The UK’s Arrow Media has received a commission for six more hours of its wildlife show Animal Fight Night which premieres on Nat Geo WILD in the U.S. on August 18 before rolling out internationally in September. Animal Fight Night was first launched in the U.S. in October last year. It was Arrow Media’s first move into natural history programming and the company later received orders for Building Penguin Paradise (Nat Geo WILD) and Dogs: Their Secret Lives (Channel 4). Each Animal Fight Night episode uses CGI to recreate and examine same species battles between animal world adversaries and dissects the science behind the tactics and bodily weapons that various creatures employ.
New local versions of The Voice are scheduled to launch before the end of the year in India and Croatia. The singing competition is currently in production for public broadcaster HRT in Croatia and for Zee TV in India. Also coming up are local takes on the show in Azerbaijan and Pakistan. As the U.S. version heads into its 7th season, the Talpa format continues to perform overseas. In April, Eurodata TV Worldwide named it the overall most successful format traveling the globe in 2013.
Top Gear, the British motoring series that airs Stateside on BBC America, is in trouble again. Its Burma Special earlier this year, in which host Jeremy Clarkson used a racial slur, broke broadcasting rules, says British regulator Ofcom. The BBC in the UK apologized in April for Clarkson’s comment which was made while he and co-host Richard Hammond surveyed a bridge they had built on the River Kwai as a local man walked across it. When two viewers complained, Ofcom investigated and a spokesperson said Monday, “After a thorough investigation, Ofcom has found the BBC breached broadcasting rules by including an offensive racial term in Top Gear, which was not justified by context… This was scripted in advance. The BBC failed to take the opportunity, either during filming or post-production, to check whether the word had the potential to offend viewers.” In May, Clarkson came under fire for the alleged use of a racial slur in an unaired clip from a 2012 episode of the driving show.
Javier Avitia has been appointed EVP Legal and Business Affairs, CBS Studios International. Avitia will oversee all business and legal affairs for the division, supporting the company’s growing operations in content licensing, format sales and international channel ventures. He is a 15+-year veteran of CBS Studios International and its predecessor divisions, CBS Paramount International Television and Paramount International Television. Most recently, he was SVP, Business Affairs and has negotiated many of the division’s prominent output and volume deals with international broadcasters, as well as licensing agreements for some of the top global programming franchises, including CSI, NCIS and Ray Donovan. The Harvard-educated attorney previously worked at Univision and law firms Jones Day and White & Case.
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