Nickelodeon UK Buys Rights To Beyblade: Metal Fusion For NickToons

From C21 Media:

Nelvana carves out Beyblade deal

Children's network Nickelodeon UK has secured television broadcast rights to 51 episodes of Nelvana Enterprises' animated series Beyblade: Metal Fusion.

The series is set to launch on NickToons in the UK in September 2010, and will join other titles in its boys' action block. Coproduced by Nelvana and D-rights, the series offers a fresh take on the original Beyblade series, with new characters.

Nelvana Enterprises' VP of worldwide sales and distribution Lynn Chadwick said: "NickToons is a great broadcast platform to drive awareness of the latest iteration of the series, bringing it to the attention of a brand new audience, many experiencing it for the first time."

Adam Benzine
3 Feb 2010
© C21 Media 2010

Nickelodeon UK Revamps Pre-School Mini-Sites

From Digital Spy:

Nickelodeon revamps pre-school mini-sites

Nickelodeon UK has revamped its flagship pre-school mini-sites under the Nick Jr's brand to offer better structure and navigation.

Dora The Explorer and Go, Diego, Go! web services have already been re-launched on the main Nick Jr's site as a result of a collaboration between Nickelodeon UK and interactive production firm Complete Control.

The rebrands are part of Nickelodeon UK's strategy to offer "immersive and playful" content for children by creating user-friendly online worlds around its key brands.

Under the partnership, Complete Control also redeveloped three sub-subsections on the main Nick Jr's site - Shows, Fun & Games and Make & Do - to introduce more effective user interfaces.

Due to the large amount of visually-led content on the site, Complete Control further created a 'super footer' text-based navigation solution to ensure optimum performance in search engines. The system has helped increase traffic to the Dora The Explorer mini-site by 457% since its relaunch.

Over February, Nickelodeon UK will introduce similar revamps for the Angelina Ballerina and Peppa Pig mini-sites, along with other properties.

Nickelodeon digital director Roy Edmonds said: "Creating content that truly engages children is no easy task but Complete Control has consistently delivered great creative treatments on all the projects Nickelodeon has commissioned, whilst keeping our needs as a commercial media company very much front-of-mind."

Complete Control creative director Glynn Hayward added: "We needed to ensure that the refreshed content we were producing for these great brands was not just only fun and engaging for children, but also boosted the SEO and page ranking of the sites."

Last month, traffic to the entire Nick Jr's website increase by 2.5% to 1,055,067 hits, with the Dora The Explorer mini-site accounting for 25% of that traffic with around 7m page views.