Pat Kiely is standing in a cavernous warehouse in Ballymount, a commercial suburb near the Red Cow roundabout in west Dublin. It is late March 1998, and Kiely has left his flourishing job as an advertising executive with DDFH&B to help turn this building into a commercial television station. 

However, as he surveys empty building, Kiely, barely in his thirties, is having a wobble. “What the hell have I done,” he asks himself. “Can we really do this?”

In the end, the answer was yes. The wobble turned to intent and, within six months, the building became the home to TV3, the television station Kiely would late rebrand as Virgin Media Television. In total, he enjoyed a 22-year stint at the station, one that culminated in 2015 with his promotion from commercial director to managing director. 

In many ways, the station’s journey over that period mirrored the arc of the Irish economy. What began as a plucky outsider expanded through the boom, culminating in a €265 million private equity buyout. The crash eroded both the station’s profitability and its value, resulting in cost cutting and retrenchment. And, as Ireland recovered, so did the station, luring in Liberty Global’s John Malone, America’s largest landowner, to buy the station. 

Kiely was there for it all – and much more besides, from losing its ITV content to UTV Ireland and to ultimately buying UTV Ireland itself. Last year, however, he resigned, outlining a desire to do something different.

Last week, he unwrapped his new project. Called BiggerStage, his media business aims to create content for international markets, deepen commercial partnerships and develop talent. Based in Dublin, it intends to open an office in London in the coming weeks and is already in discussions with US agents over its operations in North America. 

During our interview, Kiely reveals that the company is in talks about bringing two seven-figure productions to Ireland already. This is not a one-man operation – Kiely is joined by creative director Sean O’Riordan, who previously worked for London-based factual producer Betty.

Jane Russell, founder of talent agency Outlaw, is the company’s director of talent, and will bring her roster of clients including Blathnaid Treacy, Deirdre O’Kane and Louise McSharry. The team is completed by Jamie Macken, previously of marketing group Core, now director of funding and partnerships. 

In this interview, Kiely talks about: 

Ian Kehoe (IK): You were commercial director and then managing director of Virgin Media Television, what was formerly TV3. But now you are launching a new business called BiggerStage. It is a 360 media company. You are looking at producing content, building commercial partners and also development talent and talent management. What was the genesis for the company?

Pat Kiely (PK): Observations, and a general feeling that I have had over the last number of years in all the various roles I was in. The TV3/Virgin Media Television was a 22-year stint – four different jobs, five different ownership structures. Through all of that, I was working with great people and seeing what happens when brilliant content gets produced in Ireland by brilliant people. I was working through some extraordinary challenges – trying to come though those with some innovative revenue solutions. 

The three pillars of the company – content, funding and talent – were a very natural coming together for me and I spotted that nobody else in the market was really active in all three spaces under the same brand. 

IK: Let’s just dwell upon the three pillars. Content. You are going to be producing content, but not just for an Irish market?

PK: One key observation for me was the opportunity for Ireland to increasingly become a centre of excellence in this space. I have watched what colleagues in the film industry and the animation industry have done and I am really interested in television. In the content space, the opportunity for us as a business is to be outward-facing, to look at the opportunities outside of Ireland and use that to help fuel the ambition for the business within Ireland. So, can we create content that will serve Irish viewers well and serve the industry well but will be exportable? Is there an export pipeline opportunity here? We firmly think there is. At the moment, the industry has been very focused, particularly though these very challenges times, on the more local side of the industry. This is an opportunity for us to work with the local industry but to drive an international pipeline. 

IK: If we were having this conversation ten or 15 years ago, we would be talking about selling a format into an international television station – be it in Europe or the US. But streaming has changed the dynamic and created an increasing demand for content.

PK: I would describe that as the blurred lines of media. If you look from local up to international, radio operators are now getting into video. TV operators are getting into podcasts and audio. Newspapers are digital businesses. From a global perspective, there is a significant pivot, and the money is now very much with the streamers at the moment. That is a peak that is not going to last forever. Opportunities are growing. The demand has never been higher. Increasingly, the dots are being joined. I would have been asked in my old role if Netflix was a competitor. Actually, in the wider connected entertainment business that is Virgin Media, Netflix was a partner. We sit side by side. There is both a growing appetite and a growing opportunity for customers for production of content, and also growing opportunities for collaboration and partnership. 

IK: Another leg of the stool is commercial partnerships. What do you mean by that?

PK: Probably the fastest-growing source of funding for content in the UK is what is called AFP. Now, I like my TLAs, three-letter acronyms, but I said to my colleagues and particularly Jamie Macken, who runs this part of the business, can we actually bar the letters A, F, and P in that order. I see creatives breaking out in a cold sweat when you say advertising-funded programming. You can imagine it trigger a sense that all these nasty brands are going to be all over my wonderful content. 

“I am going to give it a bloody good go to apply increasing sophistication to how commercial funding and commercial partnerships can show up in content funding.”

I think there is a huge opportunity in this area. There are terrific examples all over the world where brands have invested in content – not to plaster their names all over the content but to be associated with powerful content. Media is powered by either advertising revenue or subscription revenue. People don’t see the ad breaks as influencing the content, but yet it is paying for the content. Can commercial revenue pay for content in a way that does not impact on editorial control? I think we have an opportunity, and I am going to give it a bloody good go to apply increasing sophistication to how commercial funding and commercial partnerships can show up in content funding. 

Because it does already – advertising is funding content. The ad industry is heading back towards a billion. There is a billion euro in Ireland being spent – and multiply that by 20 in the UK. That amount of money is being spent in traditional display advertising. If we can pivot a tiny little bit of that into content funding, that would be a game-changer for the content industry. 

IK: The final piece is the idea of talent management. It is what it say on the tin?

PK: I would prefer to call this part of the business talent development and talent partnerships. Management is a word that would send you in various different directions. Certainly, one of the services that we offer is to work with talent and manage their careers, but through a development lens. 

This comes from a place of working with some extraordinarily fine talent, seeing some brilliant talent come in and play a huge part in the creation of independent television in Ireland – through to more recently in Virgin Media Television, we saw some terrific young talent come in and is now showing up in news and sport. I am really looking forward to working with the fabulous roster that Jane Russell is bringing in. 

Jane runs this part of the business as talent director of BiggerStage. Jane built up a fine business called Outlaw Management and she, in coming to BiggerStage, brings all her Outlaw Management clients. That is the likes of Deirdre O’Kane, Blathnaid Treacy, Louise McSharry and delighted to more recently add Sarah McInerney and Muireann O’Connell to that roster. We are really looking forward to building that roster. We also want to give talent the opportunity to work on the other parts of the business, to sit with our development team on the content side. Talent, I have experienced throughout the years, typically are the inspiration for great content and I hope we can join some of those dots.

From left: Jane Russell, director of talent; Sean O’Riordan, creative director; Pat Kiely, CEO and founder; and Jamie Macken, director of funding and partnerships. Photo: Andres Poveda

IK: You mentioned Jane Russell from Outlaw Management who is joining you. You mentioned Jamie Macken, who is formerly Core Media and RTÉ. You also have Sean O’Riordan, who is former BBC and who worked with Betty, the London production company. You are putting the infrastructure around you. It is not a one-man operation. There is also an element of international intent. I saw in your press release that you are opening an office in the UK and are talking with agents in the US about a presence there. This is not one man sitting in an office saying he is going to leverage his contacts and enjoy a lifestyle business. 

PK: Over the weekend, I was looking back and reflecting on the release. I was as proud as punch looking at the brands that popped up from the about section on the release. You mentioned Sean – he has 12 years working in television in London, Chalkboard, BBC and more recently Betty, which is part of All3Media. He has worked at the highest level and commissioned content and developed content for all the major networks in the UK, and quite a number of the streamers. I only had my first conversation with Sean last July. 

I had worked on a small number of projects with Jamie. With Jane, I connected with her in the last six months. It has been more by default than by design. I did not set out to put together a brand-new brand. But taking that analogy, we are certainly not putting the band back together. It is very energising to have extraordinary talent around me. The three lead directors all bring really fresh and unique insights to me and I find that very energising in terms of the vision for the business and where it is going.

On the international side, I can’t establish a business called BiggerStage and talk about an outward-looking ambition and not reflect that in our structure. We are very much active in the UK market. That is Sean’s background, and he is engaging with all the major players in the UK. We are very excited about some development that is coming through and we are working with a number of major players in the US.

Transitioning into a new role

IK: What was it like setting up the business? You had a very senior role in a very large organisation for a very long time. You could have become institutionalised with more than two decades there. Suddenly you are sitting on your own in an office. How did you find the nuts and bolts of getting a business off the ground?

PK: It all came pretty naturally. Sometimes I wish I could tell a more dramatic story about the change. I am a big sports fan and I follow a lot of the stories of professional sportspeople and what happens when they go through that change from one career to another. For me, there were a couple of things. Institutionalised? I remember a very, very high-profile media person was proudly boasting their 35-year tenure with that particular media brand. I remember thinking of myself that I might have to embrace my tenure.

The 22 years did not feel like 22 years. It felt like four or five stints that were three or four years long. At the same time, the last job had a start, a middle and an end. I got to the end probably 18 months before I left. I stayed on to fulfil a couple of other obligations and finish off a couple of projects. I had a good long run into the change. I was well prepared for it.

IK: You just did not wake up one day and say you were out, that you had enough?

PK: Absolutely not. Somebody asked me recently when I decided to leave TV3, and I said it was probably 2015. I was originally planning to leave with David McRedmond when we sold the business to Liberty Global. Liberty asked me to stay on and oversee the transition of TV3 to Virgin Media Television. 

At that stage, I had gained wonderful experience and recently had wonderful support and coaching from Liberty Global – it really helped power the vision and insights into BiggerStage. The timing was quite strange. I was originally to announce on March 13 last year. I stayed on to do General Election 2020, and I really enjoyed that, and I was proud of what the team did. Virgin Media Television stepped up extraordinarily well to the challenge. For the first time, we achieved parity of esteem with RTÉ on the number of live debates. It was a great jumping off moment for me. Unfortunately, Leo Varadkar got there 24 hours before me when he closed the schools. That triggered a reaction in the country which meant there was no way I could stand up the next day and tell the organisation that I was moving on.

But my head was moving on and had moved on. I oversaw the first couple of months of the Covid crisis management – I did not have to do much; the business was in great shape and Paul [Farrell, Kiely’s successor] was a virtually natural fit. 

I then went into the summer. It was due to be a nice summer and, like everyone, I did not do very much. Then on September 1, I moved into the new office and that began the journey.

IK: I want to talk about TV3 in a moment. But was there a temptation when you left to take another job? You had been linked with a fair few including the CEO of the FAI. Was there a temptation to take a job and not go and set up your own business? 

PK: I think everybody has those ongoing considerations. To put the record straight in relation to the FAI story, which on one level was very flattering to be associated with it – but at no stage had I or have I spoken to the FAI. I was asked to participate in the process, and I declined. At that point I had the BiggerStage plan cracked. What happened was people joined the dots that I talked on the way out of not going very far and staying in media, entertainment and sport, which is very much part of the BiggerStage brief. 

You asked about the change. The change was not as dramatic as it could have been. As managing director of the organisation, I was typically running big teams. The old cliché is that it can be a lonely place at the top. I don’t quite believe in that phrase because of the buzz you get working with big teams, but you are typically in an office on your own. When I went into the office in BiggerStage, the feelings were the same – I was sitting in an office on my own. The only difference was when I went outside, there were not too many people sitting outside of the office. I had the quality of time in terms of thinking, strategizing, thinking about where we were going. From September to December, which was the real planning phase and the foundation phase, I spent a lot of time working on the purpose of the business. I got to spend a lot of time working on the purpose of the business and giving myself that focus.  

The importance of purpose in business

“A pal of mine said that, recently, I had got the whole purpose buzz – and what was that all about? I really do. I would give my previous colleagues and certainly the guys at Virgin Media great credit for this, because we spent an awful lot of time working on purposeful leadership. To me, purpose is all about the why. I spent most of my career on the when, the how, the who. But a particularly fulfilling moment of my career is when we got stuck into the why. What is the fire in the belly for getting up in the morning? That is what has powered me. The purpose changed and developed. 

More recently, with Virgin Media, we were really developing a connected entertainment model: “Building connections that really matter” was the Virgin Media purpose. I really loved having that anchor me in everything we were doing. I worked with a guy called Brian Bacon, who is probably one of the world’s best coaches from Oxford Leadership. We did some work a couple of years ago and it really helped inform and develop my own thinking around what was next for me. I did some stuff at home – the classic online form filling that I went into quite cynically. But it really helped me work on my own, dare I say it, personal compass. 

Out of that, I could see I had a passion for aspects of what I was doing and not for others. It allowed me to work on what I would call the triangulation of where things were going for me – what was I passionate about? That would clearly fuel a purpose that would get me out of bed in the morning. But crossing that over with what I have a competency in, what am I half-decent at? I am passionate about football, but unfortunately, I am not going to play for Spurs. 

The third corner of the triangle being value – the commercial opportunity, the gap in the market. When I talk about purpose, when I did that triangulation of what I was passionate about, what skills do I have, where is there an opportunity in the market – I got to a place that, right at the heart of it, was a purpose.                  

When you’ve started with purpose, you more quickly and easily got people to imagine what you were at. It was a big part of bringing the team in. Jamie, Sean and Jane would all vouch for the fact that the hook for them coming to BiggerStage was the purpose. 

I made one big mistake by the way. The purpose is empowering Irish talent to play on the bigger stage – the principle being the empowerment joining the dots for people to play on the bigger stage. But also, bigger stages are relative to everybody. One person’s bigger stage could be going from national to global. Someone else’s bigger stage could be from being unknown to stepping into a first-level media job. We worked on the purpose for a while, and then there was going to be a brand coming out of that. I worked with some people and I could have looked at 100 different brands. And I kept on coming back to BiggerStage. Others might say it is not a good idea to turn your purpose into your brand. But it really worked for me and hence – BiggerStage.”

Getting TV3 off the ground

IK: Let’s step back. What was it like setting up a television station back in 1998? I am reminded of the phrase, “pioneers get shot, settlers make money”. You were pioneers in that commercial space.

PK: I will never forget the day, March 31, 1998, I was due to start the following day, April 1. I think it might not be a good day.  I had left my previous job on the Friday, so I was giving myself two days off and I brought it back to one. I went out to this empty warehouse out in Ballymount and stood there. I had been media director of DDFH&B at the age of 29. I had only been in that job two years, but the opportunity was great. We had pitched for the business with James Morris and CanWest, who had come in as James’s big investor to get the licence away – after a ten-year journey. I walked in and I thought: “What the hell have I just done?” I looked around this big empty warehouse and thought if we could really get this away. 

It was a five-minute wobble. The minute we got stuck in, you could really see the potential and the opportunity. CanWest were terrific. They immediately brought common sense, pragmatism and an experience of commercial broadcasting in North America that did not exist in Ireland. That was really the empowerment that meant six months later – on September 20, 1998 – the warehouse was a world-class studio facility. It was one hell of a journey. I am a big football fan, but I could probably not tell you very much about World Cup 1998 because it passed me by.

IK: And it was a journey. TV3 essentially encapsulated the ebbs and flows of Ireland through that period. It changed ownership, it grew, it fell, foreign money came in. It summed up Ireland’s cultural and economic arc over that period.

PK: It is a story of everything from the Celtic Tiger through to the crash and all in between. It told me a lot and taught me a lot about media and opinion. When we launched, nobody gave us a chance. The comparison was RTÉ. Within the first six months, TV3 was half the size of RTÉ2, which had been around for 15 or 20 years. It launched with a higher share of viewing – second only to a Dutch channel in terms of the share it took in the first year for a terrestrial TV start-up.  

It was an extraordinary commercial success from the get-go. 19 of the top 20 advertisers were signed up on day one. But it took a long time to gain the critical support – it had the popular support – but to gain the critical support. We certainly took a low-cost approach to the business, but this was pragmatic and practical.

IK: You spend what you have?

PK: A term I probably overused – earn to spend it. You can’t spend what you don’t have. Within three years, ITV came in as a partner with CanWest – that brought Corrie and immediately we became the number two channel in Ireland, and it has remained there ever since. That transaction changed everything. From being owned by CanWest to being jointly owned by CanWest and ITV from 2001 to 2006 was a terrific journey. That was the Celtic Tiger story, it was double-digit growth. The business was sold in 2006 for €265 million, a 13.5 multiple. Eye-watering numbers back then. Doughty Hanson came in. 

For 78 months, everybody thought it would be the classic private equity story and Doughty would come in and strip everything out. They did the exact opposite. I had a terrific experience of buying sports rights with the likes of UEFA and the GAA where we broke RTÉ’s 80-year monopoly on the All-Ireland Championship.                                                

In ‘06 and ‘07, we had significant investment. Then the market closed down. In August 2008, I remember sitting with our investors and describing what was happening in the ad market, which was pretty much a 50 per cent collapse.

Dealing with the recession

IK: It was a tough time for all media. TV3 came out okay because of its loans were sold through the IBRC liquidation. It buffered the business. 

PK: I have to say that Doughty stuck with it, they put more money in. It is a classic story of resilience. The business had to reinvent itself, we had to double down. My memory is that we were the first to take cuts, significant cuts at that. Senior management took between 15 to 20 per cent in cuts immediately. There was an average 10 to 15 per cent cut across the organisation. We cut our spending, but also worked brilliantly with partners, all of whom helped us get through. 

We doubled down. We got through ‘09, ‘10, ‘11. The resilience was always powered by the affinity of Irish audiences. That popular appeal got us through the worst of it, plus goodwill among agencies. They were tough days. There were some dark days when we did sail close to the edge. Just as we were coming through all that, UTV Ireland showed up on our doorstep and we lost the ITV rights to UTV Ireland. That was felt by the industry as the final blow and everybody expected TV3 to go down off the back of that. 

IK: But it didn’t. 

PK: No. And this is where I get my most energised about the story. We pulled together. We got together – and this was on David McRedmond’s watch and Jeff Forde was the programming director – and we started to pull a plan together. We had 18 months’ notice of the ITV contract moving and similar for the launch of UTV Ireland. In those 18 months, we did what we did best, which is thinking about what our viewers wanted. Whilst ITV represented anything up to 25 per cent of our share, of our punch, it was, on reflection, the other 75 per cent that was sticky, and had more meaningful relationships like the Today Show, Ireland AM, Xposé. It was very much a public service in terms of the content that the business was providing. 

My favourite campaign was something we oversaw called #Newdawn. It was January 2015 and we were losing the ITV content. We had a beautiful twist. We sent out a classic circular with the cover title New Dawn. Most people thought this was something about the launch of UTV Ireland. We had this lovely twist that the most significant story in January 2015 was not the launch of UTV Ireland but it was the new TV3 schedule and that included the launch of Red Rock, and with Irish stories at the heart of our offering. We doubled down on our connection with the Irish viewer. It stood the test., that triggered what came next, because the value of the business was restored.

Pat Kiely: “The business was much bigger businesses than the brand TV3 evoked. And changing it to Virgin Media Television was a real highlight.” Photo: Andres Poveda

IK: And then in steps America’s biggest landowner, John Malone with Liberty Global. You step into the top job. Two questions on that – what was the transition like, and can you take me through the Virgin Media Television rebrand?

PK: I felt that was my step-away moment and probably the job I ended up doing was arguably the only one I would have stayed for. There was a sense that there was work to be done and some unfinished business. Once I really got under the bonnet of the Virgin Media ambition and the Liberty Global ambition, we began to see how television could work with connectivity – what happens if you fuse broadcasting with broadband? That really excited me. What I thought was a step-away moment actually ended up being a terrific new challenge. It was absolutely a fabulous five years. I really enjoyed working with Tony Hanway and the experience of working with the wider management team at Virgin Media. It was a terrific management team, and we did terrific things. 

IK: What were the highlights?

PK: In no particular order, acquiring UTV Ireland. Nor probably for the reason you would think but it was a curious twist to that story. It was actually about saving that business. UTV Ireland was about to go in the same direction as Channel 6, Sky News Ireland and all the various attempts to launch TV businesses. It is a reflection of the market that that TV3 licence is the only TV business that has survived and managed to sustain a business.

The rebrand was another thing. We finally closed down the old TV3 brand in August 2018, literally weeks before its 20th birthday. But it was a natural evolution. The letters TV and 3 evoked old school terrestrial TV. The world had changed in the last 20 years and we needed to catch up with that. It was a classic brand story because the brand was underperforming the business. The business was much bigger businesses than the brand TV3 evoked. And changing it to Virgin Media Television was a real highlight. And the rebranding of Virgin Media News was great, and the launch of Virgin Media Sport.

The future of the media

IK: You have been in media a long time – from your ad days to TV3 and now BiggerStage. We have a Commission on the Future of Media. What would you like to see in it?

PK: I have stayed to the side of all of that. I am not a current operator as a media owner per se. I believe there were 800 submissions. But here seems to be a recurring theme. I have seen words like partnership. They are the words that I like to see. In my last role, that is what I would have been calling for. What I like is being able to stay focused with what I am doing at BiggerStage. I do believe we can bring something to the discussion, but I want to earn the right to be at the table and part of earning that right is working really hard to get the business away.

What I would say is that we are a small country. Ambition has to be fuelled with funding. Does Ireland in itself have the ability to fund a media industry that can compete at a global level? Probably not. It has to bring in additional funding. The BiggerStage view is that this does not mean selling our souls to the rest of the world, but bringing the world to Ireland. We have two projects in the pipeline at this early stage which could see seven-figure investments into the country. That is jobs, that is empowerment, that is training.  

I am delighted that to hear people talk about opening up, to be outward-facing, to internalise this, to not be protectionist. That has not worked in any other industry. We have an opportunity to lift our head. The media industry here has a tremendous opportunity to step up. 

IK: You seem energised by it all?

PK: It is about a challenge and this is probably my biggest challenge – to be empowered to make my own choices and make my own decisions and not have the luxury of falling back on a corporation or anyone. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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