Sizeable TV movie packages have been sold to the French broadcaster TF1, Finnish YLE and the Belgian channel RTBF, for example, while viewers of Fox Life Italy, Fox Life France and Prorom Romania have a treat in store when their channels broadcast the packages they have purchased, including TV movies from the Rosamunde Pilcher Collections - and VRT Belgium will be showing the detective series "The Eagle". The French broadcaster TF1, Belgian RTBF and Italian Mediaset have secured the rights to the new family series "Here Comes Kalle", and in the near future French viewers will also have the chance to see the 10th series of "Air Rescue Team" along with 70 episodes of the ZDF classic "The Black Forest Hospital" on the pay TV channel Fox Life France. The Spanish station AXN has bought the detective series "Hamburg Dockland", while audiences in Latvia will be able to enjoy the romantic soap "Tessa - A Life for Love" when local channel LNT broadcasts it. In addition to all this, major packages containing both series and TV movies have been obtained by LNT (Latvia), Diema/Viasat (Bulgaria) and BTV (Lithuania).
At the same time there is good news in the genres of Children's Programs and Documentaries: the children's cartoon series "Laura's Star" has been sold to the Italian RAI, the Dutch ZAPP, YLE Finland and the Belgian Ketnet channels. Meanwhile, the two successful live action series from Australian producer Jonathan M. Shiff, "Lost Treasure of Fiji" and "H²O - Just Add Water" have been secured by the Austrian broadcaster ORF, the Irish TG4, the Norwegian NRK and the Swiss SF DRS.
So far at MIPCOM 2007 the three-part series "UPDATE - The World in 50 Years" has been the most popular single program in the documentary sector. This production has been sold to a number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe as well as Sweden (SVT) and Korea. The British channel FIVE has secured the rights to the gripping documentary " Black September - The Attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics"; The History Channel UK acquired the five-parter "The Wehrmacht". And the ZDF Enterprises sales department is also delighted by substantial purchases of large-scale packages in this genre: RAI and the History Channel in Italy, Animal Planet, n-tv and Spiegel TV in Germany, Smithsonian Network in the USA, the History Channel in Great Britain, the Finnish channel YLE, the Spanish Multicanal, the Russian broadcaster KULTURA TV as well as UPC for the Middle East and the Viasat Network for Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe have all bought extensive documentary packages.
Christian Massmann, Head of Sales at ZDF Enterprises: "We can already say with confidence that MIPCOM 2007 has been extraordinarily successful for ZDF Enterprises. In addition to extremely healthy sales of classic TV productions we are particularly delighted by the purchase of format rights for the Saturday evening family show "Wanna bet ?" by the Australian Network Nine."