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.”