Sky Boosts Arts Programming Across Europe

LONDON: Sky has planned a major initiative centered on arts programming for its customers across Italy, Germany, Austria, Ireland and the U.K., including the creation of a brand-new production hub.

The new initiative will be anchored by the launch of the Sky Arts Production Hub, a commissioning and production center based in Milan, dedicated to creating arts programming for Sky customers across Europe. The Sky Arts Production Hub will focus on producing pan-European events, alongside a wide slate of arts programming for customers across all Sky territories in addition to content commissioned locally. As its inaugural pan-European arts event, Sky will launch Sky Arts Photographer of the Year in 2016, a competition to find the best amateur photographer in Europe.

Sky Arts in the U.K. and Ireland will undergo a major relaunch, offering customers an on-demand catalogue of arts programming with more than 1,000 hours of content available at launch, including programs commissioned and acquired exclusively for on-demand viewing. In addition, the Sky Arts 1 and Sky Arts 2 channels will merge to create a single "superchannel," with a 10 percent increase in its programming investment. The new Sky Arts will launch on June 9. On the back of the launch of Sky Arte in Italy at the end of 2012, Sky Arts will also be coming to Germany and Austria.

Jeremy Darroch, the group chief executive at Sky, said: “Bringing the three Sky businesses together has opened up the opportunity to create new and exciting content on a greater scale. As an international company, we can raise our ambition and make a bigger impact for millions of customers across Europe. Today’s announcement represents a major new commitment which will bring customers high-quality and distinctive content covering the full breadth of the arts. It builds on Sky’s position as Europe’s leading entertainment company and underlines our ambition to invest at scale in even more of our own original content.”