UKTV Split terms agreed

I doubt quest red and really will merge. Both do rather well.

They’ll hardly close down overnight channels that are presumably making the majority share of UKTV’s reported c. £90m in profits to gamble it all away on a subscription service that currently has zero customers? I’d imagine the linear channels will run on alongside Britbox for a few years, at least until the point that they are no longer profitable.

Britbox may be difficult to offer in Ireland because of ITV Studios’ comprehensive programme supply deal with Virgin Media effectively prohibits them from entering the market. UKTV faces no such constraints and is currently selling separate Irish advertising on Gold, Dave, Drama, W, Ailbi, and Really.

If you read the Guardian article, Discovery's acquisitions have an ongoing sales contract with Channel 4 for which they've agreed to continue using them for now, so I doubt they'll be any rebranding or merging of channels from the existing portfolio just yet. (Discovery's sales contract is with Sky).

Two of the three UKTV channels have Freeview slots, so that may have been a factor in the part of the deal.

BBC Studios have the best of the business though, keeping big hitters such as Gold and Dave, while maintaining Eden which uses a lot of the BBC natural history archive, so they keep control of the copy within the UK and Ireland at least, while licensing it to Discovery elsewhere.

Yesterday is the surprising one to stay though. This is a channel that could easily merge with Discovery History which would give the channel a full factual focus instead of the current messy schedule of classic BBC sitcoms and documentaries.

I think it's now safe to say that Britbox UK will use UKTV Player's infrastructure as the backbone.

Bit surprised about that.

Would have expected the BBC to retain Really, and Discovery to have got either Yesterday (which is also on Freeview) or Eden.

Out of interest (though I realise this is a touch off-topic) do the Discovery channels still insist on cropping 4:3 material to 14:9?

Not so much a split then but more the BBC taking back control of UKTV and offloading a couple of the lesser channels. Wouldn't be surprised to see another partner come into UKTV at some point in the future.

BBCS want them all for themselves now, the market's changed, the bigger the company the more chances you'll survive the changing landscape. Hence why there's been a lot of media mergers.

Seems this is just a footnote in a deal with Discovery for them to have the BBC natural history content on their new streaming service outside of the UK and China.

I’m going to sound stupid... I’m going to sound stupid... I’m going to sound stupid...

Could they possibly bring BBC Three back to TV this way? Sounds unrealistic but I’m thinking about how BBC Choice came to be. They now have a couple of freeview channels up their sleeve and this might be a cheaper way of going about it?

I sounded stupid... didn’t I.

UKTV is operated by BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the BBC, which is completely separate to the BBC branded channels.

Ah thank you, it’s been a long day

BBC Studios and BBC (the public service broadcaster)'s operations are separate from each other.