CHICAGO - Big Idea Productions will meet its goal of broadcasting VeggieTales on national television a little earlier than fans might have thought possible: this month!

"The Toy that Saved Christmas" will be broadcast on the PaxTV network in prime time - Saturday, Dec. 19, at 8 p.m. EST - as the centerpiece of the "VeggieTales Christmas Spectacular!" The Christmas video, which tells the tale of Buzzsaw Louie and the VeggieTales gang seeking the true meaning of Christmas, was originally released in October of 1996.

But while an hour broadcast is about 46 minutes with commercials and a half-hour program is about 24 minutes with commercials, "The Toy that Saved Christmas" is 32 minutes long. This posed a problem for series creator Big Idea Productions, which must come up with an additional 14 minutes of animation to fill a one hour broadcast.

The VeggieTales theme song, not present in the original video, will add two to three minutes. In addition, Junior Asparagus' "live report from the Holy Land" - animation produced last year for the Young Messiah Tour - will be a part of the special.

That leaves about 10 minutes of new animation for the studio to produce, now that "Silly Sing-Along 2" has been completed. The introduction to "The Toy that Saved Christmas" will take the form of a live show from Bob and Larry. Larry has lost the film, and the veggies must stall while he searches for it! The program will include performances of music from the album "A Very Veggie Christmas," including Archibald Asparagus performing "Ring Little Bells."

This new project means that "Larry-Boy and the Rumor Weed," the next video on the calendar for Big Idea Productions, will be delayed a few more weeks. But Big Idea still expects a Spring 1999 release for the cucumber superhero's second adventure.

Big Idea President and Chief Creative Officer Phil Vischer, like the rest of the Big Idea team, is excited about the project. He said that the values and mission statement of PaxTV line up almost identically with Big Idea's, and that this opportunity was one the company could not pass up.