Top Stories

SAN FRANCISCO, October 23: Ashwin Navin, the president and co-founder of BitTorrent, was at MIPCOM for the first time this year, meeting with content providers as the company gears up to launch its television and film download platform. Navin speaks …

NEW YORK, October 23: Sundance Channel has acquired 13 new titles for a second season of its successful Asia Extreme block, featuring cutting-edge genre films from South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand in a Sunday midnight slot. Season …

NEW YORK, October 23: Last November, former Nickelodeon chief and Spike TV founder Albie Hecht launched Worldwide Biggies, a production outfit targeted to creating multiplatform content for the family and kids’ markets. As the company gears up for the launch …

VIENNA, October 20: The Universum strand of documentaries from Austrian pubcaster ORF was the company’s standout offering at MIPCOM last week, generating a number of new deals, including one with RAI. The Italian broadcaster picked up Universum titles like Strange …

SEOUL, October 20: The international distribution division of the Korean terrestrial KBS has licensed its new drama Hwangini into Taiwan and Vietnam. The company’s big push at MIPCOM, Hwangini is a 24×70-minute costume drama about a Korean Gisaeng (Geisha). Deals …

MIAMI, October 20: Wide Angle Productions Group has inked a deal with El alambique de Ideas, an independent association of TV writers in Spain, to pitch ten of its new series in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. The programs …

SAN FRANCISCO, October 20: Factual programming outfit Michael Hoff Productions (MHP) has named Ashley Adams as its new managing producer. Overseeing day-to-day production, Adams will manage all of MHP’s teams who are currently producing more than 30 hours of factual …

PARIS, October 20: The final tally of this year’s MIPCOM puts attendance at 12,509, its highest participation ever, showing a 7-percent increase on MIPCOM 2005. This year also marked a new record in terms of participating companies, with 4,216 from …

CHESEAUX/ENGLEWOOD, October 20: The Kudelski Group, which specializes in digital security systems, has reached a deal to acquire a controlling interest in the interactive television technology outfit OpenTV from Liberty Media for $132.3 million. OpenTV is a provider of set-top …

NEW YORK, October 20: NBC Universal’s wide-ranging NBCU 2.0 restructure announced yesterday will see the NBC network focusing on lower-cost, unscripted programming for its weeknight 8 p.m. slot, beginning in the fall of next year. The restructure is intended to …