Maybe it’s because we’re just flushed with the excitement of having watched the great Round The Island Race on Saturday, and seeing that Ellen MacArthur won, but we thought you might be interested in the following.
We see that the TV production company behind the filming of Dame Ellen MacArthur’s record breaking voyages has just sold for £1.05m in cash and a bunch of shares.
APP Broadcast has been bought by Tinopolis PLC and will be joining their current Sunset + Vine sports division. APP Broadcast also gain just over 500,000 shares in Tinopolis.
Although the Ellen MacArthur TV programmes have been globally successful for them – the BBC audience for her arrival back to the UK in 2005 was watched by 2.1m people on the BBC alone – they’ve been doing quality for a long time, an example being they’ve provided BBC Grandstand sailing coverage since 1998.
Beyond the skills that APP obviously has in all things sailing, one of the things that Tinopolis like about APP Broadcast is their ability to attract corporate sponsors for their programming, in the shape of Omega, Allianz and Volvo.
With the disruptions that are going on in TV at the moment (you’ll see that ITV1 has hit an low of audience share at 17% this week), with most of the industry not really understanding how they’ll make money from people if they’re not prepared to watch TV advertising (Sky+ giving the ability to skip the ads) – productions companies that can attract sponsorship are highly desirable.
The upshots of this move towards TV programme sponsorship will be something called Advertising Funded Programming – eg, you’ll see the logos of the brands on the TV shows that you’re watching.
As Jeff Foulser, Chairman of Sunset + Vine says: “APP’s ability to secure major corporate client broadcast packages that deliver outstanding returns both in television news and programming distribution also complements our existing advertiser funded programming strategy.”
It’s not just about money, it’s about passion for what they do – as APP Joint Managing Director Richard Simmonds said, “A major factor in the success of our business has been our passion for what we do. We see the same passion in the team at Sunset + Vine which has been underlined by the number of awards the company has won for innovation and production excellence.”
It looks like the future for televising the endeavors of Ellen MacArthur will be in safe hands.
