PitchTV to Feature Acclaimed Collection of Zagreb Animation
PitchTV (http://www.pitchtv.com) has announced that it will showcase Rembrandt Films' acclaimed collection of animation from Zagreb Studio. The body of work will be featured regularly among the site's varied programming. Animated films from Zagreb Studio have won several international animation awards and are considered to be stylistically unique.
"One of the studio's pioneering distinctions is that its filmmakers wrote, designed, and directed their own films, resulting in a unique animation style that became known as 'the Zagreb school.' ," stated Adam Snyder, president of Rembrandt Films.
Rembrant Films was founded in 1949 to import films from Europe to the United States, and is responsible for importing such classic animation series as Tom and Jerry. S.D. Katz, a partner at PitchTV, believes that the Internet rights for the collection of Zagreb animation were sold to PitchTV because of the site's strong commitment to artistic presentation and quality content. "We beat out more attractive bids. Companies like Atom films have a lot of money to spend, " stated Katz.
PitchTV primarily creates programming for cable television, and launched its website as a platform to distribute new programming. No advertising has been sold on the site to date, and it currently stands as an outlet for the creative forces churning at the company. However, PitchTV hopes to transition the site into a revenue generator. Katz believes content sites should emulate the early days of television, when shows were sponsored by single corporations. PitchTV.com intends to sell tasteful sponsorships on its content channels, with companies such as the GAP or Sharper Image as likely targets for sponsorship.
"Your monitor is your theater stage. Why people think they can pollute it with banner ads and trash everywhere is beyond me," stated Katz.
Katz also pointed out that high-quality content is still difficult to secure for Internet distribution. For example, the price that animators can command working on television animation is still far higher than what they would earn producing exclusively for the Web. According to Katz, an animator can expect to be paid between $300,000 and $500,000 for creating 11 minutes of animation for cable TV distribution. In contrast, a three-minute short on the Internet can be sold for about $20,000 - and only a few sites are willing to pay such fees.
One of the ultimate challenges to promoting quality content on the Web will be finding the money to hire the talent to create it. But PitchTV believes that its experience in creating content for television and film will place it at an advantage.