English Entertainment
Fox News’ deal with Worldspace
MUMBAI: Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has signed a deal with digital satellite radio service provider Worldspace, making the channel available to subscribers of Worldspace throughout Asia, Europe, the c and Africa.
Worldspace chairman and CEO Noah Samara was quoted in a company release saying, “Fox News Channel is one of the most recognised brands in America. Their worldwide cable television penetration continues to grow at lightning speed. Now with WorldSpace’s global distribution, Fox News becomes a portable and personal voice from home for American Expats and military around the world.”
With a weekly cable television viewing audience of 84 million people in the US, Fox News is broadcast to 45 countries around the world with viewers in over 48 million international homes.
Worldspace broadcasts news, music and educational programming to a global service area that includes more than four billion people and targets its original programming to consumers, governments, and other organisations. The company leverages its two geostationary satellites, AfriStar and AsiaStar and its ownership of broad-spectrum licenses to deliver more than 100 digital quality audio channels per satellite as well as multimedia content directly to its radio receivers.
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.
