Canal+ renews deals, signs up subs

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Canal+ has renewed its programming agreement with Disney-ABC International Television and signed up a multi-year partnership for movies from NewLine Cinema.

Canal+ Group will thus be able to broadcast on its channels new productions from Walt Disney Studios, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films. This includes feature films such as There will Be Blood, Enchanted and Pirates of the Carribean : At World’s End, as well as TV series like new seasons from Desperate Housewives.

The current agreement also covers catch-up TV and VOD rights.

NewLine movies include Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D and Sex and The City-the Movie.

Besides Disney-ABC, Canal+ Group’s movie offering is also composed of films from Universal Studios, Fox, Paramount, Dreamworks and Sony-Columbia. However, the pay-TV operator has lost its long-term partnership with HBO, now in a deal agreement with Orange. The French telco also signed with Warner Bros. International TV.

Canal+ Group also said it had renewed a distribution agreement with AB Groupe for all the AB channels broadcast on CanalSat. The agreement, which will be effective from January 2009 also includes distribution on IPTV and DTT distribution platforms.

The channels concerned by the new contract are AB1, AB Moteurs, Action, Animaux, CinéFx, CinéPolar, Encyclopedia, Escales, Mangas, NT1, RTL 9, Toute l’histoire and XXL.

Posting a consolidated turnover up seven per cent at €457.1 million over the first three months of 2008, French pay-TV operator Canal+ said that the progression came both from the growth of subscriptions and from that of advertising revenues.

In the first three months of this year, Canal+ recruited 61,000 new subscribers compared to March 2007, totaling 5.3 million subscribing homes. 74% of Canal+’s total portfolio comes from subcribers to Canal+ Le Bouquet.




Source: Rapid TV News