History orders Vikings, a fictional historical drama that will tell the story about a band of Viking brothers and their families.

History (DStv 254) has ordered the TV channel's first drama series entitled Vikings about the legendary Norsemen of medieval times.

Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios will be producing the show for the History channel in America where it will start showing in 2013. That makes the likelihood big that Vikings will also be shown on History in South Africa which is a channel feed from Britain. Vikings could also go to MGM (TopTV 113) itself (although the channel only currently shows movies from its own MGM stable) or another broadcaster in South Africa, since MGM will be the distributor of Vikings outside of Ireland and Canada.

Vikings will be a historical drama, and will be filmed in Northern Ireland and other locations in Northern Europe similar to where the first seasons of the fantasy shows Camelot and Game of Thrones were filmed last year.

"People think they know about the Vikings – we see references to them all the time in our popular culture, from TV commercials to football teams – but the reality is so much more fascinating and complex, more vivid, visceral and powerful than popular legend," says Nancy Dubuc, History president and general manager in a press release.

''We will explore the mysteries of the Vikings, the adventures they took and the people who led them. And we will start to understand a past that is very much part of our collective DNA today."

Vikings will be a fictitious historical family drama, chronicling the exploits of historical figure Ragnar Lothbrok and his band of Viking brothers as Lothbrok rises to become king of the Viking tribes.

Vikings is an international Ireland-Canada co-production from World 2000 and Take 5 Productions. Vikings has been created and will be written by Michael Hearst whose other show indeed included Camelot.

SuperSport to go big with UEFA Euro 2012 in June; new seasons of Boer Soek 'n Vrou, Fortuinsoekers and Getroud met Rugby on kykNET.

Last month I was told that for 2012 the Afrikaans entertainment channel kykNET (DStv 111) is prepping a new season of the reality show Boer Soek 'n Vrou, the chase race Fortuinsoekers will be back this year for a second season as well and the Afrikaans drama series about a fictional rugby team Getroud met Rugby will also see yet another season on kykNET.

SuperSport will have the 2012 London Olympics as I already broke the news in December last year and SuperSport is planning mega coverage of the UEFA Euro 2012 in June.

Programming note: New science fiction drama Alphas coming to The Universal Channel from Sunday 25 March at 20:00.

A new science fiction drama, Alphas will start on The Universal Channel (DStv 108) Sunday at 20:00 for a first season of 11 episodes.

Like Heroes before it, Alphas revolve around a group of people who have special abilities - subtle ''superpowers'' who are recruited and work for the Defense Criminal Investigation Service helping to solve crimes and battle a group of equally extraordinary criminals.

The ''alphas'' who look for others with special abilities, are led by the psychiatrist dr Lee Rosen.

Bill Harken is a hyperadrenal Alpha. He can summon amazing strength thanks to a rush of adrenalin. Cameron Hicks has hyperkinesis. Thanks to minute muscle control he has flawless aim and perfect balance. Nina Theroux can influence people's thoughts and make them vulnerable to suggestion. Gary Bell is a ''transducer'' - his neural synapses have the ability to ''read'' and see a wide range of frequencies such as all TV signals, radio and even cellphones. Rachel Pizad is a ''synesthete''. She can enhance one sense by temporarily switching off all of the others.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. M-Net again trying to make The Wild more popular as it returns to Mzansi Magic for a second time in April.

M-Net is making yet another attempt at making its soap The Wild more popular with the soap which will ''reboot'' with a rebroadcast right from the beginning on Mzansi Magic (DStv 107) from Monday 2 April at 20:00 more than a year after it started on M-Net (DStv 101).

Last year M-Net started simulcasting The Wild on Mzansi Magic after a few months, making The Wild available for a wider audience since the timeslot fell inside Mzansi Magic's open time unencoded timeslot on the DStv Compact bouquet. The just as unannounced as it began, The Wild again was yanked from the Mzansi Magic schedule.

A few months ago I asked M-Net why The Wild was suddenly missing from Mzansi Magic. I was asked to please wait for an answer which never came. But I suspected the show has gone away to come back for a pairing with the new telenovela Inkaba.

Now suddenly The Wild will be back and I was right. What I didn't anticipate is that The Wild would be restarting from the beginning instead of current same day episodes as seen on M-Net. It means that the viewership won't be able to be tallied together like before to give The Wild a bigger combined viewership number since it will be different episodes seen daily on both channels.

''We have seen the show gain a loyal and substantial audience during its run on M-Net and are excited that DStv Compact subscribers can now also have access to this phenomenal production,'' says Lebone Maema, Mzansi Magic's channel head.

RENEWED. The Amazing Race, The Good Wife, NCIS, The Mentalist and 10 other shows renewed for further seasons.

Several American TV shows seen in South Africa just got early renewal notices from the CBS network in America on which it's shown.

South African TV viewers will see further seasons of The Amazing Race (Sony Entertainment Television, SABC3), NCIS (The Universal Channel, SABC2), NCIS: Los Angeles (M-Net), The Good Wife (M-Net), Criminal Minds (M-Net Series), CSI (M-Net, SABC3), Blue Bloods (M-Net), Hawaii Five-O (M-Net), Mike & Molly (M-Net), How I Met Your Mother (e.tv), The Mentalist (M-Net, The Universal Channel), Person of Interest (M-Net Series) and The Big Bang Theory (M-Net).

Two and a Half Men (M-Net, SABC3) has not yet been renewed.

BREAKING. The Africa Movie Channel (AMC) and NHK World TV to be added to TopTV's bouquet as the 2 new replacement TV channels.

TopTV which has seen its normal bouquet offering steadily shrinking since November 2011 when various channels started to cease broadcasting is replacing Hi Nolly with the African Movie Channel (AMC) and Current TV with NHK World TV, a Japanese English language news channel.

NHK World TV which will replace Current TV as channel 406 on TopTV and AMC which will replace Hi Nolly on channel 120 will restore TopTV's number of channels to what it was by November 2011.

NHK World TV will start on channel 406 this weekend after Current TV went off the air this past weekend. [See the updated note below - apparently the channel is starting today.]

The African Movie Channel will start on TopTV before the end of March.

Pay TV operators elsewhere in Africa such as Vuku also replaced Hi Nolly with the Africa Movie Channel in February already.

NHK World TV is one of Japan's 24 hour news channels in English broadcasting from Tokyo in Japan with 31 news bureaux worldwide.

AMC focuses on African movies with a predominant Nollywood flavour, similar to what the defunct Hi Nolly showed.

TopTVdidn't respond to an enquiry made earlier this week regarding AMC and the channels' addition and has not yet issued any press statement about the replacement channels.

UPDATE Friday 16 March 16:26 - I just got a press release from TopTV saying:
''TopTV is pleased to announce that it has signed up two new channels, one of which was launched this afternoon (16 March) and the other which will start broadcasting on its pay TV platform before the end of this month.''

The rest of the information is exactly as I had it above. About the African Movie Channel TopTV says ''while the launch date for AMC on channel 120 on TopTV is still to be confirmed, the pay TV operator is very excited to be bringing this top-class African movie channel to its current and future subscribers.'' TopTV confirms that it will be happening before the end of March.

BREAKING. M-Net gets Revenge as the pay TV broadcaster grabs the hot new drama show set in the wealthy Hamptons.

You're reading it here first.

I can exclusively break the news that M-Net has grabbed another hot new TV show, Revenge, and I can exclusively spill that the hot new drama with Emily VanCamp will be shown on the M-Net channel (DStv 101) which also means a HD version on M-Net HD (DStv 170).

Although M-Net has not yet scheduled the show, the pay TV broadcaster has acquired the broadcasting rights of this brilliant new show.

I've seen the first half of the first season of the brilliant Revenge, which I can only describe as ''Gossip Girl in the Hamptons''. The show has an amazing degree of surprising plotting which will keep viewers begging for the next episode to see how the events keep unfolding in eye-popping pre-plotting.

In Revenge a girl called Emily Thorne (she used to have another name before) moves to the wealthy American seaside community of the Hamptons. Something terrible - a great injustice - happened when she was a little girl. Through excellent plotting and brilliant scheming she starts to get revenge on all of the people who wronged her father and through sending him to jail, also wronged her.

One by one she plots their downfall as an overall murder mystery will keep viewers guessing. A nemesis or two also shows up who start to interfere in her carefully crafted plans and threaten to derail everything she's crafted over years.

SABC3 soap Isidingo gets on-screen subtitels to help deaf viewers as Dtv continues on Sundays.

SABC3's soap Isidingo (weekdays, 19:30) now comes with subtitles since Wednesday evening to help deaf viewers.

''The deaf community is very important to the SABC and to the channel in particular and so it gives us real pleasure in being able to provide subtitling on Isidingo from this week on,'' says Ed Worster, SABC3's acting channel head.

''Our hope is that it will enhance the viewing pleasure of the community and grant them full access to South Africa's most popular soap.''

SABC3 has been broadcasting Dtv - a special programming block for deaf viewers since 1996 which currently has a Sunday morning at 11:30 timeslot on SABC3 and is presented by Candice Morgan.

Biola Alabi, M-Net Africa managing director chosen as one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders.

Biola Alabi, M-Net Africa managing director, has been chosen as one of the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Young Global Leaders (YGL) for 2012.

The WEF has chosen 192 leaders from 59 countries of which 18 are from sub-Saharan Africa.

Biola Alabi joined M-Net just over 3 years ago to help drive the increase of M-Net's African programming on MultiChoice's DStv platform, such as the now expanding Africa Magic channels. In 2010 she was a member of the WEF's Global Agenda Council on the future of entertainment.

''M-Net is very proud of her achievement which she's earned through her commitment to Africa, her passion for making a difference and her ongoing dedication to those around her,'' says M-Net CEO Patricia van Rooyen in a statement. ''She is an example to others that you can be a business person with compassion, a leader with insight, and most of all, a woman with vision.''