Jane Turton On Integrating ‘The Traitors’ Maker All3Media Into The Banijay Empire

The tectonic plates of the international production world shifted forever on July 9, when the merger between indie giants Banijay Entertainment and All3Media closed. The result created an entity larger than the BBC with annual pro forma revenues of €7.4B ($8.5B) and a catalog including MasterChef, The Traitors, Peaky Blinders, Midsomer Murders and Big Brother.

Banijay boss Marco Bassetti was named CEO of the new-look company, which will be given its true unveiling at a swanky drinks bash on the eve of MIPCOM.

For market watchers, a standout element of the C-suite org chart was All3Media’s long-serving CEO, Jane Turton, who became Deputy CEO of the combined entity. After spending 11 years crafting All3 into a major revenue-generating business, one might assume she would have decided to exit the fray. Given she was widely mentioned as a leading candidate for Director General job at the BBC and retains a reputation among peers and former colleagues as a top strategic thinker, the options elsewhere would surely have been plentiful.

So, is Turton content now the dust has settled? “Of course, I wouldn’t have taken it otherwise,” she responds when she sits down with Deadline down in the lobby of an Edinburgh hotel. “Life is about making choices, and I’ve made a positive choice to stay.”

Turton becomes increasingly passionate as she provides context about her mission. She had spent a decade burnishing All3’s reputation as one of TV’s top players, and now wants to oversee its integration into the Banijay fold. She’s hoping to protect jobs where she can – though Deadline has revealed several exits in the distribution team, where duplication is heavy – and she likes the scale of a wealthy business backed by Jeff Zucker’s RedBird IMI and Stéphane Courbit’s Banijay Group that “isn’t just big for big’s sake.”

Turton is also a proponent of change and is up for the challenge. “It is exciting,” she says. “It’s a big adjustment and that’s fine. It won’t do me any harm.”

She’s also been inspired by Banijay’s ability to supercharge formats and produce them in-house, pointing to how Dutch murder mystery reality hit The Traitors might have rolled out internationally as an example. “If All3 had been in Banijay at the time, we’d have had that going out – bang! – across 25 territories in a week on Wednesday. But we were selling it piecemeal.”

Given how fresh this all is, the focus since July has been hitting the year-end target and integrating with management. Around €50 milliom ($57 million) in cost savings are planned. The long-serving All3 international sales chief Louise Pedersen exited in July, along with others such as All3 group COO Sara Geater. Last week, Deadline revealed Rachel Job was in line for an EVP of Content job Banijay Rights, and this was confirmed later in the week.

At MIPCOM, Banijay Rights will be in town with content from the former All3Media International catalog, with Cathy Payne leading the unit. “Cathy is working incredibly hard to get her team in place for MIPCOM,” says Turton. “She’s got a shiny new Banijay Rights team that hopefully can accommodate for people from both sides assembled in the roles in the right places.”

Buyers might find seeing The Traitors sitting next to Survivor branding on the Banijay stand as initially jarring, but they’ll need to adjust fast. Banijay Rights now has a catalog of more than 265,000 hours from a combined business that owns more than 170 production companies. For context, BBC Studios is around the 45,000-hour mark and ITV Studios comes in near 100,000 hours.

Federal future

Back on the production front, Banijay leadership teams have been set in the U.K., the U.S. and Germany. Collectively, the likes of Studio Lambert, Neal Street Productions, Endemol Shine North America, Filmpool, Initial and Two Brothers Pictures are all in the same house.

A key strategic question for the immediate future is how All3’s well-documented “federal” model, where producers remain siloed and independent of each other, can mesh with Banijay’s geographic approach. Turton says people “overstate” the difference and that both companies are led by the same underlying north star: Creative leadership. “Can they develop and pitch, sell and produce the best shows, yes or no?” she says. “That is the only criteria for success.”