New Series Alert: Goodbye, My Princess Coming Soon To eExtra

Goodbye My Princess follows a naive, petulant little princess with an unusual amount of independence, and her perfect life gets turned completely upside-down and her innocence, so to speak, ripped away from her.

Having received overwhelming love and admiration as the 9th Princess, Xiao Feng is forced to leave the life that she has known in order to become the Crown Princess. Her husband, the black-bellied Crown Prince, holds the highest position, second only to one, the Emperor. However, the Eastern Palace is the most dangerous place to be.

Goodbye, My Princess is a 2019 Chinese drama series that was broadcast on the Asian streaming service, Youku and was said to come with a 250 million yuan budget (R528 million). It starred Chen Xingxu, Peng Xiaoran, and Shawn Wei in leading roles.

Based on the novel of the same name, the drama has earned positive reviews since its premiere, due to the outstanding performance of the cast, beautiful costumes and fitting props; as well as high-quality cinematography. It walked away with numerous achievements majority were directed at the series and Peng Xiaoran who served as one of the leading actresses.

Goodbye My Princess airs weekdays at 17:30 from 20 July on eExtra replacing Battle Through The Heavens.

Recap To The Week: AMC Networks International Launches New Content Group Across UK & EMEA

AMC Networks International UK (AMCNI0UK) has forged a new Content Group across the UK and EMEA and promoted Sam Rowden to run it.

Rowden, who currently oversees the company’s programing strategy for the CBS channel portfolio, becomes VP of the Content Group.

She will oversee linear and content strategies across the UK and EMEA with oversight of joint venture channels CBS Justice, CBS Europa, CBS Reality, RealityXtra, Legend, HorrorXtra as well as channel brands AMC and SundanceTV.

The weighty new remit also includes AMCNI-UK’s AVoD and FAST portfolio consisting of the AVoD player CBS Catchup Channels UK and FAST channel True Crime from CBS Reality that has recently launched with Amazon Freevee and Rakuten TV, and which is also available via ITVX. Additionally, Rowden is now also responsible for content acquisition and content partnerships including the relationship with Paramount Global for both the UK and EMEA joint ventures as well as content management including compliance.

“Sam has been the driving force behind the continued success of AMCNI-UK’s joint ventures with Paramount Global, both in the UK and in EMEA, including the development of our highly successful true crime originals effort since the beginning,” said Kevin Dickie, EVP and MD for AMNCI UK.

“With her leadership skills and expertise developing brands that appeal to a wide range of audiences, she is perfectly placed to assume this key role as we further integrate our linear and streaming efforts.”

Rowden joined AMCNI around 15 years ago.

Trepanation Of The Skull And You: Lost Pilot For The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy Has Surfaced The Net

In 1995, while Maxwell Atoms (née Adam Burton) was still in college, he created a short animated film titled Billy and Mandy in Trepanation of the Skull and You. This short would go on to form the basis of Atoms' hit Cartoon Network show The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. The character designs differ quite a bit from the end result. In the original pilot, Billy appears lankier and with a smaller nose than his final design while Mandy has pigtails, a nose (which she lacks in the series), and a plain, single-color dress.

In the short, Billy learns about trepanation, a process in which a hole is drilled into the skull to relieve internal pressure, after seeing that Mandy (who incorrectly describes the process as a way to unlock the brain's full potential) has already gotten "trepanned"; Billy then has Mandy trepanate him, which results in Billy losing copious amounts of blood before passing out. Atoms described it as being "completely inappropriate for Cartoon Network," but felt that the characters were too fun to use only once, which led to the development of the series. In need of a straight-man character, it was eventually decided to add the Grim Reaper as the third protagonist.

For the longest period of time, it was believed that the short utilized the visual style of a piece of concept art for an unrelated and unmade pilot for the show (shown below); the actual short is stylized after monochrome films of the 1920s and 1930s, and featured only Billy and Mandy, the latter of whom appears significantly different from the below image. Atoms would later clarify the issue on his official YouTube upload of the short.

In Atoms' 2013 RebelTaxi interview with Pan-Pizza (of thatfellowinthecoat.com and partner of Channel Frederator), he mentioned the short in some detail, revealing that he had it stored away on film, noting that he should've had it digitally transferred "at some point."

Rediscovery

On RebelTaxis's podcast on March 15th, 2016, it was announced Maxwell Atoms recently found the old short and would display it at the TROMAnimation festival in New York.

A day after the short premiered at the TROMAnimation Film Festival, Maxwell Atoms uploaded the short to his YouTube channel in higher quality; there is noticeable deterioration of the film, though it is still in a watchable state. Atoms has clarified that he is unable to reshoot the short and synch it with its audio track, as he was forced to throw out his assets for the short to conserve space when he was living in a studio apartment.

Could Boing Be Added To StarTimes Perhaps As A Replacement To Toonami?

Boing, a children's channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery which is home to Clarence, Adventure Time and Dexter's Laboratory basically older shows from Cartoon Network and Cartoonito. It has a boost in popularity despite not residing on MultiChoice's DStv.

Last month, it was confirmed by Warner Bros. Discovery that youth centred action skewed channel Toonami will fold under Warner TV which brought questions to the channel's potential future in the African market.

Toonami was added on Econets defunct Kwése TV alongside Cell C's defunct Black streaming service in 2017. In 2020, it was shortly revived as a pop-up channel on MultiChoice's DStv and was later picked up by StarSat in South Africa alongside StarTimes in the rest of Africa.

During that time, Toonami was one of the leading kids brands at the time for anime like Beyblade, DC heroes like Batman or and Cartoon Network IPs like Ben 10. Over the years, the quality had further diminished with DC building up most of their lineup and anime on limbo.

Despite transitioning to a much wider spectrum in 2021, not much content was added to the channel except for Firestarter and Dragonball Super. The reason I believe this channel could be on the chopping block for consumers in Africa is simple.

Firstly, Warner Bros. Discovery had been eliminating redundancy across their platforms. Before Toonami, there was TCM and the ever successful Boomerang who similar to the channel went through a dry spell with TCM not getting much hype on its performance as seen with Boomerang.

Unlike the latter, it wouldn't seem far fetched if Warner Bros. Discovery opted for existing brand e.g. Boing as opposed to a complete restructure of the channel.

Toonami is regarded as an adult channel but most of the content fit the demographic of Cartoon Network being 7-12 years and also StarTimes still regards Toonami as a kids brand despite the rebrand in 2021 and the only new offering on the channel at the time, Firestarter.

Boing would make a suitable replacement as both leverage on archived material and also Cartoon Network and Cartoonito aren't even seen on the platform. This would be one way to get the content to newer audiences and familiarise them with both brands.

Nick Jr. Is The Next TV Channel To Enter The Splat Zone

During the year, Nickelodeon unveiled a retrofitted design at the 2023 KCAs which is currently applicable in the United States with plans to add it in more international territories still underway. Of course, other Nick properties such as Nicktoons and Nick Jr. haven't entered the Splat Zone.

For several months, consumers were curious as to when Nick planned to update these brands better yet it how their logos would appear seeing as Nickelodeon's current design is based from an old logo of theirs some would assume Nick Jr. would undergo something similar.

As seen above, that's not really the case as the brand was introduced to one of Nick's iconic logos which can be viewed only on digital platforms at the moment. Unlike Nickelodeon, the preschool brand's design seems bubbly kind of lighter take to the main channel.

Our initial guess on why Nick Jr. couldn't opt for their past logo may have to do with the discontinuation of their parental offering or NickMom. Another would be that Paramount wants to align these brands as seen with MTV and MTV Base or BET and BET Hip-Hop.

Nick Jr's induction to The Splat Zone means that Nicktoons will be the last brand to undergo the procedure. Considering not much investment is going onto content development it's likely to receive a duplicate if not a zombified design as seen with the rest of their offering.