LONDON: Hit shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Riviera” helped Sky deliver a 10 percent rise in first-half earnings, underscoring the appeal of the European pay-TV group to the US media companies trying to buy it.
Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox was provisionally blocked this week from buying the shares in Sky it does not already own, although there are options that would allow the $15.7 billion deal to do through.
Sky, whose customer base rose by 365,000 in the half to 22.9 million, could then be sold to Disney if a separate sale of Murdoch’s TV and film assets receives the green light.
The British broadcaster reported revenue of £6.7 billion (SR35.52 billion) for the six months to the end of December, up 5 percent year-on-year and in line with the first quarter, while core earnings rose to £1.1 billion.
“This performance reflects the investment choices we have made in recent years, allowing us to more than offset the pressure on consumer spending across Europe, as more customers continue to choose Sky for more of their services,” Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch said.
The satellite-company, which operates in Italy, Germany and Austria as well as Britain and Ireland, said it would pay an interim dividend of 13.06 pence a share, on top of a special dividend of 10 pence, which UBS analysts said was a positive surprise.
Darroch said the company’s investment in original programming, such as dramas “Riviera” and “Tin Star,” drove viewing figures for Sky’s own channels up 6 percent.
“We have an exceptional line-up of acquired series, and when you add to that our own Sky Originals, it puts us in what I think is the strongest content position we’ve ever had,” he told reporters on Thursday.
The results come two days after Britain’s competition regulatory ruled that Fox’s bid to buy the 61 percent of Sky it does not already own was not in the public interest.
Murdoch, who also owns newspapers in Britain, now has to come up with an arrangement that will prevent him from influencing the news agenda at Sky, for instance by spinning off its Sky News channel.
Darroch said Sky, along with Fox, was focused on this media ownership hurdle after the competition regulator dismissed concerns about Murdoch’s commitment to broadcasting standards.
“We are very much focused in the process with the (regulator) CMA,” he told reporters.
“We have (media) plurality as the final issue to work though, (...) and we’ll see where that takes us.”
He would not comment on the company’s thinking about Sky News, saying any messages about the 24-hour service would be given directly to staff.
“We have got a day job to do,” he said. “And I think you can see from results and the plan we are laying out for 2018 we are not being distracted from any of that.”
Before the government gives its final decision on the Fox deal in June, Sky faces the next auction for English Premier League rights, the cornerstone of its offer to soccer fans.
Some of the pressure on Sky to pay huge sums to retain the biggest packages of games has been eased by a deal it struck with its biggest rival BT to supply channels on each other’s platform.
Darroch said he wouldn’t give a running commentary on the auction, adding Sky’s bid strategy was commercially sensitive.
‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Riviera’ boost Sky as own takeover saga drags on
‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Riviera’ boost Sky as own takeover saga drags on
Jailed French journalist files appeal in Algeria’s top court: lawyers
- Gleizes was arrested in May 2024 after traveling to Tizi Ouzou in northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region — home to the Amazigh Kabyle people — to write about the country’s most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie
ALGIERS: French journalist Christophe Gleizes, sentenced to seven years behind bars in Algeria on terror-related charges, has filed an appeal seeking a new trial with the country’s highest court, his lawyers said Sunday.
“Christophe Gleizes registered an appeal at (the court of) Cassation” on Sunday, the deadline for filing, his French lawyer Emmanuel Daoud told AFP in a message, declining to comment further.
Gleizes’ Algerian lawyer Amirouche Bakouri made a similar announcement on Facebook.
Earlier this month, an Algerian appeals court upheld the seven-year prison term for the sportswriter, who was first convicted of “glorifying terrorism” in June.
Gleizes was arrested in May 2024 after traveling to Tizi Ouzou in northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region — home to the Amazigh Kabyle people — to write about the country’s most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie.
In 2021, he had met in Paris with the head of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), a foreign-based group designated a terrorist organization by Algiers earlier that year.
At this month’s appeal hearing, Gleizes had said he did not know the MAK had been listed as a terrorist organization, and asked the court’s forgiveness for his “journalistic mistakes.”
The court’s decision to uphold his sentence was denounced by the rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF), as well as the French government.
Gleizes’s jailing comes at a time of diplomatic friction between Paris and Algiers that began last year when France officially backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front.
He is currently France’s only journalist imprisoned abroad, according to RSF, and French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to work toward his release.
Mother makes plea
The mother of the jailed journalist Christophe Gleizes wrote a letter to Algeria’s president requesting he pardon her son from his seven-year sentence on terror-related charges.
“I respectfully ask you to consider granting Christophe a pardon, so that he may regain his freedom and his family,” Sylvie Godard wrote in the letter, which was dated December 10 and seen by AFP on Monday.
“Nowhere in any of his writings will you find any trace of statements hostile to Algeria and its people,” she wrote in her letter to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
