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Thursday, January 30, 2020

YTV to Premiere LEGO 'City Adventures' on Friday 14th February 2020

YTV TO DEBUT LEGO® CITY ADVENTURES, BRAND-NEW ANIMATED SERIES ON FRIDAY 14TH FEBRUARY 2020

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Canada - YTV will premiere Nickelodeon and the LEGO Group's brand-new high-stakes CG-animated comedy series LEGO® City Adventures on Friday 14th February 2020 at 5:30 p.m. (ET/PT). Following the construction of the series premiere, newly constructed episodes will continue to premiere regularly on YTV.

A rollercoaster ride of fantastic fun, the series (10 episodes) depicts the funny, smart, and dynamic slices of life within the sprawling and diverse LEGO City community, following the absurd and action-packed adventures of its residents.

“LEGO CITY is our strongest evergreen property globally, and for the first time we are leveraging episodic content to establish characters and personalities that bring the city to life,” said Jill Wilfert, Vice President, Licensing & Entertainment for LEGO Group. “We’re thrilled to partner with Nickelodeon for this important evolution of LEGO CITY given how well positioned they are to engage children and families with relevant programming.”

“The LEGO brand is known for creating imaginative and innovative content for kids, and we are excited to collaborate with the LEGO Group to bring the unique characters, style and humor of LEGO City Adventures to life on Nickelodeon,” said Layla Lewis, SVP of Global Acquisitions and Content Partnerships, Nickelodeon.

LEGO City Adventures explores the intertwining paths of the city's everyday heroes as they work together to stop a mysterious master criminal who begins to wreak havoc on their town. In the premiere episode “Cubs and Robbers”, a movie promotion stunt goes wrong, unleashing a humongous ‘Cubby the Cop’ balloon on the city. Then, in “Billy the Bug”, Fire Chief McCloud accidentally buys a malfunctioning Twirly Hat for her nephew.

LEGO City Adventures | New Series | February 14 at 5:30PM E/P on YTV

Welcome to LEGO City where the adventures are awesome and the people are awesomer! Get to know this awesome city block by block!

Catch LEGO City Adventures February 14 5:30PM E/P on YTV!
Citizens of LEGO City introduced throughout the series include: Sergeant Duke DeTain (Joe Zieja, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4), an overly heroic cop; Freya McCloud (Misty Lee, DC Super Hero Girls), a crisis-ready fire chief; Shirley Keeper (Alex Cazares, The Loud House), the grumpy street sweeper; Harl Hubbs (Daniel MK Cohen, Fixed), an overeager handyman; Tippy Dorman (James Arnold Taylor, Star Wars: The Clone Wars), an expert doorman with a secret; Solomon Fleck (Roger Craig Smith, Avengers Assemble), the dedicated city mayor; Percival “Wheelie” Wheeler (Mick Lauer, Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal), a skateboarding police chief and more.

Created and produced by LEGO Group, LEGO City Adventures is also produced by Flaunt Animation (Scotland) and Passion Pictures (France) and written by Jon Colton Barry (Phineas and Ferb), Steven Banks (SpongeBob SquarePants), Jamie Moyer (Modern Family) and Brian Hunt (Second City Chicago). Jason Oliveri is the executive in charge of LEGO City Adventures for Nickelodeon.

Online at ytv.com, viewers can find out more about LEGO City Adventures. Fans can also follow YTV on Instagram and subscribe to the YTV YouTube channel for the latest YTV news, highlights, schedules, videos and games.

LEGO City Adventures made its world debut on Nickelodeon in the U.S. on Saturday, June 22nd, 2019, and is currently rolling out on several of Nickelodeon’s international territories.

About Nickelodeon:

Nickelodeon, now in its 40^th year, is the number-one entertainment brand for kids. It has built a diverse, global business by putting kids first in everything it does. The brand includes television programming and production in the United States and around the world, plus consumer products, digital, location based experiences, publishing and feature films. For more information or artwork, visit http://www.nickpress.com/. Nickelodeon and all related titles, characters and logos are trademarks of Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIA, VIAB).

About The LEGO Group

The LEGO Group is a privately held, family-owned company with headquarters in Billund, Denmark, and main offices in Enfield, USA, London, UK, Shanghai, China, and Singapore. Founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen, and based on the iconic LEGO® brick, it is one of the world's leading manufacturers of play materials. Guided by the company spirit: "Only the best is good enough”, the company is committed to the development of children and aims to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow through creative play and learning. LEGO products are sold worldwide and can be virtually explored at www.LEGO.com. For more news from the LEGO Group, information about our financial performance and responsibility engagement, please visit http://www.LEGO.com/aboutus.

About YTV

Celebrating over 25 years on the air, since its launch in 1988, YTV features high quality programming from entertaining live-action comedies and reality series for kids and their families, to night time drama for teens. With hosted dayparts such as the popular after-school block The Zone and weekend movies for the entire family in Big Fun Movies, there are plenty of entertaining options for viewers of all ages. For more information about YTV, please visit www.ytv.com. YTV is owned and operated by Corus Entertainment.

More Nick: YTV to Premiere 'It's Pony' on Saturday, Feb. 1!

Originally published: Thursday, January 30, 2020.

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Nickelodeon to Roll-Out Eco-Friendly La Bala Consumer Product Line

When it comes to going green, consumer products have led the movement in the kids industry. Toy companies got the ball rolling early on being more environmentally friendly, with major players like Hasbro announcing initiatives as early as 2010.

Musical instruments could be a category Nickelodeon explores for its La Bala CP program.

And while those first programs focused on reducing the amount of paper and plastic used in packaging, more recently licensees and manufacturers are turning their attention to baking in an eco-friendly ethos into the very DNA of their brands.

Nickelodeon is taking this tack with its consumer products strategy for Isabella de La Torre (known as La Bala), the YouTube star Nickelodeon Latin America signed an exclusive global representation agreement in 2019. Under this agreement, Nickelodeon will work with La Bala to develop her musical career and propel her career internationally on multiple platforms, including consumer products, music, short-and-long form original productions, social networks, live events and editorial, among others. Nickelodeon Latin America is working on a comprehensive strategy for the talented influencer, including multiple merchandising agreements with promotional partners covering various categories such as fashion, accessories and much more.

Cristian Cabero, Nickelodeon Latin America's Senior Vice President (SVP) of Consumer Products and Location Based Experiences (LBE), revealed to Kidscreen his team took inspiration from the ways in which de La Torre works green products into her everyday life when they began developing the CP range.

For example, she travels with a reusable cup to avoid single-use plastics, so Nickelodeon is aiming to create products that are similarly sustainable, as well as reducing the amount of packaging used for the entire line. These efforts aren’t designed to stand out—being eco-friendly should now be assumed and something La Torre’s fans expect from their purchases.

In fact, a 2018 study from research firm GreenMatch found that 72% of Gen Z consumers would spend more money on a service if it was sustainably produced, and those same respondents also reported a strong preference for switching to brands with sustainable initiatives. The study also found kids are willing to boycott companies that do not align with their values. And these stats came before millions of people (Gen Zers among them) protested for climate change solutions in September last year. What’s more, a 2019 report from Research and Markets found kids have a direct spending power of as much as US$143 billion, and an indirect spending power of US$600 billion. That’s a lot of reasons to go green.

Initial categories for La Bala’s consumer products program will include apparel, accessories, publishing and back-to-school, with the first items scheduled to hit shelves in Mexico this summer. By the end of the year, Nickelodeon plans to expand throughout LatAm and launch additional categories like bedding and electronic accessories.

De La Torre first learned about environmental issues and sustainability through social media, she says. “It’s unbelievable how many things are happening because of climate change, and people think it’s normal. We have to work now, and I’ve been using my voice to spread awareness.”

But de La Torre’s entire life doesn’t revolve around environmental efforts. She’s like most teenagers, which means her time is split between a number of interests.

“There are a lot of things she’s passionate about,” says Tatiana Rodriguez, Nickelodeon’s Senior Vice President (SVP) of Programming and Creative Strategy. “She also loves music and art, so we’re working to incorporate all of those things into the products [with equal importance.]”

The biggest obstacle, Cabera says, is waiting for the technology behind manufacturing processes to catch up to the company’s (and de La Torre’s) aspirations. “There are limitations,” he says. “We must deliver a good-quality product at a price that is accessible to the consumer.”

Nickelodeon is also looking at sustainable clothing, which saw the network partner with Trashcode in 2018 and, most recently, partner with JNR Nation in Australia to launch an eco-friendly clothing line inspired by Nickelodeon star JoJo Siwa.

More Nick: 2020 on Nickelodeon | New Shows, Specials, Events, Movies, Episodes, and More!

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Rob Bagshaw Talks About How Nickelodeon Plans to Retain Viewers by Branching Out Into Non-Scripted Programming

NEW ORLEANS – To date there are more than 300 Over-the-Top (OTT) services fighting for viewership, with services such as ViacomCBS' CBS All Access, Amazon and Netflix as well as the much-hyped offerings from HBO Max and BBC-Discovery still to launch. Suffice it to say that the American streaming marketplace is becoming crowded.

Perhaps taken for granted in this maelstrom of industry activity is linear cable television, where pay-TV providers in the U.S. still account for 84.8 million subscribers, as of December 2019. So how is cable keeping its edge and fighting back to ensure its content is as compelling as anything on Amazon or Netflix?

Those were the questions that a group of top-level industry executives were looking to answer during a Wednesday (Jan. 29) panel discussion, titled “Linear: Alive and Well” and moderated by Bruce David Klein, president and executive producer at Atlas Media Corp, at the 2020 Realscreen Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Over the past year, Nickelodeon, a division of ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks has been working tirelessly to ratchet up its non-scripted entertainment offering in the hopes of retaining its young viewers. While unscripted programming is relatively new at the network, Nickelodeon’s Rob Bagshaw, Executive Vice President (EVP) of unscripted content, noted that the network has seen successes in the past with game show Double Dare, which was recently revived, and is now doubling down on its production in non-scripted entertainment with hidden camera prank show The Substitute, shiny floor format America’s Most Musical Family, competition series Top Elf and an Americanized version of UK game show The Crystal Maze already on offer.

Photo: Rahoul Ghose

“Children are still coming to us as the bedrock of where they start to watch television… our key demo is 6-11, and we’re trying to build that by broadening out into co-viewing,” said Bagshaw.

“My challenge is to grow a genre within a network and across our other platforms so that our audience is aware they can get that content that they’re watching elsewhere, and the best way of doing that is to [offer] variety,” he continued.

The panel also featured Howard Swartz, SVP of production and development at Discovery Channel and Lauren Gellert, EVP of development and original programming at WE tv, who discussed what their respective networks were doing to keep viewers tuning in. You can read what Swartz and Gellert revealed during the panel here on Realscreen.com.

More Nick: 2020 on Nickelodeon | New Shows, Specials, Events, Movies, Episodes, and More!

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Learn Spanish w/ The Casagrandes! 🎶 Familia Sounds Podcast Ep. 6 | Nickelodeon

Learn Spanish w/ The Casagrandes! 🎶 Familia Sounds Podcast Ep. 6 | Nick

Ronnie Anne and Carl are brushing up on their Spanish with the help of the whole Casagrande familia, which means 'family'! Be sure to sing along at home and you could learn some Spanish too! Catch more of The Casagrandes, only on Nickelodeon.

Check out more episodes of the Casagrandes Familia Sounds podcast!: http://nickalive.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Casagrandes%20Familia%20Sounds

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Jace Norman & Riele Downs Go BTS of The Chenry Episode! | Henry Danger

Jace Norman & Riele Downs Go BTS of The Chenry Episode! | Henry Danger

Jace Norman & Riele Downs take us behind the scenes of the dreamiest episode of Henry Danger yet! See how Henry & Charlotte’s kiss (and other unbelievable moments) came together for this episode. How did Riele share a cage with a lion? Is Jasper invisible now? Did Captain Man really help bring a baby tiger into the world? Is Henry proposing to Charlotte? Find out all these answers and more as we go behind the scenes of “I Dream of Danger.”

Catch more Henry Danger everywhere Nickelodeon is available!

Make sure to subscribe to the brand-new Henry Danger YouTube channel! Up the (You)Tube!: https://at.nick.com/HenryDangerYouTube

More Nick: 'Henry Danger' Wraps Production

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