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The fifth Malayalam
news channel Jeevan TV went on air last week. Backed by the church,
this channel will beam programmes 24 hours a day and will be a family
channel, according to channel managing director PC Cyriac. He told
mediapersons that the channel would focus on entertainment, education
and information. It would uphold social values and would not air
advertisements of liquor companies, even if they were surrogate
liquor ads.
This would also
be the first Malayalam channel to beam news in English. However,
there would be only a few in-house programmes, Cyriac said adding
it would outsource serials on the condition that the channel’s
focus was maintained, he added.
The channel
would be a mode of education for students as there would be several
educational programmes. This would make it a much-viewed channel
which would naturally bring in revenue through advertisements, he
said. On the influence of the church, he said the channel was backed
by the church and there were over 8,000 shareholders who would have
a say in the running of the channel. He was confident that with
40 lakh viewers of Malayalam programmes on TV and nearly half of
them viewing cable TV, there would be a shift towards serious, social
issues and Jeevan TV would provide that opportunity.
For feedback,
the channel would have ‘Jeevan TV clubs’ involving viewers
who would make suggestions and these views would be considered by
the channel authorities, he added.
Toonz
India in production deal with Treehouse
India’s
only ink-animation studio Toonz Animation has clinched a co-production
deal with UK-based Treehouse Production for a fun spook animation
series. The permanent distribution rights for the series within
the Asian continent, however, will remain with Toonz, according
to Toonz Animation India CEO Bill Dennis.
The animated
series titled How To Care For Your Monster will be produced in 52
episodes of 12-minute duration over a period of one year. Artists
at Toonz will work on various stages of production from sheet timing,
through layout, animation, clean up, in between to scanning, according
to a Toonz release. Toonz, identified by the California-based Animation
Magazine as ‘top ten studios to look for’ is busy with
the first episode How To Haunt A House. It is ghosts and monsters
that star in this series, set in cemeteries, crypts and haunted
houses. The first episode of this delightfully witty series is about
how Mandy and Randy, two ghost-loving children team up with spook
specialist Brady Plunkett and his friend Ember to liven up a boring
bed and breakfast party in their house on the haunted hill. The
episode will be “a horror-trip for everyone else but the kids,”
says Bill Dennis.
Apart from the co-production, the eight year old Treehouse Production
will handle the distribution in te non-Asian regions. The British
studio has clients in the UK, Canada and France through special
series like Chines Words, Junkyard, The Adventures of Dawdie and
Internet animation ventures.
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