Content

In a bid to pay down its $1 billion debt, Hallmark Channel’s parent is selling domestic rights to its film library to Robert Halmi Sr.’s RHI Enterprises for $160 million, officials said Thursday.

The deal by Crown Media Holdings comes one day after the company named former Court TV chairman Henry Schleiff as its president and CEO.

One day after earning an Oscar best-actor nomination for his work in The Last King of Scotland, Forrest Whitaker earned a best-actor nod Wednesday from the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications for his work on The Shield.

FX’s gritty cop drama garnered the lion’s share of nominations for NAMIC’s March 27 Vision Awards, which honor outstanding achievements in original, multiethnic cable programming.

In the weeks and months following Sept. 11, 2001, there was much anxiety over what would happen if the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., were followed up by bioterrorism. FX probes those fears in depth with Smallpox, a fiction film that takes the guise of a documentary.

Says There’s ‘Really Nothing’ to Media Speculation About Possible Union

ESPN will continue to serve up tennis’ Australian Open.

The network and Tennis Australia said Tuesday that they have reached a new multiyear, multimedia agreement for the extension of ESPN's exclusive television coverage of the Australian Open, as well as other new rights across many ESPN platforms.

ESPN has held exclusive U.S. rights to the Australian Open since 1984, and the extension kicks off in 2007.