That’s the snappy line Rovio strategist Andrew Stalbow is using to talk about the company’s forthcoming animated series, “Angry Birds Toons.” The show, first announced nearly a year ago, will be distributed primarily through an update to the Angry Birds game for smartphones and tablets.

The cartoons will also be available on Comcast’s on-demand services, Roku’s set-top boxes and Samsung’s smart TVs, and will be broadcast on TV in 12 countries — but not the U.S. — one day before each new episode comes to the apps.

Why is American broadcast TV not getting the show? It seemed like a natural fit, especially since Nickelodeon aired one of the first pre-series shorts in the run-up to Angry Birds: Space. The absence of Nick (or any other American station aimed at the younger set) from Rovio’s press release this morning was conspicuous.

Parents who would rather park Junior in front of the tube and keep the iPad for Mommy and Daddy, don’t despair. Stalbow left the door wide open for a future TV run in the States, even if initial talks didn’t result in a deal.

Andrew Stalbow

Rovio will roll out one new episode of “Angry Birds Toons” per week, with 52 of the three-minute to five-minute shorts planned so far. Unlike Netflix’s “House of Cards” episode dump, serialized installments will give players a reason to open the app more frequently over a longer period of time, and will likely expose them to new game features and cross-promotions for other games.

And even though downloads of Rovio’s games still tick up and up and up (crossing the 1.7 billion mark recently), engagement seems to be dropping: Onavo Insights estimates that active iPhone users of the original Angry Birds app dropped 22 percent in January.

After all, there are only so many ways to kill a pig.

Stalbow called the new series Rovio’s “transition from being a mobile games company to a fully-fledged entertainment company.” That’s markedly different from Cut the Rope makers ZeptoLab’s claim that “we’re a gaming company first,” in spite of a planned TV show of its own.

Stalbow said, though, that games are still the “engine driver” of Rovio’s IP.

So, what about those other games: Bad Piggies, which stars the villains from Angry Birds, and Amazing Alex, which takes place in a different world? I asked if they, too, would get the animation treatment, and again Stalbow left the possibilities open.

Stalbow said the focus right now is on the Angry Birds “classic world” (read: sorry, Bad Piggies fans), but that he expects animation to have some staying power within the company — it’s already one of the three pillars of Rovio’s new business, the other two being games and merchandise.

The first episode of “Angry Birds Toons” hits international TV on March 16, and games and on-demand services on March 17. Plus, Rovio is still working on that Angry Birds movie, now slated for a summer 2016 release.

BoomTown motored on down to the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley on a fabulously sunny day to liveblog the latest Bing event.

The software giant is updating its search service, announcing deep integration–part of a deal announced last year–with Facebook.

The theme, according to Microsoft (MSFT) SVP Yusuf Mehdi, quoting the Beatles, was search with “a little help from your friends.”

Let’s hope it’s not: “Help, I need somebody.”

11:35 am PT: Mehdi kicks off the show, announcing the line-up, which includes Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Well, it just got 100 percent more interesting here in this nondescript auditorium.

Mehdi talks a little bit about the future of search and making it better. He talks about social being an important part of it.

While I’d have gone with Barry Manilow, he quotes the Beatles.

Mehdi is followed by Microsoft Online Services Division President Qi Lu, who throws more love bombs at Facebook.

“With the partnershop of Facebook and Bing, we will be able to unlock…how people in a social relationship can be first-class citizens in a search experience,” said Lu.

It sounds so lofty, even though it is mostly trading movie review recommendations or good places to take the kids on a rainy Sunday.

Lu thanks Zuckerberg effusively and invites him onstage.

11:54 am: No hoodie.

Zuckerberg is also “honored to be here,” giving us a little history lesson about the origins of the social networking giant and its various and sundry efforts.

I’ll be honest, the lack of donuts is making me distracted.

He’s not actually saying more than bromides about “what would social search look like.”

And looking around at who would be the right partner in the arena. Microsoft! Of course! That giant investment way back when was nice too!

“They’re really the underdog here,” said Zuckerberg in the first interesting comment, noting that overdogs–that would be Google (GOOG), which he does not mention by name–never innovate much.

His take: Underdogs are the best.

12:01 pm: Mehdi is back to show off the wares in a demo.

First, what’s there. Web search in Facebook and Facebook status updates on Bing.

Zzzzzzzz. Get to the good stuff!

First, a module that brings in a Like module from Facebook into the search, with all the other information provided by Bing.

It is, said, Mehdi, particular for a person.

“This is going to profoundly change how we search,” he said of personalized experiences.

Mehdi also shows off a way to differentiate your friends who have names of famous people, who are the ones who come up on search first.

Interesting, but people search is not the biggest problem I have.

He also says more is coming, such as friend experts surfacing in search and Like in every result on a page that it was possible. Yipes!

Also, thank the Lord, the ability to turn it off.

12:15 pm: Now Facebook exec Dan Rose comes up and starts talking about the Facebook-Microsoft bromance.

Apparently, four years is an eternity in Silicon Valley in terms of a relationship.

Actually, four weeks is long, so congrats you two crazy kids!

I’d celebrate with a donut if they were here.

“More and more” social in Bing, said Rose.

It’s a match made in digital heaven!

12:22 pm: Q&A time!

So what more? The press is so unsatisfied! Yes, we are.

Zuckerberg takes the lead. New interfaces! More!

A privacy question. “This is Instant Personalization,” said Zuckerberg, who said that Facebook has five partners in that effort.

He explains Instant Personalization, saying he wants to clear up misconceptions.

It’s private enough, you oversharers!

“Just because it is all public information about you, this is really good,” he said.

But is it by default? Of course, it is. That’s Facebook modus operandi!

Opt-out should be tattooed on employees at Facebook as a requirement.

Bing does put up a warning at the top of the page, but only five times. Then, you need to go foraging to turn it off.

Next: Does Bing search queries get sent back to Facebook? Not necessarily.

But, “everything is going to be social eventually,” said Zuckerberg, as long as it is public.

Public is apparently the new black.

More questions about new Facebook Groups and other deets, none of which is that bracing.

Apropos of nothing, I am considering asking a question about the ever-exciting Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) scandal, just to jack up the volume.

I try to ask a question about Zuckerberg’s underdog comment, but no more time.

But Zuckerberg sort of addresses it, going on about why he has picked Microsoft as the favorite.

While he does not say it, it’s because Facebook is the overdog here and, as you know, every overdog needs an underdog.

Speaking of cartoon heroes, here is the opening of that classic television show:

Here it is for the classic television cartoon “The Flintstones” on its 50th anniversary, as rendered by the Silicon Valley search giant.

Suddenly, I feel very old, but who doesn’t love that Wilma?

Enjoy:

Here’s the new trailer for “Yogi Bear,” a cartoon/live-action movie coming out in mid-December (and which I will surely be dragooned by the Swisher boys to see).

Lots of distracting CG and 3-D as usual, but it does look nice when Jellystone Park’s infamous gourmand is grabbing a juicy pic-a-nic basket.

Enjoy:

For Chinese people, Google is not god, and even if it puts on a full-on show about politics and values, it is still not god. Actually, Google is not a virgin when it comes to values. Its cooperation and collusion with the US intelligence and security agencies is well-known, which aroused spats with Europe. If some information is “unfavorable”, Google must delete it under the order of relevant US agencies. The data of its search results is also “stored for inspection.”

After Google launched an attack on China’s censoring, American officials and media responded vigorously. Is it still a corporate incident or commercial action? All this makes one wonder. Thinking about the US’ big efforts in recent years to engage in Internet war, perhaps this could be an exploratory pre-dawn battle.

A blistering attack, though Google (GOOG) clearly invited it by directing Chinese searches to an uncensored search engine based in Hong Kong, essentially using Beijing’s “one country, two systems” policy against it.

There will undoubtedly be more like it in the future, especially if Google continues to tweak the Chinese government as it did today by indexing Twitter posts on its Chinese search site in open defiance of the country’s ban on the microblogging site.

[Image credit: China Daily]

I am not quite sure what to make of the comic by Newsvetter’s Andrew Fowler, who also created Guhmshoo cartoons, but it is definitely worth checking out.

So, here is “All Things Digiphobic,” which you can click on to make larger: