Given that I was wondering about where The Foundation would stand in the somewhat desolate new children’s TV landscape, I should probably have worked this out – they’ve been bought by RDF. This is probably extremely good news for Ged and Vanessa, the owners, who must have been staring into their crystal balls wondering just where to take their shows.
It’s also a mostly-predictable development, given that RDF’s new director of family entertainment is none other than Nigel Pickard. See, children’s TV in the UK has been run, for more than a decade now, by the echoes of the old TVS children’s department, a collection of people named by somebody (possibly me) ‘The Maidstone Mafia.’
Ged, Vanessa and Nigel are all leading lights of that group, and all power to them – they’re ‘the good guys,’ with their heads screwed on right.
Meanwhile… where does this leave the independent children’s sector? RDF is now immense, Media Merchants is part of the similarly-vast HIT, and… who’s left?
And here’s me sitting in RDF’s offices in Bristol as the news breaks…
Interesting that RDF still perceives that much value in a children’s producer, especially one that doesn’t on the face of it have much international potential. I can understand them taking over an animation house, but as far as I know Foundation mainly make excellent but very British shows, with less back end potential (I would have thought).