Artificial Life and RDF Digital USA to Produce Interactive Animated TV Show

RDF Digital USA and Artificial Life, Inc. announced a collaboration to produce an interactive animated TV show entitled Sleuths.

Implementing Artificial Life's MoPA-TV system, Sleuths will let audiences become part of the storyline.

Artificial Life said its MoPA-TV technology has been greeted with success in Japan and across Europe. Now, RDF has created a format around the technology to bring it to the States.

The group said that Sleuths is a half-hour animated episodic series featuring four kids solving a mystery every week. In the show, the audiences register and customize their own avatar which will appear on the screen representing them while the show airs live on national television. Three times per episode, the avatars of the registered audience members will appear in the show for voting sessions. A question will be asked in each session and they will have to text in their vote within a limited time frame. Those who get it wrong will be eliminated from the screen; those who get the question right will be congratulated on the correct answer and stay for the next question. At the end of each episode, the top five avatars who answered all of the questions correctly will appear on screen one final time standing with the main characters. All audience members will have a shot as seeing their avatar standing next to the show's stars.

Along with the show comes an online community and additional revenue from SMS text messages that bring the audiences' avatars live on screen.

The show was created by Max Benator, Senior Vice President of Multi- Platform Entertainment for RDF USA. RDF will produce the series.

"It's both a television show and an interactive experience -- it's revolutionary and we couldn't be more excited to introduce this to the States," said Max Benator, Senior Vice President of Multi-Platform Entertainment for RDF USA.

"We are excited about the first appearance of MoPA-TV in the US -- a home to many original, creative and innovative show formats. Nowadays, television programs must compete with many other forms of entertainment such as the internet and video games, so by adding something new to the traditional TV viewing experience it helps to satisfy the thirst of audiences for something fun and new. The interactive home entertainment that MoPA-TV provides ushers in a new era of TV entertainment!" said Eberhard Schoneburg, CEO of Artificial Life, Inc.

MoPA-TV stands for "mobile participation television". The system enables live TV broadcasters to support real-time viewer interaction with their shows using their mobile phones.

RDF Media USA, Inc. is the American umbrella of the RDF Media Group, a production and distribution company.

Artificial Life, Inc. is a public U.S. corporation headquartered in Los Angeles, with its production center in Hong Kong and additional offices in Berlin (EMEA headquarters) and Tokyo. As a provider of mobile broadband 3G technology, mobile participation TV, mobile gaming, content and business applications, Artificial Life provides 2D and 3D multi- and single- player rich-media applications for 3G, 3.5G and 4G network-enabled mobile phones.

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