BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of Britain’s public broadcaster, has issued legal proceedings in Italy alleging that Silvio Berlusconi-backed broadcaster Mediaset has illegally copied its Strictly Come Dancing/Dancing with the Stars format. The Italian writ argues that Baila!, a new Italian show that’s due to air on September 27th, is an illegal copycat of the […]
Private equity fund Permira has cancelled its plans to sell All3Media. UBS had been appointed last March to find a buyer. All3Media is best known for producing hit shows such as Shameless and Skins. Permira had reportedly been looking for about £750 million to £800 million for All3Media, and while plenty of would-be buyers conducted […]
Discovery Networks has entered into an alliance with Spanish DTT channel Veo Television, owned by Unidad Editorial, to launch a FTA DTT channel in January 2012. The new channel will broadcast documentaries and non-fiction series from the Discovery’s library along with current affairs programmes and talk shows made by Unidad Editorial, among them a political […]
Vivendi pay TV arm Canal+ is to acquire Vincent Bollore’s free-to-air television business for up to €465 million. It says the purchase will help it defend its business against the arrival of Netflix, Apple and Google. Canal+ will intially take a 60 per cent stake in Bollore Group’s TV business, which owns the Direct 8 […]
Liberty Media’s Chellomedia has acquired a 40 per cent stake in Bosnian free-to-air broadcaster OBN. It said that acquiring the stake in the Bosnian market would enable it to create a hub for the launch of pay channels later as infrastructure in the country developed, as well as positioning it to benefit from growth in […]
Channel 4 is to relaunch its on-demand service at the end of the month, with 4oD getting a significant makeover. It has rebuilt 4oD, adding more personalisation and much-needed features like predictive search and recommendations. At the heart of the changes is My 4oD, a section of the service that allows users, once registered, to […]
Iran has launched ‘Hispan TV’, a global satellite news channel that is initially beaming its content to Latin America and in particular to Venezuela and the other Latino countries some of which have close political ties with Iran. BBC Monitoring is reporting that Hispan TV is part of the state-funded Press TV operation which […]
The electronic media has emerged as one of the fastest-growing and most competitive sectors in Pakistan, according to the Chairman of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory (PEMRA). Presenting the watchdog’s report for the year 2010-11 to President Asif Ali Zardari, Dr Abdul Jabbar advised that PEMRA, by the end of the 2010-11 financial year, had […]
Vibrant TV is claimed to be a new type of channel. Backed in part by Chicago-based media buying agency Zephyr Media, the FTA channel says it will showcase internationally produced lifestyle, series, sports and kids programming. The channel will be available on satellite and terrestrially. Dan Zifkin, CEO of Zephyr, says the network will launch […]
The recent slew of bad financial news on TV has seen a major surge in television ratings, especially in the US. All three US financial networks (Bloomberg, Fox Business and CNBC) have gained significant numbers of viewers during the working day, always a sure sign that Wall Street’s financial types – and those at home […]