Youthful Vision

To

produce award-winning children's television that appeals to young viewers in all corners of this shrinking planet is no kids' game. It is an intensely competitive, high-stakes industry--in which Canadians have shown the creative talent and business acumen to succeed on a global scale. Without being immodest, we think our company, CINAR, is a case in point.

CINAR's pioneering role in the development of such nonviolent, pro-social children's television series as Arthur, Wimzie's House and The Busy World of Richard Scarry has been been heralded by some critics as visionary. But in the late 1980s, when we were first getting involved in the production aspects of the business, we happened to be mainly the parents of two young children, Eric and Alex. From that perspective, we just felt that providing an alternative to all the violent TV programming we saw aimed at children was the right thing to do. Our decision to specialize in nonviolent shows has paid off. So has our approach to the market, which focused primarily on then new cable and specialty channels.

These days everyone is jumping on the global bandwagon. CINAR was determinedly international from the start. We began business in the early '80s, distributing European and Japanese cartoons to the burgeoning U.S. cable industry. Our first original production, The Wizard of Oz, was created in 1987 with Japanese and American partners. To some extent, our strategy made a virtue of necessity: Canada was too small a market to support production of children's TV on the scale we hoped to achieve. But that turned out to be an advantage, not a handicap.

We had also come to the happy realization that children's programming, especially animated productions, could easily be dubbed and adapted for different world markets. If we chose characters and stories with evergreen appeal, such as Paddington Bear, Arthur and Little Lulu, they could sell for generations. We also learned that building international alliances takes time and effort, but it has become key to our long-term success and growth. We have partnered with some of the giants of the industry, including Viacom, Sony, Time Warner, Reader's Digest and PolyGram. We have always said we want to partner, not to conquer, in the great Canadian way.

The rest, as they say, is history. From its Montreal headquarters, CINAR supplies programming in 40 languages to about 150 countries. We have more programming on television in France than any other producer in the world. Montreal is home to our own full-service animation studio; state-of-the-art sound recording, mixing, audio and video postproduction facility; music creation, recording and publishing division; as well as our licensing division. We employ about 200 people in Montreal and 300 more in the U.S., Britain and Israel.

It has been said that our success lies in combining the European and Canadian preference for substantial content with American-style entertainment value. Whatever the case, our shows communicate what we think are educational, pro-social values, but they are also highly entertaining, and messages are passed along to children in a subtle way. Wimzie's House, seen daily on PBS in the U.S. and starting its third season in fall 1999, has been sold in more than 100 countries. Arthur has won two consecutive Emmy Awards for best children's series and is the top-rated children's series on U.S. television.

CINAR has gained in tangible ways from its Canadian-Quebec heritage. We are able to draw on an exceptional pool of creative and technical talent, particularly in the animation field, that was initially nurtured by the National Film Board, based in Montreal. We also have received federal and Quebec tax incentives and similar benefits from co-production treaties that Canada has with 54 countries.