The Champions Series - A Salute to John Claster

John Claster has made an indelible mark in the children's syndication market. As president of a company his parents founded more than 40 years ago, Claster has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to children's television. In 1968, he started his career by working in the promotions and publicity department at Claster Television for its flagship show, Romper Room. In 1969, he moved to merchandising, a year later, he took charge of the company's sales, and in 1973, when his father retired, he became the president.

At that time, Claster Television's main claim to fame was Romper Room. Nearly 25 years later, under John Claster's watchful eye, the company has become one of the foremost syndicators in children's television and handled such children's programs as Fred Flintstone and Friends, Transformers, My Little Pony, G.I. Joe, Muppet Babies, Ghostbusters and Casper. Currently, Claster Television's lineup includes such programs as Beast Wars, All Dogs Go to Heaven and Mummies Alive!.

While it may not be so clear what Claster plans to do when he steps down as president of Claster Television at the end of this year, what is clear is that he will be missed.

This month, in KidScreen's "The Champions Series," John Claster discusses children's television and his nearly 30 years in the industry.

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Q. With your involvement in children's television, and through your family's association with Romper Room, your experience goes back to the very beginnings of children's television. Are there any enduring truisms about the way children are entertained through television? What has changed over the years?

A. The biggest change that I have noticed over the last 20 years is that children are more sophisticated today. At a much younger age, children are leaving animation and traditional children's programming. Girls are out of it at almost the age of eight and boys are leaving it at nine-and-a- half and they're going to situation comedies or Beverly Hills, 90210 or Party of Five. They're more into music at a younger age than they were years ago, they're more into fashion than they were. They have a very large influence over parents on a lot of purchases in the family. They have strong opinions on what cars are cool and not cool and why. They're very familiar with a broad range of entertainment mediums that didn't even exist 20 years ago. Cable barely existed 20 years ago, and now you've got the computer, and you've got the Internet, and you've got CD-ROMs.

The other big thing is fragmentation. That change and the children's sophistication have definitely challenged the creators of programming. And you see examples of it all the time, of how difficult it is to capture children's interest. One situation I can look at is when Smurfs was a huge success for NBC. As long as Smurfs was the anchor of NBC's Saturday morning, NBC did really, really well. But when Smurfs lost some of its steam, you saw the network diminish in some of its success [with children's programming]. It's hard to do hits. But you have to hope you can capture lightning in a bottle that way.

Q. What are the enduring truisms about children themselves?

A. The biggest truisms I see holding are for preschool children. To some degree, the sophistication of children can only reach down so far. There just is a chronology to all of this that you can't violate. A two-year-old, a three-year-old, a four-year-old, they're going to be a little more sophisticated, a little more aware, but they can't grow up too fast up to that age. Barney, for example, reminds me of our Romper Room program except there's a green and purple dinosaur instead of a teacher. But the things that are on Barney, or the things that are on Arthur, are attracting young children. It's very soft programming. It's very similar to what attracted kids many years ago. And preschool children still like to see other children on air.

And I'll tell you one other truism, and this is true for older kids also. Kids will gravitate towards trends. Kids find them really fast. I remember when Pop Rocks [candy] was successful. When kids on the East Coast, who couldn't get this stuff, found out how popular it was on the West Coast, they started getting them bootlegged into the East Coast in about a month. Kids figure out very early on where the trends are. One of the differences is that the trends come and go a little faster. And it's amazing how fast they go from coast to coast. Actually, it's amazing how fast they go around the world now. Power Rangers is a good example. That became popular worldwide very quickly.

And one final truism is that kids want good stories and good characters with a little uniqueness thrown in. If you start with good characters and good stories, you are well ahead of the game. Combine that with a unique twist, like we've done with Beast Wars, and it's a very good formula for success.

Q. How do you see the roles of promotions, licensing and merchandising changing over the next few years? Will they affect the overall children's television programming product?

A. I don't necessarily think they're going to affect the product children see. I think what will happen is that those three elements, which are not part of the content of the show, but which surround the show, will become more and more important. It has always been true that, when you have a megahit program, all of those other things are working very well around it.

One of the things that I think is going to become more difficult is creating successful licenses. You've got so many distribution outlets for children's programming that you need to find greater audience mass in order to have a huge hit, and getting that in the world of fragmentation is harder and harder.

Q. Has the alliance between creative and marketing hurt or helped the overall product?

A. I think that the alliance between creative and marketing is not as new or of any greater importance today than it was 20 years ago in terms of helping or hurting product.