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SYDNEY: FremantleMedia Australia has hired Zara Curtis, who’s been serving as the commercial director at NewsLifeMedia, as the general manager of its content-creation division Spring. Curtis takes up the post in mid-July. Prior to NewsLifeMedia, Curtis was at ACP for more than 10 years, holding a number of senior sales …

SINGAPORE: MP & Silva has acquired the Capital One Cup, formerly known as Carling Cup, and Football League rights across Asia for the next five seasons until 2017. The deal covers all Asian territories, with the potential reach of more than 110 million households. With the addition of this new rights …

HONG KONG: Celestial Tiger Entertainment has secured carriage for the Celestial Classic Movies channel on Indovision and OkeVision, the branded services of PT MNC Sky Vision, Indonesia’s largest DTH operator. To celebrate the launch event, Celestial brought legendary actor Ti Lung for his first visit to Jakarta. Lung has been …

SINGAPORE: MyChinaChannel has appointed Wayne Chou as its new CEO and Terry Mak as COO as it gears up to launch its own premium linear and new-media channels. Chou and Mak will work together with Melvin Ang, the founder and executive director of MyChinaChannel, to accelerate the plan of having …

SINGAPORE: Singapore is migrating all of its free-to-air channels to digital TV by the end of 2013. MediaCorp will be transmitting all its seven free-to-air channels digitally by the end of next year. Channels 5, 8, Suria and Vasantham will be available in HD by the end of 2013. The …

LONDON: Expanding its presence in the Asia Pacific, Shine International has opened an office in Singapore, tapping Jeeyoung Lee to serve as the director for North and Southeast Asia.  Lee joins from Viacom International Media Networks, where she’s been working in international program sales. Lee also previously worked at CJ …

SEOUL/MUNICH: The Korean platform operator CJ HelloVision has added the Unitel Classica HD channel to its cable and web TV services. The global premium pay-TV channel is already available on SkyLife and KT. The new carriage brings the total reach of the channel to more than 1 million households in the Korean …

SYDNEY: Beyond Distribution has sold a range of in-house programming and third-party titles to broadcasters across the Asia-Pacific region. A package of 100 hours of lifestyle content went to Fetch TV in Australia. This included The Stagers, All for One with Debbie Travis, Burn My Mortgage, Buy Me, Maxed Out and …

SINGAPORE: Multi Channels Asia (MCA) has reached a carriage deal with TMNet’s IPTV platform HyppTV in Malaysia for Outdoor Channel HD. The network, distributed in Asia by MCA, reaches 11 countries in the region with the Malaysia launch. “As the largest market currently for pay TV in South East Asia, …

MUMBAI: Viacom18, the Viacom/Network18 joint venture that operates Colors, Sonic and a number of other channel brands in India, has tapped Unilever executive Sudhanshu Vats as its new group CEO. Vats has spent almost two decades at Hindustan Unilever Limited, the consumer-goods giant’s Indian operation. He joins Viacom18 in August, …