Features


Discovery embarks on OTT ‘Million March’

Discovery Networks International is launching OTT services throughout Europe. Its top executives explain how the channel operator will win streaming customers in big numbers, as it starts on its ‘March to a Million’. When TBI was the first to report in early June that Discovery Communications was making a concerted effort in OTT in Europe […]

Endemol Shine targets Bullseye

Endemol Shine Group regional CEO Marina Williams tells TBI how the production giant is working with its enlarged catalogue, how the central and eastern European and Middle Eastern markets are evolving and what the big bets for NATPE are While there’s been much change following the merger of Endemol, Shine Group and Core Media, Endemol […]

Sunny Side up

On the final day of La Rochelle specialist factual market Sunny Side of the Doc, event chief Yves Jeanneau tells TBI about current trends, how distribution is changing and the impact of dedicated documentary SVOD platforms.   TBI: The event hall seems busy and there are plenty of new projects at the event. What does […]

Caroline Beaton: Why niche is the new normal

In an increasingly fragmented TV landscape, should broadcasters and producers focus more on niche formats than on trying to recreate the entertainment and reality juggernauts of the noughties, says Viacom International Media Networks senior VP, international programme sales Caroline Beaton. We’re told we are living through a ‘golden age’ of television, with intensifying competition for […]

You(th)Tube

The launch of the YouTube Kids app in the US in February has been greeted with unanimous approval by content companies both big and small. Gary Smith reports. That there are now several generations of digital natives is a given, as is the fact that the current crop of 2-8 year-olds are more thoroughly immersed […]

Holding out for Hierro

Galician thriller Hierro was named best project at the Berlinale’s first CoPro Series pitching competition in February. TBI reports on what the award means for its international prospects. Galician-created drama Hierro competed at Berlinale’s CoPro Series 2015 and beat four other finalists, in the process winning an invitation to participate this month at Series Mania, […]

Red flag to a bull: James Ross, Lightning Int’l

It’s a common sight in Asia: husband and wife, together on the sofa – or possibly propped up on pillows in bed, each with a tablet watching their favourite TV shows. Not long ago, it was an entirely different story. When I first came to Asia almost twenty years ago, it was not unusual to […]

Legendary status

Former Sony TV sales boss Michael Grindon tells Jesse Whittock how Legendary Television’s emerging international sales division can offer an alternative to the Hollywood studios. Despite being the LA production studio behind The Hangover movie franchise, Legendary Entertainment’s push into television has been anything but lethargic. Less than a year since former Sony Pictures Television […]

LA Screenings wrap: analysis

Another year of excess, exuberance and extreme selling at the Hollywood studios is over, but the nature of the mayhem is changing, writes Jesse Whittock The LA Screenings began as they shouldn’t – grey clouds and prolonged rain shows dampening the spirits of the buyers flying in to Hollywood (one local hyberbolically claimed California has not seen any “any […]

Epic drama Rising

The story of History’s new historical miniseries, Texas Rising, which debuts this evening on Memorial Day, according to the key players behind its creation Act 1 The patriotic rallying call Commander William B. Travis delivered in an open letter to his fellow Americans on February 24, 1836 sets the scene for US cable channel History’s biggest […]