Profile
Before joining Belle Media, Richard held a variety of roles with companies he helped establish, including Artem Digital a leading provider of digital assets to film and television post-production and to the Video Games sector. Major clients included:- Warners, Universal, BBC, BSkyB, Red Bee, Disney, EA, SCEE, SCEJ, Capcom, Cinesite, MPC, Framestore CFC and Double Negative.
Prior to this he founded Metro Cable – backed by UK Venture Capital investor 3i Group plc. Metro operated primarily in Wales and Southern England. The main operations were sold to NTL (now Virgin Media) and the company then re-focussed on opportunities from Digital Switchover.
Highlights include winning the right for telecommunications competition in Hong Kong and devising the sub-contractor model now used in televising the UK Parliament.
Richard started work with BT plc and was one of the pioneers of multi-channel media: working in both satellite broadcasting and cable. He helped establish a number of channels, including MTV Europe and Discovery UK, and was responsible for building the UK’s first new broadband cable network in Aberdeen. He worked in Hong Kong for 3 years with Hutchison where, in addition to planning one of the world’s largest infrastructure projects, he helped pull together an international programming consortium. This subsequently became the basis of Star TV.
Other information
A passion for wildlife saw him help found Discovery Initiatives - a pioneer in tourism as an agent in conservation. Discovery works with NGO’s across the world and, to date, has contributed over £800k to conservation projects. He has recently become involved in setting up a major new awards programme in India promoting tourist related tiger conservation.
An investor in a number of start-ups, he was a Non –Exec Director of Dimensional Imaging for 2 years. The company is an award winning spin-out from Glasgow University specializing in 3D medical imaging.
He is a Member of BAFTA and the RTS. Interests include film, theatre, travel, golf, rugby, and wildlife photography.
Photograph by Charles Best