Welcome to the first edition of Leadership+ for 2021, brought to you from National Student Pride. This series of interviews will shine a light on the day-to-day lives of LGBT+ partners, executives, and directors in the businesses many students are looking to apply to.
I’m Max, and I’m a recent graduate. I know exactly the angst students feel about finding a graduate job, and I hope this series can spark some ideas about your own long-term career goals by reading about the journeys of LGBT+ industry leaders who were once just like us.
In this conversation, I sat down with David Levine, Chief Content Officer at Moonbug Entertainment, the British media company that is taking the children’s TV market to the next level. In addition, David was the winner of the 2021 British LGBT Award for Inspirational Leader.
This interview was recorded on Tuesday, 19th January 2021.
In this interview:
Being Chief Content Officer
Starting a new job during COVID-19
‘The Big Gay Dinner’
What We Can Learn from Children’s TV
Being Chief Content Officer
MT: So - David Levine - what is your role at Moonbug?
DL: My role at Moonbug is Chief Content Officer - and that means I oversee our creative and production teams to produce first class digital content for kids that can be seen on all platforms. Plus, we have a huge audience - and my job is to make sure we bring content that is accessible and positively influences kids’ lives in making them better and happier human beings.
MT: I was looking into this last night and the scale and reach is extraordinary. Moonbug runs CoComelon, which has over 100 million subscribers on YouTube - it is enormous.
Am I right to say that Moonbug taps into this recent shift in commercial logic whereby audiences are fragmented now, everything is online, and frankly that can better cater to the life of an energetic child - you can pause, play, stop, replay, pause however you want…
DL: Yes, and Moonbug has the largest network of kids TV channels on YouTube.
We have 235 million subscribers that generate more than seven billion views a month. It’s staggering. Bigger than Viacom, bigger than Warner, bigger than Disney. It completely builds on the trend of increased kid viewership to YouTube away from linear television channels. And we’re the global leader in that space.
We’re also on 100 platforms around the world, including Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max - just as a start. Additionally, we also programme in over 26 languages, including American sign language, so our content is broadly distributed across many platforms in many languages.
CoComelon is our biggest property at the moment. We also haveBlippi, Little Baby Bum, My Magic Pet Morphle - those are some of our properties. They generate billions of views.
MT: So your involvement in Moonbug - what does it mean to be Chief Content Officer?
DL: I oversee the creative team, who come up with all the stories and ideas, and the production teams, who execute them. So my schedule is everything from meetings about upcoming titles, planning the pitch to a platform like Sky or Netflix, or even deciding, if we’re in seven languages, what should be our eighth?
MT: So would you say you’re very much at the strategy level?
DL: Strategy and creative. I can weigh in if we have a new character design, for example. I look at our new episodes and make sure the plotline fits the Moonbug brand and our educational curriculum.
That’s creative as well as overall strategy.
Starting a New Job during COVID-19
MT: You really have jumped feet-first into this new role, and you came from the Walt Disney Company beforehand. What was the kind of runway you had coming into this role during the pandemic?
DL: When I started, we were only three days a week in the office, and we didn’t have a high percentage of people in the office at all. As a creative company, we definitely feel its best for people to be in the office and collaborating together. When things reset, we expect that our office life will be closer to what it was than what it is now.
MT: That’s definitely true of creative industries. You can just bounce ideas off each other faster. Maybe we’re not in a position yet where we can do that fully remotely.
DL: We’re doing our best, and everyone was very gracious with me. In my first week, I had one-to-ones with all of the management, mostly via video, one or two socially distanced.
But I also have a team in Los Angeles. If it wasn’t for COVID, I would have been in LA in December, spending time with my team there, having meals with them, taking pitches with them, having creative sessions with them.
But things being what they are, instead I have ‘LA days’. I start a couple hours later and end a couple of hours later to accommodate for the time difference.
‘The Big Gay Dinner’
MT: You qualified as a lawyer at George Washington University (GW), and then you were at Disney for many years. How did that transition happen?
DL: When I graduated from law school, it happened to be in the middle of the recession, and I applied to all the district attorneys offices around my area in New York to get a job. When I didn’t get any offers, my boyfriend at the time gave me a piece of advice, which was:
“Be open to looking for a job that might be less than what you’re qualified for, but at a company you love, and your passion will propel you forward.”
That led me to apply for a job at Marvel Comics. They were looking for an experienced paralegal or an inexperienced lawyer, and I thought “Hey, I’m an inexperienced lawyer!”
MT: Were you interested in comics?
DL: I’m a huge comic book fan. I’ve been collecting comics since I was six years old.
I was hired for the legal position at Marvel, and got exposed to the merchandise licensing business. I got really interested in the idea of being a business person, making deals, and creating things.
I jumped from the legal department to the licensing department, and then went back into a legal role at a small entertainment company called Itsy Bitsy Entertainment. I was employee number eleven in the whole firm.
MT: Truly Itsy Bitsy, then.
DL: Truly Itsy Bitsy. I joined on Monday and didn’t quite realise it, but Itsy Bitsy was the television distribution, merchandising and licensing agency for Teletubbies, which they had just sold to PBS.
I was 27 years old. Up until then my biggest licensing deal was a mid-five figure calendar deal and I soon started negotiating nine figure deals with some of the biggest toy companies and broadcasters in the world.
I started on the Monday, and by the Friday, I was negotiating a multi-million dollar licence agreement with Hasbro to become the master toy-licensee for Teletubbies in America.
MT: Wow.
DL: I was part of the management team, and the president of the company included me in the acquisitions process, whereby we reviewed new shows to represent, and I was very involved both creatively as well as the legal process.
MT: How do those meetings go? What do creative meetings like that look like?
DL: You ask yourself about the quality of the creative team - can these people pull off a good idea? Is the idea relevant for the demographic? Is it special? Does it make you laugh? Is it going to connect with the audience? Is it following a trend or is it setting a trend?
MT: I like to ask because thinking about children’s TV from a business perspective is day-to-day for you, but admittedly entirely new to me.
DL: That enabled me to be creative. Additionally, it allowed me to travel to the global television rights fairs and marketplaces - called MIPTV in April, and MIPCOM in October - they take place in CANNES, France. I was able to start building global connections and be involved in acquiring new properties, doing co-production deals, and that was the beginning of the path to not only legal work but also being creative.
My next role was at Ragdoll - the producers of Teletubbies. Ragdoll’s founder Anne Wood, asked me to help build their business in the US, based in New York. I was doing the business affairs and also the sales of our shows in North and South America.
You see, my legal work was the bedrock, but now I had more business-related activities on top of it.
It was in that process that I started meeting people at Disney.
Interestingly, part of how I solidified my relationship with people at Disney is through meeting and becoming friends with an executive there that was also LGBT+. We became friends, and then when they were attending MIPCOM, there’s an annual dinner for all the LGBT+ executives that attended.
At the time, it was called The Big Gay Dinner.
You only found out about it because there was a private email list and you had to know someone who knew someone to be on…
MT: ...the Big Gay List?
DL: The Big Gay List. I brought them to the Big Gay Dinner and we really became friends and when it came time for me to look for a new role, I called them up, and they said, well the President of Disney Channel, Rich Ross, is going to be in New York in February, why don’t I set you up with a face-to-face?
So I had breakfast with Rich, told him I aspired to do something a bit more creative with my career, and in the last three minutes of the conversation he said - we have this role that’s based in LA. Would you be interested? I said sure.
By the end of March I was packed up and I moved out to California to start my career at Disney.
I was Executive Director of Programme Planning. I was overseeing the scheduling of a number of our channels and my career just grew from there.
Here’s a piece of advice - I was a Vice President at my previous company. I again took my ex-boyfriends advice from all those years ago and took a step back in title to be Executive Director at Disney.
MT: But it was a great thing to do?
DL: One of the best decisions I made in my life.
MT: So at what point did you end up focusing on Europe?
DL: So after two years at Disney, I was promoted to Vice President, including overseeing worldwide programming strategy. I worked across all our channels across the world to roll out new channels, new shows, new brands.
During that time as VP of Worldwide Programming Strategy, I got to meet every programmer from every channel across the world.
We were launching global franchises like Hannah Montana, High School Musical, Camp Rock, Wizards of Waverly Place, Phineas and Ferb.
MT: All of those shows...that was all my era. Golden years for me.
DL: And for me, too!
I had team members based in Toronto, in London, as well as my team in LA. I was travelling to the UK twice a year. After about ten years, I spoke to a long-time colleague leading Disney Channels EMEA and asked if she needed help running programming. We crafted a position for me to move over.
The new position included regional programming strategy, which I knew quite well.The hook of the new role was overseeing our production and development teams to produce live action scripted & non-scripted shows; animated series; for the pre-school and kids 6-11 demographic, based in the UK, Italy, France & Spain. That was the real hook for me.
What We Can Learn from Children’s TV
MT: So you’ve been around in children’s TV for many years now. What’s stuck you to it?
DL: A couple of things...
Firstly, I’m a huge kid at heart. I still like comic books, I put together Lego sets to de-stress, I have young relatives and I love playing with them.
Second, the kid’s industry is a very inclusive, welcoming, collaborative industry. As opposed to - in general - primetime drama - kid’s TV is built on co-productions, especially in Europe, so you’re constantly working with other people. You can be working with somebody as a partner on one project but your competitor on another. So you’re cordial and friendly with all your competitors. That’s helped keep me in the industry.
The last bit is - being able to provide something positive.
The smile you had on your face when I referenced Hannah Montana, High School Musical...that’s what it’s all about.
MT: So here’s something I want to know. There’s a European market and an American market for kid’s TV.
Growing up, we had Sky+ and there were about thirty-ish channels of children’s shows. Meanwhile, the time I spent in the US...I never saw so many children’s channels. Am I right in thinking the UK market is more competitive?
DL: Completely. The UK and Italy have the most linear kid’s TV channels of any market, certainly in Europe if not globally.
MT: Why is that?
DL: Low economic barriers to entry. There’s also huge local funding of content and public service broadcasting.
MT: So we’ve spoken about the shift away from linear television, but can linear television survive?
DL: I think linear network television will always survive in some form. The strength of the linear television channel will continue to diminish, but linear channels will be one of many ways to view content provided by the strong brands behind them.
MT: And this is where a company like Moonbug steps right in and capitalises on this shift, right?
DL: Exactly. We work with everybody. YouTube and Netflix are clearly the big drivers in the shift in kid’s viewing behaviour in the last ten years.
MT: You clearly love the content that is produced and have helped to produce over the years. Here’s a question for you - what could the rest of us learn from children’s TV?
DL: Well, a couple of things.
Number one - not to talk down to children. In the best shows, you speak directly to children and not down to them.
Also - diversity and inclusivity is a given for the youngest viewers in a large part of the world. It’s accepted without blinking. And particularly when it comes to LGBTQ+ for example, for younger kids, acceptance is inherent in their make-up. I know that from personal experience. Kids have a natural acceptance that we should hold onto as we get older.
Kids’ content plays a role in modelling that, supporting that, and doing it in a way that is smart and respectful.
Thank you for reading this edition of Leadership+. You can subscribe here to get an email for every new interview. Send any thoughts, feedback, or comments over to me on email and check out National Student Pride.
With special thanks to Moonbug Entertainment for their involvement.
If you are interested in a career in television, Moonbug are currently recruiting for a Production Runner, and will soon be advertising internship applications through their website and LinkedIn.
Additionally, the countdown to National Student Pride 2021 has officially begun. You can check out the first episode of the new podcast, The Tea with NSP, for an exclusive interview with Lorraine Kelly, and grab your free ticket to our digital event here.