Sky to Up Investment in Home-Grown Content

LONDON: Over the next three years, BSkyB intends to increase its annual commitment to British content by more than 50 percent to £600 million, chief executive Jeremy Darroch said in a speech yesterday.

Speaking at an event organized by the think tank Reform, Darroch reaffirmed Sky’s commitment to the U.K.’s creative community across the drama, comedy, factual, entertainment and the arts genres. With a current annual spend of £380 million a year on the origination and production of British programming, Sky is already one of the largest investors in British content. The promise to up investment to £600 million annually comes on the heels of home-grown successes such as Mad Dogs, Thorne, Flying Monsters 3D, Little Crackers and Lucrezia Borgia. The plans call for 300 percent more original drama in the next three years, plus increases in original comedy and arts programming.

“We are still a young company and we have ambitions to do a lot more and widen our contribution still further," Darroch said in his address. "When Sky began, it made perfect sense for us to focus first on areas which were then relatively under-served, sport, movies and 24-hour news in particular. As the business has grown and become successful, it has given us both the opportunity and the incentive to broaden out and create more choice beyond those initial strengths.”

He continued, “Home-grown content resonates strongly and we believe we can both bring more quality and value to existing customers, while also reaching out to more people who haven’t yet chosen pay TV. Our plans will take our original entertainment to an entirely different scale, complementing our existing strengths in sport, movies and news. They will mean working with the best production, writing and acting talent and will require focus and creative ambition as well as sustained financial investment.”

Darroch went on to note, "This is a significant undertaking for us and a demonstration of our commitment to the U.K. Programming like this is inherently risky and time-consuming. But if we get it right, the results won’t just be good for our business, but for customers and Britain’s creative industries as well.”

Sky is currently working with more than 100 independent production companies.