Friday round-up: Latest news, deals & hires

Profits rise at Banijay Entertainment

Banijay Entertainment has reported a 5.4% bump in profits over the first nine months of 2025, but said some show delivery dates would be pushed into 2026.

Revenues at the House of Guinness producer were up 1.7% to €2.1bn (£1.85bn) while profits touched €303m, with Banijay adding that “low single digit” organic revenue growth was expected for FY2025.

Banijay Group recently acquired betting giant Tipico for €3bn as part of an ongoing strategy to diversify its business away from pure TV production and into live events and gambling.

The Banijay Gaming unit saw revenues rise 8.5% to €1.1bn, while across the group, revenue was €3.2bn with adjusted EBITDA up 9.8% at €600m.

AMC Networks cuts around 90 roles

Acorn TV and BBC America operator AMC Networks is cutting its 1,800-strong workforce by 5%.

The move was confirmed in a Q3 earnings call with AMC chief exec Kristin Dolan, who said the jobs were going following a voluntary scheme focused on its US staff. Further details were not given by AMC, which owns the eponymous network and Sundance TV among others.

Dolan also revealed that revenues were down 6% for the past three months to $561m. While that beat Wall Street expectations, earnings per share at 18c missed by almost 50%.

Ad revenues dropped 17% on this time last year, content licensing was down 27% - a decline blamed on delivery timings - but streaming revenues were up 14% to $174m. Subscriber numbers were up 2% to 10.4m.

CuriosityStream ups John Higgins amid AI push

Factual firm CuriosityStream has named John Higgins as vice president of content partnerships, with a remit to expand the company’s work with AI firms.

Higgins is focusing on building and deepening the company’s fast-growing licensing deals with major tech and AI developer partners.

He reports directly to Clint Stinchcomb, president and chief exec, who said Higgins’ “ability to listen, understand, and collaboratively craft large volume and bespoke dataset solutions from Curiosity’s extensive premium video corpus of nearly two million hours has helped drive meaningful revenue growth and position CuriosityStream as a premier partner in the AI era.”

Higgins joined CuriosityStream in 2021 following the company’s acquisition of educational media publisher Now You Know Media, Inc. 

All3, Banijay & ITVS execs out of C4 race

The identity of Channel 4’s eighth chief executive is to be determined in the next month – but it won’t be any of the trio of high-profile super-indie leaders linked to the position.

Broadcast understands that new chair Geoff Cooper has begun the formal interview process at C4 and that a handful of candidates have been selected to enter the final phase.

The expectation is that the broadcaster will make an announcement this side of Christmas, but it will not be naming any of All3Media’s Jane Turton, ITV Studios’ Julian Bellamy or Banijay UK’s Patrick Holland as its new boss. Read more

UK’s Celebrity Traitors set BBC records 

The much-anticipated finale of The Celebrity Traitors in the UK reached the biggest overnight audience for BBC1 this year.

The Studio Lambert-produced format beat its own record of 8.3m (55%) last Thursday and peaked with 12m (68.3%) at 10pm. The title now holds the top five positions for the most-watched overnights this year on BBC1, just in front of the most recent civilian version of the show, which reached 7.4m (42.4%) in the 8.30pm-9.40pm slot on a Friday in January.

The nine-part celebrity series was just behind the finale of Gavin & Stacey which averaged 12.3m (64.8%) on Christmas Day 2024. The finale was broadly in line with the New Year’s Eve 2024 Fireworks which reached 11.2m (61%) and the Line of Duty series six finale which reached 11.1m (52%) in April 2021.

According to the BBC, the finale had 1.9m live requests on iPlayer, making it the highest live-viewing number for any entertainment episode on iPlayer of all time. Read more