Howard Myers-Rifai

Title
Head of Unscripted Originals
Company
Foxtel Group
Country (Address)
Australia
Biography
Howard oversees all non-scripted production and development at Foxtel Group, with his team working across Foxtel channels and BINGE, including Lifestyle, Entertainment and Factual. It’s a hugely diverse slate that includes Real Housewives, Selling Houses, Love It or List It, FBoy Island, Great Australian Bake Off and Billion Dollar Playground, as well as brand-funded projects Luxury Escapes and Gen Well.

He has also been responsible for true crime series Debi Marshall Investigates and Crimes That Shook Australia. Howard has won AACTA Awards for Love It or List It and Gogglebox, as well as a Silver Logies for Ron Iddles: The Good Cop.

Originally from the UK, Howard worked his way through production as an Editor, Director and Producer, gaining several BAFTA and Royal Television Society nominations along the way.

Previous roles include Director of Production for Disney Channels UK & Europe (managing hundreds of hours of live shows and original series); Head of Formats & Creative Director for Buena Vista Productions in London & Los Angeles (supervising sales and international production of formats including The Amazing Race and Extreme Makeover, as well as scripted remakes of Desperate Housewives and The Golden Girls); and Managing Director/Executive Producer for Rival Media.
Howard Myers-Rifai
What we're looking for from Ready, Steady, Pitch!
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UNSCRIPTED TELEVISION

As we broaden the types of programmes we consider, I'm very open to consider different forms of unscripted storytelling from unique factual to interesting reality and everything in-between.

Before pitching, make sure you know what programmes we currently have in our schedules, so that your pitch can be focussed, different and tailored to our audiences/platforms.

Interesting access and great talent always helps. Most of all, surprise and excite me with something I haven’t seen before!

If your idea lends itself to non-traditional production funding, including brand-funding and international co-productions, I’d be interested to hear about that too.

Please note that I'm only considering UNSCRIPTED (non-drama) TV projects.