SKY Renews BBC Worldwide Channels for Australia, New Zealand

SYDNEY: SKY and BBC Worldwide Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) have extended their channel-carriage partnership.

Through the new agreement, BBC UKTV, BBC Knowledge and BBC World News will remain part of SKY’s Basic package. BBC UKTV is the highest rating entertainment channel on the SKY platform. It has built on this success recently with a brand refresh, which saw a new on-air look and feel introduced. BBC Knowledge NZ is home to some of the biggest names in British factual programming, while BBC World News continues to bring the issues of the day to SKY viewers from a global perspective.

SKY CEO John Fellet said, “British storytelling resonates incredibly strongly with New Zealanders and our BBC channels have an amazing diversity of quality shows across every genre. These channels add enormous value to our Basic package which is evident by the hundreds of thousands of SKY customers who tune in every year.”

Jon Penn, the managing director of BBC Worldwide ANZ, added, “I’m delighted that we have extended our carriage deal with SKY, ensuring that fans of great British entertainment, engaging factual and impartial global news will have access to the BBC’s premium channels for many more years. Working in partnership with the team at SKY, we will continue to invest in our channels, bring our audiences more outstanding British content and offer a really compelling proposition to the New Zealand market.”

SKY’s head of affiliate channels, Maria Barlow-Cooper, commented, “These are much-loved channels offering an array of great content. BBC UKTV is renowned for its premium dramas such as gangster series Peaky Blinders as well as introducing local audiences to ground-breaking premiere shows such as SS-GB and the much-anticipated Top of the Lake 2, directed by New Zealand’s own Jane Campion. With a variety of lively chat shows, quirky comedies and big British events such as the Brit Awards and Last Night of the Proms, BBC UKTV is programmed specifically for our local viewers as a cracking celebration of the best in British entertainment.”

She continued, “Factual lovers are spoilt for choice on BBC Knowledge NZ whether their passion is natural history with Sir David Attenborough, science with Professor Brian Cox or just incredibly moving real life storytelling with Louis Theroux. And of course Kiwis have a huge appetite for keeping up with world events and the BBC World News service brings its own unique global perspective to our news bouquet.”