Boston-based animation house Fablevision is slated to create two new shows

for Noggin, the new 24-hour educational network for kids from Nickelodeon

and the Children's Television Workshop. Fablevision will produce CECIL AND

HER VERY OWN UNIVERSE and SWAMP DOG. CECIL will feature a 12-year-old girl

and her robot dog who live in a underground society in the future. Cecil

dreams of leaving her mole-like life to see what above ground has in store.

DARIA fans can start gearing up for a telefilm full of fun-filled teenaged

angst. IS IT FALL YET? will be based off the DARIA series and is slated to

hit MTV in the fall. Karen Disher and Guy Moore will direct, and Glenn

Eichler and Peggy Nicoll will script.

Recently, Europe has gotten a good old dose of American capitalism,

Japanese style. POKEMON has infested the European television market. The

children's mega-hit first debuted in the UK on Sky 1 in April and quickly

became the channel's #1 kids show. In October, the ITV Network and GMTV

secured UK terrestrial broadcast rights to the show. A month prior to the

ITV and GMTV deal, POKEMON started airing on Germany's RTL2, The

Netherlands' Fox Kids, Belgium's VT4 and RTL, Portugal's SIC and France's

Fox Family's newly picked up ANGELA ANACONDA rings in the New Year with a

14-episode marathon on January 1, 2000. The seven-hour event will start at

7 am and run 'til 2 pm on Fox Family. The show that TV Guide recently named

one of the top ten new kids shows of 1999 regular airs at 1 pm on Saturdays

and Sundays on Fox Family.

Cult comic and TV franchise THE TICK is getting a new lease on life.
Producers Barry Sonnenfeld and Barry Josephson (FANTASY ISLAND, MAXIMUM
BOB), via their deal at Columbia TriStar Television, will bring a
live-action, primetime half-hour version of the clueless hero's show to Fox
Broadcasting. The series is scheduled for fall 2000.



Read more about THE TICK from creator Ben Edlund in the Animation World
Magazine article "Tick Fever Endures" by Deborah Reber.

Director/animator Mike Dietz, founder of Orange County, CA-based Mike
Dietz Studios, has signed on to direct an episode of THE PJ'S, the
stop-motion animated show starring movie-star Eddie Murphy, for Portland,
OR-based Will Vinton Studios. Mike Dietz was one of the founding partners
of The Neverhood, the stop motion animation studio that produced several
projects for Steven Spielberg's interactive division of DreamWorks SKG.
Since leaving The Neverhood to start his own animation studio, Mike has

The Disney Channel and Toon Disney gear up for the holiday season with a new
millennium celebration. The Disney Channel will feature holiday episodes
from Playhouse Disney series BEAR IN THE BIG HOUSE, ROLIE POLIE OLIE, and
PB&J OTTER. To highlight FANTASIA/2000's January 1st opening in IMAX
theatres around the country, MOVIE SURFER'S will go inside the new film.
Toon Disney, the 24-hour all-animation network, will present various
holiday-themed features as well as the television premiere of the Annie

On December 10, 1999, Cartoon Network will debut the one-hour millenium
special DEXTER'S LABORATORY'S EGO TRIP. The special will center around Dexter's over-zealous reaction to receiving a message from the future which informs him that he will one day save the planet. The show will air at 7pm on December 10 and repeat at 12am on Janurary 1, 2000.

On Friday, November 19, 1999, Universal Studios Hollywood celebrated the 40th
anniversary of the first airing of the Jay Ward cartoon ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE.
Guests were treated to a hand-carved chocolate moose weighing almost 4000
pounds. Estimated calories nearing 40 million.

We have more information to add to the Pokemon insanity. Last weekend when
POKEMON: THE FIRST MOVIE debuted in theatres, the TV series POKEMON stole
enough kids away for the local movie house to finish #1 and #2 for both weekdays and
Saturday morning. The weekday 7am POKEMON averaged a Kids WB! record 4.8
rating, 32 share, in kids 2-11, and surprisingly beat all other weekday kids series,
morning and afternoon,except for its chief competitor the WB's 4pm. POKEMON.