English Entertainment
China closes doors on new foreign-owned TV channels
MUMBAI: Further tightening its grip on foreign media, Beijing has decided to forbid any new foreign-owned TV channel from entering the country. The move will directly hit the expansion plans of Viacom and Disney in China.
Media reports have quoted the official Xinhua news agency as saying, “China will not again allow a foreign satellite TV station to have landing rights in the country.”
The ban will seriously affect Disney’s entry plans in the country. The company, which had applied for a limited broadcasting license in 2003, is one of the few major media companies without a channel in the market. Viacom’s Nickelodeon children’s channel, which has applied for a limited broadcasting license in 2003, could also be affected, say reports.
Beijing began allowing new ventures in TV programming only in 2004. But when foreign media firms started taking advantage of the relaxation to come up with new channels, the restrictions started getting tougher.
In April, China’s television and film regulator restricted the entry to media companies which held single programming joint venture. The move was meant to curtail the expansion plans of Viacom, which had announced several partnerships.
Last month, the regulator introduced more regulations banning city and provincial broadcasters from associating with foreign media companies. This development impacted Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp plans of setting up a JV.
Foreign players which hold mass broadcasting rights in China include News Corp, Viacom’s MTV and News Corp-promoted Phoenix Satellite Television in Guangdong. Tom Group has mass broadcast rights in Guangdong with Time Warner while Time Warner’s CNN and the BBC news channels, and various channels owned by News Corp’s Star TV subsidiary hold limited broadcasting rights in the market.
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.
