Tag Archives: Blue Ant Media

Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Preview: Smithsonian’s Searching for Secrets in the world’s iconic cities

When I travel to a new city, I always make sure I head a little off the beaten track and away from the more touristy areas to learn more about it. Now, thanks to a new Smithsonian Channel series, I’ve gleaned more about some of the world’s most iconic cities.

Searching for Secrets, debuting Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern on the specialty channel, pulls back the curtain on some best-kept secrets and unappreciated history.

The first of six episodes is about New York City, a place I’ve been lucky enough to visit, explore and read some of the history of. But what’s unveiled on Sunday I’d heard nothing about.

Posed as a series of questions, the show reveals all. Visitors are allowed to enter the viewing area in Lady Liberty’s crown, but why not the torch? Timothy White, from New Jersey University, explains that the area—off-limits for more than 100 years—is part of a fascinating story of the First World War, terrorism and an island that no longer exists. By 1916, the U.S. was sending munitions to the Allies. The storage facility for waiting munitions was Black Tom Island, a fact that became known to the Germans and a plot was hatched to blow up the munitions and stop the flow of weapons overseas. Told through well-done recreations and CGI of the events that followed, the incredible story unfurls, the repercussions of which carry on today.

Next up, mixology historian Anthony Caporale visits the 21 Club. A place a who’s-who has visited during its storied past, Caporale heads to the basement to open a two-ton secret door hiding a tale of liquid treasure. The door is the product of Prohibition, that 1920s time when it was illegal to manufacture, sell or transport alcohol. To get around the rules, clubs like the 21 Club served booze illegally in spots advertised by word of mouth: the speakeasy. And, to make sure the police didn’t find the libations, cousins Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berns built a basement storage area for alcohol behind a heavy, hidden door.

Also investigated in Sunday’s excellent debut: a blizzard and Thomas Edison are responsible for the steam that billows from New York City’s manholes, and how huge piles of rock are connected to the city’s grid system and its famous skyline.

Searching for Secrets airs Sundays at 9 p.m. Eastern on Smithsonian Channel.

Image courtesy of Blue Ant Media.

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Ghost Walk, Industry News

Saloon Media announces collaboration with UK-based StoryFirst on scripted drama, Ghost Walk

From a media release:

Saloon Media, a Blue Ant Studios company, announced today its collaboration with UK-based StoryFirst on its first scripted drama, Ghost Walk (8×60’). Created by Brendan Foley (Cold Courage), who also serves as showrunner on the project, the one-hour series will follow a vivacious, aspiring Canadian actress and prickly British scientist who together become the unlikely ‘Mulder and Scully’ of the world of ghosts. The series kicks off Saloon Media’s exciting new scripted slate and is the first of many Canadian/UK partnerships that the production company will reveal in the coming months. Ghost Walk was developed with the support of Canadian specialty TV channel T+E and will be produced in Ontario, Canada and York, UK.

Ghost Walk will introduce audiences to Melissa Roth, an aspiring Canadian actress who takes a temporary position as a ghost walk tour guide in York, UK. After a fall down a flight of stairs, Melissa begins to see spirits. She soon teams up with a cynical, charismatic British scientist, Charles Conroy, in hopes that he will cure her in exchange for the fame and fortune he would earn proving whether or not ghosts exist. The duo develops a bond; partners investigating hauntings from historic York to rural Canada, while tumbling through the minefield of friendship and – just maybe – something more.

Saloon Media’s Melissa Williamson (top left) and Michael Kot serve as Executive Producers on Ghost Walk. Dominic Barlow (top right) will Executive Produce on behalf of StoryFirst. Sam Linton, Head of Original Content (Canada), Blue Ant Media is Executive Producer on behalf of T+E.

Saloon Media, a Blue Ant Studios company, is a creative hub for compelling new television and digital productions. The founding partners have a wealth of experience in broadcasting and factual and scripted production, and a track record for delivering successful and award-winning programs to international clients. Saloon’s productions have broadcast on History, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Investigation Discovery, CMT, SBS, ZDF, Yesterday, Four, More4, and Netflix. Saloon is a specialist in international co-production, working with like-minded production partners around the world to produce top quality returning series and high-impact specials. Saloon Media is based in Toronto. Saloonmedia.com

StoryFirst’s focus is on the development, production, and financing of high-quality television series for the global marketplace. Alongside developing ambitious drama with new and established writing talent, StoryFirst is a co-producing partner for producers of drama projects around the world.

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Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Season 3 of T+E’s Haunted Hospitals returns

From a media release:

T+E’s hit original series Haunted Hospitals (13×60’) returns for a third season with chilling stories of paranormal activity inside hospitals, asylums and long-term care homes. Featuring expert insight from paranormal investigators Morgan Knudsen, Christopher Brewer and Richard Estep, the new installment sees doctors and nurses stalked by tormented spirits; patients unlocking portals to other dimensions; and demonic entities lurking in corridors. These encounters are part of a paranormal pattern experienced by medical professionals and patients across Canada and around the globe. The documentary series takes viewers down spooky paths leading to unexpected twists, with shocking and hair-raising otherworldly encounters at every turn. Personal testimonies keep the storytelling authentic with a first-person production approach immersing audiences in fear. The world broadcast premiere of Haunted Hospitals airs Wednesday, March 10 at 8 p.m. ET/PT exclusively on T+E in Canada, during the channel’s nationwide free preview event running until May 2 across more than 8 million Canadian households.

The first two episodes of Haunted Hospitals, Season 3 include:

Episode 1 – Dance of Death, The Feeder, Swept Away
March 10 at 8 p.m. ET/PT
The series opener shows viewers Marlon Brandon, a nurse who begins experiencing the ghost of a young man who died while fighting for social justice that has returned to the hospital seeking closure. A near death experience for Emily Walsh, a patient, opens her up to the unknown dangers of a ghastly creature and Stephanie Ferreira, a pregnant woman, falls ill only to encounter the spirits of an anguished mother and the otherworldly cries of a baby in distress at the hospital.

Episode 2 – Soul Taker, The Iron Lung, Water Problems
March 17 at 8 p.m. ET/PT
In this episode, a personal support worker, Paige Mitchell, is on the night shift tending to an elderly patient when she is stalked by an energy-sucking entity. Christina Anderson, a nurse in a Catholic hospital, encounters the tormented soul of a nun and Kenny Irish is terrorized and chased through an abandoned psychiatric hospital while on a service call.

Haunted Hospitals is produced by BGM Inc. Robin Bicknell is the Series Producer. Bruno Dubé, Marlo Miazga, Sean Connoly and Corinna Lehr serve as Executive Producers. Robin Bicknell and Patrick Hepburn are Directors. Sara Soligo is the Story/Post Producer and Juan Montalvo is the Director of Photography.

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Industry News

Blue Ant Media and Content Catalyst Fund kickstart creative engine for female-generated unscripted content

From a media release:

International producer, distributor and channel operator, Blue Ant Media and Content Catalyst Fund (CCF), a development and funding company recently launched by producer and media executive Julie Bristow, jointly announced today that they are joining forces to develop female-generated, unscripted programming for the global marketplace. Together, the two companies will combine their collective expertise and resources to develop, produce and distribute series and documentaries for domestic and international markets.

As part of this deal, CCF will identify unique and inspired unscripted ideas for development and production across several genres including lifestyle, crime and high impact documentary series. Blue Ant Studios, the global production arm of Blue Ant Media, will produce projects in collaboration with CCF and Julie Bristow as Executive Producer. Blue Ant International will serve as the preferred global distribution company.

Laura Michalchyshyn, CCO and co-president, Global Content Production, Blue Ant Media said: “Partnering with CCF and Julie Bristow offers us a unique opportunity to bring new voices and projects to Blue Ant Media and the world. Not only will this joint venture allow us to grow the unscripted side of our business, specifically in popular genres like lifestyle, docu, reality and format programming, but it will also position us at the forefront of progressive, brilliant new content created by women. The partnership gives us access to seasoned and up-and-coming creative talent and inspired content development.”

Julie Bristow, Founder, Content Catalyst Fund said: “CCF’s curation and development expertise, and the production and distribution clout of Blue Ant Media, offers female creators a powerful new opportunity to turbocharge their ideas and roll them out internationally. This announcement is just the beginning: CCF plans to bolster its executive production capacity with talent that will bring a wealth of knowledge and experience that includes buying and selling exciting projects in North America and around the world. This will allow us to give our new pipeline of female-generated, unscripted programming the very best start in life.”

Blue Ant Media is a privately held, international content producer, distributor and channel operator. We own and operate numerous production companies in North America and Asia-Pacific under the Blue Ant Studios banner, creating content for broadcasters and streaming platforms in multiple genres including factual entertainment, natural history, documentary, adult animation and drama. Our distribution business, Blue Ant International, offers a substantial catalogue of content, including one of the world’s largest 4K natural history offerings. Blue Ant Media operates channels under nine brands including Love Nature, Smithsonian Channel Canada, BBC Earth (Canada) and more. Blue Ant Media is headquartered in Toronto, with eight international offices in Los Angeles, New York, Singapore, Tokyo, London, Dunedin, Washington and Beijing. Blueantmedia.com

About CCF
Content Catalyst Fund is a mission-driven, for-profit business dedicated to catalysing the creation of commercially viable content for an underserved global market by powering female creators and investing in their ideas. CCF partners with female creators and producers to advance their projects from inception through to full monetisation of content. The company invests strategic, business and creative power in the best ideas, with the aim of ensuring that they are realised in the shortest possible time frame. http://contentcatalystfund.com/

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Industry News

Blue Ant Media announces latest original slate for Cottage Life, T+E, Love Nature and Smithsonian Channel Canada

From a media release:

Blue Ant Media, an international producer, distributor and channel operator, announced from Prime Time Online today a series of greenlights for its suite of lifestyle and factual TV channels: Cottage Life, T+E, Love Nature and Smithsonian Channel Canada. The 2021-2022 programming slate underpins Blue Ant Media’s commitment to create compelling original content that appeals to viewers at home and on a global scale. Overseen by Sam Linton, Head of Original Content (Canada), the lineup includes four world broadcast premieres with several series available for licensing globally by Blue Ant International.

On Cottage Life, Blue Ant Media has greenlit three new series to premiere in spring 2022 during the channel’s nationwide free preview event, two of which are co-productions with APTN, Canada’s national Indigenous television network. The first co-production, Dr. Savannah: Wild Rose Vet (working title) (Season 1; Broadcast Premiere), profiles rural Alberta-based veterinarian and everyday hero Dr. Savannah Howse-Smith as she takes care of animals while also exploring her newly-discovered Métis heritage. Blue Ant and APTN will also co-produce the third installment of Merchants of the Wild (Season 3; Broadcast Premiere), which follows six Indigenous adventurers pitted against the perils of an ancient waterway trade route used by the Syilx People. Blue Ant Media has also acquired from APTN seasons 1 and 2 of the Merchants of the Wild franchise to air on Cottage Life. Finally, Blue Ant Media has greenlit Mysteries from Above (working title) (Season 1; World Broadcast Premiere) for Cottage Life, which is a 10-part original documentary series investigating mysterious phenomena from the vantage point of drones. The series provides an in-depth analysis of never-before-seen drone footage, from lost civilizations to curious animal behaviour.

As the home of paranormal programming in Canada, T+E has lined up two spine-tingling paranormal documentaries to scare viewers across the country. Scheduled to premiere this fall on T+E, the paranormal documentary special Bathsheba (Season 1; World Broadcast Premiere), follows the chilling true story of Bathsheba Sherman, a witch made famous by the hit horror film, The Conjuring. The special delves into the true tales that served as inspiration for the film and unearths the archives of well-known paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, who attempted to help the Perron family from being terrorized by Bathsheba’s presence. Also new to T+E, Blue Ant Media has greenlit Eyewitness: UFO (working title) (Season 1; World Broadcast Premiere), an eight-part docuseries that breathes new life into the decades-long conversation as to whether or not extraterrestrials have visited Earth. The series weaves together powerful and credible first-hand accounts of UFO encounters with interviews, authentic visual footage and dramatic paranormal reenactments, while expert contributors explore the world-shattering realities of the witnessed events. The greenlight comes at a pivotal time when skepticism has shifted and people are open to new findings and evidence of interstellar visitors.

New on Love Nature, the 12-part documentary series Battle of the Alphas (Season 1; World Broadcast Premiere) offers viewers insight into the competitive world of animal life, giving an inside look into an important part of animal behaviour. Battle of the Alphas is a Love Nature global commission, slated to premiere in Canada and roll out worldwide on Love Nature’s branded linear and streaming platforms in early 2022.

Finally, on Smithsonian Channel Canada, the documentary special Treasures from the Maya (Canadian Broadcast Premiere), treks deep into the jungle to investigate the mysterious collapse of the ancient Maya civilization. Using the latest science and technology, Treasures from the Maya uncovers how an ancient civilization ruled by god-kings ended in warfare. The special is slated to air next spring 2022.

For a full list of original programming highlights, please see below.

Cottage Life

Dr. Savannah: Wild Rose Vet (working title) (9×30’; HD)
Scheduled for Spring 2022 • Broadcast Premiere
A Blue Ant Media and APTN Co-production • Producer: Wapanatahk Media in partnership with Great Pacific Media
The series follows the adventures of veterinarian Dr. Savannah Howse-Smith as she keeps rural Alberta’s pet and animal population healthy, all while learning more about her recently confirmed Métis bloodline and adjusting to her new cultural identity.

Merchants of the Wild, Season 3 (13×30’; HD)
Scheduled for Spring 2022 • Broadcast Premiere
A Blue Ant Media and APTN Co-production • Producer: Little Bear Big Wolf Pictures/Buck Productions
Merchants of the Wild is a vivid 13-part documentary series mixing culture, survival and adventure, as the cameras follow six Indigenous adventurers pitted against the perils of an ancient waterway trade route used by Interior Salishan People of the Colombia Plateau including the Secwepemc, Syilx, Kitunaxa and Sinixt Nations. In an attempt to reconnect to the land, the adventurers begin their journey with nothing and must survive 25 days in the wilderness using the teachings from Elders and Knowledge Keepers, who will be imperative to their success.

Mysteries from Above (working title) (10×60’; HD)
Scheduled for Spring 2022 • World Broadcast Premiere
Producer: Saloon Media, a Blue Ant Studios company
Mysteries from Above is a compelling documentary series investigating mysteries from the unprecedented vantage point of drones. From remote, hard-to-reach locations, the drones explore strange geological occurrences, unique man-made structures, curious creatures, and even lost civilizations, revealing fascinating never-before-seen footage to the viewers. Each episode will answer the question “what is that?” with an in-depth analysis from the world’s leading experts. Distributed by Blue Ant International.

T+E

Bathsheba (2×60’; HD)
Scheduled for Fall 2021 • World Broadcast Premiere
Producer: Cream Productions
Inspired by the 2013 horror film, The Conjuring, which scared and scarred audiences worldwide, the paranormal documentary special, Bathsheba dives into the true tales that served as inspiration for the film. The storyline begins in the 1970s and follows the famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, founders of the New England Society for Psychic Research, as they attempt to help the Perron family who are terrorized by an evil paranormal presence, a witch named Bathsheba Sherman, at their remote Rhode Island farmhouse. Responding to the TV industry’s goal to achieve gender parity, Blue Ant Media and Cream Productions are committed to hiring an all-female production team with the aim to create training and mentorship opportunities for women in production. Distributed by Blue Ant International.

Eyewitness: UFO (working title) (8×60’; HD)
Scheduled for Summer 2021 • World Broadcast Premiere
Producer: Saloon Media, a Blue Ant Studios company
The documentary series tells the stories of the most incredible UFO encounters of the modern era. Combining the most compelling audio and visual evidence of UFOs – mobile phone footage and photographs – with the first-hand accounts of those who were there, Eyewitness: UFO distills the biggest mystery of the modern era into riveting, experiential storytelling. Distributed by Blue Ant International.

Love Nature

Battle of the Alphas (12×30’; HD)
Scheduled for Early 2022 • World Broadcast Premiere
Producer: Yap Films
The battle of the alphas happens across the planet every day: babies compete for their mother’s milk, adolescents play-fight and adults become aggressive when their leadership is challenged or when they’re in search of a mate. From friendly competition to territorial battles, the all-new series delves into the science behind animal conflict. Distributed by Blue Ant International.

Smithsonian Channel Canada

Treasures from the Maya (1×60’; HD)
Scheduled for Spring 2022 • Canadian Broadcast Premiere
Producer: Zoot Pictures
Treasures from the Maya uses the latest science and technology (LiDAR laser imaging) to pull back the veil and help viewers see the ancient Maya civilization as they saw it centuries ago. The documentary special travels deep into the jungle, into ancient tombs and temples, to reveal stories of god-kings and their role in the collapse of the ancient Maya civilization.

Blue Ant Media is a privately held, international content producer, distributor and channel operator. We own and operate numerous production companies in North America and Asia-Pacific under the Blue Ant Studios banner, creating content for broadcasters and streaming platforms in multiple genres including factual entertainment, natural history, documentary, adult animation and drama. Our distribution business, Blue Ant International, offers a substantial catalogue of content, including one of the world’s largest 4K natural history offerings. Blue Ant Media operates channels under nine brands including Love Nature, Smithsonian Channel Canada, BBC Earth (Canada) and more. Blue Ant Media is headquartered in Toronto, with nine international offices in Los Angeles, New York, Singapore, Japan, London, Dunedin, Washington DC and Beijing. Blueantmedia.com.

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