BGM ups Connolly to unscripted chief

Canada’s Bristow Global Media (BGM) has promoted an executive to VP of development to oversee the company’s growing unscripted slate.

Sean Connolly

In the newly created position, Sean Connolly will focus on creating original formats for the world and tailoring international formats for North America.

Connolly joined BGM’s executive team as a development consultant last May. Since then he has worked directly with Marlo Miazga, VP of content, and has been responsible for greenlighting It’s My Party for Canada’s TVO and Haunted Hospitals to additional services in the UK and Canada yet to be announced.

Since arriving in Canada from Ireland in 2013, Connolly has led development at Canadian production companies including Proper Television, Our House Media and Marblemedia.

He also ran his own Gorilla Media, where he created the format Make the Politician Work for Canada’s CBC, which was shortlisted for an International Format Award in Cannes and has been optioned in 10 territories worldwide.

In Ireland, Connolly helmed his own boutique digital media company Innovation Media, which created video and interactive DVD content for media clients, brands and agencies.

BGM was launched in 2013 by Julie Bristow, former head of unscripted programming at Canadian pubcaster CBC. https://www.c21media.net/cbc-veteran-launches-prodco/

The firm specialises in multiplatform content across all genres. It has recently entered a partnership with Relish Interactive on the creation of shortform animated graphic novels for the forthcoming 100 Days to Victory, a docudrama coproduced with Electric Pictures, Corus Entertainment’s History in Canada and Foxtel’s History Channel in Australia and New Zealand, as well as BBC Scotland.