Rovio to air Toons series through Angry Birds apps

As we told you, Finland-based Angry Birds maker Rovio continues to milk its franchise with the announcement of an animated series titled Angry Birds Toons. It’s premiering on the weekend of March 16 and 17 and today Rovio revealed that it will be airing the episodes directly via its Angry Birds apps, in addition to other more traditional distribution channels.

That’s a clever move considering more than 1.7 billion Angry Birds downloads across devices and operating systems. If they offered a standalone Toons app, I don’t think many people would download it. The first episode titled ‘Chuck Time’ will be airing in the Angry Birds Toons channel this Sunday, March 17, with a trailer for it included right after the break…

Rovio says that come this Sunday, users should start noticing a new Toons channel button in any Angry Bird app’s menu. This will provide access to on-demand episode streams, with a brand new cartoon airing the same time every weekend.

We haven’t seen yet, at least to my knowledge, a games maker launching a video distribution channel across all of its game titles on smartphones and tablets.

Here’s the episode 1 trailer.

The series will have 52 episodes.

Additionally, Angry Birds Toons will be distributed through select video-on-demand channel providers (like Roku and Comcast platforms, including Xfinity on Demand, online at Xfinity.com/tv and the Xfinity TV Player app), Smart TVs and connected devices.

The series will also air on select TV networks around the world, including on FOX8 in Australia, JEI TV in Korea, ANTV in Indonesia, Cartoon Network in India, MTV3 Juniori and MTV3 in Finland, the Children’s Channel in Israel, 1+1 networks in Ukraine, Gulli and Canal J in France, SUPER RTL in Germany, TV2 in Norway, Canal 13 in Chile and Gloob in Brazil.

In addition, Activision, Paramount Pictures, BlackBerry and Sony Pictures are partnering with Rovio at the launch of the Angry Birds Toons channel.

More information is available at the official Toons web site.