BRITBOX TAPS DIEDERICK SANTER AS ITS FIRST CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER

BritBox International, the ITV and BBC Studios owned joint venture, announced that Diederick Santer has been appointed to the new role of Chief Creative Officer. Santer will join BritBox in September and will oversee all aspects of programming on the SVOD service globally, including commissioning and acquisition across all genres and for all markets outside of the UK.

Formerly CEO of Kudos, one of the world’s leading television production companies, Santer oversaw programmes including “Man in an Orange Shirt” (Channel 4), “Humans” (AMC), “Gunpowder” (BBC One), “The Boy with The Topknot” (BBC Two), “Tin Star” (Sky Atlantic), and “Apple Tree Yard”. He began his TV career in 1996 at ITV, joining the BBC in 2000, and became Executive Producer of EastEnders in 2006. He has recently worked in BBC Drama Commissioning overseeing a number of their 2021 titles, and previously set up his own production company, Lovely Day, a label within Kudos, which produced the hugely popular crime series “Grantchester”.

Santer will be part of the BritBox International leadership team, working under BritBox International CEO, Reemah Sakaan. His role will include building production and distribution relationships with the UK creative sector to secure a future pipeline of shows to accelerate BritBox's international growth in the SVOD world as part of its planned roll-out to multiple countries worldwide.

The ad-free subscription video-on-demand streaming service first launched in March 2017 in the United States, and earlier in the year surpassed 2 million global subscriptions. Since 2017, it has launched in Canada, the UK, Australia, and is due to launch in South Africa this summer.

“Diederick is a critical new appointment for us as we drive the scale and editorial ambition of BritBox International. His unrivalled relationships, experience, and superb taste make him perfectly positioned to create and curate the best of British programming for fans around the world,”  said Reemah Sakaan, CEO of BritBox International.

Diederick Santer added: “I am hugely excited to be joining Reemah and her team at BritBox International.  I’ve been obsessed with British TV for as long as I can remember, so to share the very best of it with the rest of the world - and to work with the finest UK producers - is something I am very much looking forward to”.