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Michael Carrington, the exec who first backed global kids smash Bluey, is retiring after a storied career.

The former BBC Kids boss held numerous top level roles throughout from the early 1990s through to the 2020s, and had a reputation as one of the most knowledgable in the business, but is best known for supporting the development of Bluey while leading the ABC TV Children’s and Education department in Australia.

He announced his retirement on LinkedIn, saying, “The world of television has given me more than I could have ever imagined.”

Having begun his career in Australia at Network Ten, he joined Cbbc as a producer in 1993 before being whisked off to lead Lego’s TV and New Media department just before the millennium. He returned to the Beeb four years later in an acquisitions role at BBC Children’s and rose to become the first Creative Director and Controller...

Amazon is pushing a bunch of kids’ shows in front of the Prime paywall to help entertain families locked in self-isolation due to coronavirus.

As part of a global initiative, shows including Amazon original Just Add Magic can be viewed for free — users just need to be logged into their Amazon account.

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The “free for all” scheme also includes titles such as Tumble Leaf and Little Big Awesome and is aimed at pre-school children, as well as those up to the age of 11.

In the UK, third-party shows including Peppa Pig, In The Night Garden and Fireman Sam are also available to non-Prime users. Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Odd Squad,...

“We’re hearing from Chinese TV stations that maybe they shouldn’t be doing business with us,” one BBC source tells me. “In the past this has happened with our news output but it’s very unusual for drama – it is fiction, after all.” It’s thought Chinese officials are feeling particularly sensitive about Sino-Anglo relations in a week that UK Prime Minister David Cameron has led a trade delegation to the country. The Beijing government is unhappy with the way the 9th series of Spooks (aka as MI5) has portrayed Chinese secret agents as either nefariously plotting to blow up London or hacking into Us-Anglo cyber-security. One insider at Kudos, the independent TV producer which makes the show, tells me he’s surprised by China’s reaction. “There is no country that Spooks has not portrayed in an unflattering light -- including our own,” he says. China represents a huge market for BBC Worldwide,...

The execs at Disney know a successful marketing opportunity when they see one. Tinker Bell is proof of that. The diminutive fairy character from Peter Pan is Disney's answer to Strawberry Shortcake. Just like the American Greetings property, she has become the center of a highly profitable franchise. Disney's own press release for the latest film in the Tinker Bell series, Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue, proudly states that Disney’s Fairies franchise is worth $1 billion. So, Both on the outside both Miss Shortcake and Miss Bell look like innocent fantasy females. Yet, their twee exterior is the friendly face of a massive corporate machine designed to get kids to part with their parents' money for a range of products that carry the characters' images.

Ok, I'm deliberately being jaded here to underline the point that Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue is not classic Disney. It's...

We watch A Clockwork Orange, Straw Dogs and every British horror film worth watching to select the UK addresses you'll want to avoid

While it's great for British cinema that we're making decent horror movies again, the impact on our already sluggish property market has been catastrophic. With every successful regional chiller, thousands are wiped off house prices, and buying a home is now less like Monopoly than postcode russian roulette. This week, terror strikes London's cosy Muswell Hill in Cherry Tree Lane, in which urban youth descend on a white middle-class household and subject it to violence, humiliation and grime-related ringtones. The map's filling in all the time, to the extent that the government might as well replace Hips with Hoodie Information Packs. Until then, the only option for first-time buyers is to watch every horror movie made in Britain. Is nowhere safe? Read our guide and find out…...

New York -- An updated "Dennis the Menace" and a series based on a nursery rhyme picture book will come to kids network the Hub when it launches this fall.

The Discovery Communications and Hasbro joint venture has acquired live-action series "In the Night Garden" and animated "Dennis and Gnasher." They will make their U.S. debut when the Hub kicks off on Oct. 10.

"In the Night Garden" is an interpretation of a classic nursery rhyme picture book and had a successful U.K. run on the BBC.

"Dennis and Gnasher" also comes from the U.K. and features mischievous Dennis and his sidekick dog in a series introducing the classic characters to a new generation.

The BBC is investigating claims that a character on In The Night Garden was heard swearing in China. BBC Worldwide sold the rights to the show to Chinese channel CCTV last year but the narration and characters' names were translated from English into Mandarin. The Sun reports that one viewer has now called the BBC claiming that he heard one of the characters say, "F**k your mother". "Mandarin is all about tonality so you can end up saying something quite different to what you actually mean if you get it wrong," (more)...

N-Dubz star Dappy has apparently become obsessed with the children's television character Iggle Piggle. The rapper's former girlfriend Kaye Vassell described the rapper's love of In The Night Garden, particularly Iggle Piggle, while speaking about the couple's recent split in The Sun. "He started watching the BBC kids' show In The Night Garden when [our son] Gino was born, and now he's hooked," said Vassell. "His particular love is Iggle (more)...

London – Veteran BBC kids' exec Michael Carrington will take the helm as chief content officer of Turner Broadcasting Systems' U.K. and Emea channels, overseeing the content of such channels as Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Cartoonito.

Carrington, who has been with the BBC for 20 years, replaces Finn Arnesen who stepped down last October, and will oversee the creation of all original series, co-productions and acquisitions across the channels.

Among Carrington's commissions as controller of BBC preschool net CBeebies BBC were "Charlie and Lola," and "In The Night Garden." He will join Turner on April 6.

Disney's Nancy Kanter on TV programmes for pre-school children

What programmes will young children want to watch this Christmas: homemade ones, or imported cartoons from the Us?

Out of 27 dedicated kids' channels in the UK, just 1% of their total output is made in this country. Yet for the all-important pre-school market things are not so clear – CBeebies is the channel of choice for the under-sixes with 95% of it originating in the UK. And last month Nick Junior, an interesting hybrid that is owned by BSkyB and the Us giant Viacom, was named as the channel of the year at the annual Children's Baftas, snatching the crown from CBeebies. Many saw it as recognition of its energetic efforts to cloak itself in Britishness.

So successful has this trend been that even Disney, to many the archetype of the all-American company, is starting to adapt its UK output. Playhouse Disney, which competes...

The BBC will issue a new Upsy Daisy doll for its children's TV show In The Night Garden after receiving complaints about its skin colour. According to a BBC Worldwide spokesman, the broadcaster has received several complaints about the tie-in doll as its skin is lighter than its TV character counterpart. The spokesman added that the old doll will not be withdrawn "because most people are happy with it", although a new model with "a darker (more)...