Roundups #108: PBS Kids Banks On Civics And Shorts, What To Expect In December 2022 On Comedy Central Africa? And Turkish Adaptation To New Amsterdam Launches In 2023

PBS KIDS has greenlit a new series of animated shorts focused on teaching kids about civics

City Island (20 x three minutes) will put a spotlight on topics such as city planning, how communities work and conflict resolution. New York-based Augenblick Studios and Future Brain Media are producing the shorts, which will launch on PBS KIDS in December 2022 and January 2023.

Aaron Augenblick (The Jellies! ) created the 2D-animated series for ages six to 10. Episodes follow the young lightbulb Watt as she learns about how cities run, what roles businesses like libraries and airports play, and how to solve problems.

Civics is a growing trend in the kids industry, with Netflix ordering the animated musical series We The People (10 x three minutes) from Chris Nee and executive produced by the Obama’s Higher Ground Productions. Launched in 2021, it features original songs that break down concepts like taxes and the first amendment for kids and teens. Meanwhile, the Jim Henson Company is developing Citizen Squad, a live-action one-off that encourages kids to be good citizens in their community.

What to expect this festive season on Comedy Central?

SPECIALS
MARTIN LAWRENCE LIVE: RUNTELDAT
SATURDAY 20:00 31 DECEMBER
Join Comedy Central for a night of laughter with famous Comedian and Actor Martin Lawrence in his concert film : Martin Lawrence's RunTelDat tour, it showcases his take on critics, sex and his 1999 brush with death in a filmed concert performance.​

SEASON 28
THE DAILY SHOW WITH TREVOR NOAH
TUESDAYS - FRIDAYS
1 – 16 DECEMBER @ 23:30
South African born host, Trevor Noah delivers satirical news related to the international and American political matters in an entertaining way. This will be the final episodes of The Daily Show with Trevor as the host.

HOLIDAY MOVIE FESTIVAL
ENJOY A RANGE OF COMEDY AND CHRISTMAS MOVIES
EVERY SATURDAY
@ 20:00 THIS DECEMBER
SISTER ACT
BAD COMPANY
A HIP HOPFAMILY CHRISTMAS 1 & 2
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS
CURSED FRIENDSFOREVER
A DIVA’S CHRISTMAS CAROL
RENO 911 –IT’S A WONDERFUL HEIST

NBCUniversal in association with 03 Medya welcome a new medical drama

The Turkish adaptation Hayat Bugün, meaning “Life Is Today,” will be produced by 03 Medya in association with Universal International Studios. Original show creator David Schulner is consulting on the series. It is scheduled to air in Turkey on Show TV in 2023.

The series will follow Dr. Bariş, the newly appointed chief of medicine at one of Turkey’s most famous and oldest public hospitals, as he works to reform the neglected facility by tearing up its bureaucracy to provide exceptional care to patients using creative solutions.

The original New Amsterdam was inspired by Dr. Eric Manheimer’s memoir Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital and his 15 years as medical director at the hospital. It was created for television by Schulner, who has also served as executive producer alongside Peter Horton. Produced by Mount Moriah, Pico Creek Productions and Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group.

BYUtv Offers The Very Best In Kids And Family Entertainment, Could DStv, StarSat Or Openview Perhaps Get It?

With family at its core, BYUtv - a non-commercial, value-based television network - brings inspiring and uplifting entertainment into million of homes across the nation through cable, their website or on the app. BYUtv has a place for everyone -- together.

BYUtv produces shows under several categories: BYU Sports, Campus, Documentary, Faith, Family, Lifestyle, People, and Performing Arts. This includes original series, documentaries and religious service programs, along with family and faith-based films from several major studios.

Some notable original series include Studio C, Random Acts, All-Round Champion, Relative Race and Wayne Brady's Comedy IQ.

StarTimes and On Digital Media once provided a religious channel Smile TV operated by Trinity Broadcasting Network. This channel would have made a suitable alternative had they considered replacing the channel the moment TBN opted not to supply it.

MultiChoice is set to lose a pair of channels in the near future - Disney Channel and Disney Junior. With that entail, an alternative will be needed in order to keep viewer's minds at ease. BYUtv can make up for the soon to be lost live-action slate on Disney Channel.

eMedia Investments once offered the Da Vinci educational channel on the Openview platform until it formed one of their never ending attempts to save money. BYUtv could make up for the lost factual content especially now that Openview+ is on the cards.

Its eMovies And eMovies Extra Vs. TNT And CineMagic: Another Openview Vs. DStv Saga

Openview has been dominating the South African market for several years giving companies like MultiChoice a run for their money particularly for those residing on lower bouquets such as DStv Easyview as the once underachieving platform is about to go through some changes.

MultiChoice will be adding two new entertainment channels to the bouquet in the month of November, Magic Showcase and CineMagic which just helps build onto the number of alternatives in South Africa.

Openview offers less channels but they have managed to win a lot of audiences with the selection of sports, local dramas, international series, kids shows and movies. Now it appears as if MultiChoice has begun catching up to the free-to-view platform.

DStv Easyview only offered 1 movie channel TNT which has been having a bit of its ups and downs with the likes of Blade, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Final Destination, Anaconda and so forth. If it was for TNT Original Movies and All Elite Wrestling I don't how far the channel could have gotten.

Point is, TNT was at a disadvantage as Openview provided two movie channels eMovies and eMovies Extra which were able to juggle around a mix of emotions. eMovies had Pokémon, Mama Jack and Oh Schuks while eMovies Extra had Fast And Furious, Transporter and Rush Hour.

With the inclusion of CineMagic, I'm not expecting them to read each other's mind or become the sibling duo as these two fall under different grounds so the only thing that anyone should be excited about is the number of options available.

CineMagic is set to feature a mix of local and international films 18 hours a day leaving TNT to the remaining 6 hours. Although, a schedule hasn't been provided my guess would be the content is based from M-Net Movies and Mzansi Bioskop.

Over to the winners which there's none, you got to look at the benefits to the above brands to reach your conclusion. eMovies is very selective I guess that's what made them favourable on DStv, TNT has got All Elite Wrestling and CineMagic by my hunch has the local productions.

Homegrown Entertainment: Another Openview Vs. DStv Saga

SABC 1-3 and e.tv were basically the only channels you could view the bulk of local content. As they are the first channels you spot when purchasing at a TV outlet and the same to could be said when purchasing a digital terrestrial television platform or in this case, Openview.

Now in 3 million households, Openview continues to further boost their entertainment with the likes of Zee One, France24, eXposed and The Home Channel+ with plans to kind of add more channels on top rolling out a new pay-tv service, Openview+.

But if you look over this above-mentioned list of channels you'd notice that there's not much local content in store not that I watch anything from that field but if you had to look the amount of views SABC 1 gets on a monthly basis you know local is power.

I mean a series like Doodsondes can only pull less than 2 million viewers on e.tv while as a show like Scandal can almost triple that. Not saying one show is better than another but when you reside in a particular region these things are common but it's nice to have alternatives.

Point being made here is that if you didn't have a DStv you basically lose as you don't have anything that can replicate Skeem Saam, 7de Laan or The Estate but what some may not was that MultiChoice had been excluding some of their audiences.

In this case, DStv Easyview a package which some may consider as dead weight for the lake of premium entertainment channels and if we had to compare with Openview you could literally write a book. If there was one thing that these two excel at it was definitely local content.

Just like most of South Africa they were missing out on shows like Being Bonang, My Kitchen Rules SA, Battleground, Isibaya alongside another never ending list of local content. As seen these past years, the bulk of entertainment on Openview had led customers to flee the package.

Also resulting in MultiChoice to drop the fee for Easyview from R39 to R29 on a monthly basis and for years we hadn't got much update and consumers weren't given a lot of new or rather watchable content aside from TNT and Real Time.

Last month, MultiChoice announced plans to prep two entertainment channels particularly for those consumers as they plan to use the platform as an outlet to analogue following similar endeavours to eMedia's Openview.

The first already launched Magic Showcase will offer the above-mentioned shows and the latter CineMagic will offer a mixture of local and international movies 18 hours a day.

Sure it may be a bummer viewers ain't getting 24 hour screening but it's better than nothing and on the bright side eMedia is very much padded with 16-18 hour channels ranging from People's Weather, ePlesier, eToonz, eReality and eXposed.

In some way, there's a reason to get Openview mostly for third party content and finally after so many years Easyview can be used for something other than SABC 1.

GBA: Fairly OddParents Enter The Cleft!

Timmy Turner's favorite comic book hero, The Crimson Chin, has been captured! Now it's up to him to come to the rescue. With a little help from his wacky Fairy Godparents, Cosmo and Wanda, Timmy will transform into Cleft, the Boy Chin Wonder and enter the pages of a comic to save the day! It's one cleftastic adventure!

Download Now