ITVX celebrated its biggest ever month in January with 328m streams, with the service reaching 3.6 billion streams since launch.
ITV Studios' global footprint spans 60 production labels across 13 countries and its global distribution business sells its catalogue of over 90,000+ hours to broadcasters and platforms around the world.
Jane Stiller, ITV Chief Marketing Officer, said: “Brilliant content and creativity sit at the heart of everything ITV does, and the refreshed Group Brand acts as a more vibrant and contemporary embodiment of this.”
New series on Mzansi Magic
Mzansi Magic has commissioned a new 13-episode teen drama series, Obstruction, produced by Origin Pictures, that will start on Monday 18 March at 20:00 and revolve around a high school netball player and the challenges she faces to attain her goals.
Obstruction stars Luyanda Zuma as the 17-year-old Zenokuhle, with dreams of making it to the Gauteng provincial netball team.
She has to contend with various challenges faced by "an extremely talented black female teenager and how she and her peers navigate relationships with their parents, teachers, love interests, enemies, and frenemies".
Showtime going dark
The SHOWTIME streaming service is being discontinued, and SHOWTIME programming is now available through Paramount+ with a subscription to the Paramount+ with SHOWTIME plan.
Existing SHOWTIME standalone streaming subscribers will continue to have access to the SHOWTIME app and website until they are discontinued on April 30, 2024.
Some subscribers, billed directly by SHOWTIME, are eligible to have their SHOWTIME account information transferred to Paramount+ to start a new subscription to the Paramount+ with SHOWTIME plan.
Sylvester's Stallone’s Family To Star In Docuseries For Paramount+
Sylvester Stallone is expanding his footprint at Paramount+. The streamer has picked up The Family Stallone, a new docuseries featuring the star of Tulsa King, along with his real-life wife Jennifer Flavin Stallone and their daughters Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet.
The eight-part series will premiere exclusively on the service later in the year. In the new series, Paramount+ promises to “offer a seat at the table of one of Hollywood’s most famous families” by showing how the Oscar-winning actor is simply Dad at home.
The Family Stallone is produced by MTV Entertainment Studios, with Benjamin Hurvitz, Jessica Zalkind and Nadim Amiry as executive producers. Julie Pizzi, Farnaz Farjam and Jonathan Singer serve as executive producers for Bunim-Murray Productions, with Lauren Goldstein, Valana Hunn, Chris Ray and Jason Williams as co-executive producers.
During the month, Paramount+ became the latest streaming service to remove original titles from its platform. The streamer has removed a raft of titles including Real World: Homecoming.
Other titles include Jordan Peele’s reboot of The Twilight Zone, which ran for two seasons between 2019 and 2020, Peter Sarsgaard-fronted true-crime drama Interrogation, Michael Chiklis’ Coyote, comedy series No Activity, Kate Beckinsale’s dark comedy Guilty Party and animated series The Harper House.
It comes days after sister company Showtime, which is in the process of being rebranded and merged with Paramount+, removed a slew of titles including Kidding, Super Pumped, On Becoming A God In Central Florida and American Rust.
It joins with streamers such as HBO Max, which removed titles such as FBoy Island and Westworld.
Paramount+ might miss their early debut in South Africa
Paramount+ will join the existing streaming services already present in South Africa, all battling to grow their market share and to scale their subscribers bases like Disney+, Netflix SA, Amazon Prime Video, MultiChoice's Showmax, Apple TV+, eMedia's eVOD, SABC+, VIU and Britbox.
The South African launch of Paramount+ will be as a stand-alone app and through connected TV sets, but will very likely also be in partnership with the MultiChoice Group, which has existing deals to carry Netflix and Amazon Prime Video as apps on its DStv Explora Ultra decoder.
Paramount, already has so-called "hard bundle" deals in place with pay-TV operators like Comcast's Sky in the United Kingdom carrying Paramount+, and Sky Showtime as a joint venture in Europe with Comcast and Vivendi's Canal+.
Paramount+ made several consumers sign up through email for more updates on the streamer in South Africa and as we're close to the end of the first quarter of 2023. There hasn't been any updates not even a glimpse of what we already know about the platform.
Hello Sunshine is shuttering its kids and animation business as part of a strategic decision to focus Candle Media’s kids and animation efforts under Moonbug, the family production studio the corp snapped up for a near $3 billion in November 2021.
Hello Sunshine will collaborate with Moonbug on future kids and animation projects.
As a result, a few individuals will be departing Hello Sunshine over the coming weeks.
The Blackstone-backed Candle Media, which is also co-run and co-founded by Tom Staggs, acquired Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine in August 2021 for $900M.
M-Net has cancelled the long-running Idols with the upcoming 19th season on its Mzansi Magic (DStv 161) channel which will be the last for the [SIC] Entertainment-produced reality singing competition show following viewership fatigue and a massive plunge in ratings.
The cancellation of the South African version of the Fremantle format follows after a dramatic ratings plunge for Idols in season 17 that coincided with a relationship scandal involving Idols judge Somizi Mhlongo after his ex Mohale Motaung made serious allegations of emotional and physical abuse.
While Idols started off its 17th season in South Africa in July 2021 with 1 018 607 viewers as the 4th most-watched show on all of DStv for the month, it suddenly plunged to 10th place on DStv's most-watched list with 693 760 viewers at most in August 2021, shedding 32% of its viewers.
After the very large drop in viewers and in an effort to revitalise Idols, M-Net's general entertainment channels division and [SIC] Entertainment decided to retain Somizi Mhlongo for 2022's18th season and axed judges Randall Abrahams and Unathi Nkayi whose contracts were not renewed and were replaced with artists Thembi Seete and rapper-producer JR Bogopa.
Paramount’s merging its Paramount Plus streaming service and premium Showtime channel, as first reported by The Hollywood Reporter. In an internal memo, CEO Bob Bakish announced the company’s rebranding its Showtime channel as Paramount Plus with Showtime.
Paramount confirmed the change in a post on Twitter, noting that the merger is “the natural next step in our evolution.” The company’s also planning to carry over “select” original content from Paramount Plus to the TV network, which could include shows like Halo and Yellowstone spinoff 1923.
Bakish says the move “brings uncertainty for the teams working on these brands and businesses” and that he’ll share more details in “the coming weeks.”
In addition to the possibility of layoffs, Deadline reports that some shows like Three Women (which was never aired), Let the Right One In, and American Gigolo could get axed as part of the consolidation. The specifics of what will happen to existing episodes of each series are unclear, but the report says that titles pulled from Showtime will be made available to take elsewhere.
Would I Lie To You (American Remake)
In all rounds, the scoring system is the same: teams gain a point for correctly guessing whether a statement is true or not, but if they guess incorrectly the opposing team gets a point. Prior to the sixth series, it was impossible for viewers to follow the scores until they were read out at the end of each round, as some questions are edited out. However, from the sixth series the scores were re-recorded to reflect what had made the edit and not the whole recording.
61st Street
Moses Johnson, a promising, black high school athlete, is swept up into the infamously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system. Taken by the police as a supposed gang member, Johnson finds himself and his lawyer Franklin Roberts in the eye of the storm as police and prosecutors seek revenge for the death of an officer during a drug bust gone wrong.
The Garcias
'The Garcias' chronicles an American family based in San Antonio, Texas who are gathered for a summer vacation in their fancy beach house in Mexico. 'The Garcias' is a groundbreaking reboot of The Brothers Garcia, which was the first English-language sitcom to have an all-Latino cast and creative team.
Come Dance With Me
The show pairs young dancers with a family member that has supported their training, and the pair perform a dance together for a panel of judges before the determining who continues to the next round. The show was created by LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell.
The Man Who Fell To Earth
Based on the novel of the same name, the series follows an extraterrestrial who lands on Earth seeking a way to ferry his people to Earth from his home planet, which is suffering from a severe drought.
The First Lady
A revelatory reframing of American leadership, told through the lens of the women at the heart of the White House.
The Baby
When 38-year-old Natasha is unexpectedly landed with a baby, her life of doing what she wants, when she wants, dramatically implodes. Controlling, manipulative and with violent powers, the baby twists Natasha's life into a horror show. Where does it come from? What does it want? And what lengths will Natasha have to go to in order to get her life back? She doesn't want a baby. The baby wants her.
I Love That For You
Joanna Gold, an aspiring host for shopping channel SVN, who lies that her childhood cancer has returned in order to keep her job; the story is inspired by Bayer's personal experience with childhood leukemia.
Tokyo Vice
In 1999, American student Jake Adelstein has relocated to Tokyo and must pass a written exam in Japanese to have the chance to join the staff of a major Japanese newspaper. He succeeds in becoming their first foreign-born journalist and starts at the very bottom. Taken under the wing of a veteran detective in the vice squad, he starts to explore the dark and dangerous world of the Japanese yakuza.
Gaslit
The series is about the Watergate scandal and focuses on several untold stories, including Richard Nixon's subordinates, deranged zealots, and the whistleblowers who would eventually bring the whole enterprise crashing down. The story will center on Martha Mitchell, a celebrity Arkansan socialite and wife to Nixon’s loyal Attorney General, John N. Mitchell. Despite her party affiliation, she is the first person to publicly sound the alarm on Nixon's involvement in Watergate, causing both the presidency and her personal life to unravel. As attorney general, Mitchell is forced to choose between Martha and the president.
We Own This City
The miniseries details the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force and the corruption surrounding it.
The Offer
Oscar-winning producer Albert S. Ruddy 's never-before-revealed experiences of making The Godfather (1972).
The Thief, His Wife And Canoe
The Thief, His Wife And The Canoe explores John Darwin's big scam and how it was carry out. It also shows how his wife Anne became complicit in her husband’s bizarre deception to avoid bankruptcy, as she played the grieving widow and tried to convince the world, their friends, the police and insurance companies that John had gone missing while canoeing off the North East coast.
Whitney, A Look Back
Lost performances and rare moments with Whitney, featuring new details about the days leading up to and following Whitney's death.
Bill Maher: Adulting
From the stage of Miami's Fillmore Theater, Bill Maher returns for a scathing hour of his signature commentary on hot-button issues, bringing his no-holds-barred perspective to cancel culture, quarantine, Q-Anon and everything in-between.
Tim Allen To Return For 'Santa Clause' Series On Disney+
In 1994, Disney teamed up with actor and comedian Tim Allen on the holiday classic. He portrayed the role of single father Scott Calvin who alongside his son find Santa on the roof getting startled plummets to his death and Scott fills up the stockings of Santa.
In the upcoming series, he's searching for the next Santa Clause basically he's on the brink of his 65th birthday and realizing that he can’t be Santa forever. He’s starting to lose a step in his Santa duties and, more important, he’s got a family who could benefit from a life in the normal world.
Allen will executive producer, along with Scott Burditt, the creator of Last Man Standing, who will serve as a showrunner.
Betty White to be honoured with a one hour documentary on NBC
The actress and comedian has been in show business since the late 1930s. She appeared in commercials, game shows and on the radio. In the mid-50s, she starred in and produced “The Betty White Show,” a variety show on NBC. But her biggest break came in the early '70s on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. In the '80s, White landed her next big role, as Rose on the classic series, “The Golden Girls.”
An hour long documentary titled Celebrating Betty White: America's Golden Girl will be coming out later this month to pay tribute to the late comedian which will feature family and friends as well as clips of her journey.
In February 2020, Ray Donovan was cancelled after 7 seasons and a year after it was announced that the feature length film was in production to close the chapter on the series.
Ray Donovan: The Movie picks up where season seven left off, with Mickey in the wind and Ray determined to find and stop him before he can cause any more carnage. The film also weaves together the present-day fallout from the Donovan/Sullivan feud with Ray and Mickey's origin story from 30 years ago.
The movie debuted later this month in the United States on Showtime as well as on streaming services.
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