Fifth Season expands EMEA TV sales team with BBCS, ITVS & Disney hires

Jennifer Ebell

CJ ENM-owned production and distribution firm Fifth Season is expanding its EMEA TV sales team, with a raft of appointments and promotions.

Jennifer Ebell has been upped from SVP of EMEA sales to EVP of EMEA sales and acquisitions. Under this expanded role, Ebell will now oversee the company’s London-based acquisitions team, which is led by Liz Tang, who was also recently promoted to executive director of acquisitions.

Ava Mustos also joined the team last month as associate director of acquisitions, reporting to Tang, from her prior role as commercial manager for drama for BBC Studios.

Fabio Tinchant has meanwhile been upped from executive director of sales for French Europe, CEE, MENA & Turkey to VP sales for the same markets, with the addition of southern Europe to his remit.

Based in Rome, Maria Grazia Ursino has also joined Fifth Season as director of southern Europe. Her previous roles include director of content sales for Turkey, Israel, Greece, Cyprus and Malta at The Walt Disney Company; executive director of sales for Italy, Spain and Portugal at Fox Networks Group; and sales director at Sony Pictures Television.

Further hires include Vubiquity alum Simon Algie as executive director of digital sales to spearhead Fifth Season’s AVOD & FAST exploitation and digital transactions business, while Ann Schröder has been elevated from director of sales for the Nordics, Benelux and Ireland to executive director for the same markets.

Kaia Roemer joins as senior sales manager for Germany and CEE from ITV Studios, where she was senior sales manager for EMEA and handled the sales pitches, negotiations and deal making of ITV content across all linear and non-linear channels in German-speaking Europe.

This slew of new appointments comes just weeks after the exit of former Shine Group and Avalon exec Tim Robinson as COO at the company.

Robinson had been with the Tokyo Vice and Severance producer since 2018 and was closely involved with the sale of the company – then known as Endeavor Content – to South Korean giant CJ ENM in 2021. This came on the heels of another major exec rejig for Fifth Season. Those changes saw distribution chief Prentiss Fraser, development & production head Joe Hipps and Todd Sharp all upped at the company, which is also behind Life & Beth and Nine Perfect Strangers. 

Fraser, president of TV distribution at the firm, said: “It’s always a pleasure to be able to promote from within, and it’s exciting to bring in new talent as well to develop business lines for us as we continue to grow and evolve our next-generation distribution business around the world.”