Cathy Payne serves as Chief Executive, Banijay Rights. Setting and executing the business’ global strategy, she oversees all distribution activity for Banijay Entertainment’s burgeoning catalogue of almost 190,000 hours, which includes landmark brands, Survivor, Big Brother, MasterChef, Rogue Heroes, Marie Antoinette, Grantchester, Deal or No Deal, Mr Bean, Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror.

Previously, Payne spent ten years at Endemol which became Endemol Shine following the merge of the two entities, where she directed all worldwide distribution efforts, steering its six-territory strong team and in-house and third-party content sales, as well as working closely with the commercial team on IP-exploitation.

Prior to taking on the role of Chief Executive, Endemol Worldwide Distribution, Payne was Chief Executive at Southern Star International, which was acquired by Endemol in 2009. There, over the course of 20 years, she was responsible for building one of the largest distributors of English-language content outside of the U.S.