Channel Four in the UK has a fairly impressive in-house creative team, as evidenced by its magnificent Paralympics campaign from a few years back. And now, to launch its new ondemand platform All4, it’s peered 100 years into the future and predicted a same sex royal wedding, robotic horse racing and a series of mutant hosts.

After a series of technical glitches pushed back the date from December last year, Neon is set to launch on Friday, 13 February. And, not to be outdone by news of its competitor’s arrival, Lightbox has sent out a release to various media publications in which it gloats about the strong results of Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul.

News Limited to sell its stake in Sky TV, assures us all it won’t affect Sky’s ability to source content from around the world.

Panasonic and Trade Me have teamed up to take advantage of televisions becoming more and more computer-like, with the launch of the Trade Me app for Panasonic Smart Viera TVs.

It might be our national fizzy drink but you’d probably be hard pressed to describe the flavour of L&P. And explaining what L&P tastes like is the central theme of four new TV spots launched in a new campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi, along with the Taste-a-liker – an app that encourages the brand’s 190,000 strong Facebook community to share their own thoughts on the flavour.

They used to be called the Qantas Film and Television Awards, but after Qantas grounded all its flights (metaphorically speaking) last year for this and the Media Awards, the name of the screen industry’s night of nights has now been changed to the Aotearoa Film & Television Awards (AFTAs) and Aviso Design has created a new logo that ThinkTV chief executive Rick Friesen says better reflects the nature of the awards.

We’re accustomed to seeing marketing fluff from the seemingly never-ending range of new daily deal sites in our inboxes or on our web browsers. But, in what could be seen as evidence that group-buying has gone mainstream in New Zealand, GrabOne is facing up to increased competition and promoting its discounted wares with the help of a couple of new TVCs.

It’s good news for broadcasters, couch sellers and pizza delivery folk, but it’s bad news for obesity campaigners: the latest research from newly established industry body ThinkTV has shown New Zealanders spent more time than ever watching television in 2010, with the average square-eyed Kiwi tuning in for three hours and 22 minutes every day, 20 percent more than in 2007.

The third quarter ad revenue results for the major television broadcasters were released not long ago and showed things were slowly moving back to the level of the glory days. At the time, we couldn’t get hold of New Zealand Television Broadcaster’s Council chief exec Rick Friesen, but he called back and, while he wasn’t able to discuss results of specific broadcasters, he was able to shed some light on a few interesting sectoral trends.

Not Rick Friesen

MediaWorks TV launched its new season line-up in Wellington this morning. And the Auckland launch is scheduled for tomorrow. But there’s sure to be slightly more interest in some the programming decisions than there usually is after it announced today that its two major channels are set for a rejig, with C4 being re-launched as a mainstream entertainment channel known as FOUR and TV3 moving directly into TV One’s demographic territory.