ITV Studios hires Fremantle veteran Tony Stern to head international legal & business affairs

Tony Stern

Fremantle veteran Tony Stern has been hired as director of legal & business affairs, international, at ITV Studios.

In his new role, Stern will be responsible for overseeing the legal and business affairs function at all of ITV Studios international production companies outside of the UK.

Stern is an experienced business affairs exec, joining ITV Studios from a year as EVP of legal & business affairs at Eureka Productions, the Fremantle-owned Australian prodco behind shows such as Holey Moley and Farmer Wants A Wife.

Prior to that, he spent more than 23 years at Fremantle, and was promoted into the role of EVP of commercial and business affairs in 2003. In that role, he managed the commercial and legal aspects of the production and distribution giant’s format acquisitions.

Joining the company in 2000, he helped to acquire and exploit marquee format franchises, including Idols, Got Talent, The X Factor and The Masked Singer. In 2020, Stern negotiated the global aspects of the commissioning deal with Netflix for Fremantle’s reality format Too Hot To Handle.

He was appointed to the FRAPA board in 2021 and in the same year shared his legal nous with TBI on the topic of copying formats, noting that: “There were people thinking that Dragon’s Den was an infringement. You’ve got to understand that you can’t own a genre, it has to be the actual specific format [to be an infringement] and so the details have to be very close.”