When Dee Forbes arrives in Dublin to take up the position of Director-General of Irish national broadcaster RTÉ, she will be the first woman to hold the post and the first to come from outside the organisation in almost 50 years.
Moreover, Forbes, currently on gardening leave as President and Managing Director of Discovery Networks, Northern Europe, will be returning to Ireland on something like half her present salary.
Commissioned by Channel 4 and produced by What Larks Productions, Damned was previously piloted for Sky two years ago with filming of the latest production to start next month.
The show comes soon after Brand's recent return as nurse Kim Wilde in BBC's Going Forward and is her first major Channel 4 project for ten years.
BBC Two's Wolf Hall is up against Doctor Foster and Humans in TV Drama this year, whilst RTS Programme Award winner Michaela Cole has been nominated for her show Chewing Gum both in the Comedy category and for The Times Outstanding Achievement Award.
With some stellar names attached to write, act and direct the shows, Sky is building on the game-changing successes of the BAFTA-nominated The Last Panthers and the Enfield Haunting, and fan favourite Stan Lee’s Lucky Man
The deal will allow Sky to show all new and future movie titles from Sony Pictures a few months after they are released, and up to a year before any other television network.
"Sony has a fantastic track record of producing big global hits with a really exciting slate of films coming up including Ghostbusters and Inferno," said Sky's Managing Director, Content, Gary Davey. "Major agreements like this help meet our commitment to provide our customers with exclusive, world-class films and programmes and the very best TV experience.”
New episodes of Morph, from Aardman Animation, will premiere on the new Sky Kids app later this year, alongside shorter clips featuring the legendary character, designed to encourage children to have a go at making their own models and films.
The network is also in discussion with other producers to create kids’ versions of some its favourite shows.
The Sky Kids app, which launches this week, is designed to allow children easy and safe access to suitable content.
Take a peek at the extended highlights from the Royal Television Society Programme Awards 2016 in partnership with Audio Network at the Grosvenor House Hotel on London's Park Lane.
The return reinforces Sky’s commitment to high-quality year-round drama which has to date included hit shows like You, Me and the Apocalypse, Hooten and the Lady and Fungus the Bogeyman.
Later this month, NBCUniversal will launch Hayu, a new subscription online video service devoted to reality television shows, such as The Real Housewives franchise and Don’t Tell the Bride. It follows hard on the heels of Seeso, another subscription video on-demand (SVoD) offering from NBCU, but this time devoted to comedy and entertainment shows, ranging from Saturday Night Live to Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Barbara Slater, the Director of BBC Sport, likes to bang the drum for digital. Even so, last year she found the time to blog on the corporation’s website just six times.
Four of those six posts apologetically explained why the BBC had been forced to cede flagship rights and was likely to make further cuts in the future.
The posts unpicked why the BBC, after six decades, had to surrender Open golf and also give up on a, perhaps vainglorious, bid to roll back the years by making the Beeb the exclusive home of Formula 1.
