Top Stories

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 …

PREMIUM: Kim In-Kyu, the president and CEO of KBS who will receive the International Emmy Directorate Award this year, shares with TV Asia Pacific his strategies for navigating Korea’s complex terrain. TV ASIA PACIFIC: What is the role of KBS as a public-service broadcaster in the fragmented Korean market today? …

HONG KONG: A new study from the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) points to a significant discrepancy between regulations placed on traditional pay-TV providers as compared with the new crop of OTT providers and calls for measures to "block growth of the illegitimate OTT sector." The trade …

STOCKHOLM: Eccho Rights, the new distribution outfit of Sparks Network and Eccholine, has secured three deals for formats and finished shows across Asia. In Vietnam, HTV went for another 26 episodes of Clueless. Original from Poland, the format has also sold to Greece, Spain, the Czech Republic and the Middle …