Passion Distribution Seals Content Deals in Italy

LONDON: Passion Distribution has finalized multiple deals in Italy for more than 100 hours of its content.

The pay-TV platform Sky Italia picked up The Diamond Collar, a show from OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network that follows a reformed mafia street enforcer as he runs a New York dog-grooming parlor. Mediaset nabbed the clip-show documentary World’s Worst Holiday Horrors, along with Pioneer Productions’ documentaries Predators in Paradise and Buried Alive: Chilean Mine Disaster. They also went for the factual series Iron Men, from the U.S.’s The Weather Channel.

Discovery Networks also licensed several titles from The Weather Channel, including Deadliest Space Weather, Forecasting the End, Secrets of the Earth and the second season of Strangest Weather on Earth. Meanwhile, National Geographic Channels bought the second season of Prospectors, a gem-hunting series also from The Weather Channel. Other buys from the network include OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network titles such as Commander in Heels, the first season of Extreme Clutter and 10 Kids, 2 Dads.

Sky Italia’s Crime + Investigation channel took a large package of crime shows comprised of Mentorn Media’s Witness and Why Did Oscar Pistorius Kill Our Daughter?, as well as True North Productions’ Murder on the Social Network, Killer Couples and Battle of the Wills. Rounding out the deals, the new digital free-TV channel laeffe licensed Expensive Eats from Fimat36 and SundanceTV’s Man Shops Globe.

“Italy has a strong and healthy appetite for quality factual content; this is evident not only in new channel launches, but also in a change of direction on long existing channels that have only recently opened up their schedules to this kind of content and found it very successful,” said Lorenzo Bertolotti, Passion’s sales manager for the region. “Passion is capitalizing on this opportunity, expanding the range of channels we work with and strengthening our position and the visibility of our catalogue in the market.”