Laura Franses appointed as ITV’s first Director of Content Partnerships

To support the increased content needs of ITVX, ITV has today announced that Laura Franses has been appointed into the important new role of Director of Content Partnerships, reporting to Media and Entertainment Content Director Rosemary Newell, and Managing Director of Streaming Rufus Radcliffe.

Laura will lead the strategy of identifying and securing strategic content partnerships for ITVX, to support ITV’s ambitions to supercharge its presence in streaming.

Laura is a leading figure in the UK content industry, with experience spanning executive roles at Channel Four, House Productions, Discovery and Nutopia Ltd.  Laura joins ITV from House Productions where she was Managing Director, selling the company to BBCS in Dec 2022. Prior to House, Laura led a large-scale initiative to bring in third party content to the newly launched Discovery+ to drive subscribers to the service. Laura spent 8 years of her career at Channel Four - most recently as Head of the Channel Four Growth Fund, where she set-up and oversaw the highly successful £20m fund investing into creative businesses and building successful partnerships. Investments included Eleven Films (creators of Sex Education), Whisper Films (sports producers sold to Sony), Simon Chinn’s Lightbox (producer of Searching for Sugarman) and Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy company with the fund achieving a full exit of 5 investments in less than 5 years. Laura co-founded the Emmy award-winning TV production company Nutopia Ltd with Jane Root which she ran as Managing Director for four years. Prior to that she worked at Zodiak (RDF) identifying and buying TV companies for the AIM-listed super indie, and started out in the UK as a production finance executive at Film4, part of Channel 4. 

Rosemary Newell, Media and Entertainment Content Director at ITV said:

“I am thrilled Laura has joined us to lead the charge for the very best innovative content partnerships for our audiences on ITVX.” 

Laura Franses said:

“I’m delighted to be joining ITV during such a truly transformative time in its history. It’s exciting to take ITV’s powerful brand in a new innovative direction as we transform the content offering across our digital platform, working across AVOD/SVOD/FAST Channels, I look forward to welcoming brand new content partners into the ITV family and collaborating to build a hugely successful must watch digital destination.”

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