Talent Television

London 23rd June 2004 - Top entertainment producer, Mark Linsey is to join growing UK indie Talent Television as Director of Entertainment, it was announced today by Tony Humphreys, Managing Director. Linsey will take up the newly created position in August.

Linsey is currently executive producing Building The Dream for Zeal Television. He was previously Head of Entertainment and a Board Director at Tiger Aspect. His other recent credits include Silver Rose winner Oblivious for ITV, The Lily Savage Show for BBC1, Closure for BBC, Guiding Stars for Sky One and Something For the Weekend for Channel 4 and Channel 7 in Australia.

Linsey commented, "I am delighted to be joining Talent Television at this exciting point in its development. The company has created some great entertainment brands such as Test the Nation, has a very strong development team and is committed to growth across a number of burgeoning genres such as kids, politics and science. It is also fantastic to be working again with one of the UK's leading programme makers - John Kaye Cooper."

Humphreys added, "The time is right for us to engage a Director of Entertainment to take our growing portfolio of projects to the next stage. I am very pleased that Mark has chosen to join us, we have built a team of experienced and creative executives at Talent and his considerable abilities and expertise will further strengthen the company."

For further information:

Debbie Lawrence
The Lippin Company
+44 (0)20 7745 7189
dlawrence@lippingroup.com

Notes to editors:

Talent Television (part of Talent Group plc) is a leading independent UK format creator and producer of innovative television, video and interactive programming. The Company's reputation for prime-time entertainment programming is unrivalled. The "Test the Nation" series for BBC1 is now well established as a scheduling event which combines the excitement of live network television with state-of-the-art interactive television and web technology. Subjects covered so far include "The Nation's IQ", "Relationships", "General Knowledge" and "The End of Year Test". Talent was also a pioneer in reality television with "The Villa", which was first produced in 1999 for Sky One.

Talent Television also has strong ties with major Japanese broadcasters and indie production companies, having produced several HDTV documentaries for both NHK and TV Asahi networks. And, last October, the "Test the Nation" format was successfully launched on TV Asahi, in association with Japanese indie TV Man Union.

Talent Kids, the children's division, was established in January 2003 to develop high quality, innovative programming for kids. It's first commission was for the Disney Channel, with "Inside Clyde", an original fantasy adventure game show, the first 13 x half-hours being screened this winter in the UK. This was followed by a breakthrough reality entertainment format for 6-11 year olds called "Best of Friends". Produced for CBBC, the first series of 15 x half-hours is scheduled for transmission on the CBBC digital channel in March 04.