Two animated series to be co-developed under renewed CBC, ABC partnership

Tween animated series The Eerie Chapters of Chhaya

Canada’s CBC and ABC in Australia have renewed their partnership agreement and agreed co-development deals for a pair of animated children’s series.

The pubcasters announced on Tuesday they were extending their creative and commercial collaboration, through which they will continue to co-develop dramas, comedies, factual content, kids’ content and podcasts.

Among the animated series in development is My Shadow is Pink, a preschool series aimed at kids aged three to seven. It is produced by Canada’s Headspinner and Australia’s Sticky Pictures and based on a book by Scott Stuart, who also created the TV adaptation.

Tween series The Eerie Chapters of Chhaya, targeted at 10-14s, is created by Suren Perera, Georgina Love and Thomas Duncan-Watt.

Preschool series My Shadow is Pink

The projects, which received development help under the Kindred ABC/CBC Animation Collaboration, were selected from around 180 submissions.

ABC and CBC initally agreed their partnership in June 2019 and since then have co-commissioned the six-part TV series Stuff the British Stole, based on the podcast of the same name, and the unorthodox science documentary Carbon: The Unauthorized Biography, narrated by Australian actress and Succession star Sarah Snook.

Top execs from CBC and ABC are currently in Tokyo for the Public Broadcasters International conference, where media leaders including CBC/Radio-Canada’s president and CEO Catherine Tait and ABC’s MD David Anderson will speak about how public media companies are adapting to compete in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by digital players.

Both Anderson and Tait will also take part in the first in-person meeting of the Global Task Force for public media, a group made up of leaders from eight public service media companies.

The task force, formed in 2020 and chaired by Tait, also includes leaders from the UK’s BBC, France Télévisions, South Korea’s KBS, New Zealand’s RNZ, Sweden’s SVT and Germany’s ZDF.