Fox Alternative Entertainment Searching For Studio Head As Network Eyes New Talent & International Unscripted Ideas

Fox Alternative Entertainment is searching for a studio head as the company’s unscripted chief Rob Wade looks to funnel ideas from young talent and international producers.

Wade, President of Alternative and Specials at Fox Entertainment, told Deadline that the company is investing in the in-house production division, which was set up last year, with the hope of finding big, broad entertainment series.

Corie Henson, Wade’s former number two, who joined TBS and TNT last year, will not be directly replaced and the Brit has already started interviewing candidates on the studio side.

“We’ve got a great team on the network and I’m looking to bolster that but my main focus of investment in more senior figures is on the studio side. Fox Alternative Entertainment is going to have a studio head and then a small team,” he said.

Fox Alternative Entertainment is producing The Masked Singer and The Masked Dancer and is looking to attract talented young unscripted producers outside of the major studios and superindies, as well as international producers. The division will also produce its adaptation of Korean mystery music gameshow I Can See Your Voice, which is currently in development, as revealed by Deadline yesterday.

“You need to make yourself available to the broadest amount of people and try and find ideas,” he said. “In scripted there’s tons of young writers coming through and there’s obviously a huge amount of talent in unscripted but the question is how do you funnel that in. It’s difficult because I don’t necessarily think those people are going to go and become heads of development at production companies, they’re probably going to want to start their own thing so I think you can harness them.”

As evidenced by its development of equine competition format Dancing with Horses, which is from British production company Studio One, he is also hoping that Fox Alternative Entertainment can work with companies around the world. “There’s loads of brilliant producers in England, Ireland, South Korea, Australia that don’t have production services capabilities in the U.S. but they’ve got good ideas,” he added.

Wade is ultimately trying to separate Fox Alternative Entertainment from the network to create a “church and state”. He added that in the long-run, the division could also sell to third party broadcasters and platforms. “If and when Fox Alternative Entertainment really starts to get its feet, there will be certain things they’ll pitch to me that won’t be right, and at that point there’ll be an opportunity to sell outside. Is it an easy thing to do? No. but there’s a potential for selling shows outside if they’re good,” he said.

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