Steve Burke, Ted Sarandos Among RTS London Lineup

LONDON: The Royal Television Society (RTS) has added to the lineup for the RTS London Conference 2016, which will feature, among the speakers, NBCUniversal’s Steve Burke, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and the BBC’s Tony Hall.

The theme of this year’s event, which takes place on September 27, is Full Stream Ahead: Commissioning, Producing and Distributing Content in an Age of On-Demand. The conference will explore how the emergence of new distribution platforms is impacting the commissioning and production landscape.

The conference—which is sponsored by NBCUniversal International and chaired by Kevin MacLellan, the company’s chairman—will open with a keynote from Burke, the CEO of NBCUniversal.

Michael Edelstein, the president of NBCUniversal International Studios; Tim Davie, CEO of BBC Worldwide and director of global; Stephen Lambert, CEO of Studio Lambert; and Sky Vision’s managing director, Jane Millichip, will join session chair Tim Hincks, former president of Endemol Shine Group, for a session titled Go Global or Go Home.

The Brexit: What Next panel will see Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy chair a discussion with Josh Berger, the president and managing director of Warner Bros. Entertainment U.K., Ireland and Spain; Pippa Glucklich, CEO of Starcom; Peter Mandelson, the former MP for Hartlepool and a former EU Commissioner; and John McVay, the chief executive of Pact.

Ben McOwen-Wilson, the director of YouTube EMEA, joins Simon Pitts, the managing director for online, pay TV, interactive and technology at ITV; Jim Ryan, Liberty Global’s senior VP and chief strategy officer; and Sue Unerman, the chief strategy officer at MediaCom, for a debate chaired by actor and comedian Hugh Dennis entitled You Don’t Own A TV? What Is All Your Furniture Pointed At?

In the last session of the morning, Channel 4 News’s Cathy Newman interviews Sharon White, Ofcom’s chief executive.

The afternoon begins with a keynote conversation with Sarandos, the chief content officer at Netflix. This will be followed by The New Commissioners, with a panel that includes the director of Sky Atlantic, Zai Bennett; the managing director of BT TV and Sport, Delia Bushell; BBC Three’s controller, Damian Kavanagh; Vice Media’s head of news programming EU, Kevin Sutcliffe; and UKTV’s director of commissioning, Richard Watsham.

The Evolution of Public Service Broadcasting will see Pat Younge, the managing director at Sugar Films, chair a discussion with Channel 4’s chief creative officer, Jay Hunt; Monica Maggioni, the president of RAI; BBC’s director of strategy and education, James Purnell; and Peter Rosberg, the head of planning and scheduling at Danmarks Radio.

The day’s final session, Fit for the Future?, will see The Grierson Trust chair Lorraine Heggessey joined by Channel 4’s CEO, David Abraham; Sky’s group COO and CFO, Andrew Griffith; Hall, the BBC’s director general; Dido Harding, the CEO of TalkTalk Telecom Group; and Tom Mockridge, CEO of Virgin Media.