Why Sixteen South won’t be taking the YouTube-first path

2025-04-29T09:05:25Z

Colin Williams, founder and creative director of Irish animation studio Sixteen South, discusses the company’s restructuring plan, what it is looking for in third-party distribution, its upcoming slate and why it won’t be going YouTube-first.

Why Sixteen South won’t be taking the YouTube-first path

Sixteen South is restructuring. Tell us about the decision to do this and what else is changing at the company.

A number of years ago we created three separate divisions in the studio to focus on the three areas we worked in: original development, production and distribution. It was at a time when we were producing other people’s shows in our studio alongside our own, but a few years ago, we took the decision to focus solely on telling our own stories and partnering with other creators to develop original stories together and not take on service work. We’ve always been one big family, so we thought we should look like that to the industry too – one group with one purpose – to tell stories that matter to every child in every home in every country.

We’re 18 this year (don’t worry, we’ve no intentions of growing up and being sensible) so we thought it was time for a new visual identity which represents us a little bit better. It’s hand-drawn in the same way that everything we do is not only made by humans but pondered over, sketched, scribbled and developed, and so we wanted to capture the essence of who we are and what we do in our new logo. We’re launching a new website shortly too, because we realised we’ve been so busy making shows we’ve never really had the time to show our work off properly!

We’ve also moved into our new forever studio in Holywood, County Down, a beautiful little coastal town 10 minutes from Belfast. It’s also the home of [golfer] Rory McIlroy, [actor] Jamie Dornan, [musician] Van Morrison and [artist] Oliver Jeffers, so we’re in good company! Our new studio, like our logo, reflects who we are, it’s a really cool creative space which we love working in together. Our development work has really benefited from physically getting back together again; we work together in the studio four days a week and work a half day at home on Fridays to catch up on admin. We believe we’re doing the best work we’ve ever done.

What is Sixteen South’s content strategy and what projects are on your current production and development slate?

We’re entirely focused on creating characters, worlds and telling great stories to kids – characters that are aspirational and who are great role models, who challenge and subvert stereotypes and tell funny stories with big heart, and stories of hope that entertain, inform and educate our young audiences. It has always been our ambition and goal to reach every child in every home in every country and we’re delighted that our shows reach into over 160 countries (and counting).

On the back of the success we’ve had with Coop Troop, we’ve been busy creating and developing a slate of comedy shows which we’re pitching at the moment. We’ve been loving the luxury of throwing ourselves into longer stories and bigger worlds, being able to tell stories to kids that are genuinely funny and worth watching. But we still haven’t left our first love, which is creating meaningful and charming preschool series, and we have two brand new preschool series that we’re pitching at the moment. We’ve also been developing our first high-end animated television special, which we’re looking forward to revealing later on in the year. And we’ve been busy developing our first feature film for preschoolers – Odo the movie.

Being one team together means that as we spark, create and develop new ideas, we’re constantly listening to our rights team about how the market is changing and how specific buyers’ strategies are evolving. But we’ll always keep creating stories from the heart that we believe kids need to hear.

You are looking for a third-party show to add to your distribution catalogue. How does this alter your distribution strategy and what specifically are you in the market for?

Years ago, we formed our own full-time distribution team in-house when we took back the rights to our shows from other distributors, and until now we’ve been focused only on distributing our own shows. For a while we’ve been contemplating adding one third-party property to our stable, but we have absolutely no desire to become a large distributor of third-party shows, we are and always will be a boutique producer and distributor.

We’re looking for a beautiful character-driven comedy series with plenty of heart. We don’t mind if it’s animated or live action, it can be upper preschool or for six-to nine-year-old kids. But most importantly, it must be able to sit alongside our own shows and feel like it could be something we made ourselves. It needs to belong; that means it must align with our values and studio manifesto of positive role models, breaking stereotypes and zero negativity. We don’t mind what stage the show’s funding is at, we’re looking to plug a gap and get going with one strong project this year and we’d love to accept ideas from established producers.

With children migrating to social media platforms and the rise of AI, the global animation and kids’ industries are going through a difficult time. How is Sixteen South navigating this challenging period?

There’s no doubt we’re going through the hardest period that our industry has ever seen. To see partners and colleagues lose their jobs and their studios is utterly heart-breaking. The constant realigning of streamers’ strategies, the significant fall in commissioning and kids migrating to online platforms makes it a tough time to be in our beloved industry.

And, of course, the threat of AI is growing out of control. We’re already seeing opportunists ‘creating’ animation completely with AI, and it’s natural to feel terrified because anyone can prompt a computer to ‘make’ moving characters with little money and with very little talent. But we must take heart that as humans, we will always need great stories. Stories, characters and worlds are created by humans, and always will be. I genuinely don’t know if studio animation pipelines will be completely replaced with AI technologies and I’m worried for the traditional studios that focus on producing animation, because I do think that will change and sadly many of our talented friends will lose their careers.

A number of years ago we became ‘animation production agnostic,’ making the difficult decision to no longer produce animation in-house, but instead allow ourselves the freedom and flexibility to work with lots of other studio partners who specialise in specific 2D, 3D or hand-drawn animation, meaning we weren’t tied down to making all of our shows in the same way with a similar look. Our choice to be a studio that focuses on creating and developing new ideas means that no matter how they’re brought to life, we hope and believe there’ll always be a market for high-quality storytelling.

What are your goals and plans for Sixteen South in the next couple of years?

Keep doing what we’re doing. Keep telling stories to preschoolers, older kids and their families and aim to reach every corner of the world. We’ve two goals: the first one is to create a very ‘special’ special; it’s always been our ambition to create that coveted Christmas Day special, something the family enjoys together and becomes a talking point afterwards. The second is to create a preschool feature with a theatrical release based on Odo, our successful series which already has an audience in 160 countries.

We continue to believe in traditional linear broadcasting, and continue to work with public broadcasters and streamers. It’s not surprising our society’s soaring mental health problems are proportionately aligned to the equally soaring amount of time people spend online on social media and online media. We’re gambling on the fact that eventually kids and adults will yearn for stories so much they’ll come back to where they can find them. We’re not planning to create YouTube or TikTok-first shows because it’s not what we would enjoy doing. We have no idea how to fund something like that, and it would be such a compromise that we don’t think we’d ever enjoy it. What we are excited about is how to create something special that works happily across both on-air and online platforms and that’s something we’re giving some development time to just now.

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