Sky CEO Dana Strong jumped on a late-morning call to answer a barrage of questions from the British media on Monday following the landmark news that the Comcast-owned company will acquire ITV’s networks and streaming businesses in a £1.6 billion ($2.13 billion) deal.
Strong was joined by Sky’s group chief operating officer Nick Herm and Cécile Frot-Coutaz, chief advertising and content officer and CEO of Sky Studios, for a moderated Q&A that kicked off with questions on government approval and clarity on the future of ITV News. Closing on the deal, they said, is expected to take approximately a year.
“We are very excited for a big day for Sky and ITV, coming together to create a U.K.-focused national streaming champion,” began Strong. “We think this is very compelling logic, bringing these two iconic and complementary brands together, creating a streaming service leveraging NBC’s global streaming platform, Peacock, and ITV — 40 million viewers per month, 16 million monthly active users on ITVX, to create a scaled operator in the U.K.”
She has grounds to be enthusiastic: A combined Comcast-owned Sky and ITV would create a formidable British media group — the U.K.’s dominant commercial free-to-air broadcaster paired with its largest pay-TV operator. Under the proposed structure, Sky would acquire ITV’s networks and streaming businesses — including the ITV channel portfolio and ITVX — while ITV Studios, the production arm behind franchises such as Love Island, Britain’s Got Talent and Netflix hit Fool Me Once, would be spun off as a standalone listed company. The merged operation would sit alongside Comcast’s NBCUniversal assets, bringing together ITV’s mass-reach advertising business, public-service broadcasting obligations and sports rights with Sky’s subscription TV, streaming, broadband and mobile operations.
