MUMBAI: While the production industry might be in its nascent stages in India, but the popularity of animation certainly isn't.

Animation company Toonz Animation and ETV Network have inked an agreement to telecast the The Adventures of Tenali Raman.

Touted as a major broadcast agreement, the media giant will air the first home production of Toonz- the 26 X 11 minutes episode series- on the five satellite channels of ETV Network.

In an official release announcing the deal, Toonz CEO P Jayakumar added that the series will be dubbed into five regional languages.

Produced using classic 2D animation, The Adventures of Tenali Raman revolves around the fun loving jester Tenali Raman and his hilarious adventures. The series had its worldwide premiere on Cartoon Network Asia last year.

The series will be aired on five channels of the ETV network- ETV-Bangla, ETV-Marathi, ETV-Kannada,
ETV-Gujarati, and ETV-Oriya. The series will debut on ETV Bangla on 16 May 2004 at 11:05am and will air every Sunday. ETV Marathi will start airing the series from 1 May 2004 at 6:05 pm every Saturday.

As for ETV Kannada, it will air the series every Sunday at 10:05 am starting 4 July 2004. ETV Oriya will debut the series on 2 May 2004 at 10:05 am every Sunday and ETV Gujrati will air it from 2 May 2004 at 10:05 am every Sunday.

'We are delighted with the upcoming telecast on the ETV network. ETV has phenomenal coverage and with this broadcast we are all set to reach out to a sizable chunk of television viewing audience in India," offered Jayakumar.

"Providing content based on the Indian story-telling heritage has always been a priority for us and we are pleased that children and adults alike can now savor this exciting series in their local language," he added.