Fifth Season’s Jennifer Ebell on margins, capital deployment and how streamers are buying audience loyalty
As buyers descend on the UK capital for Showcase, London TV Screenings and Mip London this week, Broadcast International speaks to Jennifer Ebell, exec vice president of TV distribution at Fifth Season, about the key trends and challenges facing the business.
What was the single biggest challenge for your business in 2025?
The continued compression of licence fees combined with longer greenlight cycles. Buyers remain highly selective, risk-averse and focused on proven IP. That environment demands sharper packaging, disciplined rights strategies, and very careful capital deployment. The challenge isn’t demand, it’s velocity and margin, which increasingly shifts risk back onto distributors.
What are your top three growth priorities for 2026?
Disciplined risk, smarter data, faster execution.
Streamers have struck some eye-catching deals directly with YouTube creators over the past year. What do you make of this trend and do you see it impacting your business?
It’s fundamentally a talent-pipeline play. Streamers are buying audience loyalty and built-in communities, reflecting the wider shift towards talent-driven IP, with some times lower-cost unscripted, and personality-led formats that build instant audiences. We see it as additive rather than competitive and potentially a discovery pipeline for IP that can scale into premium, long-form formats.
Broadcaster-streamer IP pacts have also become popular across Europe, in particular the TF1/Netflix deal starting this summer. How will such arrangements affect your business; will we see a similar deal in the UK; and, what do they mean for the future of second windows?
These arrangements reflect economics, not romance. Broadcasters need scale and financing; streamers want local IP and regulatory alignment. It’s pragmatic. In the UK, the market has already evolved and we’re seeing more structured collaboration, even if not always formally labelled as such. Second windows won’t disappear if anything they are becoming more strategic. Windowing will be sharper, more data-driven and tailored by territory.
What impact will the WBD-Netflix deal have on your business and the wider industry, if it goes ahead?
It will likely narrow certain buying lanes, but it will also reinforce the value of strong IP, disciplined capital and premium content.
How will Channel 4’s nascent in-house production (and IP ownership) strategy affect your business and the broader distribution sector?
In-house ownership inevitably reduces some external volume, but it also reshapes the financing landscape and creates new partnership models across the ecosystem. Our approach has always been to partner with producers early often at script stage around strong global IP with international ambition. Ultimately, great stories travel and find a home. Ownership strategies may evolve, but demand for premium, globally resonant content remains constant.
If we gave you £2m to invest in a show of your choice with a view to getting the biggest returns within five years, what kind of show would it be?
I’d invest in a scalable thriller with franchise potential and international appeal. A contained budget, a strong hook, global casting potential, and a story that can sustain multiple seasons. Nothing fancy. Just a great world building story. I’m also a fan of grounded horror, but realistically, it’s harder to scale for a mass audience.
Tell us about your key title for LTVS and what makes it stand out?
Based on Karin Slaughter’s best-selling novel, The Good Daughter stars Rose Byrne, Meghann Fahy, and Brendan Gleeson, and is produced by Made Up Stories and Fifth Season. A gripping story of family secrets, sisterly bonds, and a shocking crime, it twists and turns with every episode, keeping viewers on the edge of their seats. With its proven story power, rich characters, and built-in buzz, The Good Daughter is a series that demands attention from the very first shocking revelation.
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