“We raised our ratings slightly this past year in a market where broadcasters are supposedly continuing to lose viewers,” says Al Kahn, 4 Kids’ ceo. “Ratings-wise we’re about a 1.6, we’d like to be a 1.8 in kids 6-11, that’s the minimum we’re shooting for. Overall we’d like to be a 2, but that’s going to take a little more time until we get there.”

Kahn and 4 Kids faced some serious challenges when they took over from FOX. “When FOX knew they were selling the block they stopped promoting it and the ratings went down substantially. We’re starting to build them back up; we’re not up to where they were when FOX was running promos for their kid shows on The Simpsons and across a weekday strip, but we’ve made some inroads.

“I think we made the competition on Saturday morning that much greater. Everybody uses it as a battleground now, everybody’s stepped up the competitive field, that means they’ve been promoting more during the week and they’ve been doing more different things on Saturdays. All that’s been more exciting for the viewer and been more difficult for us, but that’s part of the game you’re playing in so you have to deal with it.”

To make matters worse, FOX’s kids’ programming inventory went over to ABC as part of the network’s sale of their Family cable channel. Meanwhile, the network returned the after school time to its affiliates, leaving 4 Kids without a weekday strip to program and cross promote its schedule. To add to its challenge, FOX’s contract with 4 Kids requires one of the eight shows to meet the FCC’s educational content requirement.

Shaman King is yet another Japanese import that is finding success in the states. © 4Kids Entertainment.

The company has entered the fray with an assortment of acquired and ‘localized’ (redubbed and edited to U.S. standards) anime programming, including Shaman King and the video-game inspired Kirby and Sonic X. Kahn says “it’s a style we like because you can do many more shows for the same money as opposed to doing less shows in traditional 2D.”

Although anime is ‘in’ these days, Kahn prefers to play down its import as a genre in its own right within the FOX BOX schedule: ‘I think the term anime is misleading; I think kids don’t know from whence we cometh. By the time we localize the programs kids don’t even know they’re from Japan any more. We as adults tend to label this stuff, but kids don’t really know it.”

In addition to its acquisitions 4 Kids also produces a pair of original series for the FOX BOX: a new version of the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the CGI-animated, Pokémon-influenced robots of Cubix. Speaking of which, 4 Kids is in the unusual position of supplying two highly successful shows to rival WB!: Pokémon: Advanced (still a major ratings winner according to Kids WB!’s Hardman) and the equally popular Yu-Gi-Oh! “Certainly we’d love to have them on FOX, but we’re not going to break contracts,” says Kahn. “At the time we made those deals we didn’t have the FOX BOX. And if you look at the adult world, a lot of shows are produced by studios run by networks, but the networks don’t want the shows and they wind up being sold to the highest bidder; Warner Bros. does Friends, but it doesn’t run on the WB.”

After two years on the The Kids’ WB!, Cubix has found a comfortable new home of the FOX BOX. © 4Kids Entertainment.

Kahn acknowledges that licensing is an important part of 4 Kids’ overall game plan and key to making the FOX BOX a profitable enterprise. “Absolutely, we’re a licensing company – 4 Kids Licensing. The real reality for us is we use television as a launcher for these properties. We have a great track record in this area, with properties like Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and the Ninja Turtles relaunch.” While he notes, “the videogame related shows have been extraordinarily successful for us,” he’s quick to add that “it’s content – content, content, content. The content is first and foremost. That will eventually also work to a licensing position. But before that can happen, kids have to like what they see and want to emulate what they see.”

Kahn sees the morning leadoff 8:00 am timeslot where he’s forced to program the FCC-friendly half-hour as his biggest problem. “The networks we compete against don’t have to, so they can put on something very powerful against us, which gives us a tough way to start the morning off. WB puts on Yu-Gi-Oh! against us.” Cubix, with its robot-building premise and science content is 4 Kids’ FCC-friendly sacrificial lamb. While a discussion guide is available as a classroom aid to interested teachers, Kahn acknowledges that the show has been “the one that’s most disappointing for us; if Cubix doesn’t have the zoom and bang of a more action-oriented show to start with, it certainly doesn’t have it against Yu-Gi-Oh!”