Off The Fence’s Bo Stehmeier on the commissioning slowdown and a new focus on micropayments
As buyers descend on the UK capital for Showcase, London TV Screenings and Mip London this week, Broadcast International speaks to Off The Fence’s Bo Stehmeier about the key trends and challenges facing the business.
What was the single biggest challenge for your business in 2025?
Programme supply. The slowdown in commissioning - particularly across factual in the English-speaking market - significantly constrained available volume and created a tougher operating environment
What are your top three growth priorities for 2026?
Expanding our presence across YouTube and FAST platforms; securing off-air funding; and driving operational excellence around micropayments and revenue-share deals. In parallel, we aim to offer Insight/OTF content investment and co-production opportunities to the production community.
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?
This trend will have a major impact on the factual-entertainment sector, though likely less on specialist factual. In an ever-changing market, these deals are pivotal and need to happen quickly to keep the industry evolving at pace. The hope is that the resulting programme supply won’t simply replicate legacy US cable formats, but instead bring a fresh look, tone, and budget model — shaping the foundation of what television will become.
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?
We’ve always operated within a content ecosystem where sharing and windowing are standard, and these deals signal a return to that model. Consumers are platform-agnostic and fragmented, so broader windowing increases reach and ROI for major IP holders. However, such arrangements could present risks for smaller IP companies that may find themselves squeezed out. Similar deals in the UK are certainly plausible as market dynamics continue to shift.
What impact will the WBD-Netflix deal have on your business and the wider industry, if it goes ahead?
OTF does not rely heavily on either party for business, so we don’t anticipate significant direct impact. Industry-wide, however, consolidation of distribution power will continue to shape competitive dynamics.
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?
Outside OTF, I would invest in factual-entertainment social-experiment formats - particularly dating - driven by the creator economy. Within specialist factual, we are developing a science-led strand spanning adjacent genres, where each episode stands alone yet contributes to a broader bingeable series.
Tell us about your key title for LTVS and what makes it stand out?
Giants of Earth - our 3 x 60-minute series from K2 Communications. Intelligent, powerful, and deeply connected to the land, elephants are gentle giants. Their world is as diverse as they are. From the sweeping plains of Tanzania’s Serengeti to the arid deserts of Namibia, and into the lush jungles of Thailand, this is the story of resilience, family, and survival.
Never have these big beasts been filmed so close up through an Imax lens, audiences will have never seen these giants so close up and personal. It’s a real ode to our leathery friends.
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