National Geographic


Twofour Arabia staffs up with trio of hires

Twofour Arabia has bolstered its ranks with three new staff joining the Abu Dhabi-based division of UK indie producer and distributor. Reem Nouss (pictured) and Yara Awad have been brought on to work across the raft of factual series that Abu Dhabi Media commissioned from Twofour for its Abu Dhabi TV Network. Reem Nouss is […]

Nat Geo Wild for Earth Touch titles

National Geographic has acquired a package of content from factual producer and distributor Earth Touch. The films will go out on the Nat Geo Wild channel. The titles are Venom Island, Blood River, Speed Kills, Ragged Tooth and Snakes in the City. Speed Kills and Snakes in the City are three-parters and the other titles […]

Nat Geo preps reboot of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

National Geographic Channels International will launch a modernised version of iconic space series Cosmos across its 170 channels in 2014. The series, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, will air on Fox and Nat Geo in the US next spring. Both are owned by News Corp. The show will be a reboot of the classic thirteen-part space […]

OWN buys Kate and Wills Royal Baby doc

OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network has acquired one-off doc William, Kate and the Royal Baby, as one of a number of deals distributor Zodiak Rights has secured. With Kate Middleton set to give birth to a child this summer, OWN has taken the show, which comes from CB Productions and was produced for France 3. In […]

Magine accelerates expansion plans with $19m injection

Magine has secured $19 million in extra funding from Swedish and international investors and said the cash will allow it to speed up its international launch plans. TBI broke the news of Magine’s launch in March and it subsequently rolled out in Sweden. At that point the OTT service was targeting launches in five European […]

Haslingden tunes up a new super indie

Until September last year, David Haslingden was Fox’s top channels executive, running its US and international networks. But after two decades at the News Corp unit he left, only to emerge back into the spotlight in February when he acquired Natural History New Zealand. Australia’s Northern Pictures was then added and a joint venture formed […]

Discovery appoints Foley original content boss

Factual channel operator Discovery has appointed Charlie Foley executive VP of its freshly-minted Original Content Group. Discovery has pushed heavily into original content and the new group will sit alongside the international programming division run by Luis Silberwasser and Julian Bellamy. Discovery told TBI that the new division will develop select projects and Silberwasser’s unit […]

National Geographic snaps up Power’s croc docs

UK-based distributor Power has sold a pair of crocodile documentaries to National Geographic Channels International. Nat Geo has acquired Touching The Dragon and Dragon’s Feast for its international services. Both series are produced by Power’s affiliate company NHU Africa. Touching The Dragon documents the “incredible interactions between a man and a wild, five-metre long crocodile […]

Magine expands with German launch

Cloud-based TV operator Magine has launched in beta in Germany, its first European expansion since debuting in Sweden in March. Magine is a subscription service that combines live linear TV, catch-up and on-demand programming, delivered from the cloud to TV screens, smartphones, tablets or computers, as TBI revealed in March. Viewers in Germany can sign […]

Pact: Channel 5 attitude toward indies ‘worrying’

UK producer body Pact has labelled the terrestrial broadcaster Channel 5’s relationship with local indies “worrying” following results from a new survey. Pact’s membership survey rated Channel 5 as ‘disappointing’ at best in key areas of concern – ‘appreciation of cash flow issues’, ‘dealings regarding terms of trade’ and ‘getting paid on time’. This compared […]