Monday 9th April 2018
Multichannel broadcaster, UKTV, today announced it has appointed Ronan Hand in the newly created position of director of programme funding. The role, which sits within UKTV's Commercial team, is designed to better enable the broadcaster to realise its ambitions in IP ownership and original commissions. Ronan joins from ITV Studios where he is SVP global content, non-scripted and co-productions.
Reporting to chief commercial officer, Simon Michaelides, Ronan will lead a multi-faceted team in taking a coordinated approach to funding original programmes, which draws together commercial partnerships, co-production and programme distribution. He will also explore new areas such as airtime funded programming with the intent of forging optimum funding partnerships for each programming idea.
Ronan joins UKTV in May and his responsibilities will include expanding UKTV's international sales footprint and amplifying the role of Advertiser Funded Programming within UKTV's programme mix. Ronan and his team will work closely with the Commissioning team led by director of commissioning Richard Watsham.
Simon Michaelides, UKTV's chief commercial officer, said:
I'm delighted to welcome Ronan to UKTV. He has a glowing reputation, a keen editorial eye, and a wealth of experience across multiple genres, all of which make him ideally suited to help us realise our ambitions as an originator of differentiated content. At UKTV we value creativity, collaboration, and the ability to challenge the status quo. These are precisely the skills that Ronan has built his reputation on, and we look forward to him putting them into practice at UKTV.
Ronan Hand added:
UKTV has been a company whose work I've admired during my time working in the TV industry and when the opportunity arose to join them in this role it felt a great fit. I'm very much looking forward to bringing my energy and passion to their team and helping create more great content for UKTV's dedicated audiences.
In his current role within ITV Studios' Global Entertainment Team, Ronan is responsible for managing ITV Global's non-scripted content, facilitating co-production on a domestic and global level, and acquiring and investing in the best non-scripted programming from producers around the world. Ronan joined ITV Global Entertainment in 2012 after a decade in various areas of the TV industry and 7 years in broadcast acquisitions. He has previously held roles at Flextech and Virgin Media TV in the UK and directly prior to joining ITV Studios he was head of global acquisitions for the Fox International Channels Group.
Ronan joins UKTV at a time when commissioning original content is at an all-time high. The broadcaster has seen a five-fold increase in the number of UKTV Original Productions over the past five years and worked with three times as many independent production companies in 2017 versus 2016 and across three times the number of genres, including comedy, entertainment, factual and sport. Most recently, UKTV has commissioned its first ever drama series for premium entertainment channel W. UKTV Original Flack (6X60'), starring Academy Award winning Anna Paquin, is a co-commission with US network Pop and co-produced by Hat Trick Productions and Anna Paquin's production company CASM Films.
For more information please contact:
Kerry Goode, Head of Network Communications, UKTV
About UKTV
UKTV is a commercial broadcaster reaching over 40m viewers every month.
The award-winning independent has eleven imaginative brands - UKTV Play, Dave, W, Gold, Alibi, Yesterday, Drama, Really, Home, Eden and Good Food. These include the two most popular non-PSB channels in the UK and account for nearly 10% of the British commercial TV market. The network delivers inspired channels to audiences through Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, BT, TalkTalk, YouView, Freesat, Amazon Fire and UKTV Play, and distributes its highly valued original programmes to 200 territories. Now celebrating over 20 years at the forefront of digital television, UKTV - an independent commercial joint venture between BBC Studios and Discovery, Inc. - is proud to be the first British television broadcaster in The Sunday Times top 100 companies list.