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euro news1112v3_news 10/12/2015 18:20 Page 2 “We have gone from having just three drama teams five years ago to 15.” ITV’s Crozier: ‘Content at heart of our strategy’ A dam Crozier, CEO of UK commercial broadcaster ITV, says he went against the recommendations of shareholders upon joining the company five years ago to get rid of the rump of the content side of the business and focus on the UK broadcaster. “Even then, you could see just how important creating your own content was to become with all the changes that were taking place,” he told delegates during a Media Mastermind Keynote at MIPCOM. “We decided to put content at the heart of that strategy. Our media strategy was quite simple: make great content, make it famous on our channels and then sell it around the world.” He noted that ITV was now the biggest independent producer of nonscripted programmes in the US and the third biggest distributor in Europe. “We have gone from having just three drama teams five years ago to 15.” He defended traditional TV against suggestions it was in decline. “Channel brands are not dead and the 30-second ad is still vitally important. TV is the most powerful medium in the world. The Internet would love to have what we have.” He suggested that television viewing was “vastly under-measured” at the moment but felt that this would be addressed by ensuring that measurement across a range of different platforms was possible. He said that the desire for great content would never go away. “And that’s why it doesn’t matter whether you started life as a telephony company, a broadband company, an Internet company, a media company, the key differentiator for the future, whatever your set of pipes, will be what you have on those pipes, in other words, content.” Fox plans full control of Sky … eventually James Murdoch, chief executive of 21st Century Fox, has revealed that the company intends to take full control of Sky, four years after it was forced to drop its plans to acquire BSkyB in the wake of a phone hacking scandal which embroiled News Corporation. In a detailed interview in the Hollywood Reporter (together with brother Lachlan) Murdoch noted that following the acquisition by BSkyB of its German and “The company is moving at a very fast pace and has grown in value enormously.” 8 EUROMEDIA Italian counterparts and the separation of News Corporation’s print and TV assets, Fox has 40% of an unconsolidated asset. “The Sky businesses, we’ve only just brought them all together into one big European platform. That integration is going really well. The company is moving at a very fast pace and has grown in value enormously. We’ve also been clear that over time, having 40 per cent of an unconsolidated asset is not an end state that is natural for us. Right now, we’re 100 per cent focused on supporting the company to get this integration going and get it done for the business to move forward, so there are no plans on the agenda right now,” he suggested. “We believed that the proposed acquisition of BSkyB by News Corporation would benefit both companies, but it has become clear that it is too difficult to progress in this climate,” said then News Corp deputy chairman and president Chase Carey in a statement on July 13 2011. “News Corporation remains a committed long-term shareholder in BSkyB. We are proud of the success it has achieved and our contribution to it.” Following News Corp’s announcement, BSkyB chief executive Jeremy Darroch (now CEO of Sky plc) said: “We remain very confident in the broadly based growth opportunity for BSkyB.”