In The Frame – June ’18

Amazon has made its debut as a British sports broadcaster by streaming live tennis from Queen’s. Coverage of the London club’s annual pre-Wimbledon tournament precedes streaming on the same platform later this summer of the US Open, and the ATP tour next season.

“We are just getting started,” Jay Marine, European head of Amazon Prime Video, said. Earlier this month, Mr Marine’s company broke Sky and BT's stranglehold on Premier League football, the most-watched sports league in the world, acquiring rights to livestream 20 matches per season from 2019, including all 10 matches over one bank holiday and another 10 during one midweek fixture programme. The matches will be available to UK Prime Video members at no extra cost to their existing subscription.

YouTube Premium has launched in the UK. Formerly called YouTube Red, YouTube Premium, priced at £11.99 per month, includes ad-free, downloadable, background-playing YouTube, YouTube Music Premium, and access to about 60 YouTube Originals – content designed to compete with Netflix and Amazon, such as Cobra Kai, the Karate Kid spin-off and the most-watched streaming show across all services, and a number of UK-focused shows, including Sidemen, described as The Inbetweeners versus Top Gear, and F2: Finding Football.

BBC News

The BBC is reaching a record weekly audience of 376 million people, with 24 million people consuming the World Service in English and other languages. More data is available here.

A new design and engineering hub is to be set up in Glasgow. The BBC will invest £4 million in the project and recruit an additional 60 people for technology and design-led roles over the next three years. The new facility will join existing hubs in London and Salford. The corporation is also building new music recording and rehearsal studios in east London, which will also provide a purpose-built base for the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

The BBC has published its latest senior manager expense figures and has vowed to increase the diversity of its senior management by 2020, adopting US-style ‘Rooney rule’ to ensure candidates of a black, Asian or other minority ethnic (BAME) appear on shortlists, effectively banning all-white lists.

It’s been announced that BBC One will show a special programme, hosted by Sir Trevor McDonald, later this year to celebrate the 60^th birthday of Sir Lenny Henry.

And finally…

• As Frame 25 discussed here, AT&T were given the go-ahead this month for their $85 billion takeover of Time Warner.
• The government has told 21st Century Fox it can buy the 61 per cent of Sky that it doesn’t already own only if Fox sells Sky News to another organisation. The government also approved a rival bid for the British broadcaster from US media giant Comcast, while Disney has raised its bid for 21st Century Fox to $71.3 billion.
• Channel 4 and VICE have struck a major partnership, which makes more than 900 hours of VICE’s award-winning, long-form content available on Channel 4’s on-demand service, All 4.
• Love Island has become ITV2's most-watched show ever and England's victory over Tunisia in the World Cup was the most-watched UK TV event of 2018 so far (audience figures for the team’s game against Belgium on June 28^th have not yet been released).
• Staying with the World Cup, a Brazil museum showing World Cup matches in 8K.
• Adobe have launched an all-in-one video editing app, Project Rush.
• A year-long programme to assist new audio professionals has been launched by the Association of Motion Picture Sound. You can read more details here.

From the latest news to the latest positions – click here to see Frame 25’s most recent additions to its list of available TV jobs