Police officials arrested 70 Sikh demonstrators for vandalizing MTV’s offices in Mumbai, Daily Variety reports. MTV posters that depicted a Sikh girl massaging a man outraged the protestors, who were later released on bail, Variety says. —Sergio Ibarra
Nickelodeon will become available 24 hours a day in various African countries after the network secured a deal with MultiChoice and MTV Networks, Daily Variety says. The channel will be broadcast through MultiChoice’s SWtv satellite service based Johannesburg and reach…
Showtime turned a nifty ratings trick Monday, with new half-hour “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” premiering to record numbers. “Call Girl” attracted 949,000 paying customers in its first run Monday, outranking every other series premiere in the three decade-plus…
CBS Sports executives Ken Aagaard, Mike Aresco, Harold Bryant, Rob Correa and Marty Kaye have been promoted, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced today. Mr. Aagaard has been upped to executive vice president of operations, engineering and production…
ESPN’s coverage of Monday’s U.S. Open final playoff, in which Tiger Woods beat Rocco Mediate, was the most-watched golf telecast in the history of cable TV. The matchup had 4.2 household ratings and 4.7 million viewers. The previous high for…
“The World’s Ugliest Dog” competition show will return to Animal Planet in October 2008. Now in its 20th year as part of the Sonoma-Marin Fair, the competition will be produced for television for the network by Wholly Cow Productions. Dawn…
The pilots for Fox’s “Fringe” and HBO’s “True Blood” have leaked online, TVTattle reports. Both series premiere in September, but are already available on BitTorrent, the Web site notes. —Vlada Gelman
CBS’ “60 Minutes,” AMC’s “Mad Men” and Bravo’s “Project Runway” were among the shows that received the George Foster Peabody Award on Monday, Broadcasting & Cable reports. The awards ceremony also featured impromptu tributes to Tim Russert, the newspaper says….
Seniors network Retirement Living TV has laid off 47 employees and temporarily shelved four shows as it experiments with programming, the Baltimore Sun reports. Executives for the network insist the move is not a sign of trouble and that some…
Cablevision’s Rainbow Media Holdings has completed its acquisition of the Sundance Channel. The agreement, made official today, was originally reached by Rainbow and Sundance Channel owners NBC Universal, CBS and Robert Redford on May 6. The sellers are receiving $496…