Meet The Panel

  Simon Tomkins - Manager of Programme Strategy: New & Future Audiences, ITV
Simon manages the programming strategy, and scheduling, of ITV’s youngest-skewing channels, ITV2; ITVBe, and CITV. He strategically plans the direction of these channels, working across a range of youth-skewing brands including ‘Love Island’ and ‘Celebrity Juice’ for ITV2; ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ and ‘The Real Housewives of Cheshire’ for ITVBe, and ‘The Rubbish World of Dave Spud’ and ‘How' for CITV. Simon’s previous roles at ITV include Head of Scheduling for a number of channels including ITV2; ITV3, and ITV4
 
  Satmohan Panesar – Commissioning Editor, Factual Entertainment, ITV
Satmohan works across both main channel primetime and the digital channel portfolio commissioning a diverse range of programs including ‘Heathrow: Britain’s Busiest Airport’, ‘Million Pound Pawn’, ‘Inside Prison: Britain Behind Bars’, ‘What Would Your Kid Do?’, ‘Easyjet: Inside The Cockpit’, ‘Sugar Free Farm’ and ‘Diabetes: The Fast Fix’ for main channel to ‘Ibiza Weekender’ (ITV2), ‘Dress To Impress’ (ITV2), ‘Larry Grayson: Shut That Door’ (ITV3) and a plethora of fishing and motorbike shows for ITV4 for the ITV digital family. In 2020 he oversaw ITV’s first celebration of Black History Month onscreen with commissions including ‘Alison Hammond: Back To Schoool’ and ‘Craig & Danny: Funny Black and On TV’. Satmohan is currently the chair for ITV’s Black Asian Minority Ethnic network, Embrace.
 
Satmohan started in production before moving over to factual development - in 2011 working at Silver River, Betty, Watershed and Boomerang. While at Silver River, Satmohan was part of the team responsible for developing the first of Nick and Margaret's BBC documentary series, The Town That Didn't Retire; he later worked on Nick and Margaret: We Pay Your Benefits. At Betty, he helped develop the second Baker Brothers series and Discovery’s Sex Hospital and at Boomerang helped secure the C4 one off Million Pound Movers.
 
  Kim Akass – Professor of Radio, Television and Film at Rowan University, New Jersey
Kim has co-edited and contributed to ‘Reading Sex and the City’ (IB Tauris, 2004), ‘Reading Six Feet Under: TV To Die For’ (IB Tauris, 2005), ‘Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television’ (IB Tauris, 2006), ‘Reading Desperate Housewives: Beyond the White Picket Fence’ (IB Tauris, 2006) and ‘Quality TV: Contemporary American TV and Beyond’ (IB Tauris, 2007).
 
She is one of the founding editors of the television journal Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies (SAGE), managing editor of the website CSTonline as well as (with McCabe) series editor of the ‘Reading Contemporary Television’ for IB Tauris.  She is currently researching the representation of motherhood on television for a forthcoming book ‘From Here to Maternity: Representations of Motherhood in the Media’ (MUP).

   Jo Smith – Portfolio Editor, BBC Two and BBC Four - LinkedIn profile
 

 
Chair:
  Chloe Seddon – Development Executive at Twofour
Prior to her new role at Twofour, Chloe was most recently head of development at Parable where she secured feature documentary ‘One Extraordinary Year’ for Red Bull airing on Amazon, ‘Madame Tussauds: The Full Wax’ for ITV, as well as current affairs hours for Channel 4 and originated short-form format ‘Would You Rather?’ for 4Studio. Before Parable she was head of development at Gobstopper TV where she landed the company’s first commissions and series produced the first series of ‘Just Tattoo Of Us’ for MTV. She was selected as a Broadcast Hotshot in 2014 and for the Wonder Women Mentoring Programme in 2021.