{"id":72697,"date":"2016-07-11T17:14:42","date_gmt":"2016-07-11T17:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/?p=72697"},"modified":"2016-07-12T09:55:58","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T09:55:58","slug":"virgin-media-buys-utv-ireland-purchasing-tv3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/showbiz\/virgin-media-buys-utv-ireland-purchasing-tv3-72697","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Media buys UTV Ireland after purchasing TV3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Virgin Media has bought UTV Ireland from ITV \u00a0for \u20ac10 million.<\/p>\n<p>The deal was first revealed by the Sunday Business Post this weekend, with confirmation from the media giant today.<\/p>\n<p>The deal unites UTV Ireland and TV3 under the same\u00a0group. Virgin Media will now own both ITV and UTV Ireland, and has a 10-year deal for top ITV soaps Emmerdale and Coronation Street.<\/p>\n<p>Virgin Media already bought the TV3 Group for \u20ac80 million last summer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is a very positive development for Irish broadcasting and ensures Virgin Media\u2019s continued investment in top quality programming and local production,&#8221; Virgin Media chief executive Tony Hanway said.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-72698\" src=\"https:\/\/media.goss.ie\/uploads\/2016\/07\/UTV-Ireland-Schedule-mx-7.jpg\" alt=\"UTV Ireland Schedule mx-7\" width=\"3500\" height=\"2379\" \/><\/p>\n<p>TV3 managing director Pat Kiely added that it was \u201can exciting new chapter\u201d for the Irish television industry.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Virgin Media\u2019s investment in TV3 has already supported the expansion of our studio facilities and increased production,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The proposed acquisition of UTV Ireland will ensure further investment in the independent Irish television sector as we continue to compete head on against significant local and international competition.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The deal will bind the two stations together in the same group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[20,57],"tags":[228,335],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goss.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}