Irish and international TV makers attend annual Fís TV Summit

Television industry leaders converged on Galway yesterday for the sold out annual FÍS TV Summit. Attendees included commissioning editors and key representatives from television channels and distributors including BBC, BBC World, Virgin Media Television, RTÉ, TG4, Screen Ireland and About Premium Content. Television industry leaders converged on Galway yesterday for the sold out annual FÍS TV Summit. Television industry leaders converged on Galway yesterday for the sold out annual FÍS TV Summit. Attendees included commissioning editors and key representatives from television channels and distributors including BBC, BBC World, Virgin Media Television, RTÉ, TG4, Screen Ireland and About Premium Content.

Insightful panel discussions addressed this year’s summit theme of TV Drama and topics included best approaches to the commissioning process, ‘Getting the Green Light’ with Alan Esslemont, Director General TG4 and Andrew Byrne, Head of Commissioning Virgin Media Television and going global ‘The International Perspective’ with About Premium Content creator Laurent Boissel.

Michael Parke, Andrew Byrne and Daithaí Keane at the FÍS TV Summit 2020 in Galway on Thursday. Photo:-XPOSURE.IE

Summit organisers Galway Film Centre were behind the one day event.

We are pleased that the event was such a success. In particular, we were really pleased to have had such a diverse crowd in attendance and such a wide mix of industry professionals both geographically and from a content perspective.
Alan Duggan, Manager, Galway Film Centre

A panel with the team behind the highly successful ‘Dublin Murders’ series included screenwriter Sarah Phelps and producer Noemi Spanos. Exciting upcoming projects were discussed including Michael Zam’s insight on his upcoming series on Vivian Leigh ‘Vivling’. Speaker Dathaí Keane will direct the series ‘Smother’ which starts shooting in 2 weeks in Co. Clare and Rachael New spoke about writing series two of ‘Miss Scarlett and the Duke’ for PBS Masterpiece.

Additional Summit speakers Manda Levin, BBC Senior Commissioning Editor for Development, BBC Executive Producer Michael Parke, Dermot Horan Director of Acquisitions and Co-Productions RTÉ, Dervla Regan Screen Ireland. The industry audience included Désirée Finnegan CEO Screen Ireland and representatives from Creative Europe, WRAP Fund, BAI and Screen Skills Ireland.