Stephen Lambert

Chief Executive

Studio Lambert

It has been just over a
year since Stephen Lambert stepped down as the chief creative officer of RDF
Media, and already he has hit the ground running on a new venture, Studio
Lambert. Launched in partnership with ALL3MEDIA, the production company is focused
on high-quality, nonscripted programming for the U.K., the U.S. and
international markets. Lambert, who was responsible for creating award-winning
formats such as Wife Swap, Faking
It and The Secret Millionaire, has set up trans-Atlantic offices in Los Angeles
and London, and has recruited quite the roster to join him.

Tapped to helm the
company's U.S. team is Eli Holzman, the former head and co-founder of Miramax
Television. Holzman created the hit series Project Runway, and served as the president of Ashton Kutcher's
Katalyst Films, where he developed and launched Beauty & The Geek, which aired for five seasons in the U.S. on The
WB and then The CW. He is also behind The CW's new hit series Stylista. "Eli is somebody who combines great
creativity with a real entrepreneurial flare and I think that he's already got
some shows that he was working on before he joined us that we're going to be
doing as Studio Lambert USA productions," says Lambert. "I'm sure
that together we're going to be able to create some big hits."

Behind Lambert in his U.K.
operation are Peter Moore, the executive producer of hit programs such as the
first season of the BBC's The Apprentice and Channel 4's Jamie's Kitchen; Tania Alexander, who was behind Channel 4's reality series The
Games and Shipwrecked: Battle
of the Islands; Jenny Crowther,
who series-produced The Secret Millionaire and Wife Swap; and Jamie Donald, previously a BBC News executive and former deputy
editor of Today.

Also adding power behind
the venture is the backing of ALL3MEDIA. "I was excited about the idea of
starting a new company and I was very keen to get the backing of a big media
player. I was very impressed by ALL3MEDIA. It's a group of very successful,
very impressive companies that have been created with ALL3MEDIA and those
companies have been allowed to benefit from being in a group while still having
their own way of doing things. I liked the fact that it wasn't an
over-controlling group, yet the support was there when you needed it. It's a
good model." Studio Lambert's shows will be distributed through ALL3MEDIA
International.

Leading off Studio
Lambert's crop of offerings is Undercover Boss, which Channel 4 is set to launch in early 2009.
The show features bosses from big companies heading back to the floor to work
on the front line, while nobody they're working with knows their true identity.
"They're looking for things that are going wrong that they can sort out,
but the big emotional thing is that they're also looking for the underappreciated
workers who are doing a brilliant job, who they can give a holiday to or maybe
even promote. It's looking for the good and the bad within their company,"
Lambert explains. "We hope to find a really good home for it in the
States, it might be a network sell or it might be for cable."

Another highlight in the
company's slate is The Jacksons in Devon, which shows how the famous pop family's move to London went bad.
Studio Lambert was given exclusive access to film the family in their
multi-million-dollar estate to follow the move. Shooting is also under way on Ultimate
Gap Adventure, a new eight-hour
series for Channel 4 that follows as six 20-year-olds travel across Indonesia,
in what is ultimately a popularity contest to be named "best traveling
companion."

"We want to have some
great nonscripted shows on air both in the U.K. and in the States," says
Lambert. "We've certainly got the in-house development capability to
create our own shows, but we're also interested in partnering with people. And
we're also putting quite a lot of energy into working in the online spaceÉWe
want to be in that area as well as in television." And looking down the
line, Lambert hopes to replicate the level of success he had with his past
accomplishments in his brand-new venture. "I'd love for Studio Lambert to
find a show that is as successful as Wife Swap and that's what we're going to try to create in
the next 12 months."

—By Kristin
Brzoznowski