LONDON, UK: STV Group plc has acquired, through its wholly-owned subsidiary STV Studios Limited, 100% of the issued share capital of unscripted television production network Greenbird Media Limited for a total cash consideration of approximately £24 million, of which £21.4 million was paid on completion.
As well as helping its network of investee production companies to accelerate their growth plans, Greenbird Media is also a service provider, offering a bespoke back-office solution to enable creatives to focus on pipeline development and programme production.
The acquisition will make STV Studios one of the largest production groups in the UK, is a major step towards our stated objective of becoming the UK’s No.1 nations & regions producer, and accelerates the STV Group’s overall diversification strategy.
Founded by respected television executives Jamie Munro and Stuart Mullin in 2012, Greenbird has built the largest independently-owned network of high quality producers in the UK, with an archive of 2,000+ hours of content, and will this year produce over 350 hours of new programming across 25 returning series.
Greenbird network companies are behind such hit shows such as LEGO Masters (C4, Fox in the US), The Hit List (BBC One), Animal Casualty 24/7 (C5), The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan (BBC Two), Late Night Lycett (C4) and Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing (BBC Two).
Greenbird directly owns majority stakes in two of the UK’s leading unscripted production companies, Crackit Productions (75%) and Tuesday’s Child (51%), founded and run by award-winning creative leaders Elaine Hackett (ex Endemol UK board member overseeing Big Brother) and Karen Smith (ex MD of Shine TV and co-creator of Strictly Come Dancing) respectively.
Tuesday’s Child in turn owns a majority stake in Interstellar (51%). Greenbird also holds minority positions in a further 12 production companies, including Rumpus Media (40%), Glasgow-based Hello Halo (30%) and Flicker Productions (40%), offering significant scope for future consolidated growth.
Simon Pitts, STV CEO said: “Growing STV Studios into the UK’s #1 nations and regions production company is one of our core strategic objectives. This transformative acquisition represents a major step towards that goal, adding significant scale and creative firepower to the group and immediately accelerating STV’s overall diversification in terms of both revenue and profit. We’re delighted to be partnering with Greenbird Media and to welcome their incredibly talented network of creative leaders to the STV family as we jointly aim to grow our production base in the UK and internationally.”
Jamie Munro and Stuart Mullin, Greenbird founders, said: “This is an exciting new chapter in Greenbird’s history. We are hugely proud of the Greenbird incubator model we have built. It has given creatives space to flourish and deliver some of the most innovative, entertaining and loved programmes in the UK. Their creative power is unrivalled and has been recognised by viewers, critics, awards panels and through the volume of international sales that their shows have generated.
We’re delighted to be working with Simon and David at STV. We look forward to a future together helping a wider network of creatives realise their ambitions.”
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