EXCLUSIVE: Australian producer WTFN has reshuffled its administration pack.
Co-founder Daryl Talbot has moved out of the CEO seat on the 22-year-old firm to change into Government Director, with COO Wes Criminal rising to switch him. Steve Oemcke, the opposite co-founder, stays Chief Inventive Officer and Derek Dyson is Chief Industrial Officer.
WTFN is greatest identified for Australian unscripted exhibits equivalent to Bondi Vet, Sydney Harbour Drive, The Hunters, Emergency and Area Invaders, but additionally operates in worldwide distribution by means of subsidiary Fred Media and digital vendor Radar. The 2 gross sales companies merged in September final 12 months.
Talbot, a former 9 Community producer and information reporter, launched WTFN with former gameshow host Oemcke in 2003, and so they have gone on to construct one among Australia‘s most prolific unbiased manufacturing and distribution operations. The Sydney-based firm owns a library of greater than 2,000 in-house hours, a sizeable quantity together with quite a few multi-season returners, and expertise company Empire Expertise, and has workplaces in L.A. and London.
This shuffle is among the many most important administration switches on the firm so far. “We now have been by means of some restructuring,” Talbot instructed Deadline. “The trade isn’t standing nonetheless and you’ll’t be left behind. The brand new construction offers me headspace to consider our technique and our worldwide focus.”
Talbot mentioned that whereas there’s “no denying from a macro-economic place that the previous couple of years have been fairly robust for everybody,” WTFN begins 2025 in “most likely the strongest place we’ve ever been in.” He predicted the corporate will expertise double-digit digital progress this 12 months, and added, “It has been a journey to get right here and navigate the modifications within the trade, together with Covid. To come back out of all of that and be rather well positioned is nice.”
Final 12 months, we revealed WTFN had engaged a financial institution to discover a sale or new funding with distribution progress in thoughts, however nothing has materialized but on that entrance and it stays privately owned.
Talbot declined to remark when requested in regards to the course of this, however was eager to speak up how the corporate had constructed up worth by means of what WTFN calls a ‘whole distribution’ technique after realizing that manufacturing alone wouldn’t hold the enterprise alive. This comprised figuring out the necessity for a global gross sales enterprise greater than a decade in the past, and launching a digital enterprise that features FAST channels and social media content material.
“We went from constructing homes to constructing homes, proudly owning them and renting them out,” mentioned Talbot. “That has allowed us to construct out personal library and given us choices going ahead. We’ve received a robust recurring manufacturing enterprise that persistently does a job for the networks, and we’re on the market pitching new exhibits, however proudly owning and controlling the content material is vital to the longer term. You must have the industrial mannequin that lets you suppose up these new exhibits.”
