BritBox Hires Diederick Santer as First Chief Creative Officer

BritBox International, the ad-free SVOD (subscription video on-demand) service from ITV and BBC Studios, has hired Diederick Santer as its first chief creative officer.

Santer will join the company in September and will manage all aspects of BritBox’s programming, including commissioning and acquisition across all genres and for all markets outside of the UK, according to the job description. His role will include building production and distribution relationships with the UK creative sector to secure a future pipeline of shows to accelerate BritBox’s international growth in the SVOD world as part of its planned rollout to multiple countries worldwide.

He’ll report to BritBox International CEO Reemah Sakaan. Together, the two will lead continued global expansion and beef up the service’s original slate.

Santer was CEO of the TV production company Kudos, where he oversaw “Man in an Orange Shirt,” “Humans,” “Apple Tree Yard,” “Gunpowder,” “The Boy With the Topknot” and “Tin Star,” before setting up his own production company there, Lovely Day.

Lovely Day produced “Grantchester.”

Santer began his TV career at ITV. He joined the BBC in 2000 and recently returned there to commission some dramas. In 2006, he executive produced “EastEnders.”

BritBox, which contains the largest collection of British TV boxsets, launched in the U.S. in March 2017. Earlier this year, it surpassed 2 million global subscriptions.

“Diederick is a critical new appointment for us as we drive the scale and editorial ambition of BritBox International,” Reemah Sakaan, BritBox International CEO, said in a statement. “His unrivalled relationships, experience, and superb taste make him perfectly positioned to create and curate the best of British programming for fans around the world.”

“I am hugely excited to be joining Reemah and her team at BritBox International,” Santer said. “I’ve been obsessed with British TV for as long as I can remember, so to share the very best of it with the rest of the world – and to work with the finest UK producers – is something I am very much looking forward to.”