Leading figures from across Britain’s biggest media companies have banded together to advise Lord Carter on how to tackle online piracy before his Digital Britain report is released on June 16th. The “copyright squad”, including Neil Berkett of Virgin Media and Michael Lynton of Sony Pictures, are urging Carter to include draft legislation that will […]

MGM Worldwide Television, a division of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios, has concluded its first pan Middle Eastern Pay TV and VOD agreement with Showtime Arabia, the leading Pay TV network in the Middle East and North Africa, and its Show On Demand, the region’s first video on demand service. The licensing agreement marks MGM’s first VOD […]

Channel 4, Time Warner and BSkyB have been shortlisted as potential buyers of Virgin Media’s wholly owned VMtv channels Virgin 1, Bravo and Living. Virgin Media intends to sell the channels separately from its joint venture with BBC Worldwide, UKTV, which will be sold at a later stage. The BBC has denied interest in purchasing […]

HiTV, one of Africa's leading digital satellite operators, has outlined its intention to acquire the broadcast rights to the English Premier League for the African continent alongside eleven other pay-TV operators in Africa. This bid forms part of a major proposal presented to the FA by HiTV, which will also offer every country in Africa […]

The European Commission's proposed telecoms reforms, which include the three strikes proposals for abusive downloaders, will now have to go into the conciliation process after the European Parliament again refused to discard an amendment that would force governments to get court permission before disconnecting illegal downloaders of copyright material. MEPs in September put forward an […]

A weaker than expected performance by its films at the box office and through DVD sales depressed Disney's second-quarter profits. Operating income at Disney's studio business fell 97 per cent to $13 million. The recession also continued to depress earnings in other parts of the group, with advertising down at Disney's ABC television network. But […]

Looking to expand the parameters of its Socialthing social networking news feed service, AOL announced plans to integrate the platform across the sites of Warner Bros. Television Group another unit of Time Warner. The service, acquired by AOL last summer, is designed to help users trace the Internet activity of friends. WBTVG will use the […]

Pangea Media, a media platform for youth media and marketing professionals, has released the results of a jointly developed survey which tracked television consumption and viewing preferences of almost 2,000 of Pangea Media’s tween/teen users. The survey found that tweens/teens watch an average of five to 10 hours of TV content a week and prefer […]

DirecTV will merge with John Malone's Liberty Entertainment to simplify its ownership structure and improve its ability to pursue deals; specifically making itself a more attractive target for one of the big telcos. Liberty Entertainment will be spun off from Liberty Media as previously announced, and will now include 54 per cent of the stock […]

Discovery Communications reported an $8 million increase in first quarter revenues to $817 million, outstripping analysts expectations for the period and posting $119 million in profit. The company reported only $34 million in profit for the first quarter of 2008. Discovery even bucked the advertising slump, posting a two percent increase in ad revenues. As […]