Neil Duncanson

Neil Duncanson is CEO of North One Television - one of Europe’s biggest and most respected independent media companies.
His career began as a newspaper journalist in East London, a stone’s throw from the 2012 Olympic stadium, before freelancing in Fleet Street and moving quickly into television with Thames News in the mid eighties, where he even made occasional on-air appearances as a reporter.
He switched to Thames Sport in 1987, devising, researching and co-producing a pre Olympic series for ITV called The Fastest Men on Earth and writing the accompanying book. He went on to work on the department’s other network output before news editing ITV’s Seoul Olympic coverage in 1988.
He then joined LWT as a producer/director on the network current affairs series Eyewitness and the Channel 4 series Seven Sport. He also co-wrote Crown of Thorns, an in depth look at the lives of the world heavyweight boxing champions, before attending the National Film School.
At 30, he started a sports production company at music giants Chrysalis – with just three staff - and this has grown into the company that exists today.
In 1992 Chrysalis Sport was set up as a separate division, launching Italian Football on Channel 4, taking over Rugby Special on the BBC, launching Arsenal’s in-house TV service, producing the biggest ever sports documentary – Graham Taylor’s Impossible Job, and creating the six part pre Olympic series Tales of Gold for BBC1 – for which he co-wrote the accompanying book. He also wrote two children’s’ books on sport – one about the Olympics and another on sports technology.
The company continued to grow, with NBA, Indycar, Spanish Football, Indoor Bowls, Speedway, even Fishing, before diverging into factual and entertainment programming in the mid 90s, most notably with the massive Top Ten franchise.
In 1997, Chrysalis Television was established, which boasted entertainment, factual, music, digital and commercial programming, as well as sport, with offices in London, Birmingham and Sydney.
In the same year, the company took on the coverage of Formula One for ITV, for which it won countless awards, including three BAFTAs in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
In 2003, Chrysalis Television was renamed North One Television, when the company was part of the first acquisition by the all3media Group. Today, all3media is Europe’s largest television production group, producing programming in every conceivable genre – drama, reality, documentary, entertainment, sport and factual.

North One Television has continued to be a market leader in male skewing factual programming, with motoring magazine format Fifth Gear running for over a decade on Channel 5 and Discovery, while British television’s top technology series – Channel 5’s The Gadget Show – has been going strong since 2004 – and recently expanded into China. The company also has a strong reputation for programming in popular history (The Boat That Guy Built for BBC1, How Britain Worked for C4)and popular biography (five series of The Unforgettables for ITV1, The Two Ronnies Spectacle for Gold), Recent factual entertainment credits include Speed with Guy Martin for Channel 4, three series of Gadget Man for Channel 4 (with Stephen Fry and Richard Ayoade) and a new, utterly unpredictable series for Dave, Ross Noble : Freewheeling, a travelogue with, in the words of its host, ‘no destination’.

The company’s tradition of innovative sports production also continues, with its ground breaking coverage of the Isle of Man TT, which is now into its sixth year on ITV4. North One has also recently agreed a five year deal with BT Sport to produce its coverage of MotoGP, the premier motorcycle racing series and one of the most exhilarating and colourful sporting spectacles in the world. Coverage will launch on the Channel in March 2014. Previous major productions included Premier League All Stars, The World Freerun Championships and the long running World Rally Championship.

North One is also one of the world’s leading producers of advertiser funded programming, having produced hundreds of hours of programming, for dozens of brands such as Renault, Honda, Heinz, nPower and Shell.