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A content partnership is a term describing a joint venture between brands, broadcasters, publishers and producers to create original audio visual programming across any media platform. Stakeholders in the project co-finance and share the exploitation rights to that content and its intellectual property.
Most commercial content partnerships are now being applied to Advertiser Funded Programming (AFP) where brands directly fund TV shows. These new partnerships allow advertisers to gain web exploitation rights without having to fully fund the creation of original programming.
Changes in UK product placement legislation in March 2011 will also allow advertisers to co-fund television content that features their brands within the editorial of the show.
Some recent examples of content partnerships:
DIC Entertainment Corporation, branded as the Incredible World of DIC, was an international film and television production company that was mostly associated as an animation studio. As a former division of The Walt Disney Company, DIC produced live-action feature films and licensed numerous anime series.
HIT Entertainment Limited was a British-American entertainment company founded in 1982 as Henson International Television, the international distribution arm of The Jim Henson Company, by Jim Henson, Peter Orton, and Sophie Turner Laing. Orton alone took over the company in 1989 after learning Henson intended to sell the company to The Walt Disney Company. HIT owned and distributed children's television series such as Thomas & Friends, Fireman Sam, Bob the Builder, Pingu, Barney & Friends, and Angelina Ballerina.
Vodafone Group Plc is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania.
Sky Network Television Limited, more commonly known as Sky, is a New Zealand broadcasting company that provides pay television services via satellite, media streaming services, and broadband internet services. As of 31 December 2022, Sky had 1,023,378 residential television subscribers consisting of 517,003 satellite subscribers and 506,375 streaming subscribers. Additionally, Sky had 23,156 broadband customers. Despite the similarity of name, branding and services, such as Sky Go and MySky shared with its European equivalent, Sky Group, there is no connection between the companies.
BBC Worldwide Ltd. was the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in January 1995. The company monetised BBC brands, selling BBC and other British programming for broadcast abroad with the aim of supplementing the income received by the BBC through the licence fee.
Tetley is an English beverage manufacturer founded in 1837 in Yorkshire. It is the largest company of tea in the United Kingdom and Canada, and the second largest in the United States by volume.
Mobile phone content advertising is the promotion of ring tones, games and other mobile phone services. Such services are usually subscription-based and use the short message service (SMS) system to join up to them. Another method is broadcasting messages to the mobile phone's idle-screen, enabling the mobile operators or advertisers to reach millions in real-time. The advertising and sale of ring tones in particular has seen a massive growth in recent years, with some commercial breaks, particularly on music television channels and in motor racing, being dominated by such adverts. Advertising in newspapers and magazines has also become popular.
TV5 is a Philippine free-to-air television and radio network headquartered in Mandaluyong, with additional studios in Novaliches, Quezon City. It serves as the flagship network of TV5 Network, Inc., which is owned by MediaQuest Holdings, the multimedia subsidiary of the telecommunications conglomerate PLDT. TV5 is popularly known as "The 'Kapatid' Network", employing the Filipino term for "sibling", a branding that was introduced in 2010.
Roku, Inc. is an American streaming technology company, founded in 2002 by Anthony Wood. It produces streaming players and TVs, licenses its technology to other manufacturers, and distributes streaming services on its platform. Roku leads streaming TV distribution in the U.S., reaching 120 million viewers as of 2024. Outside the U.S., the company operates in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the U.K., and Latin American countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.
Advertiser-funded programming (AFP) is a recent term applied to a break away from the modern model of television funding in place since the early 1960s. Since that time, programmes have normally been funded by a broadcaster and they re-couped the money through selling advertising space around the content. This has worked fine for decades, but new technological advances have forced broadcasters and advertisers to re-think their relationship.
Blip was an American media platform for web series content and also offered a dashboard for producers of original web series to distribute and monetize their productions. The company was founded on May 5, 2005, and it was located in New York City and Los Angeles. It was financed by Bain Capital Ventures, Canaan Partners, and Ambient Sound Investments. Blip's mission statement was "to deliver the best original web series to audiences across multiple platforms." The site showcased a wide variety of dramas, comedies, arts, sports and other shows. Blip was acquired by Maker Studios in 2013 and shut down by them on August 20, 2015.
Blyk was an ad-supported mobile phone network that offered text messages and customer-to-customer calls, with a capped amount of usage being free of charge. It targeted young people and had offices in Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and in India.
BuddyTV is an entertainment-based website, which generates content about television programs and sporting events. The website publishes information about celebrity and related entertainment news through a series of articles, entertainment profiles, actor biographies and user forums. On 31 December 2014, Smart TV manufacturer VIZIO acquired BuddyTV's parent Advanced Media Research Group, Inc., in order to expand content and service offerings. The site was shut down on 22 May 2018. The site was later relaunched on 30 August 2021 by a small web content company with the intent to resurrect BuddyTV.
Viceland is a brand used for television channels owned and programmed by Vice Media. The brand launched on February 29, 2016, with two cable channels in North America. The American version is a joint venture majority-owned by A&E Networks. A Canadian version operated as a Category A-licensed specialty channel majority-owned by Rogers Media; it was discontinued on March 31, 2018.
A multi-channel network (MCN) is an organization that works with video platforms to offer assistance to channel owners in areas such as "product, programming, funding, cross-promotion, partner management, digital rights management, monetization and sales, and audience development," in exchange for a percentage of the ad revenue from the channel.
Disney+ Hotstar is an Indian subscription video-on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by JioStar, a joint venture between Reliance Industries, Viacom18 and Disney India.
Pluto TV is a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service owned and operated by the Paramount Streaming division of Paramount Global.
Tastemade, Inc. is a media company that offers food, travel, and home & design-related programming for online and streaming audiences. Elvina Payne was announced as CFO in June 2024.
Shahid is an Arabic content-streaming platform operated by the Saudi state-owned MBC Group.