PA partners with SBTV to launch youth news service

London, 20 January 2016: The UK-based digital music discovery platform SBTV is marking its 10th anniversary with the launch of a news channel, SBTV News, in partnership with multimedia news agency, The Press Association (PA).

SBTV News will be powered by PA’s Snappa service, on SBTV’s rapidly-growing web platform SBTV.co.uk and represents a substantial expansion of the youth network’s coverage beyond music and entertainment. It will feature news content for SBTV’s youth-focused audience, including music, showbiz, games, tech, politics, sports and entertainment.

Jamal Edwards MBE, founder and CEO of SBTV, says: “SBTV News will be a fantastic opportunity to expand on our existing service which already covers the most important breaking music news on the web. Partnering with the PA allows our Editor-in-Chief, Ash Houghton, and his team to significantly expand the remit of the news we can cover, including sport, politics, and wider entertainment news. This is something I’ve been very keen to do for a while.

“Our audience is young, intelligent and hungry to learn, with interests beyond music, so I’m sure SBTV News will become an important part of our platform. We aim to become the go-to news destination for our followers – just as we have for discovering the best new music. Even before the launch of the SBTV News channel, SBTV is growing so strongly. Ash and the team have done an incredible job building the platform over the last few months and this news partnership marks another landmark moment in the evolution of SBTV. It’s a great start to our 10th anniversary year.”

Clive Marshall, Chief Executive of The Press Association says: “We are very excited to have formed this digital partnership with Jamal Edwards and SBTV, which will combine the multimedia content, resources and experience of PA and the unique strength among young audiences of SBTV. We see this is as great opportunity to gain insights into the needs of youth audiences and to ensure our services are relevant for this demographic.”

Ash Houghton, Editor In Chief of SBTV, says: “SBTV News will offer our fast-growing audience a real alternative news service. It will be informative, engaging and look to provide a platform for the issues young people care about most. The introduction of SBTV News comes at a time where we are experiencing phenomenal audience growth across the platform – thanks to some outstanding content from our existing team of writers.”

The SBTV News partnership will see PA journalists seconded to SBTV to provide a fresh perspective on the news with engaging, fun and informative breaking news stories, sourced from PA, the web and social media. The partnership will be managed by a joint SBTV-PA board chaired by Colin Morrison, media company director and consultant, who says: “This is a ground-breaking partnership of the UK’s national news agency and one of the most successful digital platforms to create what will become a major news service for young audiences everywhere.”

Jamal Edwards founded SBTV in 2006, originally as a YouTube channel, to give a voice to UK rap and grime talent, who had been under represented by traditional media. It has become one of the most significant curated youth networks in the digital space, filming hundreds of exclusive sessions and interviews with the best established and emerging talent, championing many British acts who have since achieved global success, including: Ed Sheeran, Rita Ora and Emeli Sande. SBTV now has over 630k subscribers and over 338 Million video views on YouTube.

Check out SBTV News here: http://sbtv.co.uk/news/