Viacom (Visual & Audio Communications) acquires 50% of Super! and from October 22 it launches men’s interest channel Spike on channel 49 of the DTTV. Spike is also present in other countries, with case histories in the UK and the Netherlands; its ratings are constantly growing, and it’s the first DTT channel with a 9 share in those countries.
2017 is a positive tax year for Viacom thanks to its partnership with DeAgostini Editore, with the acquisition of 50% of Super!, the kids channel.
“These important acquisitions complete our strategy, which has already started a few years ago, of making Viacom become an increasingly important player in the Italian market too, both as an editor and a benchmark for international networks willing to invest on advertising and others in Italy”, states CEO and General Manager at Viacom Italy, Middle East and Turkey Andrea Castellari.
The launch of the new channel happens after the acquisition of the Local Channel Numbering (LCN, a function of TVs, set-top boxes and other devices that allows to assign a default channel in the list to every television service received) by Scripps Networks Interactive. This was an operation that, together with the deal with DeAgostini Editore, describes the strong positioning strategy on free-to-air TV applied by Viacom compared to the one of Sky on Pay TV with MTV, Comedy Central and the kids channel, such as Nickelodeon, NickJr and Teen Nick.
