For months, the UK red tops were full of the blind casting versus historical accuracy debate surrounding the new three-part drama Anne Boleyn (initially broadcast in the UK 1st-3rd June 2021 on free-to-air service Channel 5) and finally the figures are in. The programme, which divided critics, commentators and the public, was controversial for its […]

Netflix has announced that it is opening its first fully owned, live-action, full-service post-production facility in Mumbai, India. To be fully operational by June 2022, Netflix says the facility “will have 40 offline editing rooms designed as a flexible, collaborative and inspiring environment for showrunners, directors, editors and sound designers to create their best work. […]

The return of the Eurovision Song Contest, following its cancellation in 2020,  was seen by 183 million viewers across 36 markets. The Grand Final of the 65th Contest achieved, on average, a 4 percentage point higher TV audience share than the last Contest in 2019 of 40.5 per cent – more than double the average […]

Cairo-based United Media Services (UMS) is planning to launch a news-focused channel that it says will report on regional and local news and to be launched early in 2022. It will be available to the Egyptian and Arab diaspora in Europe, the US, Canada and Australia as well as locally. UMS is very much a […]

Ivory Coast-based mobile content platform StarNews Mobile has agreed a group-wide deal with the Orange Content unit of Orange to provide its video platform to the telco’s 150 million subscribers across 15 countries in Africa. Africa has 650 million mobile customers, with the vast majority receiving their daily news and information via their mobiles. While […]

GB News, the news channel which includes Discovery among its backers, has confirmed it is to launch on June 13th. A tweet from the service says: ‘GB News will launch on Sunday 13th June at 8pm with a special programme “Welcome to GB News”’. The channel, positioned as an alternative to BBC News and Sky […]

Following earlier speculation, Amazon and MGM have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire MGM for a purchase price of $8.45 billion (€6.91bn). MGM has nearly a century of filmmaking history and Amazon says it will help preserve MGM’s heritage and catalogue of films, and provide customers with greater access to […]

Netflix has announced its first Russian Original drama series, with the working title ANNA K. The series is a contemporary retelling of Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina. Svetlana Khodchenkova is set to play the lead role. Michael Azzolino, Director Original Series at Netflix, commented: “We are incredibly proud to announce our first Russian series […]

Europe’s media sector, represented by a range of organisations, has welcomed the European Commission’s proposal on the Digital Markets Act (DMA) as a much needed and urgent step towards establishing a fair, balanced and contestable digital market, publishing a Statement calling for clarification of, and amendment to, a number of issues According to the Signatories, […]