All the latest news from the global content industry on Friday, 2 October

 

Paramount alum joins BiggerStage 

Irish production company BiggerStage has appointed Leda Connaughton-Deeny to the newly created role of CFO.

The move follows the company's unveiling of its global production hub at Troy Studios in Limerick, which was launched after Ireland introduced an unscripted tax incentive to attract international productions.

Connaughton-Deeny joins following two decades at Paramount Global, where she led teams from its Sydney, London and New York offices. She worked across broadcast, content distribution, streaming and consumer products.

She reports into BiggerStage founder & CEO, Pat Kiely, the former boss of Virgin Media Television who launched the company in 2021.

 

 

UK's celebrity Traitors sets new record

The second season of the BBC's celebrity version of The Traitors has had its biggest launch yet, with 2.8m more viewers than the previous opener.

Last year’s edition of the Studio Lambert-produced show reached 6.1m (46.4%) in a later 9pm-10.10pm slot on a Wednesday in October.

Peaking with 9.1m (55.5%) at 8.30pm, last night’s launch was also comfortably ahead of the 6.4m (36.7%) who watched the series four opener of the civilian version at 8pm on New Year’s Day. It beat the 2.9m (25%) benchmark for the slot.

It was the second most watched non-sporting episode of the year so far, just behind the final of The Traitors series four, which averaged 9.4m (55.1%) at 8.30pm on a Friday in January. It was immediately followed by the accompanying visualised podcast The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked, which kicked off with 3.1m (28%) after making the switch from BBC2 to BBC1. This was ahead of the 2.8m (24.4%) slot average.

 

 

 

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