All3Media CEO Jane Turton gave a glimpse of what a merger with Banijay could look like if it is likely to pass the antitrust review process.
The merger is expected to close by the end of the summer, with Banijay president Marco Bassetti becoming CEO and Turton remaining deputy CEO.
“I think integration is at the heart of a lot of people,” Turton said in an off-site conversation with Variety co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton at Shoreditch House during SXSW London.
“By the way, all of these companies are a combination of people and intellectual property, and I think the people in them, the teams, are very important,” Turton continued. “The success of these businesses depends heavily, if not almost exclusively, on the quality of their people.”
Hear highlights of the conversation on the Daily Variety podcast
Turton has been at the helm of the All3Media ship of 40 companies working in TV, film, theater and digital since 2015 and was featured in Variety magazine’s inaugural Women’s Impact Report UK.
In her keynote address at Shoreditch House, she acknowledged that mergers necessarily mean scale, but that does not necessarily translate into value. “Of course, scale matters, but you need to understand why scale matters,” she said. “It’s not just about being muscular, it’s about being more subtle, more sophisticated than just literal size. You can be very big and be very bad at your job, and that’s not going to grow your business. So what’s exciting about this merger is the fact that we have a very deep bench of talent that literally covers every genre.”
One example of the organic synergy she proposed was the upcoming theatrical version of the hit game show “The Traitors,” which was brought together by three companies from All3Media. Neil Street, which produces the theatrical show, Studio Lambert, which produces the UK and US versions of the game show, and Dutch-based IDTV, which created the format.
“This is a great example of what shareholders call synergy,” she says. “Teamwork, partnership, call it what you want. Having a deeper bench across multiple regions allows us to do more and more of that.”
Turton pointed out that All3Media currently operates in just six markets, the two largest being the UK and US, followed by Germany. Banijay’s footprint spans France, Italy, Spain and South America, but Turton also pointed to a deep well of IP such as “MasterChef,” “Survivor” and “Big Brother,” saying, “This is scale, but it’s much more sophisticated than just a statement about pure scale.”
