An Italian court has ruled in favour of the BBC Worldwide and RAI’s joint action against Mediaset/Endemol TV dance show ‘Baila!’, which the court said had too many similarities with BBC format ‘Strictly Come Dancing’/’Dancing with the Stars’. Mediaset went ahead with their normal transmission after making some alterations to their format, while at the […]
Amazon.com has revealed a licensing agreement with Fox that will allow Amazon Prime members to stream instantly a broad selection of popular movies and TV shows from the Fox library. This deal will bring the total number of Prime instant videos to more than 11,000 movies and TV shows later this fall. FOX titles available […]
Streaming platform Roku has confirmed the addition of Disney to the Roku Channel Store. Now, all Roku customers can access hundreds of short-form video clips from Disney.com including music videos, movie trailers and more. “We’re delighted to be the first player to stream this collection of Disney videos to consumers’ TVs,” said Roku Founder and […]
Netflix and Discovery Communications have made an agreement to bring episodes of shows including “Man vs. Wild” and “River Monsters” to the streaming service. The deal is the first major move by Discovery to make full episodes of its TV shows available for instant streaming, expanding well beyond the short clips that are now available […]
Sony has revealed that The Smurfs and Friends With Benefits will be the first movies it releases on home video that will be compatible with the UltraViolet view-anywhere system. The movies will arrive in stores December 2. The high-definition Blu-ray versions will be UltraViolet compatible. Under the UltraViolet system, home movie purchases are recorded on […]
BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of Britain’s public broadcaster, has issued legal proceedings in Italy alleging that Silvio Berlusconi-backed broadcaster Mediaset has illegally copied its Strictly Come Dancing/Dancing with the Stars format. The Italian writ argues that Baila!, a new Italian show that’s due to air on September 27th, is an illegal copycat of the […]
The value of imported drama series for 120 European broadcasters across 21 territories was $5.92 billion in 2010, according to a report by Madigan Cluff. The Imported Drama Series in Europe report states that this figure was similar to 2009, but was well down on the $6.623 billion recorded in 2008. Michael Cluff, co-report author […]
Optus chief executive, Paul O’Sullivan, has urged the Australian government to create sharing provisions for digital content services provided over the National Broadband Network (NBN). He said that it was essential that rules were put in place so that “the guys with the biggest wallet” could not lock up content that allows telecommunication companies to […]
Telstra is threatening to tear up its new $153 million broadcast rights deal with the Australian Football League (AFL) after a copyright dispute erupted over rival Optus providing football telecasts to its Internet and mobile phone customers. Telstra chief executive David Thodey has told The Age that if a court allows Optus to continue showing […]
Getting its defence in early, Google has said it would be unworkable for it to block entire sites. In a speech to the Royal Television Society on Wednesday it has been widely trailed that UK culture secretary Jeremy Hunt will call on search engines, ISPs and transaction companies to play a more active role in […]