General Manager Clare Laycock leaves UKTV

Clare Laycock

Thursday 5 June 2014

UKTV announced today that Clare Laycock, General Manager for Good Food, Home and Really, is leaving the broadcaster.

Laycock joined UKTV in 2008 to oversee the rebrand of its lifestyle channels, and during her tenure has steered Home to head the lifestyle genre in Pay and has overseen the transition of Really from a niche Pay channel to a successful free-to-air entity that is currently up 19% share (year-on-year).

Emma Tennant, Controller UKTV, said,

Clare has made a fantastic contribution to UKTV. She leaves behind a great legacy with Home and Good Food continuing to lead the lifestyle genre and is leaving Really as one of the fastest growing channels on the network. She has also been instrumental in bringing award-winning content to the channels such as Choccywoccydoodah, Hairy Bikers' Mississippi Adventure, My Flat Pack Home, Valentine Warner Eats Scandinavia, Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Nation and John Torode's Australia.

I will personally miss Clare's creative energy and infectious enthusiasm and I, along with everyone else at UKTV, wish her all the best in her future career.

Before joining UKTV, Clare spent two years at BBC Learning as Head of Campaigns. Prior to that and following a stint in medical production, Clare spent many years at Discovery UK where she experienced the digital TV revolution first hand, launching their first ever lifestyle channels, and ultimately running Discovery Health and Discovery Kids as VP and Channel Director.

END

For more information contact:

Kerry Parker, Head of Network Communications

About UKTV

UKTV is the multi-award winning media company that reaches over 42 million viewers per month. UKTV's ten imaginative channel brands - Watch, Dave, Gold, Alibi, Eden, Yesterday, Drama, Really, Home and Good Food - include the most watched non-PSB channel, the most watched channel in the Factual genre and the most watched channels in the Lifestyle genre (Pay and Free). The company's most recent financial results showed a record-breaking year-end revenue of £262m, and operating profit at £71m.

UKTV has a truly innovative model, curating brand-defining commissions, high-profile acquisitions and the very best of BBC and Channel 4 content, and embracing technology to deliver inspired channels to audiences through Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, BT TV, TalkTalk, YouView, plus direct On Demand digital services. The network distributes its highly valued programmes to 200 territories around the world and supplies Sky with more hours of HD content than anyone else.

Now celebrating its 21st year at the forefront of digital television, UKTV - an independent commercial joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc. (SNI) - is proud to be the only British broadcaster to be recognised by Best Companies.

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