International music network MTV and telecommunications giant Motorola have inked a three-year $75m deal to integrate marketing activities via a joint entertainment platform.

Reality format Wife Swap, where two husbands swap wives for two weeks, is to be reversioned for the French and German markets after factual distributor RDF International inked two new licences.

In France, production company Wai TV is taking a new entertainment format into production for Gallic broadcaster France2, after scoring a hit for the net with a driving quiz format last month.

Stateside channel producer Firestone Communications is launching the first digital 24-hour Hispanic kids service, Sorpresa, later this week, after inking carriage deals with three US cable platforms.

After weeks of political turmoil, Paolo Mieli, former editor-in-chief of national newspaper Corriere della sera, has been appointed head of Italian state broadcaster Rai.

Channel producer and distributor Zone Vision is keeping up the pace of global expansion by inking a carriage deal for telenovela channel Romantica with an Israeli digital platform.

In the UK, pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB is set to go head-to-head with MTV and publisher-broadcaster Emap when it adds three new music television channels to its bouquet in April.

Digital pay-TV network Showtime is extending its operations in the Middle East with four timeshift spin-offs of its family entertainment channels, bringing its total bouquet in the region to 50.

Swedish media conglom Modern Times Group (MTG) is building its presence in Russia with the launch of pay-TV channel TV1000.

Hot on the heels of UKTV~s expansion plans revealed last week, UK media group Telewest Communications is broadening its digital lifestyle line-up with Fashion TV.