Although Egmont Imagination is substantially diminishing its production and development infrastructure while at the same time pursuing the sale of the companys assets, they will be at MIPCOM with a full slate of programs. Tom van Waveren, president of Egmont, said, "While Egmont Imagination no longer fits within the Egmont Groups strategy, our companys distribution structure remains in place for the foreseeable future as options are being considered. Additionally, our distribution and rights exploitation activities remain intact, and we will continue to exploit the companys portfolio of original animated series programming. As a result, we will showcase our line-up of new original programming at the upcoming MIPCOM Junior and MIPCOM markets in October 2002 as previously planned and announced." Egmont Imagination will debut its new 2D animation series, PAZ (formerly known as LITTLE PENGUIN) at MIPCOM 2002. A co-production with Discovery Kids US and King Rollo Films, PAZ is a 52 x 5-minute series aimed at preschoolers. The series, which is currently in production, is based on Egmont Books LITTLE PENGUIN book series, and features a frisky little penguin named Paz. Paz is also the character selected to represent Discovery Kids re-launch of its READY SET LEARN! programming block. In addition to airing the series, the weekday morning block will feature Paz as a puppet character who will host the programs. PAZ is scheduled to premiere in early 2003 in the U.S. on both the TLC and the Discovery Kids Channel.
