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MONTREAL: Madeleine Lévesque, former director of original productions at TELETOON, has joined Sardine Productions to lead development and production initiatives. Lévesque will identify and secure new projects to add to the company’s expanding development and production slate for both Canada …

LOS ANGELES: TV Guide Network has reached a deal for the exclusive basic cable rights to Punk’d, Ashton Kutcher’s celebrity hidden camera series for MTV, to air as a weekly one-hour strip. The one-year deal includes 100 half-hour episodes for launch …

NEW YORK: 4Kids Entertainment has licensed the latest series in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise to YTV in Canada, which also scored the rights to the comedy adventure series Gogoriki. Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds is the ninth season in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. YTV has …

LONDON: In a deal with BBC Worldwide, UKTV’s family entertainment channel Watch has secured the British multichannel broadcast rights to season nine of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, launching this fall with a lineup that includes Kelly Osbourne. The American adaptation …

LONDON: The highly anticipated drama FlashForward, which premieres on ABC on September 24, has been sold by Disney-ABC-ESPN Television to 11 new territories across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It was previously announced that Five in the U.K. is …

LOS ANGELES: Lookout Point is a new venture focused on the co-production and financing of international drama, founded by Simon Vaughan, formerly of Alchemy Television. Vaughan was one of the original founders of Alchemy Television and before that was at …

NORWALK: CABLEready has entered into an exclusive distribution agreement with ReelzChannel that covers representation outside the U.S. At MIPCOM, CABLEready will be presenting ReelzChannel content such as What I Learned from the Movies, which takes a comedic look at the …

TORONTO: Corus Entertainment is rolling out a media campaign in support of the newly rebranded specialty service Dusk, formerly Scream, kicking off today with a month-long free preview. The relaunched channel features a new name—from Scream now to Dusk—a new …

BARCELONA: Imira Entertainment has scored a deal to represent TV rights for the live-action tween/teen series Karkú in Europe. The 76×26-minute series, produced by Chilean outfit My Friend Entertainment in co-production with Televisión Nacional de Chile, will debut at MIP …

MONTEREY: Total revenues at the U.S. cable networks increased by more than 9 percent last year, according to SNL Kagan, with growth slowing slightly this year before rebounding in 2010. In 2008,  total revenues gained 9.4 percent to $42.2 billion; ad revenues …