Al Jazeera Children’s Channel signs biggest ever deal with BBC Worldwide

Al Jazeera Children’s Channel (JCC) and BBC Worldwide have firmed up their largest ever deal together, totalling more than 180 hours of programming, with all series to be dubbed into Arabic for broadcast in early 2013.

Series pickups include natural history children’s series Andy’s Wild Adventures, season one and two of Kindle Entertainment’s fictional, live-action pre-teen drama Leonardo (pictured), seasons one to five of Kudos Film & TV teen spy adventure comedy series MI High, and the Tiger Aspect/The Jim Henson Company/Sticky Pictures production Me & My Monsters.

In addition, Darrall Macqueen’s live-action/animated series Baby Jake and Ragdoll ‘s The Adventures of Abney & Teal have been snapped up while the complete In The Night Garden catalogue has been re-licensed, kidscreen.com reports.

Natasha Hussain, the territory manager for the Middle East and Africa at BBC Worldwide, said: “This deal further builds on the strong relationship we have with Al Jazeera Children’s Channel. We have a real breadth of engaging and informative programming in our children’s catalogue so it’s great to see some of our exciting live-action drama and documentary content such as MI High and Deadly 60 licensed by the channel for the first time.”

Rashed Al Qurese, the acting director of sales and media rights for Al Jazeera Children’s Channel, added: “Both JCC and BBC have a strong tradition of providing quality entertainment to their audiences. This new selection of creative and intelligent series will expand on our schedule of programming that children will love and parents will trust.”