SPTI Invests in Dutch Indie Tuvalu Media

LONDON,
December 12: As part of an effort to grow its non-scripted output, Sony
Pictures Television International (SPTI) has made an investment in the independent
Dutch television production company Tuvalu Media, taking an equity stake in the business.

Additionally, SPTI has secured distribution rights for Tuvalu’s full slate of
television product, including both formats and finished programming. The
agreement marks SPTI’s first investment in a Dutch company. Under the
deal, Tuvalu will continue to develop content for the Dutch market, with SPTI
responsible for distributing Tuvalu’s original programming and formats
worldwide. Tuvalu is in production on the BBC format BabyBoom for NCRV, How Safe
is Your House? for SBS 6 and Twinzz for TROS.

Headquartered
in Hilversum in the Netherlands, Tuvalu has worked on a number of Dutch TV
productions, including Boudewijn Büch’s World for VARA, Max & Catherine for Omroep Max, Most Identical for TROS, Beat the Burglar for AVRO, Faking It for RTL and TestCase for Discovery Channel. Over the
past year, Tuvalu has developed a number of formats for the international
market, including, most recently, Twinzz and The 100. Both series are currently in production for
the Dutch market and will be broadcast in spring 2008. They are being sold across
Europe and internationally.

Antony
Root, the senior VP of European production at SPTI, said: “Our investment in Tuvalu is
strategically important as it adds another supply line for our continuously
expanding formats business and it extends the geographical reach of our
production operations across Europe. This agreement also underscores our
heightened focus on building SPTI's non-scripted business in Europe and around
the world. Tuvalu has
quickly become a leading production company in the Netherlands and we are
looking forward to helping them achieve a global reach through producing and
distributing their formats internationally.”

—By
Irene Lew