00:00We have some breaking news to bring you, and that is one of the biggest ever British media deals of
00:06all time, really.
00:07Sky, our parent company, of course, is buying ITV's television and streaming channels,
00:12referred to as their media and entertainment business, not their production company, not ITV's studio.
00:18So let's just run through some of these details that are just crossing as we speak.
00:22The price tag for this is £1.6 billion in total.
00:26That's actually with slightly less cash up front than some people might have been expecting.
00:31It's £1.2 billion of cash up front, a further £200,000 based on performance over the next couple of
00:38years,
00:38and £200,000 is accounted for by Love Productions, a Sky asset moving across to ITV Studios,
00:46the part of ITV that Sky isn't buying.
00:49A few other things that just jump out on this.
00:51So they are committing Sky, our parent company, to all of ITV's public service broadcaster commitments
01:00that are currently being committed to, and that does extend to 2034.
01:05That will mean that regional and national news continues via ITN.
01:09Now, the deal with ITN was a five-year deal, so it doesn't go as late as 2034,
01:14but it seems that on those news commitments and other public service broadcaster commitments,
01:19they're not going away any time soon.
01:22They'll have distinct editorial identities, ITV News and Sky News, again, for at least five years,
01:29possibly till 2034.
01:30We need to get to the bottom of that.
01:32They're saying more free-to-air sport than ever before.
01:35Clearly, at the moment, Sky has a lot of sports rights.
01:37It will now have a free-to-air channel where it can put some of those things,
01:43and it does point to £200 million in annual cost synergies going forward.
01:49Now, they're pointing that towards in marketing, in tech, and in non-UK content
01:54that they can now acquire together.
01:55They're not pointing to headcount reductions, to job cuts,
02:00but clearly that will be an area to focus on where there presumably will be some rationalisation
02:06of headcount going forward.
02:08So, from a viewer's perspective, nothing that...
02:12Or what's going to change if anything?
02:15I think the big point is this deal has been mooted for a very long time.
02:19It's now been confirmed.
02:20So, in that sense, there's no big surprise other than the fact that it has now got over the line.
02:26From a viewer's perspective, this is historic because this is one of the public service broadcasters
02:32changing hands, changing hands to a U.K. company in Sky,
02:36but a U.K. company that is owned by a U.S. company, Comcast, NBCUniversal.
02:42And, you know, rewind the clock 10, 20 years, 30 years, even three years,
02:46that would have been thought of as unthinkable.
02:49And certainly something when Rupert Murdoch used to own Sky that they wanted to do at some point.
02:55It was never going to happen.
02:55Now, two big reasons for that was there were some questions over them individually,
03:00but much more so there was a question of, you know, concentration in media,
03:05which today Sky and ITV will think won't be a problem going forward.
03:10They hope won't be a problem because it's not just the simple TV stations anymore.
03:15There's YouTube, there's Netflix, there's X, there's all these types of things.
03:18This will now have to go through an approval process.
03:20It'll have to be approved by the Competition Markets Authority, by Ofcom.
03:23The government can get involved if they disagree with it.
03:26So this won't be completing today by any stretch of the imaginations,
03:30but the very fact they think it's worth going ahead with this,
03:32they think it will get done because we live in a completely different media environment these days.
03:36Thank you very much.
03:37Thank you.
Commentaires