Cartoons on the Bay is a festival aimed mainly at Italian producers and TV stations that gives them a platform to present themselves on a national and international scale. The main intention of the festival is to generate wider press coverage for the industry. By cooperating with the EEC’s animation initiative CARTOON, this market has indeed achieved international recognition.

Every year, approximately 100 European projects are presented by CARTOON. Out of these, about 10 projects will eventually be realized. For this year’s festival, Cartoons on the Bay invited several licensing experts from Germany, the U.K. and France to participate in a workshop called ‘Cartoon Licensing.’ The object of this workshop was to discuss how characters of a European animated series can be commercialized, and to what extent a licensing and merchandising market can be established in Europe. Participants learned how to improve the presentation of European animated characters in order to compete with American and Japanese projects.

As a result of this year’s meeting, a regular workshop will take place before or during the festival. The workshop will present series that are in production to industry and trade representatives, potential licensees, licensing agents, production houses and TV stations. One of the workshop’s main goals is to find additional means of financing productions. By integrating media and industry, producers should be able to enhance and maximize the overall market opportunities of their programs.

It is, of course, too early to tell whether this workshop will be successful. Nevertheless, it is certainly the right step in bringing all partners together at an early stage.

Florian Haffa is managing director of EM-Entertainment, a Munich-based diversified communications company.