The Sun has named a director of video to lead its expansion plans in this area.
Sun director of digital Will Payne told Press Gazette in January that the brand has “significant ambitions” for video as it implements a strategy based around two pillars: original, episodic formats and breaking news videos.
Jon Lloyd has now joined The Sun as director of video to lead a video-first commissioning strategy across these pillars.
Lloyd joins from running his own content agency, Frieda.tv, creating factual entertainment programming. He is also previously behind TV content formats like Come Dine With Me and Four in a Bed.
He said: “It’s an incredible time to be joining The Sun as we increase our high-quality video content, putting it at the heart of our story-telling, and transform this UK institution into a ground-breaking audio and visual content producer and platform.”
Other new Sun hires include Kate Chaplin as head of news video, joining from The Telegraph where she is leading its own strategy as head of video news. She was also formerly a TV producer for Sky News.
Laura Payne has been named head of video production, moving across from News Broadcasting Digital where she has been head of production since 2022. She first joined News UK in the commercial studio team in 2018.
Sun editor-in-chief Victoria Newton said: “With his successful track record of producing quality programming, allied with Kate and Laura’s huge expertise, Jon is perfectly placed to lead The Sun’s video output as we add another dimension to our brilliant digital journalism.”
The Sun said it has driven more than 1.7 billion video views on original programming and news video in the last quarter including its political show Never Mind The Ballots, Ukraine show The Frontline and sports shows Tactics Exposed and Weekend Wager.
Payne told Press Gazette The Sun’s Youtube revenues more than doubled in the second half of 2024 and described the video strategy as “one of the most ambitious things that I’ve seen in my time at The Sun”.
He said it was “not a video-first transformation, but a real prioritisation of video within the newsroom, and putting it at the heart of the commissioning process”.
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