The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has finally confirmed Education Digital 2 as the preferred bidder for the £50m, five year contract to deliver Teachers TV from 1 September 2008. The contract is believed to worth £5m a year less than the existing deal, excluding performance related bonuses which in the year ending 31 July 2007 totalled £1.36m.

Education Digital 2 is 75% owned by Ten Alps plc through its production company subsidiary Brook Lapping. The remaining 25% is owned by Independent Television News Limited which brings to the consortium Espresso Broadband Limited (Espresso and Channel 4 Learning) in which it has an equity interest. No changes are expected to be made to the existing management team which will continue to be led by Andrew Bethell.

To compensate for the reduction in income we can now expect TTV to aggressively develop other revenue streams including advertising, sponsorship, co-production deals, content repackaging deals and sales of international programme rights.

A key element of the new remit is to extend TTV’s reach using different platforms, genres and partnerships with other broadcasters. According to Ipsos Mori, only one in five teachers access the service via TV for at least five consecutive minutes. Of these, four in five watch at least 30 minutes of output per month. The website attracts 129,000 unique visitors per month or 4,300 per day. Increasing the reach of the service will be Education Digital’s biggest challenge.

A puzzling part of the announcement process is why Ten Alps rushed out a press release on 28 February, 14 days before the official public announcement from the DCSF. It certainly had a good effect on the Ten Alps share price, up 9.3% that day to 51p.

www.tenalps.com