Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Sky is planning to cut about 1,000 jobs across its business in the UK this year as more customers switch to digital-only services and away from the traditional satellite dish that made the broadcasting giant’s name.
The UK-based media group in the coming weeks is set to talk to staff in teams that could be affected by the job losses, according to people close to the plans. Sky employs about 27,000 people in the UK, meaning that the job cuts are expected to affect about 4 per cent of its staff.
The broadcaster has accelerated a shift in its strategy since being acquired by US media group Comcast in 2018 for £32bn to digital streaming over the internet rather than satellite.
Sky has had to restructure its operations as a result. A significant proportion of the cuts is expected to be focused on the more traditional parts of Sky’s business, such as the engineers who are used to install satellite dishes to the sides of homes.
Sky said: “Increasingly, customers are choosing Sky Glass and Sky Stream which don’t require specialist installation, and that has led us to change the number of roles we need to deliver our services.”
The latest round of cuts at Sky, which also shed hundreds of jobs last year, will add to a growing and already lengthy list of dismissals across the UK and US media industries.
This week, Channel 4 said that it would cut more than 200 roles, about 15 per cent of the 1,200 at the group, as it sought to shift to a digital streaming service rather than a more traditional TV channel offering amid a sharp drop in advertising.
The BBC is also cutting jobs as it grapples with a cash crunch caused by the freeze in its licence fee over the past two years, while analysts said that ITV could reveal job cuts at its results next month.
Hundreds of other jobs have been cut at US broadcasters such as Paramount, which owns Channel 5 in the UK, while broadband rival BT has announced up to 55,000 roles will be lost before 2030, including teams of engineers that have been rolling out fibre broadband around the UK.
Sky is still recruiting in some parts of its business in the UK, including for its new film and TV studio at Elstree.
More than three-quarters of Sky customers sign up to internet-delivered services rather than a traditional satellite dish, including through the use of Sky Glass, an internet enabled TV set that comes with a subscription to its channels.
Digital services also means that it can use the full range of its expensive sports rights, with plans to stream multiple channels to show Premier League football matches acquired before Christmas as part of a £5bn deal as well as the hundreds of games in the English football leagues.
