Dinosaur Train top ratings on PBS
Dinosaur Train, a 40-part children’s animation series co-produced by Singapore-based animation studio Sparky Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company, has earned the #1 spot among 2 to 5-year olds on PBS KIDS America’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) TV stations in December 2009.
Dinosaur Train was also named one of the year’s Best New Kids’ Shows for 2009 by People magazine.
The half-hour episode series features an adorable preschool-age Tyrannosaurus Rex named Buddy. Buddy embraces and celebrates the fascination that preschoolers have with both dinosaurs and trains while encouraging basic scientific thinking and skills.
Dinosaur Train was also the number two most-watched series under the “Ladies of the household aged 18 to 49, with children under the age of three” group.
Singapore-made iPhone App Voted Tops
A Singapore-created iPhone application called BuUuk has been voted one of 11 must-have iPhone travel applications by CNNGo.com, a division of CNN.
Created by a local firm, BuUuK is a free guide to eating and drinking for smartphones. It helps users find the location of and directions to eating spots around Singapore. It is said to be the Asian equivalent of Urbanspoon and Around Me, covering places like Australia, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, India, Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The CNNGo.com team had gone through 66,000 iPhone applications before listing BuUuk, together with the other 10 applications, as essential iPhone apps to have while travelling around the world.
For more information on BuUuk, please visit http://buuuk.com/
Singapore Documentary Wins CINE Golden Eagle Award
Made-by-Singapore reality documentary Lifewatch recently won the CINE Golden Eagle Award Fall 2009. The six-part series was produced by ThreeSixZero Productions, and was one of the public service broadcast programmes supported by the Media Development Authority.
This is the third consecutive time that ThreeSixZero Productions has won this prestigious bi-annual award. Other winners in the same category – People and Places – include Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservation.
More than 400 jurors reviewed Lifewatch over a multi-stage jury process. The TV series takes viewers into the heart of the action and drama that unfold at the Singapore General Hospital. It was first shown on MediaCorp Channel 5 and later dubbed into Mandarin for Channel 8’s audiences.
Other PSB-funded programmes also did well at last year’s Asian Television Awards. The Little Nyonya and Red Thread won the Best Drama series and Best Actor Award (for Adrian Pang) respectively, while five other programmes were also highly commended.
Rocketbirds: Revolutions! Nominated for Three Independent Games Festival Awards
Local gaming studio Ratloop Asia’s latest game, Rocketbirds: Revolutions!, has been nominated for three awards in the 2010 Independent Games Festival (IGF), to be held in San Francisco in March.
Ratloop Asia was set up in 2008 with a grant from the Media Development Authority and production on Rocketbirds: Revolutions! started that year. The 2D action-filled puzzle game featuring great graphics and animation rarely seen in Flash-based games took one year and three months to complete. It has been nominated for Excellence in Visual Art, Excellence in Audio and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the upcoming IGF.
Asia Television Forum Wins Exhibition of the Year Award
Asia Television Forum (ATF) has been awarded Exhibition of the Year at the Singapore Experience Awards 2009. A key trade event at the Asia Media Festival (AMF) 2009 hosted by the Media Development Authority, ATF serves as a platform for international buyers and sellers to forge strong business networks and partnerships.
About 5,000 broadcasters, buyers and sellers, distributors, financiers and producers turned up at AMF last December, and several Singapore media companies managed to seal new international partnerships during the event.
The Singapore Experience Awards is one of the most prestigious awards given out by the Singapore Tourism Board, recognising organisations and individuals who have contributed to a distinctive Singapore Experience.
Homegrown Company Mozat Makes Red Herring’s Top 100 Global Companies List
Mozat, a network partner of the FutureMobile project under the Media Development Authority’s Interactive Digital Media Programme, has won the Red Herring Top 100 Global Companies Award.
Red Herring Global surveyed 1,200 top companies in Europe, USA and Asia to come up with the list of Top 100 companies which will lead the next wave of innovation in technology. Past award-winners include Google, Yahoo!, Skype and Netscape.
As Asia’s leading mobile social network provider, Mozat enables integrated social networking, communication and multi-player gaming on a single application. The company was founded by a group of PhD scholars and professors of the National University of Singapore. |