Celebrating a year of extraordinary stories on Sky Atlantic
Sky Atlantic HD is the home of extraordinary stories; passionate, funny, violent, desperate, compelling narratives that possess you and won’t let you go. How thrilling it is when you find a show you can’t miss, a moment you never forget, or a character you fall in love with.
This is what Sky Atlantic HD is all about. And though our story has only just begun, I believe it is the most exciting channel around today.
The story of the channel began a year ago when we launched to great acclaim as the latest addition to the Sky entertainment portfolio and the new home of HBO. Since then we've showcased some of the greatest content in the world - Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire and Treme from HBO; and more best of the US with The Borgias, Blue Bloods and Nurse Jackie.
But that’s just the first chapter in the story of Sky Atlantic HD. My challenge now is to build on those great beginnings and make the channel synonymous with the best, most compelling content in the world, no matter where it comes from.
As well as new acquisitions, we’ve announced a raft of original UK content across all genres that will be airing this year. Made by the best people on and off camera, we challenge talent to raise the bar, be unexpected, embrace the counterintuitive, take creative risks and above all be truly entertaining.
Investing in original UK content is a key part of Sky’s strategy to offer more to our customers, and to that end we plan to invest £600 million per year in UK programming by 2014, across our portfolio. Sky Atlantic HD is to be a major part of that charge by investing in bold, authored pieces with strong narrative stories.
We are developing dramas, documentaries, entertainment, factual, and factual-entertainment series. Shows that add different flavours to the channel, complementing the acquisitions we have, celebrating the best of British television-making and offering our customers a new high quality viewing destination.
In the coming months, Sky Atlantic will become the home of great UK programmes in every genre. In drama, we have Hit + Miss created by the extraordinary Paul Abbott, starring the truly original Chloë Sevigny, and Falcón set in steamy Seville based on the exceptional crime books of Robert Wilson.
In comedy and factual entertainment we’ll show the brilliant Kathy Burke’s Walking and Talking, Julia Davis’ Hunderby and Morgan Spurlock’s New Britannia. In documentaries, the award-winning John Dowers follows Bradley Wiggins and his personal Tour de France; and in acquisitions, Stephen Spielberg’s new series Smash makes its British premiere on the channel.
One year on, Sky Atlantic feels more fresh and exciting every day. And following yesterday’s announcement that the channel is now available on Sky Go – we’re thrilled to be finding more and more innovative ways to share our extraordinary stories with customers.
