Food Network and Travel Channel owner Scripps Networks is to spend nearly £4m on original UK shows next year as it ramps up its local commissioning ambitions.
The company launched Food Network five years ago and acquired the Travel Channel in 2012, which have benefited from a combined 30 UK-originated shows.
Scripps has spent around £6.3m on these commissions, which include Sweet TV’s Andy Bates’ Street Feasts and Shine TV’s Jonathan Phang’s Caribbean Cookbook.
It now wants to take its commissioning plans to the next level, and Nick Thorogood, senior vice-president of content and marketing, Scripps Networks UK & EMEA, said 2015 will be its most ambitious year to date.
“It’s a massive rise,” Thorogood said. “We’ve been looking at our business model and what we need to do to keep our broadcast partners happy is to keep platforms feeling like they’re full of fresh, vibrant talent and, most importantly, to take world-class content and put it through a local lens.”
Travel Channel has re-commissioned Transparent TV-produced Jonathan Phang’s Gourmet Trains for a second six-part run. It will TX next year and is executive produced by former Channel 5 and Sky boss Richard Woolfe.
It has also ordered 6 x 30-minute Food & Wine Adventures, in which Jenny Powell and French wine expert Olivier Magny take a road trip around Romania. It will be executive produced by Tuesday’s Child, the indie set up by former Shine TV managing director Karen Smith.
Food & Wine Adventures is a follow-up to Jeni And Olly’s West Coast Wine Adventure, the Pacific Productions series in which Jeni Barnett and Olly Smith travelled across the west coast of America.
Scripps now has around eight shows in development and is searching for new ideas it can produce on tariffs of between £20,000 and £70,000 an hour.
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