SMG rebranding reflects focus on TV after sale of Virgin

Published on Tuesday 24 June 2008 22:25

SMG further underlined its plans to focus on television yesterday by announcing plans to change its name to STV.

STV is the broadcasting arm of the business and holds the ITV licences for central and north Scotland.

The company said television was "at the core of the business and it is considered appropriate that the corporate name will be aligned with the primary business activity".

Chief executive Rob Woodward said: "Our core TV business is outperforming and I am confident that the strategy we are executing in regional advertising, content and digital media will deliver significant growth.

"The new name we propose, STV Group, reflects the company's focus and uniqueness in the Scottish media market."

The change of name, which follows the sale of outdoor advertising business Primesight last year and Virgin Radio last month, came as the Glasgow-based company outlined its new online strategy.

Under a deal with video platform company, Brightcove, viewers of the company's website will be able to access all of STV's ITV productions, such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale, as well as its Scottish content and more than 200,000 hours of material from its 50 year archive.

The website will be re-launched with the added content in late summer.

Alistair Brown, SMG's head of new media said: "STV has already successfully delivered high-quality and robust streaming of large-scale public and sporting events in Scotland and through this new video site we aim to develop this popular offering further, making our content available in as open and user-friendly a way as possible to as wide an audience as possible."

The company said yesterday that trading since its last update in May was in line with expectations.

It added that it was meeting all of its "key performance indicators" and increased its target for the amount of content it will produce this year by ten hours to 70 hours.

SMG also revealed that it had identified tax planning opportunities which it estimated would create a cash benefit of 10 million over the period from 2008 and 2011.

It said details of its plans to return 30m from the sale of Virgin Radio to shareholders would be sent out "in due course".

Shares in SMG fell 0.25p to 13.25p.