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HONG KONG: Model Georgina Wilson has signed on to present and judge the third season of the competition series Asia's Next Top Model, which airs on the female-skewing entertainment channel StarWorld. Joining Wilson will be international supermodel and Asia's Next Top Model veteran Joey Mead King as mentor and judge. …

BEIJING: The Chinese online video portal iQIYI has announced its plan to buy distribution rights for more than 1,000 U.S. movie titles in 2015, in a bid to satisfy the growing demand from its users for American content. In June of this year, iQIYI subscribers watched more American movies than …

SYDNEY/LOS ANGELES: Entertainment One (eOne) is expanding its TV business with the launch of a dedicated production and development arm in Sydney. Jude Troy, currently the managing director of home entertainment, has been tapped to serve as executive VP of television development and acquisitions for Australia and New Zealand. The …

SINGAPORE: MediaCorp's free-to-air Channel 5 is being relaunched in January 2015 with more of an emphasis on local content. The "Local Upsize" lineup on the new channel will be aligned more with the Singapore identity and connect more closely with Singapore families. The English channel will increase its local content …

SINGAPORE: Ma Dong, the chief content officer of Baidu’s IQIYI, is lined up for a keynote at the upcoming Asia TV Forum & Market (ATF) entitled Digital China: The New Storyteller—IQIYI. Dong's Asian Media Keynote speech will take place on December 9. The presentation will touch on IQIYI's position in …

SINGAPORE/KUALA LUMPUR: Rewind Networks' HITS channel has been added to the lineup of Astro, where it will be available with Bahasa Malaysia and Simplified Chinese subtitles. The channel is set to go live on Astro on November 16. An entertainment network, HITS is dedicated to featuring iconic shows such as Mork …

SHANGHAI: The Chinese movie and TV production powerhouse Huayi Brothers has received investments from Alibaba founder Jack Ma and Tencent as part of a private placement to raise up to $588 million. Huayi announced in a stock exchange filing that it would issue 145 million shares. The investment firm owned …

SYDNEY: Australia's commercial broadcasters are taking issue with the increased ad-time limits being granted to SBS following new budget cuts for the country's pubcasters. A total of A$308 million ($266 million) will be cut from the budgets of ABC and SBS over the next five years. A statement from Communications …

SINGAPORE: Scripps Networks Interactive's HGTV will make its Asian debut on December 4 with an HD rollout on StarHub in Singapore. The home and lifestyle channel will launch with signature U.S. series like Property Brothers, Cousins on Call and The High-Low Project. The channel will also air original local productions …

HONG KONG/SINGAPORE: China will overtake Japan as the Asia Pacific's largest ad market in 2016, Media Partners Asia (MPA) projects in its latest report, which estimates that net advertising revenues in the region will rise 5 percent this year to top $121 billion. The report, Asia Pacific Advertising Trends & …