Pixar shorts like For the Birds and Boundin’ are flying and leaping from the Internet onto the new iPod with video. © Pixar Animation Studios.

Emerging entertainment technologies are creating a number of new options for animators seeking to secure distribution for their properties. The video-capable iPod, television and broadband video-on-demand (VOD), advanced mobile phones and portable media players such as Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) and Tiger Electronics’ VUGO represent just a few of these new venues. The entertainment industry’s acceptance of such channels was illustrated in November when the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced it was launching a new category of Emmy for programming created specifically for nontraditional viewing platforms.

Alternative distribution venues are attracting viewers as well, albeit not at the level of traditional media. In October, Frederator Studios launched Channel Frederator, a free weekly animation download (known as a video podcast or vodcast) that can be viewed on an iPod or PSP. It has seen viewership double each week, reaching 200,000 weekly downloads after about a month of availability. Meanwhile, Apple, which offered six shorts from Pixar on iTunes as part of its initial roster of content for the video-capable iPod, saw one million video sales in the first 20 days. Pixar’s For the Birds and Boundin’ were among the top downloads.

“The world is portablizing,” says Fred Seibert, Frederator’s founder. “People are becoming unshackled from their computers.” He points out that when he suggested to his 19-year-old tech person, David Karp of Davidville, that Frederator launch a web-based animation channel, Karp responded, “That’s very 2000,” and recommended the vodcast instead.

Many of the new distribution channels, including the iPod and PSP, are open systems, where any animator can independently create or repurpose content for the devices and make it available to the general public. On the other hand, platforms such as mobile phones or VOD are, for the most part, closed systems in which animators must work through a gatekeeper—such as a carrier, distributor or aggregator—to secure distribution.

Even in an open system, working through a gatekeeper is likely to maximize exposure, and eventually revenue, because the gatekeeper’s aggregation of content and its marketing expenditures will draw a significantly larger audience than any animator distributing content independently could. Frederator, for example, attributes 95% of Channel Frederator downloads to its listing on iTunes, with most of the remainder coming from the Frederator website. (Conversely, another Frederator vodcast, about cars, generates 95% of its downloads from sources other than iTunes.)

The Pitch Process
In many ways, the process of pitching content to gatekeepers in the alternative distribution world is similar to that for traditional media. “First, we listen to what they’re saying about what programming they’re looking for, then we pick titles that might work for them,” says Newton Grant, director of business development for Central Park Media. CPM offers downloads for the iPod and PSP (including trailers and some episodes), as well as VOD titles through CinemaNow, Movielink and Comcast, among others. “Generally speaking, what they’re looking for is what’s relevant to a particular demographic. It’s still television for the most part, it’s just a new way to distribute it.”

Sprint Nextel, where a team reviews content submissions on a weekly basis, looks for “the same things that any medium would,” says Dale Knoop, gm of multimedia services. “Quality matters.” Sprint Nextel has four dedicated animation channels, including Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Looney Tunes and Saturday Morning TV (which includes Classic Media properties such as Rocky & Bullwinkle, Casper and Mr. Magoo), and is in negotiation with other leading brands. It also features animated content within some of its general entertainment channels, such as Fun Little Movies and SmashTV.

The types of content new-media gatekeepers are looking for varies widely, in part because of differing strategies and technical requirements, but also because the channels are so new they’re still trying to figure out what works. “We’re making it up as we go along,” says Seibert.