Youngest Media expands into Germany

L to R: Lucas Church, Mark Stehli and David Flynn

UK prodco Youngest Media has set up a German division in Munich and hired a former All3Media executive to run it.

Youngest Media Germany is the prodco’s first international venture since being launched in 2016 by former Endemol Shine executives Lucas Church and David Flynn.

The pair have appointed Mark Stehli as MD of Youngest Media Germany and will work alongside him to create and pitch both new and existing content.

Stehli joins the company after serving as director of production and corporate development at All3Media in Germany.

The new team has already commissioned the reality series Battle of the Bands (working title) for German commercial station RTL II and will take the format to Mipcom.

The series will feature two bands made up of members from the opposite sex, living, flirting and competing under one roof. The bands will go head-to-head in weekly battles.

It will air in for six weeks in 2020 with Christoph Oldenburg and Flynn serving as executive producers.

“Establishing an embedded presence in one of Europe’s most important territories represents a significant step for youngest Media,” Flynn and Church said.

“We’ve been extremely encouraged by the appetite of Germany’s major platforms to innovate and launch new formats and RTL II’s commission of Battle of the Bands underscores this.”

Youngest Media is best known for its format Small Fortune, which attracted an audience of more than three million on the UK’s ITV and was sold recently to NBC in the US.