In April, TV producer Endemol UK disbanded its digital unit in favour of a 25-person, group-wide “digital board”, after UK digital head Peter Cowley and global digital media and new business head Adam Valkin left.
But the indie is appointing a new digital head now. It’s promoting digital production head Nick Hall to be digital media operations director. Hall will now sit on that board, which is chaired by COO Lucas Church and Remarkable TV MD David Flynn.
It may point to a more TV-led digital strategy than Endemol had under Cowley, who had latterly produced web-only original drama for social networks and web portals – The Gap Year and Beat for Bebo, Kirill for MSN, Cell for O2.
Endemol credits Hall with having attracted 450,000 online players to participate in virtual betting around Endemol’s Channel 4 show The Million Pound Drop recently, and says he will oversee multi-platform brand extensions plus original digital productions.
Endemol UK CEO Tim Hincks said in April that original web video productions are “severely compromised” by the sponsorship-led funding model.