World Screen

LONDON, January 31: BBC Worldwide has agreed to take a 25 percent equity investment in the Freehand Group, an Australian independent production company, as part of its strategy to boost its content creation capabilities globally. Under the terms of the …

LOS ANGELES, January 31: ABC has announced plans for a new reality series from Mike Fleiss entitled The Great American Dream Vote, which will be hosted by Donny Osmond. From Mike Fleiss and Lisa Levenson, the executive producers of The …

GLENDALE, January 31: DreamWorks Animation and Aardman Animations are discontinuing their exclusive partnership to create animated films together. DreamWorks and Aardman previously collaborated on Chicken Run (2000), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and Flushed Away (2006). …

NEW YORK, January 31: ESPN and The Tennis Channel in the U.S. will share the rights to the Australian Open and the French Open through 2011. In a multiyear agreement, the networks announced that they would share coverage of the …

LONDON, January 31: Episodes from season three of Buena Vista International Television’s Desperate Housewives will be available on demand in Denmark on the subscription broadband service TV2 Sputnik up to seven days before their free-TV premiere on TV2. Desperate Housewives …

MUNICH, January 31: The Biography Channel will launch in Germany on March 31 on Kabel Deutschland and Kabel BW. Negotiations with other platforms are under way across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. There are also plans to distribute content via alternate …

LONDON, January 31: BSkyB’s profits for the first half of this year fell by 10.2 percent to £246 million on improved revenues of £2.2 billion. “In the last six months we have achieved a number of important milestones in building …

EL SEGUNDO, January 31: The DIRECTV Group has reached a deal to acquire Darlene Investments’ 14.1 percent equity interest in DIRECTV Latin America for $325 million in cash. In addition to giving DIRECTV full equity ownership of DIRECTV Latin America, …

PARIS, January 31: Vivendi Universal’s 2006 revenues rose 2.9 percent to 20.04 billion euros, while fourth quarter revenues were up 1.2 percent to 5.55 billion euros. Canal+ Group’s 2006 revenues amounted to 3.63 billion euros, a 7.7 percent gain. Revenues …

NEW YORK, January 31: Profits at Time Warner rose by 35 percent in the fourth quarter to $1.75 billion, while full-year net income more than doubled to $6.55 billion. “I’m delighted that 2006 proved to be a good year for …