Viacom International Media Networks has confirmed that Spike will launch in the UK on April 15th, and has lined up a slate of high-profile US dramas for the new channel. A localised version of the American network, Spike UK will be a free-to-air, twenty-four-hour channel, carried on Freeview channel 31, Sky channel 160 and Freesat channel 141.
The launch comes out of the Channel 5 stable, with Channel 5 and Spike both under Viacom ownership. Channel 5’s programme director Ben Frow will oversee commissioning, scheduling and acquisitions for Spike, which takes Viacom’s UK free-to-air portfolio to nine networks.
On the acquisitions front, Spike has picked up the UK rights to Breaking Bad, Justified and Sons of Anarchy, three series that were dropped part-way through by their previous UK home, Channel 5, and never aired in full. Spike will now run all three in their entirety, with Breaking Bad shown complete on free-to-air UK television for the first time. The channel has also taken the free-to-air rights to the fifth season of The Walking Dead, and will give the mythological drama Olympus its British television premiere.
Alongside the imported drama, Spike’s launch schedule is fronted by the original entertainment series Lip Sync Battle, hosted by LL Cool J and created by Jimmy Fallon’s Eight Million Plus Productions with Stephen Merchant, John Krasinski and others. The channel will also become a UK home for mixed martial arts through Bellator MMA, sitting alongside reality output from the US network and a slate of British commissions.