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As coronations go, it was something of a letdown. When Margaret Loesch, president of the Fox Children's Network, unveiled her fall programming lineup to advertisers in New York on April 5th, the occasion might have served to celebrate Fox's newfound dominance in the kidvid game. In only its fourth year on the air, everything clicked for FCN this season. With hits such as X-Men, Tiny Toons and the out-of-left-field smash Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Fox left the Saturday-morning competition in the dust.
The Fox folk had some fun with the event, as always, producing a video spoofing kids shows in general and their own in particular (the tape featured Super Surfin' Transmogrifiers, with hand-held dolls cheesy enough to make one pine for the production values of Power Rangers). A climactic onstage appearance by two Power Rangers, running through some goofy kung fu poses, underscored the fluky nature of the Power Rangers phenomenon.
If the upfront presentation seemed a tad muted compared to Fox's runaway success in kids, there were several reasons. For one, a bunch of media buyers can't be expected to get too excited about watching network executives exchange high-fives. Besides, that's not Loesch's style. "What a gratifying year," she began her pitch. "From Peter Pan [an early Fox bomb] to the Power Rangers--what a ride!" That's about as demonstrative as Margaret Loesch gets--in public anyway.
Further draining drama from the moment, Fox had circulated preliminary versions of its fall schedule three weeks earlier, when the upfront market for kids' ad time had opened and closed in a two-day frenzy. So the event had none of the hallmarks of a career-capping milestone, though it could just as well have served as one.
Fox has swift established itself as the leading children's programmer, and the 48-year-old Loesch has emerged as the Queen of Kidvid. Producers, advertisers and even some competitors acknowledge that, in children's programming, we are living in the age of Fox. "They have a machine that's very, very potent--a hitmaker," notes Jeff Segal, president of rival Universal Family Entertainment and Cartoon Studio. The big question is: Can the other networks seriously challenge Fox's hegemony in kids?
The game is worth winning. At stake is a national advertising pot worth more than $650 million....