The Fresh Beat Band Biography
The Fresh Beat Band (originally known as The JumpArounds) is an American live-action musical children's television series created by the husband-and-wife duo of Scott Kraft and Nadine van der Velde and developed by Kraft, van der Velde, and Alice Prodanou for Nickelodeon. The show stars Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, Thomas Hobson, Shayna Rose (later Tara Perry), and Jon Beavers as the "Fresh Beats" (Kiki, Shout, Marina, and Twist), described as four best friends in a band who are determined to follow their dreams. Kraft and van der Velde additionally serve as executive producers of the series. During the first season, Dan Danko and Tom Mason served as the head writers and wrote a majority of the episodes, with additional contributions from Prodanou (who also served as developer and story editor), Bradley Zweig, Matt Sheppo, John Ritchie, Amy Keating Rogers, Laurie Israel, Rachel Ruderman, and Kerri Grant. Kraft and van der Velde were only credited for developing the series for TV during the first season. Beginning with the second season, they took over the writing positions from Danko and Mason, who departed to work on other projects, while Prodanou retained her position as developer, with the story editor credit being dropped. Kraft and van der Velde ended up co-writing all of the episodes for the second season alongside Carla Banks Waddles, Kim Duran, and the duo of Heather MacGillvray and Linda Mathious. In addition, new writer Tom Saunders, as well as Kraft and Duran's eventual PAW Patrol collaborator Ursula Ziegler-Sullivan, were each credited for co-writing one episode. Kraft, van der Velde, Duran, MacGillvray, and Mathious all returned to write the episodes for the third season. Banks Waddles also returned to the writing team, but due to her commitments with other projects, she was only credited for writing three out of the 20 episodes. Calvin Leung, who additionally serves as script supervisor and coordinator with Grant, Linda Ota, Jennifer Farmer, and Dawn Dreilin...
