51 acquisitions by major broadcast platforms extend reach of HIT’s pre-school portfolio

HIT Entertainment, one of the world’s leading children’s independent producers and rights owners, today announced 51 sales from its pre-school portfolio to leading broadcasters around the world.

31 of the deals will see programmes, including ‘Thomas & Friends’, ‘Angelina Ballerina’, ‘Bob the Builder’, ‘Fireman Sam’ and ‘Rainbow Magic’ air on new broadcast platforms. The remainder will enable current broadcasters to offer audiences new series of programmes already on air.

Alison Homewood, EVP Worldwide Programming HIT Entertainment, said “Our global TV sales team has had a phenomenal few months selling HIT’s extensive pre-school portfolio around the world. We are thrilled to extend the reach of our much loved and trusted brands to even more children following these new deals”.

Thomas & Friends
13 new contracts have been inked for ‘Thomas & Friends’, one of the world’s most popular pre-school brands. Five of these will see Thomas air on new broadcast platforms Canal Panda (Portugal), ATV (Turkey), Al Jazeera Kids (Middle East Arabic), RTV (Slovenia) and Yoopa (Canada), while TV4 (Sweden) and MTV3 (Finland) have licensed their first CG Thomas series. The remaining sales have been to Nick Jr (UK), France 5 (France), TV2 (Norway), CYBC (Cyprus), IETV (Israel) and RTE (Ireland).

Bob the Builder
13 broadcasters have also acquired series’ of ‘Bob the Builder’, four of whom will be broadcasting it for the first time – Canal Panda (Portugal), NOS (Holland), DeAKids (Italy), ATV (Turkey), while three long-time Bob broadcasters are taking their first Bob CG series, VRT (Belgium), SVT (Sweden) and TV2 (Norway). The deals with Sweden and Norway mean that audiences across all of Scandinavia will now be able to enjoy the brand with TV2 (Denmark) and MTV3 (Finland) already broadcasting Bob.

The remaining six broadcasters extending their portfolio of Bob programming, comprise RTE (Ireland), CYBC (Cyprus), TV Barrandov (Czech Republic), Super RTL (Germany), IETV (Israel) and Thailand PBS (Thailand).

Angelina Ballerina
HIT has continued the global roll out of CG-animated ‘Angelina Ballerina – The Next Steps’ with eight new deals recently signed. First-time broadcast platforms include Minimax (Hungary, Romania and Poland), RTP (Portugal), Piwi (France), DeAKids (Italy) and ATV (Turkey), with broadcasters RTE (Ireland), CYBC (Cyprus) and IETV (Israel) who had shown the previous 2D animation, extending their relationship with the brand.

Fireman Sam
Seven new broadcasters have recently signed deals for ‘Fireman Sam’ - RTL (Holland), VTM (Belgium) Minimax (Hungary, Romania & Poland), Piwi (France), ATV (Turkey), TV Barrandov (Czech Republic) and RTV (Slovenia),

Rainbow Magic
HIT has sold its TV special ‘Return to Rainspell Island’ to Cartoon Network (UK) and Canal Plus (France). Based on the highly popular Rainbow Magic books, this is the first time the brand has been available to audiences on TV.

Little Charlie Bear, Monkey See, Monkey Do & Shelldon
In its capacity as distribution agent, HIT Entertainment has successfully sold the broadcast rights to Chapman’s ‘Little Charlie Bear’, ‘Monkey See, Monkey Do’ from Smartoonz and ‘Shelldon’ produced by Shelldon Entertainment Company.

New series ‘Little Charlie Bear’ has been bought by Hop! (Israel), Minimini (Poland), RTE (Ireland), Al-Jazeera Kids (Middle East) and S4C (Wales), rounding out a series of pre-sales deals brokered by HIT including CBeebies (UK), ABC (Australia) and three Scandinavian public broadcasters.

Dance-a-long production ‘Monkey See, Monkey Do’, which last Autumn debuted on Sprout in the US, to immediately become the third most visited site at SproutOnLine, has been acquired by Thailand PBS. And the newest title in HIT’s distribution catalogue, underwater sensation ‘Shelldon’ has been sold to IETV (Israel) and Al-Jazeera Kids (Middle East Arabic).