Darren Throop

July 13, 2009 World Screen

April 2009

 
With an aggressive acquisitions spree in the last two years, E1 Entertainment has boldly declared itself a major player in the international production-and-distribution market. What started as a home-entertainment distributor in Canada is now a global enterprise involved in television, feature films and music, with bases in Europe and North America. On the heels of the company’s scoring a U.S. network slot, on CBS, for its CTV drama The Bridge—among other U.S. pickups—the engineer of E1’s growth strategy, Darren Throop, reveals his big-picture plans.
 
WS: What was the rationale behind your series of acquisitions, and what does each company bring to the group?
THROOP: Our goal is to create the world’s leading independent content owner and distribution business. We want to be able to acquire, own and exclusively distribute content on behalf of ourselves and third parties, and push that content through our own infrastructure in different territories. About two years ago we bought Contender. That was the founding acquisition for us in Europe. The next stop was RCV in the Benelux, an all-rights management business with a fantastic catalogue of movies. We then came back to North America, [with the] acquisition of Seville, which was a theatrical distributor in Montreal and the foundation for our film business in Canada. And then last year we acquired Barna-­Alper and Blueprint, which are two leading Canadian production businesses, and Oasis, which added an international sales group. All of these companies bring us content and multichannel distribution infrastructure.
 
WS: How are you restructuring to accommodate all these new businesses?
THROOP: We have just rebranded the entire group as E1 Entertainment. The operating names—Contender, Blueprint, Barna-Alper—are gone. We want a global brand and a global presence, and I think the rebranding is a very strong statement. We needed a senior management team, and we needed the infrastructure in these territories.
 
WS: And E1 Television International will serve as the hub to distribute all your TV content to the worldwide market?
THROOP: Exactly.
 
WS: What other benefits do these individual companies derive from being part of the larger group?
THROOP: Finance would be a big one. We signed a revolving credit facility with J.P. Morgan in September, that gives the entire group access to a revolving facility that they hadn’t had before. It really takes the focus of the business leaders away from finance, balance sheets and accounting and puts it squarely back on content creation, aggregation and distribution, which is really where we need them to focus.
 
WS: Are you looking to do any additional acquisitions?
THROOP: We’re always looking. We would like to see a wider reach from a territorial standpoint, to have additional infrastructure in a few new territories. In this economic climate, there are significant opportunities out there. We’re mindfully watching opportunities that come across our desk.
 
WS: Have you had to make any changes to your plans, in light of the current climate?
THROOP: No, not in the strategy. We’re being mindful of our cost base, just like any other company is. We make adjustments on a yearly basis when they need to be made. But we’ve got a five-year plan that we put in place. We’re a couple of years through that plan, and we’re staying the course. Our banking facility is in great shape, our cash flows are in great shape, so we haven’t had to make any adjustments to our business plan, but we’re being as prudent and mindful of the macroeconomic conditions as any other company would be at this time.
 
WS: What are your big-picture priorities for the next year?
THROOP: On the television side, we’ve had some tremendous successes as of late. The Hung series being picked up by HBO was a big win for the television group. We’re working on a couple of other productions that we think may have some interest from U.S. networks. We really want to get our three pillars [TV, film, music] of the business working collaboratively, so we can unlock any synergies or any potential for additional revenue opportunities. What we’ve built is a major alternative where you can take a single piece of visual, audio or television content and plug it into an infrastructure and we can monetize all of those rights across the group. Everything from publishing and merchandising and licensing to toys to whatever revenue streams can be derived from that piece of content. Over the next 12 to 18 months, we’re really focusing on getting our senior management team together and creating that culture of a single entity as opposed to various operating groups across different territories.