Purchase and management of rights

Sogecable's Acquisitions and Rights Management department has worked hard in 2007 to purchase the best contents for the many channels offered on Digital+, the company's digital platform, and on its freeto- air channel Cuatro, with considerable success in terms of management and viewership. The department has thus supplied all the company's channels with major sporting events, the latest films, a wide selection of excellent documentaries and the most prestigious international series.

In 2007, Sogecable acquired the television premiere rights for films such as Mel Gibson's Apocalypse, nominated for three Oscars last year, as well as the winner of the 2007 Cannes Festival, the Rumanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. It also acquired the rights for the best independent films, including The Painted Veil, starring Naomi Watts and Edward Norton; Next, with Nicolas Cage and Jessica Biel; Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino and Planet Terror by Robert Rodríguez.

Sogecable has also pre-purchased the most important Spanish movie projects: El orfanato (The Orphanage), which has grossed almost €25 million at the Spanish box office; Las 13 rosas, (the two films taking home 11 Goya Awards in 2008); 7 mesas (de billar francés), with 2 Goyas; and Bajo las estrellas, winner of the 2007 Malaga Film Festival and two more Goyas. Also worthy of mention is REC, with 2 Goyas and €8 million grossed at the Spanish box office; Lola, la película, Café solo o con ellas, La caja Kovak and Salir pitando, all among the 15 top-earning Spanish films of the year. It has also bought and is preparing for their television premiere films like Mortadelo y Filemón. Misión: salvar la Tierra, released in theaters on January 25; Asterix en los Juegos Olímpicos, Transsiberian with Eduardo Noriega and Woody Harrelson and José Luis Cuerda's Los girasoles ciegos, starring Maribel Verdú.

As for short films, Sogecable has acquired No time for Nuts, a 2007 Oscar nominee for Best Animated Short,starring Scrat, the squirrel from Ice Age. It has also bought Paseo, a Goya nominee for Best Fiction Short Film and Alumbramiento, winner of the Best Short Film at the 20th European Film Awards.

Series have been another big star of the Canal+ lineup. Canal+ started out the year by premiering Big Love, a controversial HBO series nominated for several Emmys and Golden Globes. Then came Studio 60, the latest project by the prestigious Aaron Sorkin, and the airing of all seasons of Prime Suspect, a classic in British television finally acknowledged with three Emmys in its seventh and last season. In December came the premieres of The IT Crowd, a real cult series thanks to the Internet, and The Tudors, a big-budget production about Henry VIII aired on Showtime in the United States. Finally we must mention two series aimed at younger audiences, Extreme Animals, which has become one of the most-watched series of the year on Canal+, and the fictional 3D animation program Animalia, slated to premiere on the channel in 2008.

Canal+ continues to offer its subscribers the best documentaries from all genres. Again this year, the channel has acquired the exclusive rights for the best productions on the market. In 2007 it premiered the documentary that won the Oscar in 2007, An Inconvenient Truth, as well as the best wildlife documentary of all time, Planet Earth. In 2008 the pay channel will show two new major wildlife productions from the BBC: Wild China, an inside look at the fascinating wilderness of this hard-to-access country, and Life in Cold Blood, the most exhaustive series on reptiles.

In 2007, the channel has consolidated DOK, an umbrella brand created in 2006 to cover the most personal, social non-fiction works, all backed by excellent reviews and awards from the top international festivals. DOK boasted premieres of the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp and The Death of Kevin Carter; the 2007 César winner Dans la peau de Jacques Chirac; the winner of the 2007 Chicago International Film Festival: Taxi to de Dark Side and others such as The US vs. John Lennon. The channel also boasts one of the candidates to the 2008 Oscars, No End in Sight and the winner of the 2007 Sundance Festival, Manda Bala.

Other noteworthy events on the Canal+ program include momentous concerts like Serrat y Sabina, Dos pájaros de un tiro, shown on the channel on December 31.

Cuatro, whose programming grid already has some of the best television series in the world -House, Grey's Anatomy and Kyle XY, just to name a few- has managed to secure in the last year exclusive rights for some of the most prestigious, emblematic American series of 2007: Dexter and Californication, an extremely popular series from Showtime and Women's Murder Club, one of the most successful new series in the US.

As for documentaries, Cuatro has secured the rights for the free-to-air television premiere of Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth; the fictional documentary Death of a President, which analyzes the consequences of a hypothetical assassination of President George W. Bush and Doomsday 2012: the End of Days.

TV premiere rights for the controversial series ‘Californication’, starring David Duchovny, have been acquired for Cuatro.

Sogecable has purchased the rights for the Euro Cup, a soccer competition that will be played in Switzerland and Austria starting on June 7, one of the year's biggest sporting events. The rights cover all television broadcasting technology, including high-definition broadcasts of the games.

In addition to live broadcasting rights for the European championship, Sogecable has also secured exclusive rights for showing recaps of all the games and rights to air taped versions of the entire competition.

The company signed this past August a deal for the exclusive broadcast rights, for the next three seasons, of all home games played by the 10 best teams in the Italian Calcio league (Juventus, Inter, AC Milan, Lazio, Roma, Florentina, Genoa, Cagliari, Catania and Torino). In other words, it has the exclusive on the best Italian soccer.

The agreement also guarantees Canal+ full coverage of the Italian Cup and the Supercopa for the next two seasons. The first pits all the Italian teams against each other in a system similar to Spain's Copa del Rey, while the Supercopa brings together the winners of the last two competitions, the champion of La Liga and the winner of the Copa.

As far as other sports go, Sogecable has renewed broadcasting rights for the next three Wimbledon tournaments, the most prestigious Grand Slam in lawn tennis. Canal+ will provide live coverage of everything that goes on at the All England Club in London from start to finish. And, as always, the channel will pay special attention to the movements of Spanish players, especially Rafa Nadal.

Sogecable has also secured the rights for the European Handball Championship, competed in Norway, and has renewed its rights for the thrilling Six Nations Rugby tournament.

In 2007 Sogecable's channels have televised the Champions League and the Spanish football league -La Liga-, the main European and American football leagues (the German Bundesliga, the Italian Calcio, the Dutch Erdedivisie, the French Ligue1, the Portuguese Superliga, the Opening and Closing Tournaments of Argentina and the Ecuadorian, Bolivian and Brazilian leagues), the Copa América soccer competition in September, the World Rugby Cup in France, also in September; the NBA's European tour in October; the NBA season, as it does every year; the US Open (August ‘07) and the Australian Open of tennis (January ‘08). It also has broadcast rights for the Atlético of Madrid during the first rounds of the UEFA, plus the most important golf tournaments: the Masters at Augusta National, the US Open, the British Open, the US PGA and world tours, not to mention the 2008 Ryder Cup. And for bullfighting aficionados, last year Sogecable acquired the rights to the Feria de San Fermin in Pamplona. Digital+ covered all the fights, while Cuatro aired the running of the bulls. This prestigious fair has joined those of San Isidro, the Feria de Abril of Seville, the Feria de Zaragoza and select fights from the Feria de Albacete.

AUDIOVISUAL SPORT

Audiovisual Sport (AVS) is a company owned by Sogecable dedicated to acquiring, managing, exploiting and administering audiovisual rights for Spain's professional soccer league and the Copa del Rey (except the final match). Audiovisual Sport administers the audiovisual rights, in all forms of exploitation, for all matches of the Spanish First Division and Second Division (BBVA league). AVS ceded the free-to-air rights to Mediapro for Spanish league games for broadcast on its channel La Sexta.

However, AVS cut off Mediapro's signal at the beginning of the season, after this Catalan production company repeatedly failed to comply with the agreement reached in July 2006. AVS has sued Mediapro and the dispute is now pending court decision.

2007 has also been a crucial year in the development of rights for new windows such as the Internet -over which matches from the Champions are shown- and mobile telephones.