News round-up: Nordics welcome Korean dramas; Little Dot Sport hires Katie Matthews; Blanchard bags doc producer Grissell

Taxi Driver

Sweden’s TV4 among Korean drama buyers

Sweden’s TV4 and Finland’s MTV3 have picked up a raft of Korean drama series from Eccho Rights, the Nordic distributor owned by CJ ENM.

Both platforms have picked up CJ ENM-produced action thrillers Trap and Strangers From Hell, as well as Taxi Driver from SBS.

TV4 and MTV3 become the first local broadcasters in their respective countries to acquire South Korean content.

Eccho Rights established its Seoul office in 2017, the year before the distributor was acquired by Korea’s CJ ENM.

Little Dot Sport hires Katie Matthews 

Digital content agency and media network Little Dot Studios has appointed Katie Matthews as partnerships director at its recently launched specialist label, Little Dot Sport.

Matthews will manage the label’s portfolio of clients, identify new development opportunities and work across its social content, distribution and monetisation. The newly created role role reports to Robbie Spargo, director of Little Dot Sport.

Matthews has spent the majority of her career at independent PR agency, The PHA Group, where she ran the agency’s sports division.

Blanchard bags doc producer Grissell

Podcast firm Blanchard House has hired BBC producer Laurence Grissell as its head of content.

Grissell most recently worked at the BBC’s Documentaries Unit and has been behind The Californian Century, Wireless Nights and The Untold.

He will join in March, working with the rest of the team at Blanchard, which was founded in 2021 and is made up of co-founder and CEO Kimberly Jung, co-founder and creative director Rosie Pye and co-founder and Host Alex Wiltschko.

Pye previously worked at the BBC and The Economist, while Wiltschko hosts Google Ventures’ podcast, Theory & Practice.

The company, which secured a $1m seed investment last November and set up a partnership with The Shrink Next Door podcast journalist and presenter Joe Nocera, has also confirmed it us now repped by agency WME.