Passion Scores African Sales

LONDON: Passion Distribution has sold more than 100 hours of programming into Africa in the last quarter, including the celebrity reality series Life with La Toya and the the doc special The Town That Caught Tourettes.

The first season of Life with La Toya was picked up by e.tv for its South African feed. Mnet went for a number of series for its pan-African feed, among them All on the Line with Joe Zee, The Writers' Room and RuPaul's Drag Race.

BBC Worldwide Channels took a large pan-African package that includes the doc specials The Town That Caught Tourettes, My New Hand, SuperStorm USA: Caught on Camera and The Year the Earth Went Wild. It also opted for The Fried Chicken Shop: Life in a Day, How to Change Your Body, Abby and Brittany: College and Beyond and season six of Traffic Cops.

Discovery also licensed a package for its pan-African feed. This one incudes Men in Rubber Masks, OWN's Ask Oprah All Stars and the latest two seasons of OWN's St. Louis Soul Food.

Lorenzo Bertolotti, Passion's sales executive for Africa, said: “The African television market keeps evolving rapidly and so does the appetite of the local audience for high-quality international content. Passion continues to grow from strength to strength in the region and we are happy to be heading to DISCOP AFRICA with a host of new must-see shows, from lifestyle to factual, and attention grabbing, fun and adaptable formats.”