World Screen

LONDON: FremantleMedia Enterprises (FME) has set up a new digital content initiative, entitled Steve Irwin’s Croc Bites, as part of its partnership with the Australia Zoo. The initiative, Steve Irwin’s Croc Bites, is being done in conjunction with Spring, FremantleMedia Australia’s brand funded and digital content division. FME will digitize …

SINGAPORE: SingTel’s mio TV, which is celebrating its fifth birthday, has signed an agreement with FOX International Channels (FIC) that adds 40 channels to its service. Through the new pact, mio TV gains FIC channels such as the English-language FOX HD, FX HD, National Geographic Channel and Nat Geo Wild. The Chinese-language channels Channel …

HONG KONG: This year’s CASBAA Convention, which features the theme 18 Reasons Why, has lined up speakers such as Electus’s Ben Silverman, Discovery’s David Zaslav and Turner Broadcasting System International’s Gerhard Zeiler. Silverman, the founder of Electus, will deliver the keynote at CASBAA, which is taking place October 29 to …

PREMIUM: Hisashi Hieda, the president and CEO of Fuji Media Holdings, shares with World Screen his strategy for Japan’s leading commercial broadcaster in the digital age.   WS: In the aftermath of the earthquake and the economic downturn, how has Japan’s advertising market performed over the last year? HIEDA: Total expenditure in …

HONG KONG: Celestial Tiger Entertainment has increased its content distribution agreement with Lionsgate to include all of East Asia. CTE already represents Lionsgate exclusively in Greater China and Southeast Asia, now adding Japan and Korea to that list. The pact covers Lionsgate TV content as well as the studio’s library of …

BURBANK: Warner Bros. International Television has named Beibei Fan as its new VP of television distribution for China. For the past two years, Fan served as the director of television distribution for Disney Media Distribution. Prior to that she held the same title at Warner Bros. International Television.  As VP …

MELBOURNE: Russel Howcroft has been named the executive general manager for Australia’s Network Ten, taking effect in early 2013. He will be responsible for leading the operations in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. He will report to James Warburton, the CEO of Network Ten. Prior to this appointment, Howcroft was …

PREMIUM: Light entertainment airing on Seven led the prime-time ratings in Australia last week, with The X Factor pulling in the biggest audience, excluding news and current-affairs programming.  Market leader Seven Network’s version of the FremantleMedia format topped the ratings on Monday and Tuesday, pulling 1.588 million and 1.562 million viewers, …

SYDNEY: Free-TV broadcasters invested a record AUD$1.35 billion ($1.41 billion) in Australian content for the 12 months ending in June 2012, according to Free TV Australia. This tops last year’s record AUD$1.23 billion. Commercial broadcasters’ investment in Australian content grew by AUD$267.6 million over the last two years. This figure far exceeds the …

SINGAPORE: The Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) and MediaCorp have started a joint effort that calls for local musicians to score and produce original theme songs for one Malay-, one English- and five Chinese-language TV programs. The call for proposal runs from September 25 to November 5. Singapore artists and …