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Co-start Wall to Wall. Run BBC2. Move to US as Chair Discovery Network USA. Leave huge bureaucracies. Start Nutopia, a small production company. Do giant productions… and stay reasonably modest and human. Jane Root is delivering a plenary at SPAA next week.

The scale of Jane’s career is well described on Wikipedia – her professional biog, the Wall To Wall story, the Shed Media history, and the background on BBC2.

On the telephone, she was practical and unassuming. In the middle of writing her plenary speech, she explained that “I’m going to be talking about where ideas come from, and how organisations can run themselves to help people come with great ideas. And I’m going to be talking about some of the great ideas I’ve been fortunate enough to be close to, when they came to fruition. Some of them are my ideas, some are other people’s ideas.”

That notion of an idea underpinned the whole conversation. I asked her what gave her personal joy, and she briskly listed her family, nature and cooking. “I’m a person who enjoys a lot of things,” she said. Then she plunged into the personal dimension of ideas.

“I’m going to talk at some point how some of the best ideas in my life happened at a really terrible time. My mother was dying, and as a result of trying to have something to talk to my father about in hospital, I was coming up with ideas. We had a long discussion about Great Britain, which turned into this big, big show we did. In the middle of a terrible moment, I was finding a common language to have fun with people.”

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Jackson, currently non-executive chairman at STV, and Bazalgette, non-executive chairman of Sony Pictures Television’s UK production business, will form a four-strong team including managing director Laura Franses, who was previously acting managing director at Raw TV and chief operating officer of Amaze TV. Root is the new company’s chief executive.
Nutopia, which is based in both London and Washington DC, will specialise in “high-scale” productions on “classic subjects”. Its focus will be factual and factually-inspired drama.

Nutopia’s first commission is a 12 x 60-minute history series called America: The Story of Us. It will use CGI technology and dramatisation to show how a combination of visionary thinkers and innovations in technology and engineering have helped build the modern America.

The indie is currently developing projects for BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Discovery Channel US.

Root quit her post as president of Discovery Channel US in 2007. There she commissioned some of the network’s biggest hits, including Man vs Wild, Born Survivor and Deadliest Catch.

There has been much speculation over Root’s next move since she left Discovery in November 2007 after three years, saying she wanted to return to the UK to pursue other opportunities.

She was tipped as a top candidate for the role of BBC1 controller, which was vacated by Peter Fincham following the Queengate scandal that October. The role, however, eventually went to Jay Hunt.

Root (left) was also rumoured to be in contention for the role of HBO Entertainment president after Carolyn Strauss left in March 2008. That job was filled by Sue Naegle.

While few would have expected Root to bow out of the channel executive business altogether, she does have experience with successful production start-ups. Before joining the Beeb as its first female channel controller, Root was a founder of UK indie Wall to Wall, which has since been acquired by the Shed group and made a coveted move into the US.

Nutopia’s first project will be America: The Story of Us, a 12×60′ commission for US cablenet History that is due for delivery in 2010.

The series will tell the story of how modern America came to be, looking at the role of innovations in technology and engineering, conflicts and visionary thinkers in shaping the US into the most powerful country in the world. The production will use CGI technology and dramatisation techniques.

“America: The Story of Us is not only the biggest project History has ever undertaken, it is the definitive event of the genre, underlining History’s ownership,” said the network’s executive VP and general manager, Nancy Dubuc.

“There has never been a time when people are thinking so fervently and passionately about history. Now is the moment to tell the most epic, essential and groundbreaking story of America in a new way for a new generation.”

Emily Brookes
12 May 2009
© C21 Media 2009