As it continues to scale up its $3 billion media agency operation, MDC Partners has appointed agency veteran Dene Callas to the new role of managing director of Maxxcom Global Media, the Toronto-based holding company’s media oversight unit. Callas is the No. 2 executive at Maxxcom reporting to CEO Steve Farella. In her new role, Callas is responsible for building the group’s offering and resources. She will work with MDC agencies, including TargetCast, Media Kitchen and RJ Palmer as well as full-service shops like Crispin Porter + Bogusky, as they integrate the growing array of holding company media assets into …

New BBC director general George Entwistle used his first address to staff to announce the closure of the operations division and the departure of one of his rivals for the job, Caroline Thomson. Entwistle signalled a radical shakeup of the BBC structure put in place by his predecessor Mark Thompson, including the creation of BBC Vision, just six years ago.

The retail implications of mobile media go far beyond so-called “m-commerce” -- the instant conversion of a retail purchase via a mobile device -- but likely have even greater long-term effects for consumers and marketers alike, a top strategist at London-based mobile agency Somo Global said Tuesday during a presentation at OMMA Mobile Europe in London. In fact, that executive, Somo Chief Strategy Officer Ross Sleight, went to far as to assert: “I think in e-commerce, we have taken the fun out of shopping.”

Young adults in Europe are communicating with food brands in new ways – and expect an emotional connection through multiple online and offline media, according to director of innovation and insight at Mintel, David Jago. Jago said that a bulge around the 18-30 age group is emerging in the European market, with awareness growing among food manufacturers that this is generall a well-educated and well-connected demographic that requires a different marketing approach.  

Belarus authorities on Tuesday moved against international media ahead of a parliamentary election, detaining photographers attempting to record an anti-government demonstration. Uniformed police in the capital Minsk took into custody still photographers working for the English Reuters news agency and the US-headquartered Associated Press, as well as a television camera operator for the German channel ZDF, a statement from the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) said.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have won an injunction in a French court preventing the celebrity magazine Closer from publishing further paparazzi shots of the duchess sunbathing topless. Mondadori France, Closer's publishing company, will face a hefty fine if it publishes any more photographs or transmits them to any third party via email or any other means following Tuesday's judgment. A court in Nanterre, near Paris, opened a separate criminal investigation on Tuesday into charges that Closer and a photographer breached the privacy of Prince William and Catherine by publishing the topless photos.

Fears have deepened in Dublin that up to 100 jobs could be lost at the Irish Daily Star, with unions predicting the media owner Richard Desmond would stand by his threat to "close down" the joint venture over the Duchess of Cambridge pictures scandal.

Canada's cable TV sports networks are going to make more money by not showing NHL games this fall than if the NHL had started the season on time. To understand the inverse logic of the lockout and its victims, consider that an average regular season broadcast in Canada can have production costs of about $600,000; typical advertising revenue for that game comes in anywhere from $150,000 to $200,000 short of production costs.

A piece of history has been rescued from oblivion with the National Media Museum in Bradford, United Kingdom, revealing a restoration of the first known color motion picture. Shot as a test reel by British inventor Edward Raymond Turner, it was long thought to have been a practical failure until restored by the museum, which is showing the film to the public for the first time 110 years after its making.

The founders of Transfluent, a Finnish companywhich translates social media, websites and smartphone apps are about to relocate to New York. What's more, they've just picked up $1m in angel funding to set up that office, and have also opened an office in Singapore. The company has 15,000 freelancers working in 60 languages.