The Sky Networks account includes the Sky One, Sky Two, Sky Three, Sky News, Sky Movies, Sky Travel, Sky Arts and Sky Box Office brands. The business does not have an incumbent agency across all brands.
The pitch will be overseen by Alex Lewis, the director of marketing and communications at Sky Networks, and is part of an initiative to use the brands to drive subscriptions.
Beattie McGuinness Bungay, the incumbent on the Sky One and Sky News brands, will not repitch for its share of the business.
WCRS already handles the Sky brand advertising. Sky confirmed the three agencies had been invited to pitch for the business as part of a shortlist. A decision on the winning agency is expected by the end of next month.
Yesterday, Sky announced it had acquired the third series of hit US drama 'Prison Break' from terrestrial broadcaster Five. The move is another step in Sky's acquisition of high profile shows, which also saw the broadcaster poach 'Lost' from Channel 4, which was a major blow for the broadcaster after just one season.
The broadcaster is currently embroiled in a public relations spat with one of its main rivals Virgin Media over carriage negotiations.
In an extraordinary move earlier this month, Sky released details of the extent of its efforts to negotiate a settlement with Virgin Media, over the withdrawal of its basic channel package at the end of February. The channels removed include Sky One, Sky Two, Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News.
Virgin Media has accused Sky of more than doubling the asking price of the rights for Virgin to carry its basic channel package and also threatened to pay nothing to Virgin for its channels, which include Bravo and Living TV.
The loss of the basic package has deprived 3.3m Virgin Media customers of hit shows, such as 'Lost' and '24'.
In May, Sky announced it had has added just 51,000 customers in the first quarter of the year, as the record product sales driven by its recent 'See speak surf' marketing campaign were offset by higher levels of churn..jpg)
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