Technology

South African born Julian Friedmann launched a global scriptwriting and development portal on 1 July.

South African ad agencies should possibly heed a US report issued on Monday 7 July, in which analyst Leland Westerfield of BMO Capital Markets cut his estimate for ad spend growth in 2008 by half.

Two thirds of the membership of the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists (AFTRA) have voted to ratify the union’s prime time contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP).

The Cape Town leg of the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival includes the following industry events:

A call for entries has been issued for the 20th anniversary of the SAB Environmental Journalists of the Year Awards, to take place in Johannesburg on Wednesday, 8 October.

If you star in a Will Smith movie, it’s likely to be a big opener, as South Africa’s Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron has discovered. Theron stars with Smith in the Superhero spoof, Hancock, which has blitzed the box office worldwide. No surprise then to learn that it took R4.8m in its opening weekend (4 - 6 July) in South Africa.

Five short documentary films about love, made by filmmakers from Malawi, DRC, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, have been produced as part of a workshop and production platform created by the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival, the Jan Vrijman Fund of IDFA and public broadcaster SABC.

In a first for South Africa, Mobfest launched Novel Idea, a text based mobile channel on Monday 7 July. The mobile channel delivers serialised daily fiction in the form of 'textisodes' to the mobile handset. The content is entertainment focused and written specifically with the mobile reader in mind.

NBC Universal and private equity firms Bain Capital and Blackstone Group have agreed to buy The Weather Channel from Landmark Communications.

Endemol has appointed former Arts Alliance executive Adam Valkin to head up all of its global digital-media activities.