Canal+ announced the promotion of Laurence Blaevoet to head of children’s programming late last month. We caught up with her to get a read on new channel priorities heading into MIPCOM.

Blaevoet moves up from her previous position as director of scheduling, replacing Francois Deplanck, who left his post to become president of the company’s newly formed gambling venture.

While she plans to continue the work that Deplanck carried out on preschool channel Piwi and kids channel Teletoon, Blaevoet’s new remit goes a bit further than her predecessor’s. She now leads the department’s other kids and family offering, pay-TV channel Canal+ Family.

The 2.5-year-old channel, which launched with fare pulled from the Canal+ library of kids series, documentaries and TV movies, is growing and Blaevoet says Canal+ Family needs a re-vamp in terms of co-productions and pre-buys. Currently, she’s looking for edgier animation in the same vein as The Simpsons to set the channel apart from its competitors in France. She’ll be on the lookout at Cartoon Forum in Hungary next week, as well as MIPCOM and Canada’s Ottawa Animation Festival in October. In the meantime, she is open to taking submissions on a year-round basis.