UK news media organisations are expanding their presence on the US market.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the British public broadcaster, is planning to ramp up production of TV shows in the United States.

The organisation is reportedly looking for options to raise money in the US. BBC Studios currently creates programmes in America in cooperation with Lions Gate studio, but “BBC management wants a larger role”, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw notes. The news comes amidst efforts by the BBC to diversify its revenue sources beyond the licence fee, which has traditionally been its primary source of income but has faced instability in recent years.

In the meanwhile, The Guardian is set to see record revenue numbers in the US, expecting to make $33 million in digital reader revenue for its fiscal 2023/2024 year. “Investments in U.S. products [such as US-specific newsletters] and headcount [which rose to 159 employees] are paying off for the British newspaper”, Axios’ Sara Fischer reports.

As Axios reminds, The Guardian ramped up its US investment after the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election as it saw persistent audience interest. Overall the US market makes for about one-fifth of The Guardian’s revenue, and reader revenue is the biggest revenue stream for the publisher that traditionally doesn’t have a digital paywall.

The Cyprus Confidential reporting project, which was unveiled on Tuesday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and dozens of media outlets, exposed the extent of Russian oligarchs’ financial involvement in Cyprus and the West.

The project is a notable media news story itself, the way Panama Papers were in 2016 or Pandora Papers in 2021. It’s a massive undertaking, which has involved close to 70 media outlets and is based on the data from over 3.6 million documents from seven financial data leaks.

Besides, the leaks showed reported financial ties of prominent German journalist Hubert Seipel with the pro-Kremlin oligarch Alexei Mordashov. The “leading western journalist who has long been considered one of Germany’s top independent experts on Russia received at least €600,000… in undisclosed offshore payments from companies linked to [Mordashov]”, The Guardian reports.

“The revelations are likely to reverberate across Germany, where debate has been raging since last year’s invasion of Ukraine over the role parts of the political and business elite played in helping to keep Putin in power, not least due to [the] long-term dependence of Europe’s largest economy on Russian oil and gas”, The Guardian writes.

Quick links — Four more news stories worth your attention:

The Guardian: Hungarian plan to target foreign influence fuels NGO and media fears
Press Gazette: Reach redundancies: Company rejects report it will replace journalists with influencers
The Wall Street Journal: Insider Co-Founder Henry Blodget Steps Down as CEO Amid Strategy Shift
Axios: Media jobs slashed [in the US] amid soft ad market

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