World Screen

LOS ANGELES, June 29: The Walt Disney Company’s board of directors has elected John Pepper, Jr. to be its non-executive chairman, effective January 1, 2007. Pepper, 67, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, will succeed Sen. George J. Mitchell …

LONDON, June 28, Zonemedia (formerly Zone Vision Labs) has named Vitaly Sufan as general manager the company’s Moscow office. Sufan, who was formerly the deputy chief programming officer of NTV-Plus, will be responsible for Zonemedia's channel distribution activities in Russia, …

LONDON, June 28: Maverick Entertainment and Silver Fox Films will release Singalong With Spider, on DVD in the UK, July 3. Singalong With Spider is the second DVD release of the classic British preschool series, Spider!, currently playing on Nick …

LONDON, June, 28: Spellbound Entertainment has announced the sale of 52 episodes of U.K. preschool series, The Koala Brothers, to the Korean educational station, EBS. "The Koala Brothers is one of the most charming pre-school series on the market, with …

NEW YORK, June 28: According to Nielson Media Research, Nickelodeon has secured the top spot as the number one basic cable network across all kids’ demos at the end of the second quarter of 2006, for the eleventh consecutive year. …

KNOXVILLE, June 28: Scripps Networks is launching high-definition channels in the U.S. and in Japan. Food Network HD will launch in the U.S. on June 30, joining HGTV HD as Scripps' second high-definition network to launch in the last three …

BURBANK, June 28: NBC will begin airing the first of 10 original webisodes on July 13; based on the network’s hit show, The Office. Airing Thursdays on NBC, The Office stars Golden Globe winner Steve Carell, Jenna Fischer, John Krasinski, …

LONDON, June 28: ITV will be airing a prime-time stop-motion animation show based on the book series Flanimals by Ricky Gervais, the co-creator and star of The Office and Extras. The animated TV series, consisting of six 30-minute episodes, written …

LONDON, June 28: Sky has introduced a new service than allows viewers to program their Sky+ digital boxes by mobile phone. The service, called Remote Record, will be available as an SMS service, on mobile Internet and on the sky.com …

NEW YORK, June 28: Universal McCann’s Bob Coen cut his 2006 advertising forecast for the U.S. He expects ad spend to increase by 5.6 percent to $286.4 billion instead of 5.8 percent, which he predicted last December. The downgrade is …