BREAKING. Zone Reality and other Chello Zone TV channels seen in South Africa changing names; getting reprogrammed by CBS.

TV channels such as Zone Reality (DStv 125) and others seen in South Africa are most likely going to change their names and appearance, and will be getting reprogrammed entirely for South African viewers and others after CBS Studios International and Chellomedia which runs these channels have reached an agreement whereby CBS gets a 30% stake in the channels in return for TV programming from its studios as well as its name.

Zone Reality will for instance basically be rebranded - or in effect be folded into - CBS Reality. Chellomedia's international broadcaster arm Chello Zone runs channels such as Zone Reality in South Africa as well as in the rest of Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

CBS Studios International and Chellomedia will roll out and launch - and in some cases rebrand - CBS Drama, CBS Action and CBS Reality throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. These channels will have a collective footprint of 43 million subscribers. Chello Zone will form a new executive board comprising representatives from both companies.

Some of the Chello Zone channels will be renamed CBS Reality, CBS Action and CBS Drama and will be stocked with programming from CBS' TV library. CBS and Chello Zone already ran similar channels in the United Kingdom with great success. "This new partnership expands on a successful United Kingdom venture for CBS-branded channels that the companies launched in November 2009," CBS just said in a press statement.

"This is another terrific international business opportunity using CBS' wealth of content and globally recognised brand for equity in an exciting growth venture," says Armando Nunez, CBS Studios International president. "It opens yet another new international distribution outlet for our vast programming library, provides another way to monetize our content and complements our strong ongoing licensing of programming around the world."

"Chellomedia continues to be highly focused on building and growing the portfolio of TV channels internationally; it is very much part of our strategy to work with the best brands in entertainment," says Chellomedia's new CEO Niall Curran. "We are committed to delivering growth, subscribers and performance for this partnership".

I'm working on establishing exactly what channels are affected by this new partnership investment and how and what channels it will be affecting across MultiChoice's DStv and On Digital Media's (ODM) TopTV.

MultiChoice says that the pay TV platform has "no plans to add any further CBS channels onto the DStv platform or to make changes to the existing channels".