Backyard Cricket Inspires Comedy Webisodes

MEDIA RELEASE

3 March 2009

 
Backyard Cricket Inspires Comedy Webisodes For TVNZ Onemand

Iconic Kiwi soft drink brand L&P is putting laughs online this week with the launch of a web-only TV show, available exclusively at TVNZ Ondemand.

The BYC Chronicles, produced by Ric Salizzo of Leftfield, is a series of three 20-minute episodes that focus on the exploits of James McOnie, sports radio jock and backyard cricket enthusiast, as he puts together a team to enter the annual L&P ‘BYC’ Tournament taking place in Paeroa, 7th March 2009.

The first episode went live on the TVNZ Ondemand site earlier this week.

“Our L&P Backyard Cricket tournament is now a world famous event in New Zealand, and James McOnie is such a cricket fanatic that we thought it was time for him to hit the big time,” says Nikki McKelvie, Ogilvy’s Business Director on Coca-Cola Amatil.

“Who better to support James than L&P - the official sports drink of BYC?”

“We worked collaboratively with Coca-Cola Amatil, Leftfield Productions, Ikon Communications and TVNZ Ondemand to pull this great idea off,” says Ms McKelvie.

TVNZ’s General Manager of Content and Delivery, Tom Cotter is enthusiastic about the potential for the locally produced online-only series.

“Ratings for our on air shows are going from strength to strength. Consequently, online streams for catch up episodes of those shows on TVNZ Ondemand are growing exponentially. So while we pride ourselves on having content across multiple platforms, there will be cases where we commission web-only shows,” says Mr Cotter.

TVNZ’s Ondemand site registered over 830,000 full-episode streams of catch up programmes to nearly 200,000 unique browsers in the last month alone.

The second 20-minute episode of the BYC Chronicles goes live on tvnzondemand.co.nz from this Sunday, 8th March.

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