ACTF News

The sale of the teen comedy-horror series Crazy Fun Park to ARD BR/KiKA in Germany has capped off a busy year for the ACTF, with shows from its award-winning children’s catalogue in high demand.

Following the successful launch of the series at MIP Junior 2022 (where it was the most watched show by total viewing time), the ACTF sales team has been busy in 2023 securing broadcast deals, including most recently with ARD BR/KiKA, and in the months prior with BBC (UK), Hulu (USA), YLE (Finland), VRT (Belgium), NRK (Norway) and more.

International Emmy award winning factual series Built to Survive has proven popular with buyers this year with acquisitions by Téle-Québec (Canada), Mediawan (France), TFOU (France) and RTV (Slovenia), with more sales to be announced soon.

With an enviable number of sales already secured prior to 2023, including to BBC (UK), ARD/SWR (Germany), TVB (Hong Kong), RTE (Ireland), TVO (Canada) and many more, Hardball (Series 1&2) was recently acquired by NHK (Japan) with Series 2 being picked up this year by Canal Once (Mexico) for children’s channel Once Niños, having already acquired Series 1 in 2021. Hardball continues to be enjoyed by children throughout the world.

Interest in pre-school animated series Kangaroo Beach continued to be strong in 2023 with Series 1 & 2 being acquired by TVO (Canada), Knowledge Network (Canada), Kartoon Channel (USA) and RTV (Slovenia), while Series 2 sold to Warner Bros. Discovery Latin America.

Premiering in November 2022 on NITV (Australia), live-action coming of age series Barrumbi Kids was picked up in 2023 by FNX - First Nations Experience, USA (who acquired a significant package of the ACTF’s first nations content), RUV (Iceland), SABC (South Africa), Netflix (Australia), Fubon Cultural & Educational Foundation (Taiwan) and in a first for the ACTF the series was acquired by the Public Service of Montenegro. More sales are due to be finalised soon.

Yet another International Emmy award winning program, the groundbreaking transgender series First Day (which has already sold extremely well worldwide), was acquired for the first time in 2023 by Disney Latin America, who picked up the broadcast rights to Series 1 & 2, as did VRT (for Dutch speaking Belgium), while those who had already acquired Series 1 added Series 2 to their library with acquisitions by SABC (South Africa) and Fubon Cultural & Educational Foundation (Taiwan), as well as the French language version being acquired by TFO (Canada), SRC (Canada) and RTBF (Belgium).

Sales were also finalised in 2023 for several other ACTF shows, including Little Lunch, Balloon Barnyard, Little J & Big Cuz, More Than This, Are You Tougher Than Your Ancestors, The Inbestigators and many more.

With an existing catalogue of wonderful shows and with many more currently in development and production, the ACTF can expect another busy year ahead as we continue to bring the best Australian made kids shows to audiences everywhere.

Produced by:

Crazy Fun Park (Werner Film Productions); Built to Survive (Butter Media); Hardball (Northern Pictures); Kangaroo Beach (Cheeky Little Media); Barrumbi Kids (Ambience Entertainment and Tamarind Tree Pictures); First Day (Epic Films); Little Lunch (Gristmill); Balloon Barnyard (Like a Photon); Little J & Big Cuz (Old Dog Pictures/Ned Lander Media); More Than This (Baby Banksia Productions); Are You Tougher Than Your Ancestors? (Flying Kite Pictures & Sticky Pictures), The Inbestigators (Gristmill).

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