Robin Lyons has resigned as a director for Entertainment Rights Plc. (ER), as well as leaves his position of md of Siriol Productions, a wholly owned subsidiary of ER, to set up his own production company, Calon.
The ER board has decided to relocate Siriol Prods. from Cardiff, Wales to ER’s head office in Hammersmith in England. This decision follows a strategic review of the group’s production facilities, following the acquisition of Tell-Tale Productions in September 2004.
Robin Lyons and his former Siriol colleagues Andrew Offiler and Lynne Stockford have been the driving force behind all of Siriol’s productions, including BAFTA award-winning programs SUPERTED, HILLTOP HOSPITAL and UNDER MILK WOOD. The new company, Calon (which means ‘heart’ in Welsh), has also agreed to acquire the rights to several of Siriol’s projects, including HOLLY’S HELPLINE, CODELIA and SAFEHOUSE HOTEL. Calon will, following completion of the acquisition, go straight into production on the third series of BOBINOGS for BBC Wales/Cbeebies.
“The ER board would like to take this opportunity to thank Robin for his contribution to the company and wish him all the best in his brand new venture, Calon,” said Mike Heap, ceo of Entertainment Rights.
“I’m very excited about our new venture,” Robin Lyons, added. “We see this as an opportunity to bring in new talent and investment, to break into new areas of programming and to build on the success of our children’s drama series, HELP! I’M A TEENAGE OUTLAW. Our core business will be animation but we want to do more drama and some entertainment.”
London-based Entertainment Rights (
www.entertainmentrights.com ) is one of the U.K.'s leading specialist media groups focused on the ownership of high quality children's and family programming, characters and brands. ER owns the rights to many classic characters including Basil Brush, Postman Pat, Little Red Tractor, He Man and Masters of the Universe, Fat Albert, She Ra, Ghostbusters, Zorro and The Lone Ranger. ER's library has grown to more than 1,800 hours of children's and family programming. This includes rights to global brands such as Mattel's Barbie, Scholastic's Clifford, Hasbro's Transformers, Casper the Friendly Ghost and Felix the Cat. ER is ideally placed to extend and exploit its portfolio of quality programming with its own television distribution, licensing division and an established home entertainment label, Right Entertainment.
