Friday round-up: Latest news, deals & hires

Off The Fence unveils Ever Wonder

RTL Deutschland’s free-to-air channel NTV and pay sibling RTL Living channels have partnered with Insight TV’s InTravel and Off The Fence (OTF) on a coproduced science series.

Ever Wonder (10 x 60 minutes) is from Australian doc specialist Wildbear Entertainment and addresses seven questions most frequently posed about familiar phenomenon, from soaring skyscrapers to roaring storms.

Each episode unravels by revealing the hidden machines, structures, and designs that make these feats of wonder possible. OTF is selling globally.

The move is part of OTF’s strategy to develop longer running IP strands that fulfil the increasing needs of broadcasters and platforms to appeal to diversified and fragmented audiences.

Cocktail Wars to be served up at E!

US cablenet E! has ordered mixology competition series Cocktail Wars.

Hosted by Lance Bass and Joey Fatone, the 10-episode series will debut this summer and pits American bartenders against each other in a bid to win $10,000 each episode.

Cocktail Wars is executive produced by Texas Crew Productions and R&D Media. David Karabinas, Rick Cikowski, Chip Rives, James Macnab and Brad Bernstein are executive producers for Texas Crew; Russ McCarroll is showrunner and executive producer for R&D.

Murder in a Small Town lands S3

Fox has extended cosy crime drama Murder in a Small Town into a third season.

The show is produced by Sepia Films in association with Fox Entertainment and Future Shack Entertainment, with Peter Gallagher joining the third run.

Murder in a Small Town is based on the nine-book Karl Alberg series by novelist LR Wright and was originally optioned by Soapbox Productions.

The series, which also stars Rossif Sutherland (Reign) and Kristin Kreuk (Smallville), tracks Sutherland’s character Karl Alberg who moves to a quiet, coastal town after being battered by big-city police work but finds a raft of new cases to deal with.

Sony’s Wayne Garvie calls for BBC/C4 merger

The UK’s Channel 4 should become the “de facto commercial arm of the BBC”, according to Sony Pictures Television president Wayne Garvie.

Speaking at the Creative Cities Convention (CCC) in Liverpool, Garvie called for the two broadcasters to merge, arguing the production sector would benefit from having fewer stronger buyers rather than multiple weak ones.

His comments come the day after Priya Dogra, the new chief executive of C4, rejected the idea of a merger with the BBC. She told CCC delegates that in her experience mergers are effectively acquisitions, meaning C4 would become subsumed into the corporation. Read more