Murdoch and Shields to Give Joint Keynote at MIPTV 2010

PARIS, March 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Elisabeth Murdoch and Joanna Shields will deliver a joint MIP Digital Keynote at MIPTV 2010.  On Tuesday April 13, the pair will provide further details of their recently-announced partnership that is aimed at innovating at the intersection of TV, digital and social entertainment.

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The Shine Group Chair and CEO, Elisabeth Murdoch and the former CEO of Bebo and President of AOL's social media and communications businesses, Joanna Shields, will explore what, in their view, are new frontiers of storytelling and will demonstrate how entertainment now extends beyond its conventional platforms with audiences programming their own experiences.  

The keynote will be a highlight of the MIPTV 2010 conference programme entitled "Charting the Next Decade of TV and Digital Entertainment."  

Since founding Shine in 2001, Elisabeth Murdoch has steered its growth from a single multi-genre independent to a global group boasting 24 globally-respected, prolific production companies across three continents. It consists of the UK's admired genre specialists Dragonfly (factual), Kudos (drama), Princess Productions (entertainment) and award-winning, multi-genre producers Shine TV; in the US, market-leading independent producers Reveille and international sales arm Shine International. In 2008, the group unveiled Shine Pictures, a joint-venture with New Regency to develop, produce and distribute films globally.

Recent international start-up companies include Shine Germany, Shine France and Shine Australia, headed by renowned executives Axel Kuehn, Thierry Lachkar and Mark and Carl Fennessy respectively. Metronome Film & Television, the Nordic region's pre-eminent production group, responsible for a string of hit programmes from both home-grown and international formats, joined the Shine Group in 2009.

Prior to setting up Shine, Murdoch joined British Sky Broadcasting as General Manager before rising to Managing Director, Sky Networks with overall responsibility for Sky's programming business, group consumer marketing and its news, film and entertainment channels. She began her career in television at the Nine Network in Australia as a researcher in 1990, later joining Fox Television in Los Angeles as Programme and Promotion Manager for seven stations.  She then went to the FX Cable Network as Director of Acquisitions.  In 1995 she started her own company, EP Communications, managing two dominant NBC affiliate television stations KSBW-TV and KSBY-TV. The stations won one national and five Californian Emmy Awards as well as the 1995 Peabody Award for Broadcast Excellence. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of the UK Film Council and was appointed a Tate Trustee by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in August 2008.

Joanna Shields was most recently Chief Executive of Bebo and after spearheading its acquisition by AOL for $850M, she became President of AOL's social media and communications division responsible for all social and instant messaging products including AIM and ICQ desktop and mobile clients. During her tenure at Bebo, the network enjoyed explosive growth up to 50M users and became profitable before its acquisition by AOL, then a unit of Time Warner.

Shields pioneered numerous innovations in ad-sponsored programming combining original productions with brand sponsorship and a new business model for media companies to distribute and monetize their content through viral sharing on the network. Bebo's first, and the Internet's most successful serialized drama, KateModern, was nominated for two BAFTA (the British Oscars) awards and generated over 70 million views. KateModern was followed by Sony's Sofia's Diary, the first online show to cross over to TV in the UK, Endemol's The Gap Year, the most successful reality show not on TV and The Secret World of Sam King, the first co-production between Universal Music and a social network. Bebo Originals have been viewed over 130 million times to date.

Prior to Bebo, Joanna Shields was Managing Director at Google where she was responsible for developing and managing the company's advertising and syndication network across Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Africa.  Other key positions have included Vice President, International, for RealNetworks, the pioneer in web audio and video streaming technology and Chief Executive of Veon.  Her career started in 1987 in Silicon Valley.

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