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Pact and NESTA encourage convergence in the broadcast industry

14/08/2008

“One of the barriers to creative and commercial innovation is the lack of clear, open-source material that encourages creative businesses to converge."

Pact and NESTA today released a range of tools designed to make it easy for TV and film producers to work with digital producers on convergent or “multi-platform” projects. The tools include legal templates that make it easy for producers to kick off multi-platform development, as well as a ‘how to’ guide for exploring joint ventures.

Pact is making the tools freely available to producers on its website. The templates provide a simple legal framework for producers to work together when developing intellectual property. It is hoped that this initiative will improve the quality and number of multi-platform proposals going to UK broadcasters such as the BBC and Channel 4.

John McVay, Chief Executive of Pact, says: “Producers from both the TV and new media sectors have told us that they need a simple framework to help them to develop their multi-platform ideas. With the help of NESTA, the launch of this guide and these legal templates will be an invaluable resource, allowing more companies to create more truly convergent projects in the future”.

Jon Kingsbury, Director of the Creative Economy Programme at NESTA says: “One of the barriers to creative and commercial innovation is the lack of clear, open-source material that encourages creative businesses to converge. Tools like these are a pre-requisite for effective collaboration and will enhance independent producers’ development of multi-platform content ideas.”

Contact:

For further information, please contact Catherine Anderson on 020 7438 2609 or catherine.anderson@nesta.org.uk, or Nick Underhill at Pact on 020 7067 4369 or email nick@pact.co.uk

Editor's Notes:

Pact

Pact is the UK trade association that represents the commercial interests of independent feature film, television, animation and interactive media companies. Pact is the largest representative group of screen-based content producers in the UK and the largest trade association in the film, television and interactive media sectors.

NESTA

NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts. With endowed funds of over £300 million, its mission is to transform the UK's capacity for innovation. It does this in three main ways: by working to build a more pervasive culture of innovation in this country; by providing innovators with access to early stage capital; and by driving forward research into innovation, with a view to influencing policy.