The Kidscreen Hot50 winners were announced earlier today and we are thrilled to share that 9 Story and Brown Bag have placed first in Distribution, second in Production, and for the first time ever we placed in the top ten of the Digital Media category, debuting in the number eight spot!
It was another triumphant year for 9 Story Distribution International, who for the second year running placed first in the Hot50 distribution category. Our distribution team added 736 half hours of programming to our company’s library, 460 of which were from popular Scholastic brands including Clifford the Big Red Dog and The Magic School Bus. The division also continued its global growth, selling nearly 1,000 half hours to new digital partners across Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Korea. And across Central and Eastern Europe, our sales team sold more than 600 half hours of programming and established new partnerships with Russian broadcasters Carousel, CTC Media Group and HD1TV. And finally, we scooped up Teletubbies mastermind Andrew Davenport’s new stop-motion/live-action series Moon and Me, and secured its place on broadcasters, such as ABC (Australia), RTE (Ireland) and YLE (Finland).
“This year we’ve been able to build up our own homegrown content and also cherry-pick high-profile acquisitions from third-party partners,”
~ Alix Wiseman, SVP of distribution and acquisitions 9 Story / Brown Bag Films
9 Story and Brown Bag Films placed second in production this year on the Hot50 list, making it our 3rd consecutive year in the top three in this category.
Some big highlights include our acquisition of the 3D animation studio BASE, now rebranded to Brown Bag Films Bali, which raised our employee headcount to more than 1,000 worldwide! We also launched a new live-action division with a slate that includes Blue’s Clues & You! and a three-series development deal with producer Tom Lynch (The Secret World of Alex Mack). And who can forget our epic Emmy win in the outstanding preschool children’s animated series category, alongside our partners Fred Rogers Productions, for Daniel Tiger’s Neighbourhood.
“We’re always reinventing ourselves, but the number-one thing is the quality of animation.”
~ Cathal Gaffney, 9 Story COO
And finally, a newcomer to this year’s Hot50 list is our 9 Story Digital division who debuted in the 8th spot in the Digital Media category. Along with releasing a slew of new games and digital extensions (have you tried Hidden Heroes yet?), our Digital team grew its digital footprint to more than 100 brands on YouTube, which are available in more than 10 languages and reach more than 6.3 million subscribers. We are absolutely thrilled to see our digital team’s work making the cut on this year’s list.
A huge fiery congratulations to our 9 Story and Brown Bag teams! It takes an incredible village of talented folks to maintain such high rankings year after year and wow does our village ever shine bright! And lastly one more big congratulations to all of today’s Hot50 winners, it is such an honour to be included amongst such an amazing bunch.