Given the if not scorched, at the very least notably singed earth within the industry as a result of the frenzied rounds of M&A over the last few years, Matt Hornburg is aware that the recently announced union between Blue Ant Media and his former company marblemedia could be viewed with trepidation.

“Some might look at this from the outside and say, is this really the right time, in this marketplace, to be bulking up?” says Hornburg (pictured right), who now holds the role of co-president of Blue Ant Studios. “And our response is that this is exactly the kind of time to prepare. We all know that [ups and downs] is how this industry goes, [but] people are going to be watching TV after we’re dead — it’s not going away.

“But behind the scenes, how that content gets financed, that’s very dynamic, and the companies that can be dynamic with the needs of clients are the ones who are going to succeed. We’re now really poised for that, so we just have to be very careful how we scale this new business, and make sure that it’s built on a super-strong foundation.”

Hornburg and his fellow co-president, Mark Bishop (pictured left), were speaking with Playback sister publication Realscreen within the cacophonous MIPCOM market hall a little more than two months after marblemedia — known for such competition formats as Blown Away, Drink Masters and A Cut Above, and the recent winner of TIFF audience award for the feature documentary Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make Believe — came under the Blue Ant production umbrella.

The Toronto-based shingle now shares space with three of the company’s other labels — Blue Ant Studios, Saloon Media and animation studio Look Mom! Productions — while its rights management wing, Distribution360, has joined with Blue Ant’s distribution arm Blue Ant International.

As was outlined at the time of the merger, Bishop and Hornburg will lead this newly integrated production and distribution business, which, they say, will be something far more than a mere consolidation.

“This wasn’t about, let’s bring together all these assets and squeeze as much value out of it as we can — if it was a private equity play, this would be a different conversation,” says Bishop. “It truly is a merger, and that’s why we’re using that word — it’s about coming together and really reimagining a new company.”

As Hornburg and Bishop explain, that reimagining will indeed involve a retirement of the company’s discrete existing brands, on both the development and distribution sides. “Right now, all these labels are operating with their individual names and identities. But as we move forward, we are in the process of developing a new brand identity, a new name for the studio that will encompass production and distribution under one umbrella,” says Bishop.

This as-yet-unnamed new entity will entail a reorganization of currently cross-label personnel into highly specialized, genre-focused teams. The new structure will also include units dedicated to such areas as financing and production management, as well as a centralized, in-house post-production service and a marketing and communications team to provide further support to Blue Ant’s partners.

This consideration for the end user is baked into the pair’s overall vision for the new studio.

“The idea of distribution and development working closely together is something that we had done at marble for a number of years, on a smaller scale — thinking about how you can take the intelligence you have through your international sales arm and bring that back to production to really look at how you co-finance content,” Bishop says.

“So where previously at Blue Ant, distribution and production had been different divisions, let’s now bring it all together, bring in the intelligence of that sales team, which is located all over the world, so that when our development teams are working on ideas they’re already thinking of where those shows could go in the international marketplace,” he continues. “It’s not about making content and then passing it off to the sales team hoping they’re going to be able to sell it, but about having that conversation from day one and retooling the thought process to make sure we’re thinking about the consumer from the very beginning.”

That Blue Ant Media also includes a Canadian and international channels business — which will continue as a parallel wing of the organization under the leadership of Jamie Schouela — is another advantage for the new production-distribution operation, Bishop notes, given that Blue Ant’s very active domestic commissioning allows the company access to Canadian tax credits and media funds.

“When we’re piecing together financing [with external partners], that’s also reliant on us bringing financing out of Canada,” he says. “We’re uniquely positioned because we have our channels group down the hall that can unlock those tax credits in Canada, and a lot of the other soft money that exists in things like the Rogers Fund, the Shaw Rocket Fund, the Canada Media Fund. So being a media company that has all of these facets not only does very well for us domestically, it also makes us a great partner internationally as we go out into the marketplace.”

Asked about priorities on the production side as the revamped structure takes shape, Hornburg says that there are specific genres the company will want to produce in, while there are others they company will want to pull back on to avoid redundancy in the combined slates of the four labels.

“The key is, we’re going to be looking as much as possible at returnable, renewable series. That’s going to be the foundation for our company, that’s what our buyers are asking us for right now, whether it’s cable, network or streaming,” says Hornburg. “There’s space for documentary as well, but we’re going to be more strategic about how much of that we do, because we know we need those tentpole shows to keep things moving along. So that means thinking about our shows as franchises, [from] the ideation stage — does this feel like something that will resonate for years to come?”

This story originally appeared in Realscreen