Has Sky played it safe on commissions on par with terrestrial broadcasters?
90s fan
Posts: 204 Forum Member
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I've noted under Stuart Murphy, the Sky entertainment channels apart of Sky Arts seems to have play it safe by just commissioning comedies and lightweight factual series. Its good fit for the likes for Sky 1, Living and Atlantic if nothing but just to tightly focus to two genres it lacks the variety.
They don't revive classics much on Sky anymore such as Gladiators, even they don't commission rubbish similar to what BBC and ITV chum out. What happened to the likes of Dream Team and others discounting the risqué holiday shows they had in the late 90s.
This could be the interest on the Sky's commission website https://corporate.sky.com/about-sky/other-information/commissioning-and-ideas-submission/commissioning
I know many people can't afford Sky but there should be a 50:50 balance of variety of original programming and quality US imports, it may convince people to subscribe to Sky in the way they done for sports.
With new Sky Europe group having just formed, there needs to be new blood in Sky entertainment channels, dropping Living and Atlantic brands and going back to Sky 1/2/3 set up would be the start.
They don't revive classics much on Sky anymore such as Gladiators, even they don't commission rubbish similar to what BBC and ITV chum out. What happened to the likes of Dream Team and others discounting the risqué holiday shows they had in the late 90s.
This could be the interest on the Sky's commission website https://corporate.sky.com/about-sky/other-information/commissioning-and-ideas-submission/commissioning
I know many people can't afford Sky but there should be a 50:50 balance of variety of original programming and quality US imports, it may convince people to subscribe to Sky in the way they done for sports.
With new Sky Europe group having just formed, there needs to be new blood in Sky entertainment channels, dropping Living and Atlantic brands and going back to Sky 1/2/3 set up would be the start.
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Aye it's telling that Atlantic came about when (from memory) it looked possible that the regulator would step in over the Sky 1 deal on VM, after Sky refused to sign a new deal on reasonable terms and pulled it for a year.
From memory Sky argued at the time that the UKgold channels were worth less than their previous deal despite the viewing figures going up, then when it came time for the Sky one carriage deal to be renewed Sky claimed it was worth more despite losing viewers.
IIRC whilst S1 was off VM they were also putting some premiership matches on it...
So yes it appears that Atlantic is/was basically a way to allow the Sky 1 carriage deal to go ahead (and put off possible intervention over it's loss/bad faith negotiating), but without allowing the actual content to go back onto the other services.
Why would Sky drop Atlantic, they already have Sky Atlantic channels in Italy & Germany.
What a truly bizarre thing to say after several years of Sky original drama productions, and with the latest - Fortitude (see http://www.sky.com/tv/show/fortitude) just about to start.
You may also find this interview interesting - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/opinion/anne-mensah-why-skys-drama-supremo-worries-about-her-customers-not-her-viewers-9986531.html - pay particular attention to where it mentions "one of the biggest drama budgets in UK television".
Oh, they focus on drama tightly as well.
AMC, Starz, Showtime etc. wouldn't be pleased with that!!
They'd probably have to pay to licence the HBO name, and the idea was that HBO was a starting point, it would become a home for excellent premium drama from the US and UK commissions. I'm not sure it's gone quite as well as Sky would have hoped though...
Sky were also reportedly looking at a similar all output deal with Showtime, but Showtime buys in a lot of content (including it's biggest series Homeland) as well, which would have made the deal pointless.