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Charley Bear chalks up sales

Hit Entertainment, part of toyco Mattel as of last week, has secured a string of sales for Chapman Entertainment preschool series Little Charley Bear.

Norway’s NRK, TVNZ in New Zealand and ATV in Hong Kong are among the new buyers for the first 52×7’ series of Charley, which has originally made for CBeebies in the UK.

Hit executive VP of worldwide programming Alison Homewood said the company’s distribution team had had a “highly successful few months” selling the show around the world.

Other new buyers are S4C in Wales, Poland’s Mini Mini and Happy TV for Eastern European territories including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and the Czech Republic.

Chapman co-founder and director Andrew Haydon, said: “There are many more deals currently in progress and so we are looking forward to a very exciting 2012.”

Speculation about Chapman’s future continues after the company last year cut back on staff and warned that it needed partners to help finance its development slate.

C21 revealed last month that Edge Performance VCT, a venture capital fund that owns 27% of Chapman and helped fund an MBO of Coolabi, could look to merge the two firms and buy others.

The developments come amid intense M&A activity in the UK kids entertainment space and ongoing calls for government funding to help support the industry.

Mattel completed its takeover of Hit last week – a move that triggered the departures of CEO Jeffrey Dunn and chief operating officer Sangeeta Desai.

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