ITV Studios heads for Spain

UK producer ITV Studios is opening a production centre in Madrid, and has hired former Atlas CEO Fran Garcia to run it.

Garcia will be MD of ITV Studios Spain, the sixth production centre for ITV Studios, which has operations in Los Angeles, Cologne, Stockholm, Sydney and the UK. The new office has won a two-pilot commission from Spanish commercial broadcaster Telecinco, details of which are being kept under wraps.

The operation will focus on programming such as entertainment, factual entertainment and lifestyle. It will be dedicated to both the creation of new formats and exploitation of existing formats from across ITV Studios.

Garcia was CEO at Telecinco-owned Atlas in 2006, and was responsible for the company’s news and documentary production. As a member of the board at Telecinco, Garcia focused on the growth of the business’s financial operations.

ITV Studios MD Lee Bartlett said: “This development is core to our international growth strategy, which is dedicated to creating and producing high-value content for buyers in all corners of the world.”

The news comes after ITV Studios Global Entertainment announced its first major coproduction commission with Telecinco, to produce 300 instalments of primetime gameshow Pasapalabra, next spring. That deal saw BocaBoca Productions, the producer of Pasapalabra for the past 10 years under licence from ITV, lose the production deal for the show.