Chilly Beach gets second season on CBC

The much-touted Chilly Beach convergence project has been renewed for a second season, in production now, as producer March Entertainment begins expanding its staff and number of projects in Sudbury ON (CNM, April 3/03). The show has been purchased for a new run starting this fall by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., and will see a second run on the national broadcaster over the summer, Monday to Friday in the popular 4:30 p.m. ET time slot. The Flash animated production has been watched by the interactive and broadcast sectors since it made the leap from a long online only run to the television screen. Its producer says the show has garnered large audiences for the broadcaster, and says the interactive component has proven popular as well. March Entertainment president Dan Hawes tells Canadian NEW MEDIA that the show has had as many as 300,000 viewers per episode, while online trivia and education components have been played as often as 17,000 times per week. The show was, ironically, scaled back online when it began its television run, but legal and contractual issues that meant many of the episodes couldn’t be seen online have now been settled. March is now advertising for more Flash developers as it moves some functions, including storyboarding, from Toronto into its Sudbury facilities. Hawes says that of the original 30 developers working on the project, 29 have come back. Further staff are required, however, to work on some undisclosed new projects. Without divulging any details, Hawes says CBC has picked up a new show from March to air this fall, and the company has two or three others in development. When the show made its first break from the PC, new wireless applications were to have been an important part of the season. Work on those continues, and Hawes says there were challenges incorporating them into the project. "The challenge we’re having with the wireless space right now is the cost of service for the PDAs, the 1X data service is really, really pricey. Nobody has it unless you’re a developer testing the product. So, although it works, there is a bit of a challenge in that their service is pretty expensive. Now, they’ve come out with a new 1X Java phone, so we’re looking at porting this stuff to the little java phones that would allow you to play games and interact. Now, it’s a little bit of a bastardized interface. It’s not as slick as what you’d get with a Palm or a PDA, but it does allow you to play games, and it’s ubiquitous. Every new phone would basically have that availability." Hawes says the web site is likely driving traffic to the TV screen. "I think it is. Certainly, we had a core audience over the years that we had built up and I think that was instrumental in helping us generate really good numbers on the TV side. But, I think there’s a cross-media synergy that’s happened." He credits CBC and CBC.ca for helping generate the large numbers online and on television by providing its strong support through advertising and because of the traffic the CBC.ca site generates.

Chilly Beach gets second season on CBC

Broadcast | May 14, 2004

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