real hero." "It gives them a real sense of purpose and legitimacy," says Kris. "We make ID cards for them—press badges. Some of our kids have used those press badges to get into political rallies and things like that." Gaining Exposure As of right now, "World Youth News" is on two different cable networks three times a week. Combined totals from both networks means WYN (pronounced "win") is currently in about 22 million homes. And that's just in the United States. European interest has been gaining steadily—20 countries are currently in negotiation. One, Saudi Arabia, has already placed an order for 26 episodes. Success, however, has not been easy. "When we first finished the pilot, we took it to a lot of people and they simply didn't know what to do with it. It wasn't like anything they had seen before. It wasn't exactly a news show and it wasn't exactly some kind of entertainment. It was infotainment." Still, Mick and Kris knew they were on to something. Says Mick: "The teen market is the largest market in the world, end of story. Last year, American teens, which number about 30 million, spent 57 billion dollars of their own money." Says Kris: "Besides that, they are the most accessible group—the easiest to talk to. We've got it so they're the ones who are doing the shooting and they're the ones who are digesting that same information. We don't see a lot of good things for teens and we really wanted this to be one of the good things." Making Plans But "World Youth News" is only part of their plan. As they expand, their intention is to create the World Youth Network. "Right now," Mick says, "we have a mini-CNN in place. We've got shooters all over the world who are sending us stories and whom we can contact to go and get a story for us. Our ultimate goal, however, is to expand into the on-line arena and become a complete on-line service. That way, people can send their videos to us straight into our computers and the users out there can have direct access to that same information. We want to provide a service where the user can become a participant." "Besides," says Kris, "we've got a lot of footage that people have sent to us that we haven't been able to use yet, and we're in the