Lifetime to launch internationally this year

Female-skewed cable network Lifetime will roll out internationally this year, channel owner AETN International has told Informa Telecoms & Media.

The international debut of Lifetime means two major US cable networks targeting women are launching this year – Discovery announced last month that TLC will have an extensive roll out outside the US and be in 100 million homes by early 2011.

“It’s coming,” Sean Cohan, senior vice-president of international at AETN told Informa Telecoms & Media when asked about Lifetime launches. “We’re going to come to market with a pretty rich content offering. There will be programme sales and we will also offer the channel in the near future. Some markets are super-served for this type of content and we will focus on the markets where that isn’t the case.”

AETN announced a deal to take control of Lifetime in August 2009 and CEO Andrea Wong has since left the channel.