Top Stories

NEW YORK: Oxygen Media has greenlit a second season of the dating show Love Games: Bad Girls Need Love Too, a spin-off to the hit reality series Bad Girls Club. In its first run, Love Games became the network’s most …

JOHANNESBURG: The global television audience for yesterday’s World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands could top 700 million, outrating the 2006 event in Germany. According to Eurodata TV Worldwide, Telecinco in Spain scored a 78.1 percent share as 13.4 …

LONDON: Nathalie Drouaire has been brought on to serve in a consultancy role at FremantleMedia Enterprises (FME), to lead the development of an English-language drama slate with international co-financing. Effective immediately, Drouaire will be working alongside FME’s London and Los …

NEW YORK: Subscribers to AT&T’s U-verse IPTV platform could lose access to AMC, WE tv and IFC this week, if the operator is unable to reach a new carriage deal with Rainbow Media. The current carriage deal between the two companies expired July …

SAN FRANCISCO: YouTube is investing $5 million in grants for select new and emerging partners, to further the creation of high-quality videos. The YouTube Partners Grants program will serve to help fund the production budgets of a small group of …

BOSTON: Bell Canada’s consumer portal, Sympatico.ca, has introduced an iPad-ready website with video powered by Brightcove, which has been tapped to lead all video efforts for the Canadian communications provider. This marks the first Canadian media company to implement the …

SANTA MONICA/NEW YORK: Carl Icahn and Lionsgate have agreed to a ten-day truce to discuss potential acquisition opportunities, pausing their very public battle over control of the independent studio. The billionaire investor has been trying to take control of the company, recently …

UNIVERSAL CITY: Enrique Juarez has taken on the role of the VP sales liaison for Latin America at NBC Universal International Television Distribution. Juarez is responsible for overseeing the free-, pay- and basic cable TV efforts for NBC Universal programming throughout the …

NEW YORK/LONDON/CALCUTTA: Babelgum has entered into a co-production deal with Native Voice Films that sees the web platform working alongside traditional media partners to support the release of the documentary feature The Bengali Detective. The new project is a co-production …

LONDON: British broadcaster Five has exited Project Canvas, the IPTV-standards joint venture that recently received the go-ahead from the BBC Trust. Arqiva, the BBC, BT, Channel 4, ITV and Talk Talk remain on board for the venture, which is working to build an …