Sky News to shift focus to ‘premium’ content
Sky News is planning a seismic overhaul of its newsroom that will see the national broadcaster focus on “premium” paid-for content over its traditional linear news.
The channel’s executive chair unveiled the strategy – branded Sky News 2030 – in a speech to staff on Tuesday in an attempt to seek out new streams of revenue for the loss-making news outlet.
Rhodes told staff that Sky News’s revenue, which has hitherto been limited to sponsorships and advertising, had become “largely stagnant”, and consequently it needed to broaden its output to include more lucrative avenues like subscriptions and ticketed events.
The outlet’s 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 audiences will be charged.
The channel’s overhaul comes amid a sector shift away reach-oriented approach as its channel’s owner, Comcast, begins to think about the future of Sky News, having committed to guaranteeing the channel’s budget as a condition of its 2018 takeover of Sky.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Rhodes denied the move was a disguised attempt to cut costs, telling the newspaper it was instead “about being fit for the future”.
The media boss estimated that of Sky News’s current output, 30 per cent was what he categorised as ‘premium’, a proportion he wants to see rise to 70 per cent.
“Linear TV audiences and linear monetisation 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 to the FT follow the news that presenter Ian King, was stepping down from hosting the channel’s flagship business programme, Business Live and leaving the channel. That decision itself came shortly after the news outlet made the decision to move the programme’s filming from the City to its headquarters in Osterly, west London.
Sky News was contacted for comment.