Nigel Marven's Cruise Ship Adventures
5 March 2015
Award-winning media company UKTV today announced a co-production with Image Impact for Nigel Marven's Cruise Ship Adventures, which will air this May on its flagship pay entertainment channel Watch. In this series Nigel reveals for the first time another dimension to cruise ship voyages, introducing passengers and crew to extraordinary creatures in well-known tourist destinations.
Steve North, General Manager for Watch, ordered the new series and the deal was negotiated by UKTV's Head of Acquisitions and Co-Productions Alexandra Finlay, with Louise Dawe-Lane from Image Impact.
Alexandra Finlay commented,
Nigel Marven's enthusiasm for wildlife is infectious, and in this distinctive and unique series he gives us a privileged peek at life on a cruise ship and in its exotic destinations.
In Cruise Ship Adventures wildlife enthusiast and presenter Nigel Marven voyages with Azamara Club Cruises to discover sea creatures that follow the ship as well as onshore beasts at tourist hotspots. Every episode is jam-packed with fun and exciting adventures, for example on his voyage from Buenos Aires to Antarctica he watches humpback whales feeding right next to the ship, and plays pied piper with baby penguins, ushering the chicks to a concert on the beach.
On another cruise Nigel proves that the islands of the Caribbean are not just about sun, sand and rum, as he goes head-to-head with sperm whales, and finds rare iguanas on Necker Island, Richards Branson's exclusive resort. Other regions explored in this series include the Mediterranean, Central America, Scandinavia and India.
Steve North, General Manager for Watch commented,
Cruise Ship Adventures is an exhilarating trip around the globe, as Nigel plunges into Costa Rican jungles, dives beneath Caribbean waves, scrambles up Scandinavian cliffs and over Mediterranean mountains.
Nigel Marven said,
Anyone who's been on a cruise will be astounded by the peculiar creatures we turn up in short visits to ports of call. The best bit was sharing my passion for wildlife - taking cruise ship Captains, entertainers and passengers on adventures with everything from puffins to pipefish, whales to woodpeckers and caecilians to sloths!
Watch is UKTV's flagship entertainment channel. Cruise Ship Adventures follows the recent success of Crisis, a fast-paced conspiracy thriller starring Gillian Anderson and Dermot Mulroney, which is averaging 558k individuals, up 360% on slot.
New programming on Watch this year, includes two brand new original commissions World's Most Talented, a global talent show, and Singing in the Rainforest, which sees musicians travel across the globe to meet remote tribes and create an extraordinary music track together.
In 2014 Watch's adult share was up 13% year-on-year and the channel regularly attracts over 14 million viewers a month, helping to position the UKTV network as the fastest growing commercial broadcaster in Britain.
END
For more information contact:
Lara Feinstein, Corporate Communications Coordinator
Emily Jones, Publicist, Factual
About Watch
Sky 109 (HD)/155 and Virgin 125 (HD)/124
Watch is an entertainment channel that promises to surprise with out of the ordinary programming. Premiering hit fantasy and science-fiction dramas such as Grimm, Believe and Beauty and the Beast, it also showcases a selection of distinctive series like Doctor Who, David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities, Masterchef Australia and The Happenings. Watch is the exclusive home of Dynamo: Magician Impossible, an award winning original commission from UKTV.
www.justwatch.co.uk@Watch_Channel
About UKTV
UKTV is the multi-award winning media company that reaches over 42 million viewers every month.
UKTV's eleven imaginative brands - UKTV Play, Dave, Watch, Gold, Alibi, Yesterday, Drama, Really, Home, Eden and Good Food - include the most popular non-PSB channel in the UK and account for 9% of the British commercial TV market. The company's most recent financial results showed record-breaking year-end revenue of £278m, and EBITDA of £67.4m. It invested a record £125m in programming and related launches last year, and is becoming an increasingly significant investor in UK creativity.
UKTV has a truly innovative model, curating brand-defining commissions, high-profile acquisitions and the very best of BBC, alongside programmes originally shown on ITV and Channel 4. The network embraces technology to deliver inspired channels to audiences through Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, BT, TalkTalk, YouView and UKTV Play, and distributes its highly valued original programmes to 200 territories.
Now celebrating its 22nd 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 television broadcaster to be recognised by Best Companies.