Top Stories

LONDON, October 17: Just two weeks since The Tudors’ launch on BBC Two, the pubcaster has announced the acquisition of the second season of the acclaimed Showtime drama. Starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, The Tudors chronicles the early life of Henry …

LOS ANGELES, October 17: Judd Apatow, the hit filmmaker behind Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad, has come on board as principal and partner in FunnyorDie.com, the popular online destination founded by Hollywood comedians Will Ferrell and …

CANNES, October 16: PorchLight Entertainment secured a number of new international sales for its action thriller movie Hell’s Rain at MIPCOM last week. Hell’s Rain, which uses a natural disaster as its underlying theme, has been sold to TF1 in …

LOS ANGELES, October 16: Playboy TV has launched Playboy Prime, a new daily prime-time format featuring short-form programming that is designed to appeal to the “YouTube Generation,” its key 18- to 34-year-old male viewer demographic. Airing every night from 8 …

SINGAPORE, October 16: ESPN STAR Sports (ESS) will broadcast the weekly hour-long program Championship Gaming Series (CGS), focusing on professional gaming, every Monday evening across Asia. The program premiered yesterday at 6 p.m. Hong Kong time. CGS features highlights from …

LONDON, October 16: Granada International has secured a raft of sales in Latin America, including a package of more than 100 hours to Hallmark for its Latin American feed. Ideal, a new channel that launched in Brazil on October 1, …

LONDON, October 16: CBBC Production has commissioned Serious Ocean, a sixth edition of ALL3MEDIA International’s multi-award winning children’s factual strand Serious. This new show builds on the success of the previous seasons, Serious Jungle, Serious Desert, Serious Arctic, Serious Amazon …

MONTREAL, October 16: Telefilm Canada, a federal agency dedicated to the development and promotion of the Canadian audiovisual industry, has appointed Michel Roy as its board chair, replacing Felix “Fil” Fraser, who has served as interim chair since February. Roy …

SAN MATEO, October 16: Akimbo Systems, which specializes in VOD delivery over the Internet, has tapped the former president of On Demand Media Group, Neil Goldberg, as its COO and Peter Chantel, previously with Sony Signatures Network, as its CFO. …

SAN BRUNO, October 16: YouTube has launched its much-anticipated fingerprinting technology to remove copyrighted content from the popular video sharing site. Google-owned YouTube has come under intense pressure from content owners frustrated with pirated TV shows and movies making their …