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.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, The Learning Channel will feature a special
entitled ULTIMATE SPECIAL EFFECTS. Premiering Sunday, November 28th from
8pm to 11pm ET/PT, the special event will be comprised of three shows
highlighting the effects in recent films like THE MATRIX, THE HAUNTING,
ARMAGEDDON, and STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE.

Fox has removed Saban Entertainment's SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED, the futuristic
Spider-Man series, and Columbia/TriStar Television's BIG GUY AND RUSTY THE
BOY ROBOT, which was based on the Frank Miller/Geoff Darrow comic book
about a little Astro Boy-like robot and his Gigantor-like pal, from the FOX
Kids line-up. Both series debuted in September. They have been replaced by
Saban Entertainment's THE AVENGERS, and additional time slots for BKN
(Bohbot Kids Network)'s MONSTER RANCHER and Toei Animation Co.'s DIGIMON:
DIGITAL MONSTERS.

North Hollywood, California-based Film Roman has begun production on THE OBLONGS, a television series that will be distributed by Warner Bros. Television on The WB Network for the 2000 season. THE OBLONGS is the second animated prime-time series, after Howard Stern's DOOMSDAY for UPN, that Film Roman has added for the 2000 television season.

The WB has already removed its new primetime animated
series MISSION HILL from its Friday night line-up due to poor ratings. (Its
premiere episode finished 115th in the ratings for the week of October 4 -
10.) It's expected to return as a midseason replacement. New episodes of SOUTH
PARK return beginning next Wednesday, October 27 at 10 pm on COMEDY
CENTRAL, with an all-new Halloween special, KORN'S GROOVY PIRATE GHOST
MYSTERY, guest starring the band, KORN. . . MTV is developing an animated

Fox has removed FAMILY GUY from its Thursday night line-up due to poor
ratings. (Apparently UPN's new WWF SMACKDOWN! is creating stiff
competition.) According to a Fox spokesperson, the network remains
committed to the show, and its return date will be known in about two
weeks. The show did well last spring when it launched in a Sunday night
timeslot and Fox committed to another season. Therefore, it seems likely
the show will return as part of the Sunday night lineup when one of the

To celebrate Scooby-Doo's 30th anniversary, Cartoon Network will present a 24-hour
SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU? marathon beginning Saturday, October 23 at noon,
a 10-hour marathon of Scooby-Doo movies on Saturday, October 30, and an
eight-hour SCOOBY & SCRAPPY-DOO marathon on October 31. Immediately before
each of the marathons, as well as during them, Cartoon Network will air
live-action footage which will be called THE SCOOBY-DOO PROJECT, in which
the real Scooby Gang heads out into the woods for a documentary in a spoof

Kids' WB! has ordered 13 episodes of MAX STEEL, a new 3D CGI animated action-adventure half-hour series from Sony
Pictures Family Entertainment (SPFE) which is set to debut in January 2000.
Set in the fictitious suburban city of Del Oro Bay, it centers around Max
Steel, a young international secret agent who was the product of a
bio-technical accident which infused him with nano-technology giving him
bionic abilities. The teenage hi-tech hero is dedicated to protecting the
Earth by fighting the most dangerous and sinister mercenary organization,

United Kingdom's ITV Network Centre has commissioned a second series of 13
episodes of the animated series THE STORYKEEPERS from Dublin, Ireland-based
Monster Productions, an animation studio and distribution company formed in
1995 by former management and artists from the Don Bluth studios. The new
series, produced by Shepherd Films, and distributed by Monster Distributes,
will be delivered in Spring 2001 for broadcast on Sunday mornings. The new
series, which is a prequel to the existing series, is set in AD 8, and

Whoever wants to know how the cliffhanger ending of the October 15, 1999 episode of SPACE GHOST:
COAST TO COAST is resolved will have to win the auction that the Cartoon
Network is holding Friday, October 15 to Monday, October 18. Cartoon
Network is auctioning off the last page of that episode's script, which
will not be part of the broadcast episode, to benefit Clowns Without
Borders. The auction will be held at www.ebay.com. At the end of Friday's
episode, which guest stars comedian Steve Wright, Space Ghost and cast find

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of Comedy Central's SOUTH PARK, have received permission to
sample copyrighted Monty Python work for use in IT'S THE MONTY PYTHON
STORY. The animated special will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the BBC
comedy series MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS, which was created by Graham
Chapman, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Terry
Gilliam (the lone American in the group, who did the animation). The
special will include a spoof of the famous "Dead Parrot Sketch" entitled

NIGHT OF THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN, an hour-long animated special, will air on
Fox on Thursday, October 28, at 8 pm. Featuring the voices of Luke Perry
(BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER), William H. Macy (FARGO), and Tia Carrere
(WAYNE'S WORLD), the special was produced by Dallas, Texas-based Computed
Animation Technology (CAT) and Wimberley, Texas-based Locomotion Studios
using performance (motion-capture) 3D animation. It was written by John
Shirley (THE CROW). The special, like the upcoming Tim Burton film, SLEEPY

HESTON, animation director J.J. Sedelmaier's final TV FUNHOUSE segment for
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, aired Saturday, October 2 on the comedy show's season
premier, which was hosted by comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Sedelmaier's final
vignette, which concludes his three-year collaboration with writer Robert
Smigel, lampooned the NRA's pro-gun position by using real audio of NRA
president, actor Charlton Heston, addressing Congress combined with
dialogue from his PLANET OF THE APES movies and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, in