Peter Pas

World Screen Weekly, May 3, 2007

Commercial Director

Parthenon Entertainment

Peter Pas began his television distribution career in 1987 at the BBC, which was a training ground for many of his colleagues as well. “I sort of found that for my generation, everybody at some point works at the BBC,” jokes Pas. Back then, in the late 1980s, it was a boon time for the television business. “Virtually everything was saleable,” says Pas. “Public and private channels across Europe were buying a lot.”

After the BBC, Pas worked for a number of years in Germany at TBA Films and ITEL. However, he was ready for a change. Drawn to the idea of working for a smaller company and “being involved in everything,” Pas joined Parthenon Entertainment in October 2003 to head its distribution division. He worked closely with the company’s founder and managing director, Carl Hall, to implement a strategy that would help it “move forward” and diversify its catalogue beyond the “shrinking wildlife market” into other areas. “The Parthenon I joined [was] a tall, one-legged table, [the kind] that you find in bars, with wildlife as its only leg,” says Pas. “Now, we are a four-legged meeting table, with history, science and human interest making us a lot steadier.”

The first step toward a more stable and even-handed portfolio was the acquisition of the German factual distributor True Stories in 2004. It had a “strong catalogue of human interest and science titles,” Pas says. In 2005, Parthenon also moved successfully into the field of children’s programming after taking on S4C International’s properties.

The company’s new offerings include Freemasons on Trial, available as a special (one hour or 100 minutes) or as a three-part series. The title, which recently outperformed its slot on Discovery Channel in the U.S., will be reversioned for broadcast on Five in the U.K. to coincide with the release of Dan Brown’s new novel The Solomon Key, which also centers on freemasons. In addition, Parthenon’s catalogue also includes new titles such as Ancient Megastructures, a 3×1-hour series from Darlow Smithson that uses CGI and re-enactments to look at how some of the world’s most iconic buildings were created. Pas notes that both of these programs, like nearly all of Parthenon’s new shows, are in HD, which “is an absolute must” for all of Parthenon’s “new high-end productions.”

Other recent HD productions include Romance in Stone, which looks at romantic monuments across the world, and the one-hour special Angels, which covers the historical and cultural aspects of angels.

—By Irene Lew