The Marketing Genius Strikes Back

The show was Teletubbies, and Viselman knew from the outset that it would be controversial. It was a show that appealed to a TV audience that previously had not existed, the one-year-old and younger demographic. It featured four characters -- Tinky Winky, Laa-Laa, Dipsy, and Po -- who have televisions embedded in their abdomens, who barely speak except for a syllable here or there, and who dance, fall down, and give each other "biiiig huggggggs." To some adult eyes it was an acid trip; to others it was visual Muzak, an attempt to narcotize the youngest generation of TV viewers ever. To Viselman, though, it was mesmerizingly innocent, perfect for very young children, whose parents, like it or not, often plop them down in front of a TV. And, of course, it was a potential gold mine in licensing.

Not surprisingly, given the show's controversial nature, PBS was slow to commit. To hurry the network along, Viselman faked a hunger strike. Every day for 33 days, he would fax Alice Cahn, then PBS's director of children's programming, messages such as, "I would eat my right arm off for the taste of a knish. Please respond," or "Please hurry. My mom is starting to worry."

"It was silly," laughs Cahn, "but you have got to love him.... "

Viselman was determined to place the show on PBS because he wanted that "PBS Good Housekeeping seal of approval, that quality-assurance thing." How could Teletubbies be bad for kids if it's being shown by the same folks who gave us Sesame Street?

He finally sold Teletubbies to PBS in late 1997. By then, the show had debuted in the U.K. to much fanfare -- and much consternation. "Anne Wood was pilloried as the woman who wants to ruin early childhood," says Cahn. As a result, by the time PBS was readying to launch in the United States in April 1998, "Anne called us and said, 'I can't. I just can't go through it again," Cahn recalls. That left Viselman and Cahn to promote the series. "We were doing the news shows and taking flak from parents and critics calling up and accusing us of being the devil incarnate," Cahn says. "And Kenny was a tremendous spokesperson for the series, because he truly believed in it."

Viselman was also able to capitalize on the fact that, even before the television show arrived in the States, it had taken on a life of its own. In August 1997, seven months before the U.S. debut, The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article on the Teletubbies craze in the U.K. Among other things, the article reported that Tinky Winky had become a gay icon; that scholars were forming groups to delve into the gender and race subtext of the Teletubbies; and that an Anglican minister had pronounced that the Tubbies represented ancient Christian rituals.

But the article also detailed the Tubbies' ardent following in the U.K. And all of a sudden, potential licensees in the United States, who had been leery of the show and not returning itsy bitsy's phone calls, sprung up. " The Teletubbies had been a hard sell," says Kim Winkeleer, who was then itsy bitsy's executive director of off-screen entertainment. "After we hit the cover of The Wall Street Journal, the switchboard lit up. It was lunacy!" As the launch neared, PBS took out large billboards in New York City and Los Angeles. By May 1998, when the Teletubbies dolls were introduced into FAO Schwarz, lines of people were clamoring for them.

At the licensing show in June 1998, the image of the Teletubbies danced off of everything from the staircases in the convention center to the tables in the restaurant. "I don't believe Teletubbies would have done as well as it did merchandising-wise had it not been for that kind of marketing," says Andy Krinner, author of The Licensing Book. "The show played to a very, very small audience and not everybody loved it. But the marketing machine called Kenn Viselman got it to work."

And then, as if on cue, the Rev. Jerry Falwell went public in February of 1999 with accusations that Tinky Winky was, indeed, intended to be a gay character and was thus subliminally promoting homosexuality to children. The evidence: Well, Tinky Winky is purple, his antennae form a triangle (a gay symbol), and he carries a purse. Viselman, who played no role in the character's creation, calls the entire flap ridiculous -- "moronic" -- after all, they're all silly, brightly colored children's characters who are deliberately gender-neutral. And the purse -- well, it's a "magic bag," Viselman says.

Despite the enormous publicity that the brouhaha brought, Viselman and others at itsy bitsy feared that Falwell's charges would hurt the show's image. Today, Viselman believes that the toy's core audience "bought less" because of the controversy -- although gay people undoubtedly bought more. In any case, by some estimates Teletubbies garnered more than a billion in wholesale licensing revenues in North and South America during its peak years in the late 1990s. Viselman declines to comment on how much flowed to itsy bitsy, but licensing royalties generally range from 10% to 20%. Even some Teletubbies viewers could probably do that math.

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