Top Stories

LONDON: Following news of the departure of Robin Pembrooke, ITV has appointed Julian March as the new director of online, with plans to split the division, putting around 40 jobs at risk. Pembrooke, who joined ITV in 2010, will leave the company at the end of summer. Pembrooke had been …

SANTA MONICA/LONDON: Comedy Central UK has picked up the exclusive British broadcasting rights for the new Charlie Sheen sitcom Anger Management via a deal with Lionsgate’s international television division. Lionsgate International has sold the show in Canada, Latin America, Germany, Scandinavia, Benelux, Australia, New Zealand and Poland. Debmar-Mercury brought the …

LONDON: Mark Thompson will hand over his responsibilities as the director-general of the BBC to George Entwistle this fall. Thompson announced in March that he was leaving the BBC. Entwistle, who is currently the director of BBC Vision, will take over the role, at a reported starting salary of £450,000 per …

MAINZ: Susanne Müller is transitioning from her role as head of the co-production and program-development division at ZDF Enterprises to a new post where she will lead the feature-film sector of German pubcaster ZDF. Müller has been serving in her current role at ZDF Enterprises since 2008. From 2006 she had …

LONDON: A raft of dramas and comedies from the ITV Studios Global Entertainment catalogue are headed to broadcasters across Australia and New Zealand, with new sales totaling around 50 hours of programming. UKTV in Australia went for The Syndicate, which follows a group of supermarket workers who suddenly strike it rich …

PARIS: The TRACE Sports channel has scored two carriage agreements that bring the service into the Russian pay-TV market for the first time. The channel, which is dedicated to sports celebrities, will launch in HD on the Russian satellite operator Tricolor TV, which has more than 10 million subscribers. Exclusive content …

MILAN, July 9: Mediaset and Sky Italia have negotiated a deal to share the rights to provide Champions League and Europa League football coverage to their pay-TV subscribers. Both of the pay-TV operators now hold the rights to offer coverage of matches featuring the Italian teams in the two tournaments over …

PARIS: Novavision has named Philippe Deleplace as its new chief operating officer.   Deleplace has been in the media and entertainment industry for close to 20 years. Prior to his newly appointed position, he spent nearly a decade serving as COO of Motors TV, a global motorsport pay-TV channel. As …

LONDON: Initial, an Endemol company, is producing a new action-oriented game show for ITV, Prize Island, which will feature pairs of contestants scouring a desert island for prizes. Alexander Armstrong and Emma Willis will host. Each episode will start with four couples arriving on the sandy beach of an island …

MOSCOW/LONDON: Miramax has made films such as Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting available for streaming in Russia through a new multi-year SVOD deal with the multimedia entertainment services company Stream. The move makes Stream the first Russian multimedia outlet to digitally distribute Miramax’s titles in the Russian market. Stream’s …