About Us

In August 2010 Kevin Lygo joined ITV STUDIOS as Managing Director.

Kevin first joined Channel 4 as Head of Entertainment and Music in August 1997 and presided over an acclaimed expansion of the channel’s entertainment portfolio. Commissions during his first employment at Channel 4 include So Graham Norton, Trigger Happy TV, Top 10s, Smack the Pony, Spaced, Black Books, Da Ali G Show, and The 11 O'clock Show, as well as the now notorious Brass Eye.   Kevin also acted as Controller for the successful launch of Channel 4’s digital entertainment channel, E4, in January 2001. 

He left later in 2001 to spend two years as Director of Programmes at Five, where he is credited with broadening the channel’s programme offering from a reliance on films, sport and acquisitions to embrace original UK production including arts, popular factual and history programming. 

Kevin Lygo rejoined Channel 4 as Director of Television in November 2003 and in 2007 he was promoted to Director of Television and Content. 

Other Channel 4 programming highlights under Kevin’s stewardship include Jamie’s School Dinners, voted the fifth most influential programme in UK TV history by Broadcast magazine, as well as Anatomy for Beginners, The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off, Brat Camp, Deal or No Deal, Green Wing, Hamburg Cell, Not Only But Always, Omagh, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Sex Traffic, Shameless and Supernanny. 

Based in Los Angeles, California, Mr. Buccieri is responsible for the acquisition, development of scripted and non-scripted series and movies for television for the US networks and the International market, and for continuing the successes and reputation the company has as a leading producer of reality programming for the major broadcast and cable networks.

Prior to joining ITV Studios, Mr. Buccieri was at FOX/Twentieth Television as President of Programming, Production and Development and at Endemol as Executive Producer. 

Working closely with Kevin Lygo, Managing Director ITV Studios, Denise leads ITV Studios UK’s commercial strategy and is tasked with identifying and exploiting new opportunities for growth. She oversees business affairs and production as well as rights management and will work with the creative teams to ensure maximum value from content.

Prior to joining  ITV Denise  was Co-Founder and  Joint Managing Director of Hat-Trick Productions; she is credited with establishing the production company’s position in the UK and US working across all areas of the business from ideas generation through to content exploitation. 

Denise is based in London, South Bank and joined ITV in December 2010.

Maria Kyriacou heads ITV STUDIOS, Global Entertainment, one of the world’s leading international TV distribution, home-entertainment and merchandising & licensing businesses.   

Part of ITV plc, which also operates the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster, the business distributes thousands of hours of television series’, movies and films from ITV Studios and independent producers to more than 200 countries worldwide. Maria manages a diverse portfolio of key assets such as global formats including Come Dine With Me, critically acclaimed dramas including Lewis and Poirot and record breaking soaps Emmerdale and Coronation Street;  now the world’s  longest running drama serial.

Maria joined ITV from The Walt Disney Company where she was most recently Senior Vice President, Digital Media Distribution EMEA with responsibility for the company’s digital media sales and strategy across both channel and programme distribution. 

Maria is based in London, South Bank and joined ITV in August 2010.

Before joining ITV Francois was previously founder of Flow Productions (2004) and a creative consultant for numerous international productions such as Télé Image, Coyote, Extreme Sports Channeles, (ChelloMedia), Scarlett Productions, NRJ12, Zadig Productions, ARTE, TLC, Nordisk and Banijay.

Jan Kromschröder was appointed CEO of Granada Germany in August 2008. 

He started his career as a journalist for German magazines Stern, Tempo and TV-broadcaster Premiere and became a producer for Trebitsch Production Holding afterwards. In his position as Head of Fiction Department at Sat.1 he received the "Goldene Kamera", an acknowledged German Award, for his TV-movie "Das Wunder von Lengede". As co-founder and CEO of Kromschröder & Pfannenschmidt GmbH he has produced several high-quality TV-movies and series like "Girl Friends" for ZDF or "Unter den Linden" for Sat.1, as well as several TV-movies for German public broadcasters (e.g. "Willkommen Zuhause", an Afghan soldier's veterans drama that won the "Golden Magnolia" at the 2009 Shanghai Film Festival).

In summer 2008 he and his partner Christian Pfannenschmidt sold part of their company to Granada. As CEO Jan widened Granada's portfolio by starting to produce fictional programmes and projects with public broadcasters. In addition to his role as CEO and producer, Jan has been teaching at the Filmakademie Baden Württemberg since 2002. 

In spring 2009 he also became a professor for "Creative Producing" at the "Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen" in Potsdam-Babelsberg.

Leonie has worked in the television industry for 20 years and has been with Granada Productions for over 6 years.  

Leonie first started in the industry in 1988 in live events and then moved to the Seven Network and various independent production companies working on all genres of production.

Leonie joined Granada in January 2002 as Head of Production and was promoted to Director of Production in 2004.  In February 2006, she was appointed Acting CEO of Granada Australia, and was appointed Managing Director in April 2006.

Hans Engholm joined ITV STUDIOS Nordic as Chief Executive Officer in 2011. Previously Hans was at Eyeworks where he was Creative Director.