STV boxsets available to Sky Q customers UK-wide

RNS Number : 0901J

STV Group PLC

18 December 2020

 

18 December 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hundreds of hours of STV boxsets now available to Sky Q customers across the UK

· New deal significantly expands the audience reach of STV content

· Sky Q customers set to gain hundreds of hours of box sets at no extra cost

STV and Sky have agreed a long-term deal to bring new drama, entertainment and documentary boxsets from STV to more Sky Q customers across the UK.

Since the two companies signed an agreement last year, Sky Q customers in Scotland have been enjoying content from STV. The partnership has now been extended, and Sky Q customers across the rest of the UK will now have access to hundreds of hours of STV boxsets, with even more to come later. Sky Q customers will find the new content in the Box Sets area of On Demand.

In addition, the STV Player will now be automatically installed on NOW TV devices, where the STV Player app will appear on users' home screens.

STV offers an ever increasing range of high quality multi-genre titles, including great US dramas like The Bridge and Gracepoint; Australian boxsets The Slap, Janet King and Devil's Dust, and Irish series Striking Out, and it will all be available alongside STVs entertainment and documentary series, plus all the other great content on Sky Q - all in one place.

The launch will also enable Sky Q customers across the UK to watch a range of STV's local programming and classic archive material.

Richard Williams, Managing Director of Digital at STV, said:   "This extension of our partnership with Sky, to include UK-wide devices and NOW TV, considerably broadens the availability of the STV content to millions of new homes. 2020 has been a year of significant growth for STV Player and we're delighted to now offer our impressive catalogue of content to viewers across all major platforms on a UK wide basis."

Elaine Thornton, Director of Partner Channels, Sky said: "We're proud to extend our partnership with STV to offer Sky Q customers hundreds more hours of drama, international hits, local programming and news at no additional cost.

"STV's great content will be available alongside unique stories from Sky Originals and the expansive range of content provided by our partners, from the BBC to HBO, through to Amazon Prime Video and Netflix - and it's all in one place on Sky Q."

STV has also secured a number of distribution deals with partners such as all3media International, DCD Rights, Fred Media, Broken Arrow and Inverleigh, regularly delivering new on-demand content for viewers free of charge.

ENDS

For more information, please contact:

STV: Kirstin Stevenson on 07803970106 or email [e-mail] .

Sky: Katie Hartnoll at [e-mail]  

NOTES TO EDITORS

STV

The STV Player app is available on web, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, Kindle tablets, Freeview Play, Apple TV, YouView, Samsung, Freesat, Fire TV, Virgin Media, Sky+, Sky Q and Sky Go, Roku, Now TV, and via Chromecast.

The STV Player is the exclusive home of the Channel 3 network schedule in Scotland and offers a wide variety of Player-only programming to viewers across the UK. 

www.stv.tv  

Stats on STV Player:

-  2020 has been a year of accelerated digital growth for STV Player with online viewing up 82% from January to October (VOD viewing +87%, live simulcast viewing +71%), compared with the same time period in 2019.*

-  2020 has seen STV Player launch UK-wide on Sky, Freeview Play, Virgin Media and YouView, meaning that it is now pre-installed in over 17 million broadband enabled homes in the UK, c.70% of the total.

* These figures are from January to October 2020 and compared with figures from the same time period in 2019. The source is Adobe Analytics / Freewheel.

About Sky

Sky is Europe's leading media and entertainment company and is proud to be part of the Comcast group. Across six countries, we connect our 24 million customers to the best entertainment, sports, news, arts and to our own award-winning original content.

Our technology, including the market leading Sky Q, connects people to everything they love - TV, music, games, online video, fitness and educational content, all in one place, easy. Our streaming service, NOW TV, brings viewers all the enjoyment of Sky with the flexibility of a contract-free service.

Building on the success of Sky Originals like Chernobyl, I Hate Suzie and Brassic, we are doubling our investment in original content by 2024 through Sky Studios. Sky News provides impartial and trustworthy journalism for free, while Sky Arts, the UK's only dedicated free-to-air arts channel, makes the arts accessible for everyone. Our new TV and movie studio, Sky Studios Elstree, is expected to create over 2,000 new jobs and generate an additional £3 billion of production investment in the UK over the first five years alone.

We believe that we can be a force for good in the communities in which we operate. We're committed to being Europe's first net zero carbon entertainment company by 2030. We take pride in our approach to diversity and inclusion: we've been recognised by The Times and Stonewall for our commitment to diversity and we've put in place a new programme to invest £30million across our markets over the next three years to tackle racial injustice.

 

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