Distribution in Focus: ITV Studios’ Ruth Berry

With buyers flocking to London TV Screenings and Mip London this week, Broadcast International speaks to ITV Studios president of global partnerships, Ruth Berry, about the shifting demands of global buyers.

Cautiously optimistic and evolving with the market changes. We still see strong demand across all genres with some standouts such as true crime - like our drama Until I Kill You, or factual series, Tik Tok Murders, which sell brilliantly.

Our catalogue remains very strong globally and we’ve had strong sales across Poldark, Poirot, Lewis and more, but as the industry went through a slight reset last year we did see more consideration on what clients were buying (e.g FTA’s looking for slightly younger age demographics than historical 55+ females). Love Island still dominates the younger audiences, and [there was more demand for] more tried and tested content such as The Voice.

We’ve seen great success with more light hearted shows like Ludwig and we’ve listened to our buyer’s need for premium quality thrillers - in fact we are about to launch three: Coldwater, Code of Silence and The Guest.

Navigating macro economic challenges with our partners. Global content spending is largely flat, which is good, but audiences are fragmenting into social video platforms and challenging the linear model. We need broad, deep catalogues to satisfy changing programming needs, and across all genres. Finding a big new hit is tough. It’s great that The Voice, Love Island and The Chase and are still strong globally but we’d love a new hit.

New players in the TV market, like the roll out of Max, Samsung TV, Roku and evolving the business towards new audiences in social channels across YouTube, Meta, Snap and FAST. We’re really excited about our launch of Zoo 55 to grow our portfolio of 150+ owned and operated social channels and global FAST footprint. We reached over 10 billion social views in 2024 and hope for more in 2025.

They have moved from a level of mixed certainty on budgets and what to buy, to a more stable conversation on making deals. For example, Bell Media in Canada has recently announced its acquisition of Future Shack’s whip-smart new procedural Good Cop/Bad Cop for Crave, and My Wife, My Abuser: Captured on Camera has sold to more than 60 markets as well as in a global deal with Netflix where it was ranked in the Top 10 in the UK for three weeks.

Growth will come from our B2B licensing business and great new shows like Code of Silence and Coldwater as well as through re-mixing and re-invigorating our catalogue across our owned & operated business in Zoo 55 with channels like River Monsters, Hell’s Kitchen, The Voice.