Entertainment Studios Offering Weekly Half-Hour ‘The Young Icons’

In its second such announcement in a week, Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios is offering another first-run program to stations for fall 2010.

The Young Icons, a weekly half-hour shot in high definition, features stories about world-class athletes, accomplished artists, scholars, philanthropists and entrepreneurs – all under the age of 18. The show will fall under the FCC’s “educational and informational” classification.

Examples of the kinds of stories The Young Icons will tell include that of Patrick Pedraja, a 14-year-old actor and philanthropist who traveled America by RV, raising awareness for cancer by signing donors up for the National Marrow Registry; track phenomenon, Turquoise Thompson, who sprinted her way into the record books and earned herself a full ride to UCLA; Kimberly Anyadike, who became the youngest pilot to fly across the country; and sisters Marni and Berni Barta, who created Kidflicks, a non-profit organization that donates new and used DVDs to children’s hospitals all across America.

The Young Icons will be Entertainment Studios’ twentieth TV show. Last week, the company announced it was offering stations first-run court strip America’s Court with Judge Ross, also for next fall. Entertainment Studios also programs six HD cable networks that run on Verizon’s FiOS broadband systems.

Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.