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Grant Orchard, the Oscar-nominated director of A Morning Stroll and a longtime Brew favorite, has created the children’s series Chop Chop! (working title) in collaboration with Studio AKA. The 52 x 7-minute preschool series has been commissioned by BBC Worldwide and will premiere worldwide on its junior arm CBeebies in fall 2014.

The series features the adventures of the Squirrel Club, an adorable menagerie of animals who are awarded badges after completing activities assigned to them by their club leader Chop Chop. According to Broadcast, the series is one of the first to receive tax break certification from the British Film Institute since the Department for Culture, Media & Sport approved animated programs for financial relief in April.

While Studio AKA’s top-tier client list, which includes work for children’s brands like Disney and Cartoon Network among companies like Lloyds TSB, BMW, Skype and BBC, Chop Chop! will be its first major contribution to children’s programming. The series producers are Sue Goffe and Janine Murphy, and executive produced Henrietta Hurford-Jones (BBC Worldwide director of children’s) and Jackie Edwards (executive producer, animation and acquisitions, CBeebies UK).

Today we bring you another installment of Youth Media Movers and Shakers. We’ve culled through industry publications looking for the recent executive placements we think you should know about. If you have executive news that you want us to... Read the rest of this post

BBC Worldwide has written down £33.8m off the value of Lonely Planet, blaming the strong Australian dollar and challenges to the travel sector.

The broadcaster bought 75% of the business in 2007 for £89m and paid a further £42m for the remaining shares earlier this year. However, in parent BBC Worldwide's (BBCW) annual report, published today, it revealed the write down. The Lonely Planet business is based in Australia and BBCW blamed the strength of the Australian dollar for £20.7m of the total write down.

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BBC Worldwide will pay $67.2 million to complete the purchase of travel guide publisher Lonely Planet.

Back in 2007, BBC had acquired 75 percent of the company for nearly $142.8 million. This deal gives BBC the remaining 25 percent of the company. On the digital side, the company enjoys 8.5 million unique users on their website and has produced 140 applications.

The Guardian reports: “A strategy to grow non-print revenues – digital revenues rose 37% year on year in the 12 months to the end of March 2010 – and spinoff products such as a Lonely Planet magazine has pushed the business back into the black with profits of £1.9m [$3 million]. Lonely Planet’s non-print revenues have grown from 9% in 2007 to 22% in the year to the end of March 2010.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Since today is Valentine’s Day, I can’t think of a better time to share some work I did this past year for this most-holy day set aside to boost restaurant, flower, chocolate and greeting card sells. Heh. Yesterday I posted a Valentine Bear card, today it’s a Valentine Kitty!

Below: The finished card, front and inside copy.

Below: The first seed of the idea in a quick, thumbnail sketch. When I’m in the concepting stage of a project like this, I’ll do a slew of thumbnail sketches, which I try to do quickly, keeping them simple. If one gets chosen to turn into a card, then I’ll spend more time on flushing out the initial idea.

Below: And since the above thumb was selected to be turned into a card, I then played around with the layout, text, and colors. The sketch on the bottom-right was chosen to go to final by the client, with some slight changes (they didn’t want any lines showing hair on the cat).

This is my very first post on this wonderful site, and I'm absolutely thrilled and honored. So I thought I'd present y'all with an early Valentine.

Come by and visit when you get a chance.

“We found it! We found it! Talitha-chan is so smart! This one finally has the kitties!”

“Jessica’s right. This one has a kitty in it.”

“Ha! And a Night-Elf-Mo-Hawk!”

“Shutup fool!”

*giggle*

“But you said there was one where some girl warrior turned into a kitty.”

“Hmm?”

“No comment.”

“heheheeeeee….”

“There. It’s from the game with the kitties.”

“But there’s no kitties in it.”

“There’s a dragon! I saw them flying!”

“And horses.”

“And uhhh… undead spiders and a dwarf.”

“But where are the kitties?”

“You laughed at me when I predicted this.”

“heheheeeeee….”

“Z-bot to Hana. This is a Gamepowa Video Alert. Transmitting now.”

“Outstanding, Z-bot. Continue search. Acey out.”

“Ooh, is that the one that turns into a kitty?”

“Not sure but he sure likes to zap giants with that lightning, huh?”

“Talitha-chan, let’s go find the one that turns into a kitty.”

“Okay.”

“And so the duel of the video alerts begins.”

“Why do I get the feeling this is going to end in mass confusion?”

“Ha! Because everything we do is mass confusion!”

“Well, yeah, that too.”