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Take one part lovable serial killer, mix that with a pot-selling housewife.  Add a searing hot King of England along with a struggling lothario novelist, a dash of a spicy, enchanting call girl, combined with two morally-challenged brothers from Providence.  Infuse eight luscious lesbians and garnish with a multiple personality housewife and what do you get?  A scintillating recipe for success which has filled the SHOWTIME® menu with some of the best shows on television.

 

The buzz surrounding the SHOWTIME slate of original series has made the network and its programming among the most talked about in television today.  The success and popularity of Dexter™, Weeds, Brotherhood®, The Tudors, Californication, The L Word®, This American Life®, Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union, and Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, landed SHOWTIME original series on more than 60 national Ten-Best lists for 2007, including TIME Magazine, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and PEOPLE Magazine, and was named “Network of the Year” by USA TODAY.  This year Dexter™ received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award along with the distinguished honor of being recognized as one of AFI’s top ten most outstanding television programs of 2007.

 

Original series play a key part in the SHOWTIME programming mix which includes box office hits, music and comedy specials, provocative documentaries, Showtime Championship Boxing®, and Elite XC™, a mixed martial arts series.  Their success has helped drive subscription growth to more than 1.6 million new subscribers this year for a total of 15.6 million.

 

Leading the SHOWTIME “renaissance” is Chairman and CEO, Matthew C. Blank, and President of Entertainment, Robert Greenblatt.  Original series production is at its highest level ever and will turn up another notch as production begins on four exciting new ones that will be joining the SHOWTIME line-up:

 

United States of Tara, a new 12 episode half-hour comedy series starring Academy Award®-nominated actress Toni Collette (“Little Miss Sunshine”) as a wife and mother who suffers from disassociative identity (formerly multiple personality) disorder.  John Corbett plays her husband.  Academy Award®-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (“Juno”), who wrote the pilot, will continue to serve as a writer and one of the series executive producers, along with Steven Spielberg, Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank of Dreamworks Television, and Alexa Junge.  The pilot was directed by Craig Gillespie (“Lars and the Real Girl”).

 

The Untitled Edie Falco Project, three-time Emmy® Award winner Edie Falco is returning to premium cable television in a new, half-hour single camera, dark comedy as a strong-willed, iconoclastic New York City nurse juggling the frenzied grind of an urban hospital and an equally challenging personal life.  The series is a co-production of SHOWTIME and Lionsgate Television.

 

INSIDE THE NFL - Showtime Networks and CBS Sports are teaming to bring the highly acclaimed and award-winning NFL studio show, INSIDE THE NFL, to SHOWTIME, hosted by three of the top football analysts in television - Phil Simms, James Brown and Cris Collinsworth.  Since its premiere in 1977, the heart of the one-hour show has been its exclusive and award-winning inside views from NFL Films, as well as its storied roster of talent recapping the weekend’s games and previewing the match-ups for the week ahead.

 

MARC WOOTTON – a new six-episode comedy series from British comedian Marc Wootton.  A gifted actor/comic, Wootton is skilled at playing wild characters and interacting with unassuming people who think his characters are actually real.  He is a sensation in Britain playing a flamboyant psychic named “Shirley Ghostman,” among others.

 

Complementing the network’s success on the programming front is its leadership position within the digital media and broadband universe.  During the past year, Showtime Networks has forged relationships with a wide variety of major companies to expose its programming, creating a profile for the network on sites including Yahoo, MSN, IMDB, YouTube and MySpace.  They were among the more than 60 sites that streamed the second season premiere of The Tudors, which was viewed by a record online audience.

 

The network’s innovative use of the web as a marketing tool has been recognized by the industry with a variety of awards including four nominations for the 12th Annual Webby Awards, as well as winning the Technology and Engineering Emmy® Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) for Best Use of Commercial Advertising on Stand-Alone Broadband Devices (Personal Computers) for “THE L WORD in Second Life.”

 

The SHOWTIME new media group was also nominated for the Daytime Emmy® Award for Outstanding Broadband Program – Variety for “Dexter Blood Spatter 101” on SHO.com.  The company continues its electronic sell-through initiatives with Apple iTunes, and generated deals with other companies including Cinema Now, Amazon and Movielink.   

 

Building from its successful sampling strategy, SHOWTIME was the first network to launch a full-season online streaming campaign to the over 13,000 members of the Television Academy for Primetime Emmy® Award consideration.  Working with Brightcove Industries, a password protected site was designed to showcase its original series to all Emmy® voters.  Economically and ecologically responsible, SHOWTIME pioneered an Emmy® initiative that was quickly adapted by most of the industry, as well as the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences itself. 

 

Showtime Networks has also moved forward on a number of joint ventures:

 

Smithsonian Networks – a joint venture between Showtime Networks and the Smithsonian Institution.  Its programming celebrates the American experience with branded original content drawn largely from the assets of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum and research complex.  Smithsonian Channel™ features original documentaries, short-subject explorations and innovative and groundbreaking programs highlighting America’s historical, cultural and scientific heritage.  Smithsonian Channel™ brings the American experience home in high definition and is currently available to customers of DirecTV, Charter Communications, DISH Network, Verizon and RCN.  The venture will also have a Video On Demand offering and clips are currently available on its web site, www.smithsoniannetworks.com.

 

OurChart.com™- a social networking website featuring elements from the SHOWTIME hit series The L Word®.  Since its launch in January 2007, OurChart.com has exploded into one of the largest social network for lesbians on the web.  Traffic has grown steadily with the number of registered users on the site increasing by fifty percent in the last quarter with traffic peaking at 550,000 monthly visits.  OurChart.com boasts a valued 18-34 demographic majority that proves to be extremely engaged around the site.

 

As The L Word® heads into a sixth and final season, OurChart.com will serve as the continued home for this incredible community that has coalesced and congregated around the show.  The site offers users a place to engage and connect, as well as exclusive behind-the-scenes content and new, original programming with the same mandate for powerful, uplifting and representative storytelling that The L Word® defined at its debut. 

 

ProElite, Inc - Showtime Networks also has a stake in this mixed martial arts event promotion company.  CBS recently aired the first primetime network broadcast of EliteXC mixed martial arts to strong ratings.  Three additional broadcasts are planned.

 

The above clearly demonstrates why 2008 is a seminal year for SHOWTIME as the network continues to build upon its recipe for success that will leave viewers hungry for more.

Executives