ITV debuts pay TV drama channel

UK broadcaster ITV will launch a new pay TV channel that will be dedicated to showing “the best of British drama.”

ITV Encore, which will be the firm’s first new channel in eight years, will host some of the broadcaster’s most successful drama series including Vera and Lucan and from 2015 will also screen original commissions.

It will be available on BSkyB’s pay TV platform in the UK as part of a wider four-year partnership with the firm that will see ITV content made available through its on-demand services including Sky+ HD and Sky Store and the firm’s pay-as-you-go channel Now TV. Viewers will also be able to watch the channel on mobile devices via its Sky Go service.

Adam Crozier, ITV CEO, said Encore’s launch came on the back of the company’s “brilliant dramas” shown during 2013, which had helped the firm to increase its audience reach.

It’s part of Crozier’s strategy to reduce the company’s reliance on free-to-air advertising and builds on a relationship with Sky which has seen HD versions of ITV2, ITV3, and ITV4 available to subscribers – a deal that has also been renewed today.

He added: “The time is absolutely right to build on our successful partnership with Sky with the launch of ITV Encore, which will be an important part of ITV’s family of channels, and will complement ITV3, home to our long-running, classic drama series.”

Sky’s CEO, Jeremy Darroch, said the deal was “a positive way for us to work with ITV in a broad, mutually beneficial partnership.”