Discovery Communications is continuing its buying spree with the acquisition of Italy’s Switchover Media. The broadcaster runs four free-to-air channels and one pay-TV channel in the country.
The acquisition marks an aggressive move into the Italian DTT market. Discovery is already active in Italy with two free-to-air terrestrial channels, female-skewed Real Time and male oriented D-Max.
In addition, Discovery Channel is active with its main Discovery channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Travel & Living, Discovery Science and Discovery World on the Sky Italia DTH platform.
“Italy is a leading market for Discovery and key to our growth here over the last two years has been the development of a successful free-to-air TV business strategy as this platform has grown,” said Dee Forbes, president and managing director, Discovery Networks Western Europe, in a statement.
“The acquisition of Switchover Media adds further breadth and scale to that free-to-air strategy, as well as diversifying our portfolio to include scripted crime and children’s programming that have proven popular with audiences and advertisers.”
Switchover Media, which was launched in 2009 by Francesco Nespega, consists of children’s channels K2 and Frisbee; male-focused network GXT; scripted crime channel Giallo; and factual network Focus.
Those channels will now be merged into the existing Discovery operation. The combined business will be overseen by Milan-based Marinella Soldi, managing director of Discovery Italy and general manager for Southern Europe.
Switchover founder Nespega will serve as a consultant and advisor to Discovery, following the acquisition.
“Over the past three years, I had the pleasure and honour of guiding an extraordinary team, which, with dedication and competence, succeeded in leveraging the new opportunities of the digital free-to-air platform,” said Nespega.
“I am confident that an international leader in the media segment, such as Discovery, with its contents and resources, will be able to further expand the potential of the channels we created and implemented.”
The new acquisition follows recent investments by Discovery in TF1’s Eurosport and the Scandinavian SBS channels.
