King of the Hill’s unique voice has carved itself a faithful viewership. ™ © 2001 FOX Broadcasting.

Over at FOX, vp of corporate communications, Scott Grogin, backs up Clifton. “It’s the writing. If it isn’t on the page the voices can’t do anything with it. But more than that, it’s a show’s point of view.”

Lazzo also cites writing over design. “Did the look of South Park help it succeed? The cutout paper look helped, but I think the show would’ve succeeded in any number of styles — the writing and the idea were so fresh and original it would’ve stood out anyway. Beavis and Butt-Head hardly moved at all and the writing helped it stand out too.”

Lazzo adds that a show’s pedigree can make a big difference. “If an individual has a track record that is meaningful that certainly helps too. I’ll open Matt Groening or (The Family Guy’s) Seth MacFarlane or (King of the Hill’s) Mike Judge’s submission first.” Having a success under one’s belt carries weight with Grogin as well. “When somebody like Mike Judge comes in with Beavis and Butt-head’s track record, we’re going to listen. King of the Hill was more suitable to broadcast but still had his distinctive point of view.

Arthur offers children award-winning entertainment over its 115-episode and growing run on PBS. All characters and underlying materials (including artwork) © Marc Brown. © 2003 WGBH.

“We’re not ready to announce anything yet,” Lazzo said, “But we’re talking to some people with broad backgrounds in cartooning and animation who’ve done prime-time before. We’re hoping to have their projects on the air next fall and in ‘05.”

Arthur, PBS’s longest running series is now in its eighth season and will see a ninth in 2005, with 115 regular episodes and two primetime specials already produced. “We’re not running out of stories,” boasts Elizabeth Coté, national senior publicist from Boston’s WGBH, the PBS affiliate that originates the series with CINAR. “It mirrors the lives of real kids, and there’ll always be stories about kids to tell.”

Coté credits a number of factors for the show’s long-running success. “Arthur is book-based – that’s the reason we started with it. Marc Brown created the characters over 25 years ago and wrote and illustrated many books starring them before we became involved. Marc is also the series’ creative producer, which definitely keeps its quality up.”

That quality has earned Arthur a Peabody Award as well as three Emmys for Best Animated Series. For years it was the top rated series for the 2-11 crowd and still hits the number two or three spot on occasion. The most impressive evidence of the show’s ongoing appeal however may be its upcoming spin-off series, Postcards from Buster. The new show (a 20-80% mix of animation and live action) follows Arthur’s rabbit friend across the U.S. as he sends video postcards back to his buddy, and gives the aardvark face time in a second PBS series. One two-part December Arthur episode serves as introduction to the Postcards, which premieres in 2004.

“Remember most animated series, like live-action, won’t get past 65 episodes,” according to Mary Bredin, director, acquisitions and programming and part of the worldwide programming strategy of Disney/ABC Cable Networks Group, “because that’s enough to strip it five days a week for 13 weeks, which is the standard U.S. season. Long-running series for Disney in Europe have been Sabrina, Recess and Rolie Polie Olie.

On occasion a project makes it through the door on solely on the strength of an artist’s vision, without a strong story or characters backing it up. “In cases like that your job as a development person job to help the artist find the story,” says Clifton. “Sometimes artists are writers and sometimes they’re just not. If that’s the case, you find someone to work with artist to give voice to the story they’re trying to tell: what is it tonally, who is this character, why do I like him or her, what is driving them and what is their world like?

“With writer-creators, once you know who these people are, the property can almost start drawing itself. Then because we have access to amazing artists in-house and in the overall animation community, you find somebody who you think can resonate with the writer; someone who first of all, can translate what this person is trying to get across. You also have to ask yourself if the chemistry is going to work, because at the end of the day these people have to like each other if they’re going to spend hour after hour creating a show together.”