English Entertainment
Discovery adjudged best C&S channel at Asian TV Awards
SINGAPORE: The region’s top broadcasting talents and programmes were honoured at the Asian Television Awards ceremony at the University Cultural Centre on Thursday night. In total there were 33 categories.
Korea’s Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation’s Channel 11 won three awards, including terrestrial channel of the Year. Discovery won the cable and satellite channel of the Year 2004 in a close race with regional multi-channel rivals whose local production slates have also soared in recent years.
As had been reported earlier by Indiantelevision.com, NDTV and Channel [V] were two Indian channels whose shows were recognised. Joining them was Discovery India. Asha Gill won for best entertainment presenter for the show Lonely Planet Six Degrees . Discovery Asia’s documentary Mysterious Hanging Coffins of China. won a trophy. Discovery’s arch rival National Geographic Channel (NGC) Asia also got documentary recognition courtesy Body Snatchers of Bangkok. In all NGC Asia won five awards. It swept the technical and creative categories.
The best social awareness programme went to PT Surya Citra Televisi’s Pijar. CNN anchor Veronica Pedrosa was adjudged the best news anchor. CNBC Asia’s Asian Wall Street Journal won the best news show. Disney which will shortly launch two channels in India won in the animation category for Legends of The Ring of Fire Why the Sun Chases the Moon.. MTV Asia’s awards show won in the best entertainment (One-off/Annual) special category.
Selena Tan, an actress in a MediaCorp production, won the award for Best Comedy Performance by an Actress.
Selena won for her role in Violet’s Old Flame, an episode of Daddy’s Girls. But she was not in town to receive the award.
Japan also won big, with six broadcasting stations collecting at least seven awards in all. This year, the ATV awards committee received more than 1,500 entries from 15 countries. But only 155 entries were shortlisted, with MediaCorp receiving 20 nominations.
English Entertainment
Ellison takes his Paramount-Warner Bros case straight to theater owners
The Skydance chief goes to CinemaCon with promises and a skeptical crowd waiting
CALIFORNIA: David Ellison strode into a room packed with thousands of cinema owners and executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday and did something rather bold: he looked them in the eye and asked them to trust him.
The chief executive of Paramount Skydance vowed that his company would release a minimum of 30 films a year if regulators greenlight its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has made theater owners deeply, and loudly, nervous.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison told the crowd. “Once we combine with Warner Bros, we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually across both studios.”
It was a confident pitch. Whether it landed is another matter. Cinema operators have already called on regulators to block the deal, and scepticism in the room was hardly concealed.
Ellison pushed back by pointing to recent form. Paramount, born from the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media last August, plans to release 15 films this year, nearly double the eight it put out in 2025. Progress, he argued, was already underway.
He also threw theater owners a bone they have long been chasing: all films, he pledged, would run exclusively in cinemas for a minimum of 45 days, drawing applause from a crowd that has spent years fighting for exactly that commitment across the industry.
“People can speculate all they want,” Ellison said, “but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment. And we’ll show you we mean it.”
Fine words. The regulators, however, will have the last one.
