Court TV enjoys highest viewing figures ever during coverage of the George Floyd Trial

Last week, Court TV enjoyed “it’s biggest viewing day since inception”, according to Kerry Oslund, VP of Strategy and Business Development at Scripps with 144,000 daily reach.

Court TV is the world’s only network devoted to live broadcasting of the most compelling court cases in the United States, providing coverage and analysis of America’s most significant trials from inside the courtroom.

Court TV chose MPB to manage their expansion into the UK and we successfully launched them on Sky channel 179 and Freesat channel 177 in the latter half of 2020; followed by Freeview channel 89 in February. This made it available to approximately 25 million households on one of the UK’s biggest TV platforms ahead of its coverage and analysis of the Derek Chauvin murder trial.

Michael Ayala, a senior Court TV presenter said "the death of George Floyd has galvanised people around this idea that there needs to be changes to the system." As a result of the global outrage at Floyd’s death, there is intense public interest in the case.

The trial has made headlines for all sorts of reasons. It is a historic first for the state of Minnesota, which has never allowed cameras to film a full criminal trial in a courtroom before. In a landmark ruling last November, Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill permitted filming. Access was granted to Court TV to broadcast the trial live to global audiences and share coverage with other media outlets.

Broadcast Magazine carried this piece about the many technical challenges that needed to be overcome to create the live broadcast, from operating tiny remote controlled cameras to working within COVID restrictions.

Kerry Oslund recently declared the technical operations of Court TV as a success in the UK. We are humbled and privileged to have been a part of such an important channel launch and it’s coverage of such a significant, global event. We have enjoyed enabling Court TV’s launch success and are committed to ensuring the ongoing success of the UK channel as we continue to manage it’s broadcast operations.