ZDF Enterprises Signs New International Broadcast Agreements

CANNES/MAINZ, October 11:
At MIPCOM this week, ZDF Enterprises announced sales agreements with 50
international partners for its series and TV movies.

To date, sizeable TV-movie
packages have been sold to the French broadcaster TF1, Finland’s YLE and the
Belgian channel RTBF. Meanwhile, Fox Life Italy, Fox Life France and Prorom
Romania have also purchased programming packages from ZDF that include TV
movies from the Rosamunde Pilcher Collections. VRT Belgium has picked up the detective series The
Eagle, while AXN in Spain has
purchased another detective show, Hamburg Dockland. The French broadcaster TF1, Belgium’s RTBF and
Italy’s Mediaset have also secured the rights to the new family series Here
Comes Kalle. The pay-TV channel
Fox Life France has picked up the tenth season of Air Rescue Team along with 70 episodes of the ZDF classic The
Black Forest Hospital. Latvian
channel LNT has acquired the romantic soap Tessa-A Life for Love. In addition, major packages containing both
series and TV movies have been obtained by LNT (Latvia), Diema/Viasat
(Bulgaria) and BTV (Lithuania).

In terms of deals for its
children’s programming, ZDF has licensed the cartoon series Laura's Star to Italy’s RAI, the Dutch channel ZAPP, YLE
Finland and the Belgian Ketnet channels. Meanwhile, two live-action series from
Australian producer Jonathan M. Shiff, Lost Treasure of Fiji and H2O—Just Add Water have been secured by the Austrian broadcaster ORF,
Ireland’s TG4, Norway’s NRK and Switzerland’s SF DRS.

The three-part series UPDATE—The
World in 50 Years has been the
most popular program in the documentary genre. This production has been sold to
a number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe as well as to Sweden and
Korea. The British channel Five has secured the rights to the documentary Black
September—The Attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics; and The History Channel UK has acquired the
five-part The Wehrmacht.
Large-scale packages in the documentary genre have also sold to RAI and the
History Channel in Italy, Animal Planet, n-tv and Spiegel TV in Germany,
Smithsonian Network in the U.S., the History Channel UK, the Finnish channel
YLE, Spain’s Multicanal, the Russian broadcaster KULTURA TV as well as UPC for
the Middle East and Viasat for Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe.

Christian Massmann, the
head of sales at ZDF Enterprises, commented: "We can already say with
confidence that MIPCOM 2007 has been extraordinarily successful for ZDF
Enterprises. In addition to extremely healthy sales of classic TV productions
we are particularly delighted by the purchase of format rights for the Saturday
evening family show Wanna Bet?
by the Australian Network Nine."