Litton Studios, a division of Litton
Entertainment, has signed a deal to exclusively produce six new half-hour
educational and informational series for the ABC-owned stations and many ABC
affiliates starting fall 2011. Besides the ABC-owned stations, groups signing
on include Cox, McGraw-Hill, Newport
and Post-Newsweek.
The series are still in development, but among them are Ocean
Mysteries, Earth: Angry Planet and CultureClick. Ocean
Mysteries will feature a team of ocean scientists and explorers traveling
to some of the most remote parts of the globe to learn about the oceans. Earth:
Angry Planet considers harnessing the earth's weather for energy purposes.
And CultureClick address how technology is shrinking our planet.
All
the series will be shot in high definition. Litton will offer E/I support for
each of the shows with an FCC booklet for the public file to help attorneys
during station renewals, synopses of every episode of each series, reviews from
an independent panel of nationally recognized experts and educators who have
vetted each series, psychologists' findings on each show's E/I impact and a
letter from each show's creator/executive producer stating the program's target
demographic.
"Producing
programming that protects a broadcaster's license, educates children and
entertains entire families is a privilege and a Litton tradition," said Dave
Morgan, president and CEO of Litton Entertainment, in a statement. "Our
company's twenty year history of E/I quality programming began with Litton's
iconic leader in this category, Jack Hanna, whose series we launched in 1990,
the same year the FCC first enforced the children's television bill."
Litton
will continue to distribute its three other E/I programs to stations across the
country: Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures, Jack Hanna's Into the Wild and
Animal Exploration with Jarod Miller.
