Fox Broadcasting Bankrolls Kid’s Network

Fox Broadcasting Co. said Wednesday it is getting into the business of children’s television by bankrolling the production of weekday afternoon programming for its 126 affiliates, beginning in the fall of 1990.

But the venture will be carried out by a new company called Kid’s Network rather than Fox Broadcasting itself, reflecting the fact that the financial arrangement is different than the normal one between networks and their affiliates.

Fox will serve in the same capacity as it does in supplying its stations with prime-time programming, commissioning children’s shows and paying the production costs. But unlike with the prime-time schedule, the network has been guaranteed that the affiliates will run the program until all initial expenses have been recouped through advertising revenue.

Kid’s Network also will offer a bonus for the affiliates. Instead of just taking their usual revenue from local ad sales, they will also end up with partial ownership of the program.

Fox will participate in this relationship directly through the seven television stations it owns, including KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles.

Jaime Kellner, president and chief operating officer of Fox Broadcasting Co., said he thinks the producers of children’s programming will be willing to relinquish some of their potential profits in foreign and other ancillary sales to the Fox stations in exchange for the guaranteed order of 65 episodes, rather than the 13 they would normally get from ABC, CBS or NBC for a Saturday-morning series.

Mike Fisher, general manager of the Fox affiliate in Sacramento and chairman of the Fox Broadcasting Co. Affliate Board of Governors, expressed the hope that the Fox affiliates will be able to air better children’s programming than is currently available in syndication. Most syndicated children’s programming today are “deal driven,” he said, which means they are created and sold to help a particular advertiser sell its product.

“These new programs will be put on the air to get big (ratings) numbers,” Fisher said, “not to sell some doll.”

Kellner said that, like the three major networks, Fox will include educational elements in its children’s schedule, either within the programs or adjacent to them.

“Networks have a greater responsibility to upgrade children’s programming, to provide shows that enlighten and educate as well as entertain,” he said.

Kellner also said that by helping its affiliates secure better programming and a sweet financial interest in these programs, Fox inevitably will be helping itself.

“When you do nice things for each other, that pays off in the long run,” Kellner said. Participation in this arrangement is voluntary for all Fox affiliates. But Fisher said that he expects 100% participation, even though the Walt Disney Co. will be syndicating a two-hour block of children’s programming in the fall of 1990.