-- --
SCREEN AFRICA EXCLUSIVE:
A year after announcing Cartoon Network Africa's Creative Lab winners, WarnerMedia revealed the winning shorts at DISCOP Johannesburg 2019. The initiative, which started in June 2018 as a pan-African call for a pitch competition, not only had the ambition to find African talents and bring to life local story gems through animation, but also to unearth talent from a range of backgrounds. Creators, writers, graphic artists and animators all rose to the occasion to take a chance at bringing innovative content aligned with Cartoon Network's brief to showcase humour, craziness, randomness and absurdity - and, most importantly, to make African kids laugh out loud.
The three winning Cartoon Network Creative Lab shorts premiered on Cartoon Network on 11 January 2020 as part of a special stunt gathering together innovative, breakthrough animated shorts specially curated for Cartoon Network.
Screen Africa sat down with Ariane Suveg, head of Programming and Acquisitions, WarnerMedia Kids Africa, to talk about Cartoon Network Africa's Creative Lab success and the role of local creators in African animation.
What are the next steps for the winners of Cartoon Network Africa's Creative Lab competition? The shorts officially aired on 11 January at 17h15, DStv channel 301 and GOtv channel 67 (Ghana 158/Uganda 356). This initiative has brought talented African creators together, and it has been an exciting process. In 2020, we are willing to strengthen our collaboration with the winning, and very talented, creatives, and are currently exploring how we can enter a development process for a short series.
After the success of CN Lab, will there be another rollout of the competition?
We have not planned to run another edition of CN Lab in 2020, but are seriously on the lookout to find and produce African animation projects. We are partnering with various festivals and professional organisations to ensure we get new pitches in and are identified by talents. The success of the Creative Lab has confirmed our conviction that great animated stories can be found and developed from the African continent.
What are some projects Cartoon Network is developing to further empower African creators?
We are in discussion with some of our partners to further develop and invest in African animation, and this is an ambition for the year to come. We're also interested in initiatives that help animation skills to grow across the continent and federate various talents.
Do you think that the current players who created the winning shorts have potential to play with bigger players in the industry?
The ambition of CN Lab was to select the best creative ideas and ensure high-class production standards are met to potentially open doors for these local productions to travel. As an international company, and one of the biggest players on the global media market today, we have an opportunity to facilitate international collaborations, giving the talent the opportunity to interact with international production experts. We think that very local African stories, as they are unique and driven by strong values and catchy ingredients, could resonate globally as well.
When will Cartoon Network and Boomerang start investing in making local productions (i.e. a full show) for, and by, African viewers?
Our channels need to be representative of our audience and making local productions is part of this objective. On Cartoon Network, we have created local content productions such as Pop Up Party, a series celebrating having fun and getting together through dance and music, that will now come back for a third season on the channel, and on Boomerang we have WOOALA!, an interactive magic show filmed on the streets of Cape Town, to give a few examples. Animation is now the genre we want to commit to, and it's a fantastic project as there is a strong demand for more African animated content. We're currently working on how to start developing projects.
How has the rollout of VOD affected the way you now create content and share it for consumption?
Whether it is for linear or non-linear consumption, we're always looking for unique stories and characters, in line with the tone, promise and targets of our brands. VOD opens a door for more diversity and freedom in the formats we're working on, but the fundamentals remain the same. The level of mobile equipment in Africa, the youngness of the population and the diversity of local languages are also guiding the way we need to think about new type of content.
We know WarnerMedia partnered with YES TV in Israel and cartoons will be dubbed why do you think dubbed content is important in local markets?
We believe that dubbed content can create a stronger relationship with our viewers as it's a way to celebrate the diversity of African culture and languages. Cultural subtleties can be grasped in a different way through language, and humor is, for example, something that is hard to translate unless you are making references that a local audience can relate to.
One of the themes at DISCOP Johannesburg 2019 was Music as a Cross-Border Accelerator; how have you at Cartoon Network and Boomerang found this to be true?
Music is an important part of our work, and we agree that music has a special way to connect people across cultural borders. This is something we had in mind for our local production, Pop Up Party, which celebrates African culture and kids coming together to have fun and connect through music and dance. Additionally, we also initiated a musical campaign on Boomerang, where we created a series of ten original songs, produced in Africa, called The Boomerang Tunes. The title song, We Laugh All Day , is sung by South African/Ugandan young talent, Mila Smith.
What are some challenges in the development phase of ani
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
-- -- 
