Sky and Discovery have ended their high profile row and struck a multi-year deal which will keep Discovery’s lineup on channels on the UK’s largest pay-TV platform.
Discovery’s UK channels include Discovery Channel, Eurosport 1, Eurosport 2, TLC, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, Discovery History, Discovery Shed, Home and Health, DMAX, Discovery Science and Discovery Turbo.
Last week the sporting and factual channel owner announced it was ready to walk away and remove its channels after failing to agree a new carriage deal with Sky.
Over the following days it embarked on a highly critical social media campaign attacking Sky’s failure to pay what it felt was a fair price.
Just hours before the current expired, the two firms confirmed that a deal had been done.
Susanna Dinnage, Managing Director, Discovery Networks UK, said: “We want to thank our millions of viewers and fans for their overwhelming support over the last few days.
“We have been humbled by the strength of the passion people feel for all our brands.”
For its part, Sky said Discovery had “accepted the proposal we gave them over a week ago.”
Stephen van Rooyen, CEO UK & ROI, Sky, said: “We are pleased that we will continue to carry the Discovery and Eurosport channels on Sky.
“We are also delighted to be announcing today a new deal with PBS America that will bring the best of PBS’s factual programming to Sky, covering history, science, current affairs, arts and culture.
“We are also adding over 1,000 hours of programming to our On Demand service from channels like History and National Geographic. This means ours customers can enjoy the very best factual programming available.”
A Discovery spokesperson insisted the new deal “is meaningfully better than our former agreement and their proposal.”
The added: “Furthermore, our new arrangement enables us to control our destiny in more ways, with even more opportunities to invest and launch channels and consumer services. Stay tuned in the coming weeks.”
