LONDON, January 27: Mark Thompson, the director general of the BBC, is said to be planning to step down at the end of this year or early next, after eight years at the helm of the British public broadcaster.

RIO DE JANEIRO, January 27: Fox Sports Latin America has secured the rights to Italian Serie A matches, starting with the 2012/13 season, in a deal with MP&Silva.

LONDON, January 27: Ahead of its Univision debut this weekend, Simon Fuller's ¡Q’viva! The Chosen, the talent competition featuring Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony and Jamie King, has been licensed by Endemol to 17 Latin American networks.

BUDAPEST, January 27: Writer and director Agnieszka Holland, whose In Darkness is a contender for best foreign-language film at this year's Academy Awards, is working on a three-part drama for HBO Central Europe about Czech student activist Jan Palac

OSLO, January 27: The first episode of Lilyhammer gave Norwegian broadcaster NRK1 its best numbers ever for a drama-series premiere, reaching an overall share of 56.3 percent.

SINGAPORE, January 27: Singaporean cable platform StarHub is adding two new Hindi-language channels to its lineup, Channel [V] India and EROS Bollywood On Demand, effective January 31.

LOS ANGELES, January 27: A week after announcing plans for the political mockumentary Battleground, Hulu has premiered an original series about up-and-coming fashion designers.

NEW YORK, January 27: BBC America is set to co-produce the next installment of the drama series Luther, starring 2012 Golden Globe- winner Idris Elba.

LOS ANGELES, January 27: Lifetime and Collins Avenue are developing the new docu-series Ice Moms, set in the world of competitive figure skating, following the popularity of the franchise Dance Moms.

MIAMI, January 26: World Screen Newsflash recaps the deals, panels and parties that made news at NATPE, which wrapped in Miami yesterday.

LOS GATOS. January 26: Netflix reported a net subscriber gain of 610,000 at its U.S. streaming and DVD rental platform in the fourth quarter, almost recovering from the loss of 810,000 customers in Q3 following an unpopular price hike.

LONDON, January 26: Channel 5 has secured the exclusive U.K. first-run free television rights for the ABC Studios-produced drama series Once Upon a Time.

MILAN, January 26: Sky Italia is rolling out 13 additional high-definition channels on February 1, bringing its total HD slate to 52.

LONDON, January 26: Music star Rihanna is to executive produce and appear in a new fashion series for Sky Living HD in the U.K., to be produced by Twenty Twenty.

NEW YORK, January 26: USA Network, which has risen to the top of the cable-TV rankings thanks to its slate of original dramas, has picked up a reality series, called The Moment, for launch in the third quarter.

PARK CITY, January 26: From the Sundance Film Festival, AMC/Sundance Channel Global announced new carriage deals in Portugal, Belgium, Poland, France and Taiwan.

LONDON, January 26: PBS UK has landed the exclusive U.K. broadcast rights to a new documentary about former U.S. President Bill Clinton, with plans to air it ahead of its U.S. premiere.

MADRID, January 26: Vodka Capital has added Exim Licensing Group to its list of licensing partners for Jelly Jamm, which has premiered in 150 countries since September, including Spain, where it averaged a 31-percent viewing share among preschoolers on pubcaster RTVE's kids' channel CLAN.

LOS ANGELES, January 26: DISH Network in the U.S. today began carrying Tivi5MONDE, a French-language children's channel from TV5MONDE with a lineup that includes Galactik Football and Marsupilami—Houba Houba Hop!

BETHPAGE, January 26: Mediaset Italia is now available for a monthly fee to subscribers of cable platform Cablevision, which is also bundling the channel with Rai Italia to offer up an iO Italian package.

SILVER SPRING, January 26: Actor Erik Todd Dellums (Homicide: Life on the Street, The Wire) is to narrate the Investigation Discovery true-crime series Killer Trials: Judgment Day, which premieres next month.

TORONTO, January 26: Los Angeles-based Osiris Entertainment has tapped Multiple Media Entertainment to exclusively distribute its catalogue in Canada.

MIAMI, January 25: During his One-on-One session today with World Screen’s Anna Carugati, Emilio Romano, the president of Telemundo Media, stressed the role that original programming has played for the U.S. Hispanic broadcaster, strengthening its ties with audiences and allowing for successful product-integration campaigns with advertisers.

MIAMI, January 25: During a session at NATPE, Jon Feltheimer, the co-chairman and CEO at Lionsgate, and Emilio Azcárraga, Grupo Televisa’s president and CEO, announced a new joint venture for the development and programming of television content in English for the U.S. market.

MIAMI, January 25: This morning’s Coffee With session at NATPE focused on the popularity of the novela genre, with Jessica Rodriguez, the senior VP of Univision Cable Networks; Carlos Sotomayor, the executive producer at Univision Studios; and actress Blanca Soto in conversation with TV Latina’s Rafael Blanco.

PREMIUM, January 25: The documentary acquisitions and co-productions manager at RTI SpA – Mediaset Group talks about what she is seeking for Italia 1 and Retequattro.

LONDON/LOS ANGELES, January 25: Simon Cowell’s Syco Entertainment is working with Overbrook Entertainment—the venture set up by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith—on a new talent format that aims to find the world's best DJs.

LONDON, January 25: Netflix's new streaming service in the U.K. and Ireland has licensed a range of comedy and drama titles from FremantleMedia Enterprises (FME), scoring a total of 115 hours.

MIAMI, January 25: Starting January 30, all of the prime-time novelas on Univision Network will be offered with the option of English-language closed captioning.

MIAMI, January 25: The new Charlie Sheen series Anger Management and Kelsey Grammer’s Boss are among the series covered in an exclusive deal between Lionsgate-TISA International and Turner Broadcasting System Latin America (TBSLA).