Disney and Channel 4 have agreed a landmark UK content deal which will also see the Channel 4 linear network become available on Disney+, a UK first.
In one of the biggest deals of its kind in British television history, shows like Channel 4 are a mainstay Celebrity SAS: Who dares to win and the upcoming Bella Ramsey starrer Maya will be released on Disney+ early next year in the UK and Ireland.
From there, Disney+ EMEA managing director Karl Holmes told Deadline that there would be a “steady pace” of new Channel 4 shows coming into the Mouse House, although he didn’t give an exact figure on that.
Starting early next year, Disney+ subscribers in the UK and Ireland will be able to watch these shows day and date, as well as hundreds of hours of on-demand content like that of Russell T. Davies. Tiptoe and that of Nicola Coughlan Great mood. And, for the first time in the UK, Channel 4’s linear channel will also be available in its entirety on Disney+.
Speaking alongside Holmes, Priya Dogra, CEO of Channel 4, claimed that glasses box The network and Disney+ don’t overlap much in terms of viewership and the deal may be complementary. Channel 4 already licenses Disney content like Abbott Elementary School, X files And Scandal for its VoD player.
“From our perspective, people develop viewing habits in different locations,” Dogra said. “There are a number of services they can use to discover content, and we need to make sure Channel 4 is available on those platforms.”
Holmes said Disney+ viewership skews younger than public service broadcasters like Channel 4, adding that about 40% of Disney+ viewership over the past year came from 16-34 year olds. “There is a truly complementary relationship here,” Holmes added. “We are not in competition with our free broadcast partners; we help them reach a wider audience. »
The news comes more than a year after Disney+ launched a partnership strategy with local European networks by striking a content exchange deal with ITV that saw shows like The bear And The Kardashians head to ITVX, while love island And Mr. Bates versus the Post Office went in the opposite direction. This preceded deals between Disney and companies like Germany’s ZDF and Spain’s Atresmedia. Netflix simultaneously concluded a high-profile deal with French channel TF1, recently discussed by Ted Sarandos.
Holmes said the Disney-Channel 4 pact is broader in scope than what Disney-ITV and its team learned from the latter while executing the former. “A clear lesson is that focusing on shows that are current, important, bold and lively – and available day and date – work particularly well with our audiences,” he added. “This is what we have prioritized in this collaboration. We would like to develop this further in the future.”
For Dogra, who has been on the job less than a year, the deal is the latest landmark deal she helped engineer following the once-in-a-generation advertising deal signed with Paramount’s UK Network 5 (now Skydance). She discussed opportunities for collaboration, including broadcasting Channel 4 shows on BBC iPlayer, while playing down the idea of a BBC-Channel 4 merger.
Although the deal with Paramount “gives us scale from an advertising perspective”, today’s deal “allows us to maximize our impact by reaching as many people as possible in the UK and Ireland, including people who may not currently use Channel 4 services”, Dogra added.
“The principle is that we need to look at the broader ecosystem,” said the CEO, a former Sky and Warner Bros. executive. Discovery. “We are not going to develop scale across the board ourselves, so we need to work with like-minded organizations. »
More details on the Disney-Channel 4 deal will be communicated in due course.
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