Discovery Buys Italy’s Switchover Media

ROME: Discovery Communications has purchased Switchover Media, which operates five networks in Italy.

Switchover operates four free-to-air channels and one pay-TV network. The assets are the children’s channels K2 and Frisbee, the male-skewed GXT, the scripted crime network Giallo and factual channel Focus. Discovery currently operates two free DTT stations in Italy, Real Time and DMAX, along with its flagship Discovery Channel and others. Through its acquisition, Discovery now manages six free-TV brands and six pay-TV brands in Italy. The combined business will be overseen by Marinella Soldi, the managing director of Discovery Italy and general manager for Southern Europe. Francesco Nespega, the founder of Switchover Media, will serve as a consultant and advisor.

"Italy is a leading market for Discovery and [the] key to our growth here over the last two years has been the development of a successful free-to-air TV business strategy as this platform has grown," said Dee Forbes, the president and managing director of Discovery Networks Western Europe. "The acquisition of Switchover Media adds further breadth and scale to that free-to-air strategy, as well as diversifying our portfolio to include scripted crime and children’s programming that have proven popular with audiences and advertisers."

"Over the past three years, I had the pleasure and honor of guiding an extraordinary team, which, with dedication and competence, succeeded in leveraging the new opportunities of the digital free-to-air platform," said Nespega. "I am confident that an international leader in the media segment, such as Discovery, with its contents and resources, will be able to further expand the potential of the channels we created and implemented."