Kristin Brzoznowski

LONDON: Sky is debuting a brand-new sports channel, Sky Sports Mix, bringing a range of sporting events to all its TV customers in the U.K. and Ireland at no extra cost.

LUXEMBOURG: Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland will be launching a new, free-to-air channel on June 4 called RTL Plus.

LONDON: Sky has created Sky VR Studio, a dedicated in-house production unit for virtual reality.

NEW YORK/ISTANBUL: A+E Networks will bring Lifetime to Turkey on April 26, marking its first free-to-air channel in the market.

LONDON: Endemol Shine UK has announced new senior roles within the digital and commercial division of its business.

STOCKHOLM: Matrix star Keanu Reeves has signed on to star in Viaplay's first-ever original series, Swedish Dicks.

LONDON: Sony Pictures Television (SPT) has taken a minority stake in the U.K. film and television production company Fable Pictures.

According to SNL Kagan, over the last two years Eastern Europe has remained an active pay-TV market from an M&A perspective, with high fragmentation in the cable sector leading to ongoing consolidation. There is high pay-TV penetration, the firm finds, which limits greenfield growth opportunities in cable, while intense competition among multiple DTH operators increases the need for competitive offers.

In the U.K., SVOD viewing on services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime accounted for 4 percent of total video consumption, up from 2.3 percent in 2014, according to new figures from Thinkbox. The average TV viewer in the U.K. watched a total of 3 hours, 51 minutes of TV a day in 2015, 1 percent less than in 2014 but 5 percent more than in 2005.

LUXEMBOURG: Net profit for 2015 was up 21 percent to 789 million euros ($865 million) at RTL Group, which posted revenues of 6.03 billion euros ($6.61 billion), up 3.8 percent.