Sky’s Director of Entertainment Channels Steps Down

LONDON: Stuart Murphy, Sky’s director of entertainment channels, has announced his departure from the role in order to pursue other creative opportunities.

Murphy has been with Sky for six and a half years. During that time, he has overseen the expansion of the Sky entertainment channels, Sky 1, Sky Atlantic, Sky Arts and Sky Living. He also developed the team responsible for multi-award-winning content, from A League of Their Own, An Idiot Abroad, David Attenborough’s Natural History Museum Alive and Fortitude to the upcoming Fungus the Bogeyman.

Gary Davey, the managing director of content at Sky, commented: “Stuart has played an important part in the growth of Sky’s content over the past six years. I’d like to thank him for his creative leadership and everything he has done to build Sky’s entertainment channels. He’s been responsible for brilliant dramas from The Enfield Haunting to You, Me and the Apocalypse and standout comedies, including Moone Boy and Stella. He has developed compelling channel brands which our customers value and commissioned content they love. He leaves behind a strong and well-respected commissioning team who will take our content to even greater heights and we look forward to working with him in the future.”

Murphy added: “My sadness at leaving a company I love is tempered by my immense pride in what we have achieved together. Sky is a company in rude health, bursting with ideas, creativity, and sheer fun and I leave the department in the hands of colleagues I love and admire. For 14 of the past 17 years I have been running TV channels, including a fantastic six and a half years with Sky. TV has been a huge part of my life but with our entertainment in great shape now feels the ideal time to have a think about what else I want to do. 

“I’m delighted to have signed a production commitment with Sky Vision to write and develop comedy and drama projects, as this has been a private passion of mine for years, but I’m also very excited about exploring opportunities outside of TV.

“I'm hugely grateful to Sky for the incredible opportunities they have given me and feel privileged to have run a team responsible for buying and commissioning some of the world’s best shows—from Modern Family to Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, and An Idiot Abroad to The Last Panthers. There are very few jobs that have such an amazing range, where one has the joy of working with such relentlessly curious people, and I have never taken any of that for granted. There are many people I would like to thank, but specifically I owe a lot to Jeremy Darroch, Andrew Griffith, Sophie Turner Laing, Gary Davey and Alice Bartley, all of whom have been a pleasure to work with. I’d like to thank everyone for a very special chapter in my life.”