Top Stories

NEW YORK: HIT Entertainment has secured agreements with a number of new licensees to develop, manufacture and market new Thomas & Friends products in a variety of categories. Added Extras will be creating a line of Thomas-branded health and beauty …

LONDON: Egmont has uncovered an original Mr. Men character from Roger Hargreaves, Mr. Nobody, which returns to bookshops after 20 years. The book brings the total number of classic Mr. Men books, represented by Chorion, to 47. Mr. Nobody is …

LONDON: KidsCo has signed a deal with France’s SFR to launch the children’s channel as part of its triple-play product Neufbox. Programming will initially be in French and include shows such as The Wiggles, The New Adventures of Madeline and …

LOS ANGELES: Flavio Morales has been upped to senior VP of programming and production for mun2, where he will have the added responsibility of overseeing both West and East Coast production teams for the network. Morales joined mun2 in February …

LONDON: Turner Broadcasting has expanded the responsibilities of its senior VP of entertainment for Northern Europe, Pete Flamman, to include oversight for the company’s U.K. entertainment business. Flamman currently manages the Northern European region‚ covering Germany, Central and Eastern Europe …

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Janet Han Vissering has been promoted within National Geographic Channels International (NGCI) to the role of senior VP of development and co-finance. She has served for the past seven years as senior VP of strategic development and co-finance. …

WASHINGTON: Comcast Corporation and GE, seeking regulatory approval for their NBC Universal deal, have committed to keeping broadcast TV free, upping kids’ content output and bolstering local news programming in their submission to the FCC. The filing to the FCC …

BRUSSELS: The European Commission is taking action against France for the tax on telecommunications operators that was instituted to offset the losses from the elimination of advertising on public TV. The Commission says it has opened an infringement procedure against …

NEW YORK: U.S. President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address on Wednesday at 9 p.m. was broadcast on 11 networks, averaging 48 million viewers, according to Nielsen. Viewership for Obama’s State of the Union address was down 7 …

LOS ANGELES: Three new series have been greenlit by VH1, which also acquired a show from MTV Canada. Two of the new series focus on people transforming from the inside out. Each episode of Transform Me, a half-hour series, follows …