Call it “the ant that roared.” Toronto-headquartered Blue Ant Media has had expansion built into its DNA since its launch in 2011, with early stake acquisitions including specialty broadcasters such as Glassbox Television, High Fidelity HDTV and multi-channel operator Omnia TV.

Fast forward to 2025, and the global content company headed up by Michael MacMillan is now a channel operator, a streaming concern with FAST channels and now an SVOD operation in the form of the recently acquired MagellanTV, and a production and distribution powerhouse. That latter aspect of its business expanded considerably with its acquisition of prodcos Insight Productions and Proper Television and animation studio Jam Filled Entertainment from Boat Rocker Studios.

Coming out of this year’s MIPCOM, where the company presented what it touted as its broadest sales slate to date, Blue Ant Studios co-president Mark Bishop (pictured) offered his read on the current content climate — who’s buying what, where and why.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

With Blue Ant having a truly global presence, how do you compare the buying climate internationally to, say, last year?

Mark Bishop: Being diversified is really critical. What we’re seeing in the marketplace is that the size of acquisition teams at a lot of the networks ends up getting a little bit smaller. So you may have had one buyer that was a specialist before, and now they may be buying for a couple different areas. So that’s changed, but the good news is, in that sense, they’re still buying.

The deal structures have changed, and there’s an openness to doing creative deals. As long as we can get the content financed, doing creative deals is changing the way that all of us have an opportunity to operate right now. We’re heading to the market with a lot of optimism.

How does the acquisition and commissioning activity out of Europe compare to that out of North America lately?

MB: Whereas before we would always have to lead with a U.S. sale, now we look to other parts of the world; and, where the U.S. is an important component, perhaps the mix of buyers that we’re talking to there may have changed.

We’re looking much more now at a number of the different streaming platforms that have a real appetite for content in a more meaningful way — obviously the ones that we all know, from Netflix and Amazon and so on, but we’re also thinking about Roku, Tubi, Pluto, and some of the other platforms which are global in scope but for the most part have an American commissioning or acquisitions team.

The U.K., of course, has always been a stronghold and will continue to be, but for example, we’re seeing more acquisitions and co-commissions coming out of Australia.

Regardless of jurisdiction, no one’s paying as much as they were paying a few years ago. [Which means] that creative dealmaking is critical, because the audience still expects a certain standard of quality, so we need to find a different way to finance it.

It’s really about trying to find where that lead partner is going to come from. If you have a bunch of projects that are half-financed, no one’s going to buy those. [Sometimes] we need to be able to complete that financing, really putting our money where our mouth is.

We’re doing more of what we’re calling our self-commissioned originals — either we’re producing them, or we’re partnering with other producers and going right into production, especially in genres that we know really well like history and true crime.

Not every distributor has that capability at its disposal, so scale is definitely a plus in that regard. What do you see as other advantages of being a multi-tiered content company?

MB: We have to be ready to pivot, and to follow the trends that we’re seeing and listen to the marketplace. We’re constantly bringing back intel from our global sales team so that our [studios] team is seeing what’s happening.

For example, we did a show almost a decade ago called Cosmic Vistas, which we sold internationally. But it also did really well on YouTube. Internally, we said, “Wait a second — look at the traction that we’re having. Let’s reboot that series based on that data.”

In terms of feedback and data, what are you hearing directly from buyers about their current needs?

MB: “How can we be working differently to de-risk?” That’s why I think formats will continue to be really interesting for buyers. This isn’t new, [it’s] been happening for a long time. But I think in this climate of wanting noisy, buzzy content but [also] de-risking, that model of being able to take something that worked well somewhere else reduces development time and gives the opportunity to move quickly.

Speaking of formats, now that Insight and Proper are part of the Blue Ant fold, how do you see your format catalogue being impacted going forward, both in terms of finished programming and development?

MB: We’re having regular conversations with the creative execs at both Proper and Insight to say, “Okay, that’s a great show you’re developing — how do we make that a global format? What are the extra things that we can do?” So, working with our sales team globally, we’re bringing that conversation in earlier so that when we get to market, we can really help to move the needle.

A version of this story previously appeared in Realscreen

Photo courtesy of Blue Ant Studios