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LONDON: Driven in part by its broadcast of this year's World Cup, British commercial broadcaster ITV saw its revenues for the first half of the year rise by 7 percent to £1.2 billion ($2 billion), with pre-tax adjusted profit up 16 percent to £312 million ($527 million). Net advertising revenues …

PARIS: The French media regulator Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA) has rejected requests from TF1, M6 and CANAL+ to switch three channels from pay TV to free-to-air. TF1 was looking to take its 24-hour news channel LCI from paid to free. LCI said it now plans to "examine a possible …

LUXEMBOURG/DENVER: RTL Group has entered into an agreement with the current shareholders of SpotXchange to purchase a 65-percent majority stake in the U.S. video advertising monetization company for 107 million euros ($144 million). In addition to the initial investment, the two agreed on an earn-out component that might increase the …

MUNICH: Net profit for ProSiebenSat.1 Group in Q2 was 108.1 million euros ($144.6 million), 3.6 percent higher than the year-ago period, on revenues that rose 10.6 percent to 691.1 million euros ($924.6 million). “We increased our revenues dynamically in all key areas in the second quarter and thus continued to …

LONDON: While cord-cutting has largely been regarded as a U.S. phenomenon, new findings from research firm IHS Technology suggest that it is now hitting European pay-TV markets. IHS reports that 12 countries across Europe witnessed a decline in overall pay-TV uptake in the first quarter of 2014: Belgium, Denmark, Italy, …

LONDON: Tobi de Graaff, formerly the director of global TV distribution at ITV Studios Global Entertainment (ITVS GE), has joined BBC Worldwide as the executive VP for Western Europe. De Graaff will be overseeing BBC Worldwide's businesses across German- and French-speaking markets in Europe, as well as Benelux, Scandinavia, Italy …

UNTERFÖHRING: Sky Deutschland says it added 82,000 subscribers in the second quarter, bringing its base to 3.81 million, with revenues rising 14 percent to 428 million euros ($572 million) and EBITDA up 23 percent to 45 million euros ($60 million). The platform said ARPU in the period was 34.52 euros ($46) …

LONDON: The Royal Television Society (RTS) has readied the full lineup for the upcoming RTS London Conference 2014, which will open with a keynote address from Chase Carey, the president and COO of 21st Century Fox. The event, which takes place September 9 under the theme "Power, Politics and the …

LONDON: Sky Vision has entered into first-look agreements with ACME Films, which specializes in drama and factual programming, and Spark Media Partners, a format-focused production outfit. Sky Vision will be working with both companies to co-develop programming with international appeal for worldwide distribution. ACME Films is owned by Jamie D'Cruz, …

WARSAW/PRAGUE/BRATISLAVA: FilmBox Live, SPI International's VOD and live streaming app, is being offered for free to all subscribers of the Mixbox package from Skylink, a satellite platform in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Ten channels from the FilmBox portfolio are now available through Mixbox. These include FilmBox, FilmBox Plus, FilmBox …