MUMBAI: In a move to strengthen its ad sales in the UK market, Times Now has signed a deal with Sky Media. The channel has been recently launched in the UK market and claims to have received good initial response to its programming.

Sky Media, will be the channel’s exclusive ad sales partner for all mainstream sales in the region. The agency will be mandated to handle the airtime as well as sponsorship sales for the channel in the UK.

The channel has also recently taken on board Tarun Sawhney as the country sales manager based in London to manage all the channel sales and marketing in UK and for all the channels in India for clients in the region. With the intent to grow its mainstream sales, the channel tested on Barb in February and has become barb rated since April.

Times Network International business head Naveen Chandra said, “Times Now has had consistent ratings leadership in India and in other markets due to its product differentiation with high quality, hard-hitting journalism for the last ten years. We are happy to introduce this strong News product to the South Asian TV audiences in the UK, and build it with smart local marketing initiatives. In Sky Media sales, we believe we have the perfect sales partner for leveraging our product strengths.”

 “It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to add TIMES NOW to our extensive portfolio of South Asian targeted channels; it adds another dimension to our offering for advertisers with great news content for a continually growing and important audience”, said Sky Media operations director Richard Hawking.