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TORONTO: Tricon Films & Television has scored a second-season commission from YTV in Canada for the kids’ talent format The Next Star. Fifteen new hour-long episodes will be produced of the superstar-seeking talent show. Along the same lines as the …

LONDON/NEW YORK: After selling Classic Media to Entertainment Rights in 2007, Eric Ellenbogen and John Engelman set up Boomerang Media in partnership with private-equity firm GTCR. Today, Boomerang becomes the new owner of ER, after the kids’ programming outfit, unable …

NEW YORK: News Corporation’s chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch, has named Jonathan Miller, the former CEO of AOL, as the company’s chairman and CEO of the digital media group and chief digital officer. In this newly created position, Miller, who will …

CANNES: The personalized TV platform ZillionTV has added The Weinstein Company to its growing roster of content providers, which includes the likes of Disney-ABC, 20th Century Fox Television, NBC Universal, Sony and Warner Bros. Movies such as Vicky Cristina Barcelona, …

NEW YORK: IFC tv has given the greenlight to its first original movie, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, based on Laurell K. Hamilton’s bestselling paranormal fantasy novels and produced by Lionsgate and After Dark Films.  There are currently 16 books in Hamilton’s series, published …

LOS ANGELES: Slovenia is the newest territory to launch a local version of The MGM Channel, with carriage on UPC, the country’s largest cable operator. Starting with a launch in late 2004 of a 100-percent owned Russian-language service on the DTH …

LONDON/NEW YORK: Nickelodeon International chief Steve Grieder is adding international program sales at MTV Networks International to his remit, and has already announced two key Asian deals sealed at MIPTV. As the executive VP of Nickelodeon and program sales for MTVNI, …

CANNES: Connection III Entertainment Corp. has closed its first round of deals for the flagship entertainment series Made in Hollywood, an hour-long program that looks at how movies are made. Made in Hollywood has been picked up by Fox International …

CANNES: FremantleMedia Enterprises has set up a joint venture with the Chinese production company Asian Union (AU) to faciliate the traffic of factual content in and out of China. Vision Ventures Media will be headed up by Liu Xiao Lin …

BOSTON/ALVISO: A new study from TiVo and Innerscope Research reveals that there is a "clear and strong" correlation between how emotionally engaged viewers are with an advertisement and their fast-forwarding behavior on DVRs. Through a live study of 55 national ads, …