JAM Media is an animation and software company providing personalised animated content to the broadcast, new media, mobile and home entertainment world. John Rice, together with two college friends, founded the company in January 2002.
Rice worked for 20th Century Fox and MTV in USA and after six years returned to Ireland to study in Trinity College, where it became clear that it was possible to produce high-quality animation content economically. The company employs 14 full-time employees and contracts over 40 individuals to produce their current production Funky Fables with the BBC. To date, the company's properties have successfully been licensed to over 60 territories worldwide and have been translated into 16 languages.
Products:
JAM develops, creates and produces entertainment brands that span multiple demographics, from pre-school to young adult. Eighty per cent of the content produced utilises the Headhunter software, which allows for a personalisation of content. This software package allows broadcasters and consumers to easily superimpose headshots onto an animated body and place them into the animated environment, creating a unique interactive experience and empowering individuals to create user-generated content that retains high production and storytelling values.
Customers:
JAM's pre-school series, Picme, has been licensed to Animaia (United States), Nick Jr and MTV Networks (UK, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Japan, Latin America, The Netherlands), TPS (France), Ki-Ka (Germany) and Media Set (Middle East).
Q: What vision prompted you to start up in business?
A: I could see the way television was changing. How the web and other platforms were going to play a major role in how and where an audience access and interacted with content. It became apparent that, many traditional broadcasters and content producers were threatened by new media rather than embracing it. I saw a very definable gap that JAM could fit itself into.
Q: Are there any interesting or unusual circumstances surrounding the inception of the company or its evolution?
A: For my daughter's second birthday, I cropped out her photograph and superimposed it onto a short animated piece. This was e-mailed to friends as an invite to a party we were holding for her. We had a number of people asking us to do the same for their kids and even offering to pay! That was the genesis of JAM's pre-school series Picme.
Q: Express the biggest challenges facing your industry.
A: The four key challenges I see are; increased regulation, the broadcast world becoming more fragmented and licence fees decreasing, exclusivity of content within territories being sought and increased competition.
