UK TV production sector international revenues grew by 5.3 per cent in the past year and have tripled in the past eight years, the Pact 2016 Census published reveals. From 2015 to 2016, primary international commissions grew from £430 million (€469m) to £468 million and this was in part driven by commissions from standalone digital […]
Discovery Communications is to develop premium mid-form shows for Watch, a new platform for shows on Facebook. Discovery will produce shows both inspired by leading Discovery Communications’ properties and created exclusively for Facebook. The first Discovery show to launch on Watch is Animal Planet’s Celebrity Animal Encounters, which will be available during the first week in September. […]
Apple is considering moving its content unit to The Culver Studios where films from including Gone With The Wind and The Matrix were made. Former owners include RKO, Howard Hughes and Cecil B DeMille. The Studios would give Apple room to expand as it hires top Hollywood talent, according to three people familiar with the […]
BBC Studioworks, a commercial subsidiary of the BBC, has re-opened the studio doors to the ‘home of British television’ at the Television Centre site in Central London. Television Centre, originally opened in 1960 and the biggest TV production facility of its kind in the world at the time, has been undergoing major redevelopment works since […]
Facebook has ordered a 12-episode docu-series from Brandon Stanton, the man behind the popular photo blog Humans of New York. The 30 minute episodes will air on the new Facebook Watch video platform, debuting next week. In a Facebook post, Stanton said: “Early on I realized that video would add a deeper layer to Humans […]
Social media app Snapchat will add scripted content to its service “before the end of year”. Nick Bell, head of content for the photo-sharing platform, said that the company was not seeking to take-on traditional broadcasters, but rather complement them. “Instead, it can help bolster them,” he said, speaking at the Edinburgh International TV Festival. […]
Pan-European broadcaster Sky has invested a further £1 million (€1.09m) in TRX, the online deal-making tool for TV rights, following its initial investment of £1 million in August 2016. This latest investment brings TRX’s total funds raised to date to £10 million. As well as Sky, investors include the Channel Four Growth Fund, angel investors […]
The Wall Street Journal report that Apple is going to invest $1 billion annually on original TV content and in an attempt to climb aboard the perceived success of Netflix and Amazon, has raised more questions than answers. The fact that Amazon is increasingly moving into the slam-dunk guaranteed success of sports exclusivity is a […]
Apple is set to invest $1 billion (€855m) in producing and procuring original content over the next year, according to a report in The WSJ. The investment could result in as many as 10 new shows, with the tech giant looking to match the output of networks such as HBO. Apple previously focused on renting TV […]
Australian pay-TV operator Foxtel and premium channel Fox Sports are to be merged into a single company that could be listed on the stock exchange, owners News Corp and Telstra have announced. Fox Sports is completely owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, while Telstra and Foxtel currently share ownership of Foxtel. The pair say the […]