World Screen

NEW YORK, August 5: Private-equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) has forecast that broadcast TV will surpass newspapers as the largest ad medium in the U.S. this year, while Internet advertising will exceed broadcast TV in 2011. The predictions are …

LONDON, August 5: There will be 104 million digital TV homes in Western Europe by the end of this year, according to Informa Telecoms & Media, which forecasts 157 million homes and a 90-percent penetration rate by 2013. The new …

NEW YORK, August 5: Sony Corporation is buying Bertelsmann’s 50-percent stake in Sony BMG, the music company the two partners formed in 2004, for an undisclosed sum. The venture will be renamed Sony Music Entertainment Inc. (SMEI) and will become …

LOS ANGELES, August 5: Harry E. Sloan has inked a new three-year agreement to continue as the chairman and CEO of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM). Since joining MGM in October 2005, Sloan has led a number of initiatives to reinvigorate the …

NEW YORK, August 5: Cablevision Systems Corporation, which announced today that it may spin off some of its assets, has won a legal battle over its remote-storage DVR. A federal appeals court has given the cable provider the legal go-ahead …

LOS ANGELES/SANTA MONICA/VANCOUVER, August 5: Lionsgate has obtained the home-entertainment distribution rights to select prime-time series and library titles from ABC Studios, including Reaper, in a deal with Disney-ABC Domestic Television. The sitcom According to Jim: Season One, available on …

DALLAS/DAYTON, August 5: NCR Corporation, a provider of self-service and assisted-service technology, has aligned with Blockbuster to develop DVD vending kiosks in a pilot program that could potentially lead to a national rollout of thousands of units. Fifty Blockbuster-branded kiosks …

STAMFORD, August 5: While profit was stable at $7 million for the second quarter, World Wrestling Entertainment saw its revenues fall 6 percent to $129.7 million as compared with the year-ago period. Revenues from live and televised entertainment were down …

SINGAPORE, August 5: RGM Entertainment, a talent management and executive-production firm headquartered in Singapore, has set up a $400 million fund for English-language film and TV projects for the international market. The financing facility, with debt provided by Oceana Media …

LONDON, August 5: ESPN has reached a deal to take control of Racing-Live.com, a site that provides news and information on events like the Formula 1 to more than 3 million unique users per month. Racing-Live.com covers Formula 1 (F1-Live.com), …