Sky Plots ‘Jackal’ Jump to Free TV as ITV Takeover Takes Shape

Sky is preparing to hand its buzziest dramas, including “The Day of the Jackal” and “Brassic,” a shot at Britain’s biggest free-to-air stage, as the broadcaster works through the final stages of its £1.6 billion ($2.1 billion) takeover of ITV’s network operations.

Cécile Frot-Coutaz, chief executive of Sky Studios and the company’s content chief, confirmed the strategy at the Royal Television Society London Convention on Tuesday, telling attendees that Sky wants to experiment with “windowing” its premium originals onto ITV in the years ahead. Deadline first reported the broad outlines of the plan back in July; Frot-Coutaz’s remarks now put official flesh on the bones.

The idea, as she described it, is fairly simple: air earlier seasons of a hit show like “The Day of the Jackal” on ITV shortly before a new season debuts on Sky, using the free-to-air platform to build buzz and pull in viewers who might not otherwise encounter the series. “There’s various permutations,” Frot-Coutaz said, suggesting the company is still working out exactly how far it will push the model.

It isn’t a wholly new idea for Sky. Frot-Coutaz pointed to “Brassic,” the gritty Lancashire comedy-drama, as a test case — Sky previously placed its first four seasons on Netflix and found the exposure translated into fresh viewership rather than cannibalizing its own audience. “We saw that we had been able to find some new headroom [in viewing] because we’d exposed the show to an audience that we didn’t have,” she said.

The ambitions don’t stop at scripted drama. Sky, which Frot-Coutaz noted controls roughly 40,000 hours of sports programming, is also eyeing a bigger free-to-air footprint for its live events coverage — including the tantalizing prospect of Premier League football reaching viewers who don’t currently pay for Sky. “There’s also huge opportunities in terms of putting more sports on free-to-air,” she said. “We think everybody wins from that. The viewer wins, but also the leagues win.”

The comments came on a day of broader reflection on the deal’s implications for British broadcasting. ITV chief executive Carolyn McCall, speaking earlier at the same event, said her company had little alternative but to sell its network arm to Sky given the intensity of competition reshaping the industry, describing the landscape bluntly as “ferocious.”

Crucially for ITV loyalists worried about losing familiar staples, McCall stressed that the takeover comes bundled with a £2.1 billion output deal guaranteeing ITV Studios will keep producing shows such as “Love Island” and “Coronation Street” for broadcast on ITV through 2032. Asked whether Sky might try to unwind that commitment down the line, McCall didn’t mince words: “Good luck.” She added that Sky, far from scaling back, is likely to commission even more from ITV Studios — which will continue operating independently and remain listed on the London Stock Exchange despite the change in ownership upstream.

Taken together, the remarks paint a picture of a deal designed less to dismantle ITV’s identity than to fuse it with Sky’s deep bench of prestige content and sports rights. For viewers, that could eventually mean stumbling across a Sky original or a Premier League match without needing a subscription — a shift that, if it plays out as described, would mark one of the more consequential changes to how premium British television reaches its audience in years.