PFD rival UA sets up TV division

The TV unit will be led by Duncan Hayes and Natasha Galloway, together with co-chairman Peter Bennett-Jones, also founder of Tiger Aspect and chairman of PBJ Management.

They are joined by four other agents, Maureen Vincent, Tim Corrie, Charles Walker and Anthony Jones, and have together taken key TV names from PFD's client books, including Ricky Gervais and Dawn French.

All 29 former PFD agents have invested in the company and Bennett-Jones has helped it secure an additional bank loan against the agency's earnings over the next five years.

PFD also managed TV talent, but did not have a specialist unit focused on new TV opportunities. “The difference would be that we are able to sit down as a group and talk about TV and how to work in TV,” Hayes said.

The new structure comes in line with a belief by Bennett-Jones that TV will be UA's biggest growth area going forward because “there is a constant demand for content.” It is also likely to be the medium that yields dividends the fastest, at a time when UA is in need of ready cash.

The TV team will also work closely with a raft of other UA talent agents, whose clients - Keira Knightley and Kate Winslet among them - specialise in film but sometimes cross into TV and other disciplines.

“The world of writer performers and actors is not delineated and our clients do cross the spectrum quite a lot,” Vincent said. “Very few other agencies have the discipline that we have across the genres.”

In addition, UA's TV team has hired a part-time multimedia specialist, Adam Martin, who will focus exclusively on podcasting and other new media opportunities.

“He's responsible for looking at how to use clients' IP for mobile phone content and on the internet. It's not a very big area now but we think it will be,” Vincent said.

The rebel agents left PFD towards the end of last year, after its parent company CSS Stellar blocked a management buy out and installed former William Morris managing director Caroline Michel as its chief executive.

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