Kristin Brzoznowski

LONDON: Gail Harman, most recently at Tuesday's Child Television, has been named creative director of development at ITV Studios Entertainment, where Martin Lau joins the team as development executive.

LONDON: U.K. producer 7 Wonder has appointed Duncan Coates to the newly created role of creative director.

LONDON: John Cassy, who spent ten years at Sky, and BAFTA-winning director Daniel Smith have formed a new immersive content production studio, Factory 42, the first commission for which will be a bespoke virtual-reality experience for Sky.

STOCKHOLM: Modern Times Group (MTG) and M7 Group have inked an agreement to make ESL’s esportsTV channel available in the Nordics, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

LONDON: Kenny Reynolds, who at one time served as head of creative at Sky, has been tapped as VP of creative at A+E Networks UK.

A new report from Digital TV Research finds that Liberty Global, Sky Europe, Vodafone and Altice jointly account for half the pay-TV subs in Western Europe. According to the Western Europe Pay TV Operator Forecasts report, 73 top operators collectively accounted for 93 percent of Western Europe’s pay-TV subscribers by end-2015.

ISTANBUL: Netflix has localized its Turkish service, following a similar move recently announced for Poland.

LONDON: Justin Bodle has regained control of Power Entertainment Media, which he founded in 1995.

LOS ANGELES: ITV2 has licensed the exclusive first-window broadcast and VOD rights in the U.K. for the new CBS comedy The Great Indoors.

Total spending on SVOD in Western Europe hit the €2 billion mark ($2.24 billion) in 2015 and is forecast to reach €3 billion ($3.35 billion) by year-end 2016, according to a new report from IHS Markit. As existing services reach saturation in key markets, year-on-year growth in spending on online SVOD in Western Europe will slow into the forecast period (2016-2020), the report said. Even this slower increase in value generated from SVOD will be sufficient to make the platform the largest in terms of total home video spending.