DRG Adds Pair of Execs to Sales Team

LONDON: Sky Vision’s Amity Easter Utley and Zodiak Rights’ Jo Halstead have been appointed to the sales team of independent distributor DRG, part of MTG’s nice entertainment group.

Easter Utley will have oversight of DRG’s sales in Spain and Portugal. Halstead, meanwhile, will cover Japan, Southeast Asia and Denmark, as well as the company’s inflight business. These new hires come on the heels of DRG expanding its content pipeline by developing its relationships with existing producer clients and inking several new first-look deals this year.

“We have had a terrific 12 to 18 months and with everything firmly in place for this growth to continue, the time is now right for us to begin to expand and develop our sales team to ensure that we have the right people, in the right roles, to properly service all of our clients—be they producers, broadcasters, global OTT platforms or non-theatric businesses such as airlines,” said Richard Halliwell, DRG’s managing director.

“We are planning for ongoing expansion through 2017 and as buyer demands shift, we need to respond by evolving a sales team [that] has the right mix of local and global expertise, plus platform and genre expertise, in order to maximize returns from the range of programming we have delivering throughout next year and beyond. Amity and Jo join us at an exciting moment of growth and we are delighted that they have seen the opportunity to further their careers with DRG. With 95 percent of our catalog coming from independent producers, we are in the enviable position of being able to pick and choose the content we represent, thus ensuring the quality of our catalog is maintained and our reputation remains strong within the marketplace.“

Halstead noted: “I am delighted to be joining DRG at a time of massive growth for the business. There is a great catalog to work with and a very welcoming, experienced team, who have amazing relationships with leading broadcasters and content platforms, as well as some of the most exciting British and international producers.”

Easter Utley added: “For me, the primary appeal of DRG is its rather unique position and I look forward to working in a business which has operational and pipeline independence, yet the security that comes from being part of a major group.”