Sky to close Bravo and Channel One

Sky has announced it is to close Bravo and Channel One – recently re-branded from Virgin One – as part of its integration of the Living TV Group.

 

 

 

Sky has announced it is to close Bravo and Channel One – recently re-branded from Virgin One – as part of its integration of the Living TV Group. BSkyB brought the company from Virgin Media and the deal has now been cleared by the Office of Fair Trading. As Sky brought Living TV it had to re-brand Virgin One into Channel One but now it will do away with the channel, and Bravo, all together. Instead Sky will focus on the Living channels and game-show broadcaster Challenge.

 

 

 

The closure of Bravo and Channel One will mean the loss 50 jobs as Sky integrates Living into its existing set-up. Sky will boost the programme budget for Living though by 25%. The Living branded channels currently broadcast show such as Four Weddings, Dating in the Dark, Britain’s Next Top Model and Shortland Street. Living is also expanding into more original commissions and has signed up Katie Price, aka Jordan, to front programmes for them luring the model away from ITV2.

 

Sky has decided to close Bravo – launched way back in 1985 – because it felt the channel had the same target audience as Sky One. Channel One’s closure is for similar reasons but because Sky Three’s output and audience is similar. While its unknown what will happen to the slots on Sky, on Freeview the former Virgin One (and FTN before it) slot will be replaced with game show channel, Challege.