C21’s Creative Leadership Insights to take readers deeper inside the global formats industry

Taco Rijssemus

C21 has partnered with Taco Rijssemus, media strategist and partner at 3Rivers, to publish an ongoing series of deep-dive interviews under the Creative Leadership Insights banner, which will also feed into the agenda of C21’s Content events.

Creative Leadership Insights will launch as a new weekly series on C21 drawing on an ongoing research programme conducted by Netherlands-based 3Rivers in collaboration with Utrecht University into the creative ecosystems that drive global format success.

The series will aim to uncover why some creative ecosystems consistently produce global format hits while others do not, and what the future holds for the ecosystems that have built the format industry as we know it.

To answer these questions, Rijssemus will speak with some of the most influential creative leaders and executives across the global format industry, among them John de Mol, Marco Bassetti, Ronald Goes, Sir Peter Bazalgette and many others.

The initiative will publish into C21’s ongoing market-leading formats industry coverage in the first window. The themes, issues and some of the interviewees will be exported into Creative Leadership Insight panels at C21’s Content London and Content Europe events.

C21’s editor-in-chief & managing director David Jenkinson said: “We are delighted to host this compelling series of interviews, produced by a veteran executive who understands the business, in conversation with some of the most defining players in the sector.”

Rijssemus is a media strategist at Dutch consultancy 3Rivers, which helps broadcast and production executives develop a clear content strategy in a market reshaped by consolidation, streaming platforms, AI and the creator economy.

He has worked on both sides of the industry, as CEO of production companies including IDTV, where he oversaw the development of The Traitors, and All3Media across Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, and in board-level roles at broadcasters. He is a Fellow at Utrecht University and leads the Creative Systems Research Lab.

Rijssemus said: “The format industry is at an inflection point. The people in this series of interviews have shaped it and are now navigating its most uncertain moment. I am very much looking forward to bringing those conversations to C21’s audience.”

Creative Leadership Insights publishes weekly on C21media.net here.