Beyond Rights Hires Senior VP of Development

Beyond Rights has brought on Steve Jones to its London-based team in the newly created role of senior VP of development.

Jones’ industry experience includes serving as commissioning editor and executive producer for entertainment and factual at Sky 1, executive producer for factual and factual entertainment at Discovery Networks Europe, development executive and series producer at CJZ Productions and executive producer and development executive at Endemol Southern Star. He also co-founded Big Little Fish Television in 2019, which he co-ran for more than two years.

At Beyond Rights, Jones will be working to develop original ideas for returnable, popular factual series that meet demand in the market and that will also sit alongside similar successful programming in the Beyond Rights catalog. Working with established production partners, these ideas will be pitched to broadcasters for presale, co-production and commission. After securing a key broadcaster, Beyond Rights will manage any additional financing required for production and distribute all finished series and formats globally.

He reports to Beyond Rights’ CEO, David Smyth.

Smyth commented: “Our world is changing rapidly, and obtaining the rights and the right content for our business is increasingly challenging. So, we have decided to develop a new content pipeline to sit alongside our terrific acquisitions from third-party producers, as well as the content we have from the wider Beyond group. Steve is a hugely experienced executive, bursting with ideas, and is an exciting addition to our team. He will bring new creativity and thinking to the business and in return, he will be able to draw on the experiences, relationships and international market knowledge of our sales and acquisitions teams, who are well placed to know what buyers want.”

Jones added: “Beyond Rights is taking a very interesting strategic step with this new role. I am delighted to be working with David and the wider teams—and look forward to securing our first greenlight.”