Animation company Film Roman has announced that due to production
differences Fox will take over production responsibilities on June 1 for
Family Guy, which is currently in production on its second season. The
primetime show Family Guy airs at 8:30 pm on Sunday in the coveted spot
after The Simpsons and has been a hit with biting, racy humor. While Fox
spokespeople say that it will be handled "in-house," a specific division or
Fox-owned company has yet to be named. Film Roman, which produced 15

Angeles with several properties including two that are animated. MONSTER CLUB is an animated series for children featuring the characters of THE MONSTER CLUB. This series will feature fundamental lessons about family, friendship and the environment. RADIO TOONS, which is in development, is an animated series featuring classic radio shows from the 1930's and 1940's as the sound and dialogue tracks. Similar to the highly rated 1970 Rankin Bass TV special THE MAD, MAD, MAD COMEDIANS, it features cartoon renditions of Jack Benny, George Burns, Abbott & Costello, and Bob Hope.

Shui-Bo Wang's Oscar nominated SUNRISE OVER TIANANMEN SQUARE makes its US TV debut Sunday, May 16 at 8 pm on HBO's Signature Channel.


SUNRISE OVER TIANANMEN also debuts in Canada on Thursday, May 27 at 9 pm and 2 am ET/PT on Vision TV. It repeats on Friday, May 28 at noon, 8 pm, and 1 am; and on Monday, May 31 at 11 am. It also airs on SCN on Friday, June 4 at 8 pm; and on TVO on Monday, June 7 at 10 pm.

WATERSHIP DOWN, a $10 million TV series of 26 half-hour episodes based on
the novel by Richard Adams and the feature film directed by Martin Rosen,
both of which are also called WATERSHIP DOWN, is being produced by British
independent Alltime Entertainment and Toronto-based DECODE Entertainment.
Beth Stevenson, of DECODE, and Simon Vaughan, of Alltime, are producing;
Neil Court, of DECODE, is executive producing with Steven DeNure and Martin
Rosen. The series will debut this Fall in the UK on ITV and Canada on YTV,

Cartoon Network has greenlit Gavrilo Gnatovoch's LONGHAIR AND DOUBLEDOME
for production as a seven minute series pilot. The short features
Longhair, a fastidiously sophisticated and self-serving Cro-Magnon, and
his charmingly earnest yet irksome friend, Doubledome, as they endeavor
to evolve alongside their oafish neighbors, the Neanderthals. An air
date has not been announced. Gavrilo Gnatovich runs his own studio KNOCK
KNOCK CARTOONS in Cleveland, Ohio, which is a commercial animation house

The Kushner-Locke Co. has announced that they have entered an agreement
with Toei Animation to license Toei's animated product. Toei has one of
the largest animation libraries in the world. K-L plans to use the newly
acquired product to launch its own Spanish language animation channel in
Latin America. The deal gives K-L 1400 half-hour episodes, in the first
three years, of Toei animated product including the popular series
SAILOR MOON and DRAGON BALL Z. Toei is one of the leading animation

Fox Family Channel's 1999-2000 6 pm-8 pm lineup includes two new animated series. Saban Entertainment's PIGS NEXT DOOR, a new animated series in the tradition of ALL IN THE FAMILY, chronicles the life of a family of pigs who move from the farm to the suburbs and are forced to deal with prejudiced humans. Rodney Dangerfield provides the voice for the title character of RODNEY, a series in development for the 1999-2000 season that depicts Rodney's misadventures as a struggling comic and the everyday ups and downs of dysfunctional family life.

BBC1 has bought another season of New York-based BKN's POCKET DRAGON
ADVENTURES. The first season currently airs in the U.K. Monday and Thursday
at 3:45 pm on BBC1, averaging 1.3 million viewers, which represents about a
37% share. The series features the mischievous little Pocket Dragons who
seek adventure in a magical world of wizards, knights and gargoyles.

Nickelodeon will preview SP0NGEBOB SQUAREPANTS, a new animated series, on
May 1 at 9:30 ET/PT in the USA. The cartoon features the adventures of
SpongeBob, a hopelessly optimistic and earnest sea sponge. Creator and
executive producer Steve Hillenburg (ROCKO'S MODERN LIFE, THE GREEN BERET,
WORMHOLES), studied art and marine biology before earning a degree from Cal
Arts in Experimental Animation. Soon you will be able to visit Nick.com for
more information about the series.

Fox Broadcasting Co. has ordered another season (22 episodes) of Matt
Groening's animated series, Futurama, just four weeks after its premiere.
The show debuted on Sunday, March 28 then moved to Tuesday night on April 6
where it joined King of the Hill, The PJs, and The Simpsons repeats as
part of Fox's all-animation primetime Tuesday night line-up. Now, all of
these series have been renewed.

Cinar Corporation and WGBH Boston have announced that Emmy award-winning ARTHUR, PBS' top-rated children's series, will return with 10 new programs and 65 encore broadcasts in its fourth season, premiering October 1999. This daily animated series is based on the award-winning children's books by author Marc Brown, who is also ARTHUR's creative producer. ARTHUR's fourth season begins with, not one, but two musical guest stars: classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman who "appear" as themselves in the season's opener MY MUSIC RULES.

DIC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Disney, has sold two new animated series
to Pax TV, a new family-oriented network in the US. "Archie's Weird
Mysteries" and "Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century" will appear this Fall
as part of the weekday "Pax Power Mystery Hour." "Archie's Weird
Mysteries," a co-production with M6 France, is based on the long running
Archie comics series. In the series, a lab experiement goes awry, creating
such characters as a 50-foot Veronica, and Dr. Jughead and Mr. Hyde.

Big Ticket Television has teamed-up with Will Vinton Studios to produce a new Claymation and dimensional animation series entitled GARY AND MIKE, slated to air on FOX this Fall. The series will be executive produced by creators Fax Bahr and Adam Small, along with Academy Award winning Will Vinton and Tom Turpin (CEO/president of Will Vinton Studios).

The half-hour comedy series HOME MOVIES [AF 12/22/98] premieres Monday,
April 26, at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT. The show, featuring a "SquiggleVision"
technique, is being produced by Tom Snyder Productions, makers of Comedy
Central's DR. KATZ: PROFESSIONAL THERAPIST and ABC's Saturday morning
series, SQUIGGLEVISION. The show centers around a single mom (Paula
Poundstone) raising a precocious tot and an eight-year-old son who aspires
to be the next Steven Spielberg.

Matt Groening's new animated series, "Futurama," was watched by more than
nineteen million viewers when it premiered on Sunday, March 28. It was the
eleventh most watched TV show in the USA as it received a 11.2 rating and a
17 share, better overall ratings than both "The Simpsons" (9.3/15) that
preceded it, and "The X-Files" (10.1/15) that followed it.

Lacey Entertainment has sold the hit show POKEMON to the following European broadcasters: RTL 2 (Germany), Sky TV (UK) and MediaSet (Italy). Sky TV began broadcasting the show the week of March 29, while RTL 2 and MediaSet will begin airing the series in September. All three networks will air the series as a five-day-a-week strip. In a related announcement, EM TV & Merchandising of Germany has secured POKEMON merchandise and promotion licensing representation in that territory.

Sony Pictures Entertainment's (SPE) new family entertainment division (AF 03/09/99) has announced their first two development deals. The group has acquired worldwide rights to Kevin Eastman's UNDERWHERE, and has signed Eastman to develop an animated children's series based on his popular book. The series follows the adventures of 10-year-old Jacob who travels to UNDERWHERE, a land that exists in the same space as ours but can only be visited by those who possess the gift of imagination.

Cartoon Network U.S. will air an eight-hour marathon program called CARTOON NETWORK'S GREATEST CARTOON COUNTDOWN on March 20 starting at 2:00 p.m. and a two-hour encore presentation on March 21 at 12:00 p.m. The lineup of this program is a little different from the similar program which ran last year, THE 50 GREATEST CARTOONS OF ALL TIME. The selections come predominantly from the network's Time-Warner library of 8,500 titles, as well as from other studios which contributed cartoons exclusively for the marathon.

Encore Media Group's five-year-old Action Channel has established a new late-night Saturday programming block devoted to adult Japanese animation called Anime. Encore has acquired ten Japanese animation titles, and will launch the show with anime distributor A.D. Vision's TEKKEN: THE MOTION PICTURE on April 3. In addition to TEKKEN, five additional titles are from A.D. Vision: BATTLE ANGEL, BLOOD REIGN: CURSE OF YOMA, GSC GUNSMITH CATS, SOL BIANCA and the cult series BLUE SEED.

Headbone Interactive has signed two deals to deliver animated series to cable outlets Discovery Channel and Fox Family Channel. HUGO TAKES A DETOUR is a series of one-minute interstitials that will start airing on the Discovery Channel in spring '99. Not only is this Headbone's first foray into animated programming for television but it is also the first animated program to air on the Discovery Channel.