Virgin Media

Virgin Media (NASDAQ: VMED) and The Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista International Television (BVITV) have today announced a major UK content agreement that includes hit US network series such as Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds and Alias.

Negotiated by Steve Nam, director of rights for Virgin Media's wholly-owned channels Living and Bravo, and Catherine Powell, BVITV's vice president, Sales, UK & Ireland, Nordic, Benelux & Israel, the deal will offer some of the strongest brands from their linear schedules on Virgin Media's TV-on-demand service.

This agreement is in line with The Walt Disney Company's focus on the application of technology to enhance its content and expand its distribution.

Included in the new deal are: library series of the smash hit, Golden Globe-winning hospital drama Grey's Anatomy, FBI thriller Criminal Minds, starring Mandy Patinkin, new drama Day Break starring Taye Diggs, and the final two seasons of the Emmy award-winning spy drama Alias, starring Jennifer Garner.

The first two seasons of Extreme Makeover UK, and season 1 of Ghost Whisperer and Night Stalker will also be available on the service.

Building on Living and Bravo's long established relationship with BVITV, the licence starts later this month and sees Virgin Media strengthen its TV-on-demand service with further compelling content. The rights also include high definition versions of all the shows (except Extreme Makeover UK).

Steve Burch, president and CEO of Virgin Media, said: "We're strengthening our TV-on-demand and HDTV offerings with this major new agreement. Our customers already love the additional choice and control offered by on-demand and now we're focused on creating a must see menu of entertainment."

Further major content additions are expected throughout the year, strengthening the line-up and adding even more choice to one of Europe's biggest on-demand libraries.

Jim Brehm, senior vice president, Sales, BVITV EMEA, said: "Flexibility and choice are becoming increasingly important factors to consumers of TV entertainment, so we're pleased to be working to offer this strong selection of our series to Virgin Media's customers across the UK, in convenient ways."

To find out more about Virgin Media services, consumers can visit www.virginmedia.com or call 0845 454 1111.

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Notes to editors
Virgin Media is an innovative and pioneering UK entertainment and communications business. For the first time consumers can get everything they need from one company - the UK's only quad play of TV, broadband, phone and mobile plus the most advanced TV on demand service available, the UK's first high definition TV service and V+, our high specification personal video recorder. We're the UK's most popular broadband provider, the largest virtual mobile network operator and the second largest provider of pay TV and home phone.

Virgin Media owns two content businesses - Virgin Media Television (VMTV) and sit-up. VMTV owns seven entertainment channels - Living, Living 2, Bravo, Bravo 2, Challenge, Trouble and Ftn - and is a 50% partner in UKTV which consists of ten channels including UKTV Gold and UKTV History. sit-up runs retail TV channels bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auctiontv.

Virgin Media is the largest Virgin company in the world and has almost 10 million customers. To find out more visit www.virginmedia.com/presscentre

BUENA VISTA INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION (BVITV) Buena Vista International Television is the international television distribution division of The Walt Disney Company. BVITV licenses over 30,000 hours of programming to over 1300 broadcasters across 240 territories worldwide. BVITV distributes a portfolio of motion pictures from Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films, network TV series, TV movies and miniseries, Disney-branded kids programming, ABC Daytime and ABC News programming as well as the Annual Academy Awards®. The company also services the distribution of the Jetix Europe portfolio internationally. BVITV has been expanding its business portfolio to distribute U.S.-produced reality programs and exploits reality and scripted formats for local production; including local editions of ‘Extreme Makeover' in the UK, India, Belgium, Scandinavia and Hungary and Colombia, ‘The Amazing Race' in Central Europe and Asia, and local versions of 'Home Improvement' and 'Hope & Faith' in Russia and Turkey respectively.

Media contacts M Communications: 0207 153 1515, or 0207 153 1530 BVITV: Sarah Hird +44 (0)208 222 1724