International Television Week44 Spiegel Shopping Aspekt

Hamburg-based TV production house Spiegel TV will buy a controlling interest in local production company Aspekt Telefilm, Spiegel TV said Monday. In exchange, Aspekt will take over responsibility for fiction production at Spiegel TV subsidiary A&E productions. The deal gives Spiegel, which has made its name as one of Germany's foremost producers of documentaries and magazine programs, a foothold in fiction.

-- Scott Roxborough



NHL glides into Czech Rep., Slovakia

The Hungarian Broadcasting Corp., the satellite-to-cable broadcaster with four stations in Central and Eastern Europe, has picked up the rights to air 70 National Hockey League games, including playoffs, for the 1998-99 season in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The deal includes the rights for the year 2000 as well. Galaxie TV Network, the broadcaster's outlet in the Czech Republic, has been broadcasting the NHL games live Friday and Saturday nights, with reruns on Saturdays and Sundays, to some 1 million households in the Czech Republic and 500,000 in Slovakia, according to the company.

-- Hy Hollinger



TVFI bringing French to DirecTV

PARIS -- TV France International, an association for the promotion of French programming abroad, is negotiating to provide programs for a French-language channel on U.S. satellite network DirecTV. TVFI executives are in talks in New York with the Ethnic American Broadcasting Co., which is putting together a package of 32 channels for DirecTV aimed at foreign-language-speaking communities in the United States. No details have been released on the value of the contract. TVFI's structure does not allow it to operate the channel. Two groups are bidding for the operator's contract: French-language channel TV5, which already broadcasts on the EchoStar U.S. satellite network, and the documentary channel Voyage, owned by Pathe.

-- Charles Masters