Lifetime to launch internationally this year

Female-skewed cable network Lifetime will roll out internationally this year, channel owner AETN International has told TBIvision.

The international debut of Lifetime means two major US cable nets targeting women are launching this year – Discovery announced last month that TLC will have an extensive roll out outside the US and be in 100 million homes by early 2011.

“It’s coming,” Sean Cohan, senior VP of international at AETN told TBIvision when asked about Lifetime launches. “We’re going to come to market with a pretty rich content offering. There will be programme sales and we will also offer the channel in the near future. Some markets are super-served for this type of content and we will focus on the markets where that isn’t the case.”

Lifetime will also take the majority of programme sales back in-house. Currently, a chunk of its shows are sold internationally by UK-based distributor Passion, but this agreement is about to come to an end and AETN has its own sales team. At MIP TV its sales execs were already shopping some Lifetime library shows and movies to buyers.

AETN announced a deal to take control of Lifetime in August 2009 and then CEO Andrea Wong has since left the channel.