Sky News is rebooting reportage series Hotspots, which it describes as “one of its most successful TV brands”, as a digital-first format – launching on November 30 on YouTube.
The reimagined Hotspots series will viewers straight into some of the world’s most hostile environments with teams led by chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay and special correspondent Alex Crawford. From dodging gunfire in Syria to navigating gang-controlled streets in Haiti, Hotspots aims to shine a light not only on the stories themselves but how those stories are captured – through every breath and decision.
Using only natural sound and raw action gathered in the field, and with the entire team filming and mic’d up, the new series will capture every moment from multiple angles on cameras, Osmos, and GoPros, immersing audiences in an unfiltered reality.
Sky News said: “This coverage delivers unparalleled transparency in an era of fake news, giving viewers a real-time look at how Sky News’s eyewitness storytelling unfolds on the front lines – and the challenges journalists face to uncover the truth.”
Locations featured during the series include:
Syria: caught in the crossfire between armed groups
Haiti: inside displacement camps where hostility takes on a different face
Somalia: tracking ISIS hideouts in remote terrain
Colombia: tracking Coca farmers deep in the Amazon
The West Bank: reporting under constant watch from Israeli forces
Libya: discovering overloaded migrant dinghies drifting in the dark
Last aired on TV in 2021, the return of Hotspots “marks a flagship moment in Sky News’s broader plan to evolve into a premium, video-first newsroom built for the digital future as part of its 2030 transformation strategy,” said the news brand. “The reinvented series will predominantly live on a newly created YouTube channel, with highlights on the Sky News app and vertical teasers across TikTok, Instagram, Shorts, and Snap. The new series reflects Sky News’s strategic shift away from linear-first thinking and mirroring the way audiences increasingly choose to consume news.”
Image courtesy of Sky News Hotspots trailer
