EXCLUSIVE: Channel 4‘s plans to maneuver into in-house manufacturing are heating up.
Deadline hears that the UK industrial community behind The Nice British Bake Off has engaged a headhunter to establish an govt to steer the unnamed unit.
Ibison, the search firm run by former YMU expertise agent Nicola Ibison, is overseeing the exterior recruitment course of and has begun approaching potential candidates.
Channel 4 is open-minded concerning the job title for the brand new in-house chief, believing that the choice of the profitable candidate will probably be an essential issue.
A supply stated Channel 4 is searching for an govt who sits one rung beneath large manufacturing hitters, reminiscent of Sony boss Wayne Garvie or Jane Turton, the All3Media CEO.
The function will report into chief working officer Jonathan Allan, who’s poised to step as much as interim CEO when Alex Mahon exits Horseferry Street within the coming weeks.
Channel 4’s transfer into manufacturing is a big step, signalling the tip of its 40-year historical past as a community that greenlights all of its content material from the unbiased manufacturing sector.
The UK authorities eliminated Channel 4’s writer broadcaster shackles in 2023 as a part of a deal to maintain the corporate in public arms.
Mahon has since moved slowly and punctiliously with the in-house imaginative and prescient, embracing the chance for a brand new income stream with out being gung-ho and unsettling Channel 4’s suppliers.
Lucinda Hicks, the previous Banijay UK CEO, helped Channel 4 draw up its manufacturing plans final 12 months, however has since develop into group CEO at Sister, producer of Netflix’s Black Doves.
Channel 4 won’t be publishing an exterior job advert for the in-house manufacturing chief, however Ibison has been tasked with discovering a candidate who can construct a crew and create content material that matches with the corporate’s revolutionary, disruptive ethos.
The profitable govt will probably be anticipated to have relationships with UK broadcasters, streamers, and U.S. companions, underlining Channel 4’s ambition to make reveals for third events.
Channel 4’s plans to recruit a manufacturing chief come as the corporate prepares to publish its 2024 earnings on Wednesday. It will likely be Mahon’s ultimate annual report within the high job earlier than becoming a member of Superstruct, the KKR-backed firm behind reside occasions like Boardmasters.
Media regulator Ofcom is at present looking for Channel 4’s subsequent chair, who in flip is predicted to play a pivotal function in appointing a brand new CEO.
Debbie Wosskow, the Love Residence Swap founder and Channel 4 non-executive, is within the working to interchange Sir Ian Cheshire as chair, in keeping with Sky Information.
The Day by day Telegraph reported that Dame Tristia Harrison, the previous boss of broadband supplier TalkTalk, can also be within the working. Interim chair Daybreak Airey is claimed to have dominated herself out of the race.
