Sky Confirms Plans To Showcase Series Like ‘The Day Of The Jackal’ On ITV After Takeover

The Day of the Jackal and Brassic could be coming to free-to-air television in the UK after Sky completes its £1.6 billion ($2.1 billion) takeover of ITV‘s network operations.

Cécile Frot-Coutaz, Sky’s content chief and the CEO of Sky Studios, has said that the Comcast-owned company wants to experiment with windowing its original series on ITV over the coming years.

Frot-Coutaz’s comments, which were made at the Royal Television Society London Convention on Tuesday, confirm Deadline’s report in July about Sky’s plans to give original series airtime on its new asset.

Frot-Coutaz said Sky would look at showcasing old seasons of a show like The Day of the Jackal on ITV ahead of a new season launching. “There’s various permutations,” she said.

The former Fremantle executive said Sky previously experimented with a similar windowing strategy when it put the first four seasons of Brassic on Netflix.

“We saw that we had been able to find some new headroom [in viewing] because we’d exposed the show to an audience that we didn’t have,” she said.

Frot-Coutaz added that Sky will also look closely at putting sport on ITV, opening up the possibility that Premier League football could get free-to-air exposure.

She explained: “We have 40,000 hours of sports. So within that, there’s also huge opportunities in terms of putting more sports on free-to-air. We think everybody wins from that. The viewer wins, but also the leagues win.”

Earlier in the day, ITV CEO Carolyn McCall said the company had little choice but to sell to Sky because the “competition is ferocious.”

As part of the takeover, Sky has agreed a £2.1 billion output deal with ITV Studios, which will guarantee that shows like Love Island and Coronation Street will remain on ITV until 2032.

Asked if Sky could rip up this deal in six years, McCall responded: “Good luck.” She added that, if anything, Sky will start commissioning more from ITV Studios, which will remain independent and listed on the London Stock Exchange.