New Acquisitions for UKTV’s Yesterday

LONDON: UKTV’s recently rebranded factual channel Yesterday has picked 32 hours of content for rollout in the coming months, including The Seven Ages of Rock and Cambridge Spies.

The channel was rebranded as Yesterday earlier this month to broaden the programming slate beyond traditional historical content into living history and historical drama. Yesterday’s channel head, Richard Kingsbury, said of the new purchases: “This roster of quality acquisitions exemplifies our desire to make the past feel more immediate and more personal for Yesterday viewers by putting a renewed emphasis on living history and popular culture.”

UKTV’s acquisitions executive, Emma Sparks, added:  “While ‘serious’ history is still a core genre for Yesterday, we’re now in the market more historical dramas and dramatizations of historic events, as well as classic TV moments and shows that are now cultural history in their own right.”

The acquisitions include the one-hour Glencoe Massacre from RDF, the 26×30-minute International Terrorism from BBC Worldwide, the music-themed You Must Remember This, the five-part dramatization Cambridge Spies and the BBC-VH1 co-pro Seven Ages of Rock. Also acquired was the BBC, Discovery and ZDF co-production Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire.