Sky News to shift focus to ‘Premium’ content

Sky News is planning a seismic revision of his news room that will see the national broadcaster focus on “Premium” paid for content over its traditional linear news.

The channel’s executive chairman revealed the strategy-branded Sky News 2030-in a speech to the staff on Tuesday in an attempt to seek out new streams of revenue for the loss-making news output.

Rhodes told the staff that Sky News’s Revenue, which has so far been limited to sponsorships and advertising, had become “largely stagnant”, and consequently it was necessary to expand its output to include more lucrative roads such as subscription and ticket events.

Outlets 24-hour linear TV news channel would continue to run unaffected, Rhodes said, but its resources will now focus more on premium content for which the audience will be charged.

The channel’s overhaul comes in the middle of a sector’s shift away nat -oriented approach as its channel owner, Comcast, begins to think about the future of Sky NewsAfter committing to guarantee the channel’s budget as a condition of its acquisition of heaven 2018.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Rhodes denied that the move was a disguised attempt to reduce costs by telling the newspaper that it was instead “to be suitable for the future”.

The media manager estimated that 30 percent of Sky News was what he categorized as ‘Premium’, a proportion he wants to see rose to 70 percent.

“Linear TV audience and linear revenue generation are in a structural decline,” he said, adding that Sky News was not the first to make such a shift.

Rhodes’ speech and subsequent comments on FT follow the news that program manager Ian King stepped down from hosting the channel’s flagship business program, Business Live and leaving the channel. This decision in itself came shortly after the news site made the decision to move the program’s film from the city to its headquarters in Osterly, West London.

Sky News was contacted for comment.