What next for Sky News? Commercial director Cathryn Adams on Sleeping Giants, talent changes and growing audiences
Whether it’s drawing ire for Sky News After Dark or topping the subscription TV ratings with Paul Murray, Sky News is almost always in the headlines. Mumbrella’s Hannah Blackiston speaks with commercial director Cathryn Adams about the Sleeping Giants’ campaign against the channel, its newest talent acquisitions and whether Sky News Business will return.
There have been plenty of big announcements out of Sky News over the past few weeks. Some of them good, like the addition of Peter Stefanovic to the lineup, an assortment of new programs and some big commercial partners – and some of them bad, like the loss of political editor David Speers to the ABC and the closure of its joint venture with Nine, Your Money.
But coming off the back of a successful Q1, commercial director Cathryn Adams is confident the channel is in the best position to jump into the latter half of 2019, bolstered by strong audience growth, the addition of new talent and some unconventional programming choices.
The Business of Sport
One of the new programs Sky News is bringing in for the latter half of 2019 is The Business of Sport, a show which looks at the technical and commercial side of the sporting industry. Tim Gilbert, ex-Today Show sports reporter and current Racing Dreams host, will be co-hosting alongside ex-Nine reporter and survivor of Jacketgate, Julie Snook.
I guess I’m just a whinger as try really hard to avoid companies that advertise on sky. It’s usually easy as they have a lot of really low rent advertisers.
Aussie Fox News…
Don’t be fooled, Sky is quite concerned with the Sleeping Giants threat. The amount of time they spend following the campaign’s social media presence is incredible. The company will tell you behind closed doors that those brands which have pulled funding are only contributing small amounts. Modest or not, every dollar counts, and when News Corp is bailing out Foxtel’s losses, you know this hurts their outwardly confident egos.