Mark Young

TV Real Weekly, December 17, 2008

Senior VP, Entertainment Sales & Acquisitions Worldwide


IMG Entertainment

Programs from Tiger Aspect Productions, Tigress and Darlow Smithson form the bedrock of IMG Entertainment’s distribution catalogue. Leading the company’s sales charge is Mark Young, who also heads up its acquisitions worldwide.

"I was asked to come and re-boot IMG’s entertainment distribution business after their purchase of Darlow Smithson and Tiger Aspect," says Young, who came to IMG from BBC Worldwide. "The challenge of building a new business after leading the biggest was something that really grabbed my imagination. In my first year here we doubled our sales and have tripled them this year. We are now looking to build further in 2009, despite the economic conditions, with a really strong slate of programs."

This catalogue includes Tiger Aspect’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Make Me a Supermodel and both Ross Kemp on Gangs and Ross Kemp in Afghanistan, as well as The Diary of Anne Frank and Thriller in Manila from Darlow Smithson. "Coming next year we have the sequels to many of these popular series and, for the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of war, The Second World War in Colour from Nugus Martin."

Young points out that traditionally factual has been the top-performing genre, with programming from both IMG Sports Media (formally TWI) and Darlow Smithson. "The reality genre is now, however, the one that is really taking off for us, with Make Me a Supermodel and Vanity Lair leading the charge and some great game-show concepts following up behind." And Young continues to look for content to add to IMG’s portfolio, noting that he wants to pick up "something that everybody else will miss: a program series, rather than one-offs, a show with great production values that is strong enough to sit within a mainstream terrestrial network, has international appeal and the opportunity to be re-commissioned into a second and third series."

Putting together a strong mix of programming is Young’s main goal for the upcoming year. He explains that he’s looking to "create a slate of programming that will continue our onward advance into 2009 and beyond, through both accessing our in-house content and independent programming and working to open up some markets that we believe will make a difference in the medium to long term. These include the traditional growth markets, Latin America, Russia and Eastern Europe, India, China and Africa and the Middle East, particularly, with some of the great formats we have developed over the past year."

�By Kristin Brzoznowski