Fans of the popular US hit TV show Glee could soon find that it becomes more difficult to watch their favourite high school students, with Sky confirming that it has bought the rights to broadcast the musical comedy from this autumn.The show will move to the satellite channel after Channel 4 walked away from rights negotiations to broadcast the show last month and after Sky had reportedly offered to pay £12 million for the third series, more than double the amount Channel 4 paid for its first two seasons.
Celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Britney Spears and Olivia Newton-John have all appeared as guest stars on the show. And its cast, who have notched up more than 20 top 40 singles, are about to embark on a tour of the UK and Ireland later this month.
Stuart Murphy, director of programmes for Sky, said: “It’s the perfect fit for Sky 1 and we’re thrilled to be able to build on the success it has already achieved.”
The broadcaster will also screen reality show The Glee Project later this year, where the winner will appear in seven episodes of the main series.
Glee attracted audiences of up to 2.5 million per episode on E4, making it by some distance the channel’s biggest hit and one of the most popular UK multichannel shows, while on Fox in the US it averages about ten million viewers.
But as well as being a traditional ratings hit, Glee has also proved a musical and merchandising phenomenon. While not to everyone’s taste, the statistics speak for themselves.
The show has had more than 21 million renditions of songs downloaded worldwide, more than nine million compilation albums sold, and by February the show had notched up 113 entries on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.