Viacom International Media Networks Announces Plans To Close MTV Russia

According to the following Viacom International Media Networks article from C21Media, VIMN has confirmed the news that they have decided to close down MTV Russia, Russian version of MTV, in 2013 and will replace the channel with a new entertainment channel. VIMN will also continue to broadcast MTV Hits, MTV Dance, MTV Rocks and MTV HD in Russia, in addition to Nickelodeon Russia and Paramount Comedy Russia:

MTV Russia axed

Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN) has confirmed its Russian version of MTV will close in 2013, to be replaced by a new entertainment channel.

VIMN and ProfMedia, which acquired both MTV and VH1 in Russia in 2007, have agreed to dissolve their partnership at the end of May 2013.

This will signal the end of the youth-skewing channel in Russia and a new ProfMedia-owned net targeting 14-44s, called Friday and branded locally as Pyatnitsa, will replace it on June 1.

MTV Russia aired youth-skewing programming, including a remake of Armoza Formats’ studio-based dating show Foreplay, but its owners were unhappy with recent audience figures, reports suggest.

A spokeswoman for VIMN said the territory “remains a critically important market to VIMN.”

VIMN will continue to air MTV Hits, MTV Dance, MTV Rocks and MTV HD in Russia, in addition to Nickelodeon and Paramount Comedy.

Nico Franks
11-12-2012
©C21Media

TAGS: Channel distribution
GENRES: Music
SHOWS: Foreplay
PEOPLE: Nikolai Kartozia
COMPANIES: MTV Russia, Pyatnitsa, Viacom International Media Networks
SECTIONS: Formats Lab
COUNTRIES: Russia

'A Snow White Christmas' Puts Southern California Imprint On British Theater Tradition, With The Help Of Nickelodeon Star Ariana Grande

From the Los Angeles Times' 'Culture Monster (All arts, all the time)' news column:

'A Snow White Christmas' puts Southern California imprint on British theater tradition

The show at Pasadena Playhouse is based on the holiday family plays known as pantos.

Ariana Grande and Curt Hansen in "A Snow White Christmas" at Pasadena Playhouse. (Philicia Endelman); Related photos »
Kris Lythgoe had a problem that many a Los Angeles parent might relate to: Christmas was coming, and he wanted to take his young son, George, to a show the whole family could enjoy. Nothing seemed to fit.

But Lythgoe was equipped to do something about it, coming from a family with a certain expertise in organizing entertainment that appeals to a wide age spectrum.

His father, Nigel, is executive producer of "American Idol" and "So You Think You Can Dance." His mother, Bonnie, is a veteran stage director and choreographer. Though no longer married to Nigel, Bonnie has been part of "So You Think You Can Dance," including a three-season stretch on the judging panel of the show's Australian edition.

Kris Lythgoe, 33, knew that parents in his native Britain do not have the problem he faced in L.A., where he'd moved in 2003 to begin developing reality television shows of his own. In Britain, when Christmas is coming, the holiday plays known as pantos are everywhere. And now, because of Lythgoe, his mother, and his Michigan-raised fiancee, Becky Baeling (one of the producers), panto is here too.

After two Decembers at the 354-seat El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, Lythgoe Family Productions, the mother and son company formed to create what they have dubbed American panto, has brought its act to the 684-seat Pasadena Playhouse, where "A Snow White Christmas" opens Wednesday for 31 performances through Dec. 30. Charlene Tilton ("Dallas") plays the evil queen, emerging pop singer and Nickelodeon actress Ariana Grande is Snow White, and Neil Patrick Harris, a friend of Baeling and Kris Lythgoe, does a video turn as the queen's Magic Mirror.

Sheldon Epps, the Playhouse's artistic director, envisions panto as the major holiday season stage perennial the Los Angeles market never has had — potentially earning an annual box office bonanza while giving hordes of youngsters an early exposure to live theater. The Lythgoes' "Aladdin" already is on tap for next year.

Since the 1700s, the British have been flocking to the shows they call pantomimes — pantos for short. "Pantomime" merges two Greek words that translate as "mimic everything." Americans think of "pantomime" as a wordless performance, but British panto has nothing to do with keeping one's mouth shut.

The stories are comically told fairy tales and other children's standards — "Peter Pan," "Cinderella," "Robin Hood" and the like. Producers count on the yarns to enchant the kids, the sometimes risque double-entendres to engage their elders, and the magic tricks and music — usually renditions of hit pop songs repurposed to fit the stories — to go down well with everyone.

An essential element is what goes on in the audience, where a ticket comes with the expectation that its holder will lustily boo the villains, cheer the good guys, sing along with the music and otherwise express aloud one's reaction to the action.

According to the British newspaper the Sun, 10 million Britons — about one-sixth of the population — attend the approximately 1,000 panto productions each year. The bestselling panto on record, a production of "Aladdin" in Birmingham in 2007, raked in $3.5 million in five weeks.

But Kris, who wrote the Pasadena show, and Bonnie Lythgoe, who's directing it, say this is no exercise in Anglophilia. They are not bringing British panto to America. They are creating panto for Americans — Angelenos for now, although the master plan is to expand the Lythgoe holiday franchise to as many as a dozen U.S. cities over the next five years. Kris said the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City already is on board for 2013, and scouts from the New Victory Theater in New York City, which specializes in family-friendly shows, are expected to check out "Snow White" for a possible Lythgoe panto next Christmas.

American panto, says Kris, has one clear advantage over the British version: "Hands down, the major difference is the talent. The talent, as we all know, in this country is far superior when it comes to musical theater than in the U.K."

He said some transplanted Brits complained after the El Portal productions of "Cinderella" and "Snow White" that they weren't British enough. He told them basically to get over it — this is America.

"All these British eccentric things we kind of left out and concentrated on making the show funny," he said — an approach that he says has answered his father's initial doubts about whether American audiences would take to panto. One omitted U.K. custom for "Snow White" is cross-gender casting; Ian McKellen, for one, has played the stock panto figure known as the Dame.

The form's traditions are being honored in their broad strokes, if not their British particulars. Animal cast members are beloved in Britain; Pasadena's panto includes a miniature pony named Blitzen.

Additionally, says Kris Lythgoe, "Panto plays on colloquialism and locality. When the queen gets upset, she's throwing her servants out into Colorado Boulevard," the main drag of Pasadena that's half a block from the Playhouse. When the big singalong comes near the end, it will be to the tune of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," with "Snow White"-specific new words printed in the program.

In a sense, mother and son have been doing panto together for 30 years. Starting in the late 1970s, Bonnie, a dancer who'd played one of Sidney Poitier's juvenile delinquent London high school students in the 1967 hit film "To Sir, With Love," was choreographer and then director of the annual panto at the Millfield Theatre in North London. Nigel Lythgoe wrote the scripts, testing jokes for kid-friendliness on Kris and older brother Simon.

Bonnie Lythgoe recalls the utter enchantment of seeing her first panto at age 3 in North London's Chingford district. She started performing in them in her midteens. When Kris was 3, she'd bring him to the Millfield panto rehearsals and deposit him in the orchestra pit, alongside the show's music director.

"With busy lives," she said, "it was always the one thing at Christmas time that we would always get to see together."

[...]

'A Snow White Christmas'

Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena

When: 7 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays, 11 a.m., 3 and 7 p.m. Saturdays, 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Sundays. Games, crafts and activities in the courtyard starting 90 minutes before all performances. No shows Dec. 18-19 and 25. Ends Dec. 30.

Cost: $22 to $100

Information: (626) 356-7529 or http://www.pasadenaplayhouse.org.

Google Zeitgeist Announces Nickelodeon USA's Animated Preschool Show "Mike The Knight" One Of The Fastest-Growing Search Terms In TV Category

According to the following news article from Digital Spy UK, Google Zeitgeist has announced that the popular CGI-animated Canadian/British preschool television series "Mike the Knight", which airs on Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. in the United States, was one of fastest-growing search terms in the television category in 2012:

'Mike the Knight' beats 'Homeland', 'TOWIE' in Google Zeitgeist 2012

Mike the Knight has beaten Homeland and The Only Way Is Essex to the top of the 2012 Google Zeitgeist television listings.

The annual rankings from the company mark the fastest-growing search terms of the year in various categories, rather than the volume of searches.

The top ten trending TV shows of the year were as follows:

1. Mike the Knight
2. Homeland
3. TOWIE
4. The Jonathan Ross Show
5. Celebrity Big Brother
6. Sherlock
7. The Great British Bake Off
8. Game Of Thrones
9. The Big Bang Theory
10. How I Met Your Mother

Mike the Knight first aired in Canada on Treehouse TV in September 2011 before porting to CBeebies in the UK a month later.

It has since aired in the US on the Nickelodeon and Nick Jr channels.

Listen to the Mike the Knight opening theme song below:

Nickelodeon USA To Premiere "House Of Anubis" Season Three In January 2013!

The entertainment news website Entertainment Weekly's 'the Family Room' television news column has announced the Nickelodeon News / "House of Anubis" News in the following article that, as with season 1 and season 2 of HoA, Nickelodeon USA will start to premiere and show season three of Nickelodeon's hit mystery drama series "House Of Anubis" from January 2013 (broadcast times and dates to be confirmed by Nick US)! SIBUNA!

Please Note - The following Nick News article from EW: the Family Room contains spoilers about the third season of Nickelodeon's popular mystery drama show "House of Anubis", including one of the major storylines/plots, that some NickALive! readers may prefer to avoid. Please continue to scroll down the page if you would like to read Entertainment Weekly's 'the Family Room's' SIBUNA news article:

Get ready for the 2013 return of 'House of Anubis': EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

If you’ve been missing Nickelodeon’s otherworldly live-action telenovela-style series House of Anubis since it's season 2 finale in March, never fear. The series, which follows a group of students solving mysteries at an English boarding school, while dealing with normal teenage tumult, is set to return in January. And season 3 raises the stakes for the kids and introduces new characters, love interests, and villains. The teens go up against the teachers as they race to defeat an ancient curse and prevent a great evil from reawakening forever. Enter K.T Rush (Alexandra Shipp), an adventurous, perky, and tenacious American girl, who becomes a vital part of the Sibuna gang and partners with Eddie (Burkely Duffield) to unlock the new Anubis House mystery. Louisa Connelly-Burnham also joins the show as Willow, a bright and quirky student from another boarding house who yearns to join Anubis House. This season fans will also get to see different parts of the Anubis House campus (both above and below ground) that they’ve never seen before and and find out new things about old characters.

But it’s really a game-changer of a year for Eddie,who returns to school thinking he can spend another term hanging out and eating pancakes. But an Osarian vision tells him that he needs to stop a great evil and save the lives of his friends, and he finds himself with an inexplicable connection to new girl KT. Watch their first meeting in the exclusive promo [here on the official Entertainment Weekly: the Family Room website, family-room.ew.com].

[...]

Are you looking forward to the new season?

Tags: House of Anubis, Nickelodeon, TV

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