EXCLUSIVE: Joshua Barnett has stepped up to CEO at After Party Studios, the UK producer and agency that works with streamers, broadcasters, talent and brands.
Barnett has been upped from MD in a move that sees him take the chief exec title and that also frees up company co-founder and YouTuber Callux to refocus his attention on making content.
London-based After Party was founded by Callux and director RVBBERDUCK aka Ben Doyle. Its credits include Sky Sports’s SCENES, Channel 4.0’s Find The Cheater, and the Sidemen Charity Match, which sold out Wembley.
“We’ve always been trying to make the most culturally relevant content online and full stop, that’s always been the mission ever since Cal and I started.” Doyle told Deadline. “Josh has been banging the drum with brands and commissioners to help them understand more about that and we felt the growth that he has driven needed to be recognized. There’s a space that didn’t really exist for this production company, which operates in the kind of void in between mainstream and digital, and Josh has helped pioneer that.”
Callux added: “Josh is a pioneer and a visionary, and it’s time for him to lead this company on to new and bigger and better things.”
He added that the shift means he will get back into the hustle of being a creator. “The time is right, I miss fully being a creator. I wanted to throw myself back into the deep end of [creating] content, which I miss. I’m currently running an experiment, or a challenge of sorts, on my socials, which is trying to turn a pound into a million pounds.”
New CEO Barnett told us about how he plans to scale the business. “I think we’re seeing a world with brands becoming commissioners, and we have spearheaded that, and streamers are hunting for IP and talent from platforms like YouTube, and we’re well-placed to capitalize there,” he said. “And also sports, which has been a huge growth area over the past 18 months.”
The After Party Studios crew will be at MIPCOM next week as the Cannes market makes a concerted effort to join the dots between traditional and new-school media, a space where After Party lives. It is the latest industry event to connect the legacy players with the new breed of creators and producers. With the existing players having to be innovative with funding tight, there has been a huge ramp-up in interest in how digital-first models can be applied.
“In the last year, it feels like the people understand the space we are in more, and so the opportunities are coming thick and fast and are bigger and better,” Doyle said.