Norway and London – Norwegian children’s entertainment production company CreaCon Group has signed a strategic multi-year partnership agreement with Turner Broadcasting System Europe Limited to broadcast its hit pre-school series City of Friends across the Nordic region.
Turner has acquired the current City of Friends catalogue of two 26 x 10-minute series and two 30-minute specials of City of Friends and will commence daily broadcasts of the popular animated show in Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark on its popular kids’ channels Boomerang and Cartoon Network from October 2012. CreaCon Group has also begun development on a third series with its animation production partner Action Synthese Studios in France.
The agreement with Turner significantly bolsters the property’s TV distribution reach across the Nordic region where City of Friends is currently broadcast on TV2 in Norway, TV4 in Sweden, TV2 in Denmark and MTV3 and Juniori in Finland.
The long term agreement between Turner in the Nordics and CreaCon also boosts the licensing push for City of Friends across the region. Alongside the new seven-day broadcasting, CreaCon will execute a series of advertising campaigns on Turner’s extensive channel network to support the licensing program for the property.
Carl Christian Hamre, CEO CreaCon Group comments, “We are delighted to have entered into an important and strategically significant agreement with Turner Broadcasting. We have always respected and admired Turner’s ethos in nurturing and growing children’s shows and we feel that City of Friends will perfectly complement and enhance their existing line-up. We look forward to building upon the success of City of Friends in the Nordics with Turner.”
Bo Falk Østergaard, Director of Ad sales, Enterprises and Research, Turner Broadcasting System Nordic and Baltic, says, “This is a great opportunity for Turner and our children’s channels, Cartoon Network and Boomerang, in the Nordic market. This content will give the channels great local content that appeals to our target audience. We see this agreement as a great way to work more locally and invest more in the market. It also allows us the opportunity to adopt a really good 360 approach to the brand with our licensing and merchandise, ad sales, programming and marketing teams.” He continues, “We see this as the beginning of an extended partnership that could be transferred potentially into other key territories in the future.”
City of Friends was first broadcast in the Nordic countries in 2010 and is uniquely based on the adventures of a real-life Norway state police officer – CreaCon founder and CEO Carl Christian Hamre. Inspired by his day job, Hamre created bedtime stories for his young son and, within four years, he had produced the first series of City of Friends, which focuses on three new recruits to the emergency services working together to solve problems in their city. Today, City of Friends is broadcast in more than 180 countries and in 22 languages around the world. CreaCon Group is Norway’s leading independent children’s production company with businesses that now span TV production & distribution, licensing, live events, DVD production and distribution, music and digital operations.
Source: Turner BroadcastingSystem