blinkx Partners with HIT Entertainment to Offer Popular Children’s Programming

Thomas & Friends™ Steam into Town at www.blinkx.com

blinkx, the world’s largest video search engine, today announced a partnership with HIT Entertainment (www.hitentertainment.com), one of the world’s leading independent children’s producers and rights owners. HIT’s award-winning programming includes Bob the Builder™ and Thomas and Friends, and from this month will be readily available at www.blinkx.com. Under the terms of the agreement, blinkx will leverage its AdHoc platform to place contextually relevant advertising to complement the popular pre-school shows from HIT Entertainment.

With a catalog comprised of programming seen in more than 240 countries and in over 45 different languages, HIT Entertainment is home to colorful, educational content that resonates with children across the globe. Viewers will now have access to programming ranging from Barney™, the huggable Tyrannosaurus Rex, to the colorful cave-dwellers of Fraggle Rock™.

“As more parents turn to the Web for stimulating, wholesome entertainment for their children, it becomes increasingly important for us to make this type of programming easily accessible,” said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO, blinkx. “We’re delighted to be bringing HIT Entertainment’s quality content to blinkx.com.”

“With a portfolio of award-winning properties, HIT’s shows aim to engage, inspire, educate and delight children all over the world,” said Ryan Tunstall, IT & Operations director, HIT Entertainment. “We are delighted to be working with blinkx to increase the distribution of our shows worldwide and perfectly complements and supports our digital strategy in reaching a global audience.”

As the pioneer in video search technology, blinkx has built a reputation as the smartest way to search new forms of online content such as video. With more than 220 partners and 18 million hours of indexed video and audio content, including favorite TV moments, news clips, short documentaries, music videos, video blogs and more, blinkx uses advanced speech-recognition technology to deliver results that are more accurate and reliable than standard metadata-based keyword searches.

About blinkx

blinkx plc (LSE AIM: BLNX) is the world’s most comprehensive video search engine. Today, blinkx has indexed more than 18 million hours of audio, video, viral and TV content, and made it fully searchable and available on demand. blinkx’s founders set out to solve a significant challenge – as TV and user-generated content on the Web explode, keyword-based search technologies only scratch the surface. blinkx’s patented search technologies listen to – and even see – the Web, helping users enjoy a breadth and accuracy of search results not available elsewhere. In addition, blinkx powers the video search for many of the world’s most frequented sites. blinkx is based in San Francisco and London. More information is available at www.blinkx.com.

About HIT Entertainment

HIT Entertainment, owned by private equity investment group Apax Partners, is one of the world’s leading independent children’s entertainment producers and rights-owners. HIT’s portfolio includes properties, such as Barney™, Bob the Builder™, Thomas & Friends™, Pingu™, Fireman Sam™, Angelina Ballerina™ and Rainbow Magic™. HIT represents Chapman Entertainment’s Fifi and the Flowertots™ and Roary the Racing Car™ in North America and Japan, as well as Wallace & Gromit™, Shaun the Sheep™ and Aardman Classics from Aardman Animations. HIT also acts as a worldwide representative for The Jim Henson Company’s library of classic family brands and as representative for The Wiggles® in the UK. Launched in 1989, HIT’s lines of business span television and video production, content distribution, publishing, consumer products licensing and live events and has operations in the UK, US, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan. HIT is a part-owner of US-based preschool channel, PBS KIDS SproutSM, and international preschool channel JimJam, (outside of the US, UK and China). For more information, visit www.hitentertainment.com.

Contacts

Sparkpr
Tim Turpin, +1-415-321-1894
tim.turpin {at} sparkpr(.)com
or
Bite Communications
Clare Gayner, +44 (0)20 8834 3454
Clare.Gayner {at} bitepr(.)com
or
HIT Entertainment
Nicole Price, +44 (0)20 7554 3613
Mobile: +44 (0) 7891 934488
nprice {at} hitentertainment(.)com