Off the Fence


Stehmeier, Eyre exiting Off the Fence

Bo Stehmeier and Georgina Eyre are leaving distributor Off the Fence as part of a restructuring that sees the firm draft in Modern Times Group’s director of pay TV channels. OTF managing director, distribution Stehmeier (pictured) is leaving the company this month after eight years. There’s currently no word of his next post. “Bo has […]

Busan Contents Market: 2015 report

TBI speaks to the international content companies that attended the ninth edition of the Busan Contents Market and the organisers of the South Korean market Busan Contents Market wants to establish itself as the number one programming market in Asia, says Jong Sang Koo, chairman of the event’s executive committee and media professor at Dongseo […]

Blue chip to new chip: natural history with bite

Stewart Clarke speaks to commissioners, producers, distributors and digital pioneers about their efforts to reimagine the natural history genre. Alastair Fothergill is the embodiment of blue-chip, making landmark series for the BBC and films for Disney Nature, but he is now seeking to reinvent the genre, out of necessity as much as anything. “When I […]

Girl Eats World on Off the Fence menu

Europe-based Off the Fence Distribution is taking 500 new hours to MIPTV, including food series Girl Eat World. This will comprise various titles in factual genres and 150 hours of scripted programming. On the factual front there is 10x30mins Girl Eat World, which follows MasterChef South Africa winner Kamini Pather as she journeys to her […]

Off the Fence poaches Indigo sales exec

Europe-based factual indie Off the Fence has poached Loren Syer-Willoughby from Indigo Film & Television. Syer-Willoughby joins as an acquisitions executive and be based at Off the Fence’s London office. She will report to head of acquisitions Georgina Eyre, and be responsible for sourcing and acquiring new catalogue content. She has spent the previous two […]

Off the Fence launches footage library

Producer and distributor Off the Fence has launched a stock footage library populated with clips from its various wildlife productions. The digital library will contain short clips running to 5-to-30 seconds apiece, divided into various categories including Habitats, Plants, Time Lapse, People & Culture and Underwater. There is footage from OTF shows including Wildest Latin […]

Luck’s in at Off the Fence

Producer-distributor Off the Fence has appointed National Geographic Television producer Geoffrey Luck (pictured) as executive producer. Luck is credited with factual series for the likes of PBS, Discovery, Showtime, and the Sundance Channel. In his new role at UK-headquartered Off the Fence, he will report to founder and CEO Ellen Windemuth. “We pride ourselves on […]

The factual landscape: ducks, docs and digital

The business of selling factual programming is changing – with free-to-air slots for classic factual shows hard to come by, distributors are looking to other categories of non-fiction, as well as to digital, big-screen and even virtual reality platforms, writes Stewart Clarke. For the largest factual distributors the business has got more complex and, increasingly, […]

Off the Fence unveils Freaks of Nature to Weather Channel

Producer and distributor Off the Fence has made a new extreme weather series for US cable net The Weather Channel. The series, Freaks of Nature, is fronted by Tyler Harcott (Junkyard Wars) and uses interviews, footage and archive content to look at different forces of nature. Harcott undergoes tests around these natural forces in the 12x30mins […]

Korea, China spins web around Off The Fence content

Korean broadcasters have acquired a total of 85 hours of programming from Anglo-Dutch distributor Off The Fence, while China’s CCTV has acquired shows such as science doc Spiderman Tech. KBS has bought the 6x60mins Life Stories, 4x60mins Wildest Arctic and 3x60mins End of Big Cats and 1x60mins docs Plastic: The Real Sea Monster and In […]