Disney and the British free-to-air broadcaster ITV have launched a new partnership that will allow them to show each other’s shows in an effort to reach new audiences. ITV viewers will be able to watch shows including Only Murders in the Building, Andor, and The Bear – which lives on Disney+ in the UK – while Disney will take advantage of ITV’s various dramas and reality TV offerings.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office, ITV’s BAFTA award-winning four-part dramatization of the British Post Office scandal, will be available to Disney+ subscribers, as well as selected seasons of the ever-popular Love Island dating show. The thinking seems to be that ITV’s typically older viewing demographic could be drawn to Disney’s more adult-focused shows, with ITV’s output likely to appeal to streaming audiences that skew younger. That said, family-friendly Disney+ shows including Lilo and Stitch: The Series and Phineas and Ferb will also make their way to ITV as part of the deal.
ITV has its own streaming platform, called ITVX, which is free to watch in the UK with ads, or ad-free as part of a monthly subscription. Disney’s content will live on ITVX in the UK, and will be badged as "A Taste of Disney+", with Disney+ offering its "A Taste of ITVX" library to its own subscribers. Kevin Lygo, Managing Director of Media and Entertainment at ITV, said in a press release that the plan is for both libraries to be regularly updated.
Traditional broadcasters striking deals with streaming platforms is nothing new. Netflix has been licensing shows from the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK for a number of years, for example, and back in 2022 Disney and the BBC started co-producing Doctor Who, with Disney+ becoming the home of the long-running sci-fi show outside of the UK. More often than not, though, these relationships tend to be one-way affairs in terms of where the content is distributed, so this even divide between two platforms seems more novel.
The selected shows and movies for the launch window will be available to stream on their respective platforms from July 16.
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