'Game' on for UPN

Headnote

|Programming | CGI-Animated Series Will Star Video Game

At UPN, the game is on to lure young video game players back to broadcast television.

The network, whose target audience is the 18 to 34 demo, is banking on television's first CGIanimated television series, "Game Over," to help do it. The half-hour show chronicles the lives of a family of video game characters after the game is turned off. It premieres March 10 at 8 p.m.

"Game Over" is "the first show on television to take this cultural phenomenon seriously and head-on and respectfully," said creator and executive producer David Sacks.

"There has been a paradigm shift in the way people have decided they want to be entertained," he said. "[Video games] have conquered pop culture, but no one realizes it yet."

Mr. Sacks said he first came up with the idea to make a show about the real life of video game characters during the Internet boom a few years ago for the Web site Icebox.com. But like many Internet startups Icebox faced funding problems and it wasn't able to produce the show.

The idea stuck with Mr. Sacks, however, and he decided to try to sell it as a TV show. he teamed with frequent collaborators David Goetsch, Jason Venokur and Ross Venokur to executive produce the show along with comedy powerhouse Carsey-Werner-Mandabach.

UPN executives were immediately attracted to the pitch. "It spoke to our target audience," UPN Entertainment President Dawn Ostroff said. "We need to be different. We need to be on the cutting edge. We need to do things that most people aren't thinking about. This was a check in every...