Values on Video

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 5, 1999 | by Catherine Edwards

National video sales have ignited explosive growth at Big Idea Productions. Wooing top talent from Disney and Microsoft, Big Idea last year grew from 35 employees to more than 120. The company plans to expand to more than 300 employees.

"We want to be the most trusted media company in America," says Executive Vice President Chris Meidl. Meidl heads the project to move the company's headquarters to downtown Lombard, Ill. Not only is Big Idea planning 68,000 square feet of new office and production space, it has plans to renovate a turn-of-the-century theater for screening family-friendly films to serve the western Chicago suburbs and visitors to Big Idea. Studio tours, children's bookshops and a soda fountain all are in the works. Big Idea will not just sell its own products and plush toys, however. It also will sell classic children's literature and books that promote traditional values.

Vischer explains his company's mission. "We feel the urgency when we read in the papers what is happening to our kids today" he explains. "If you compare 1950 to 1990, juvenile crime has increased 11,000 percent. The statistics are alarming." Vischer tells Insight he is determined to help parents use media proactively for their kids. He quotes sociologist Neil Postman, who is concerned that the flood of information has broken the wall between childhood and adulthood. "We are committed to helping parents use their VCR to choose and monitor what their children watch" he says.

Big Idea recently started its own charitable effort called the Big Idea Foundation to investigate the impact of relativism on pop culture, the constant attack on the very idea that truth is knowable and values should not be based on temporary social mores. Special attention will be given to how this affects the media choices of children. Plans are under way to fund the Section 501(c) (3) tax-exempt foundation solely from the company's consumer-products division so that customers will know where their money is going when they buy VeggieTales merchandise. Big Idea sent thousands of videos and plush toys to the Oklahoma tornado victims and plans to do the same for children's hospitals and at-risk youth organizations.

The goal of the producers of VeggieTales videos is to send a message so clear that a 4-year-old can pick it up, put it in their pocket and keep it for life. Not only do 4-year-olds love the Veggies, teen-agers are wearing VeggieTales shirts and pastors sometimes wear VeggieTales neckties when they preach. "They have a universal appeal," says 16-year-old Anamaria Skolnitsky from Falls Church Episcopal Church in Virginia. "How many teen-agers do you know that have Barney T-shirts?"

"Lots of teen entertainment today serves as a diversion from real life" says Vischer. "Kids are coming out of South Park and Scream II feeling empty. Trouble starts when a kid walks home from an hour or so of diversion to a bad family situation."

VeggieTales isn't entirely about moralizing in a humorous way, however. Every video has a quirky feature called "Silly Songs With Larry." In one, Larry the Cucumber sings about his hairbrush; in another he trills that everyone has a water buffalo; in yet another he sings in Spanish. There is forever a gentle madness afoot, as when Larry plays the role of a couch-potato pirate. Is there rhyme or reason for the comic diversion in the videos? Vischer and Nawrocki assure Insight that the charming goofiness is important. "We must be wacky, and wacky is good" says Vischer.