Chris Bonney

World Screen Weekly, April 26, 2007

Managing Director

Outright Distribution

Chris Bonney has a fair amount of experience in re-branding and relaunching companies to take advantage of new opportunities. While COO of the format distributor ECM in 2003, Bonney led a management buyout of the company and, in an alliance with the producer Screentime in Australia, formed Screentime Partners. Bonney rapidly began aligning with producers worldwide to build up the company’s portfolio, including working with the British outfit Ricochet, which is owned by the Shed Group, the producers of the worldwide hit Footballers’ Wives. From that association, Bonney says, all parties involved realized they shared the same objectives for global expansion, and, he notes, “There was a recognition from our side at Screentime Partners that the marketplace was consolidating very fast and that the opportunity to align ourselves with a major player like Shed was too good to miss.”

Screentime Partners was acquired by the Shed Group and subsequently re-branded as Outright Distribution at the beginning of this year. As managing director, Bonney is now overseeing the newest evolution in the company’s growth. “We’re seeing an interesting supply of shows from within the group, which we’re already selling and making revenue from—that always helps! We made a significant secondary U.K. sale of Footballers’ Wives and Bad Girls to Five Life, and we’ve had a steady stream of Ricochet program sales.”

At present, Outright’s business is still predominantly format sales, particularly of factual-entertainment properties, but the company is also working on licensing drama formats like Waterloo Road. Going forward, Bonney intends to shift the company’s catalogue to a more equal balance of formats and completed programs.

Outright’s key properties include Ranking the Stars, a celebrity chat show; Too Big to Walk, addressing obesity; the consumer-advice program Don’t Get Done, Get Dom; and Cash Cab, a game show. On the finished program slate, Bonney cites the 6×46-minute documentary series The White House�Sex Downunder.

“We feel that strategically we’re really well placed and excited about [our] growth potential,” Bonney says. “The U.K. as a whole continues to enjoy a very strong period in the international marketplace, and that seems set to continue. We’re happy to ride on that wave.”

—By Mansha Daswani