Meet the Kindle team...

Anne Brogan
Director

Anne has worked at a number of the major UK children's TV companies. Starting at Thames TV, she moved to BBC Education, where she produced the multi-award winning programmes Nice Girls Don't Swear and Shakespeare Shorts. As Executive Producer, she looked after an exceptionally diverse and mind-stretching range of programmes which included Teletubbies and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, After a short period at Disney International, she moved to Granada Kids as Head of Drama and then became Controller in 2004 leading a thriving production department with a broad slate of programming, spanning pre-school, animation, entertainment and drama. The drama portfolio included over 100 episodes of the multi-award winning My Parents Are Aliens which was frequently voted favourite kids' show in the UK; Girls in Love, one of Granada International's best-selling teen series, and the phenomenally successful single family drama The Illustrated Mum, starring Michelle Collins, which won two BAFTAs as well as an International Emmy. In pre-school, Anne was Executive Producer on Pocoyo, a show that has received both critical and commercial success including a BAFTA, an EMIL award and Pulchinella award for best pre-school and European programme amongst others. Anne lives in London with a teenage daughter, a husband, a dog and a number of mice, but she is hoping they will move out soon.

Melanie Stokes
Director

Melanie started producing plays (mainly musicals) when she was about nine – selling tickets at 5p a go in the suburbs of South London. It was a training that put her in good stead for her first freelance producing jobs in telly. She produced a number of awarding-winning shows for Channel 4 Schools, including an improvised drama in German – Wilkommen! (BAFTA nomination, 1995) a sketch show about the human body - Ourselves (RTS winner 1995) and a young Jamie Oliver talking to a puppet mouse about chocolate cake – Write Away! (RTS 1999 & BAFTA nomination, 2000).

Melanie’s film about a boy who turns into a girl – Bill’s New Frock (adapted by Andrew Davies, RTS winner 1998, BAFTA nomination 1998, Broadcast winner 1999) won prizes at a variety of international film festivals, as did her film United about a boy who thinks his stepbrother is an alien (Special prize, Chicago Film Festival, 2002). Melanie also re-launched top-rating new versions of kids’ favourites Rainbow and Bernard’s Watch, both for ITV.

Melanie joined Anne Brogan to head up the development team at Granada Kids in 2004, where she steered a number of successful new commissions - including My Spy Family and Den of Doom.

Valerie Ames
Director of Production

With more years experience in the television industry than she cares to remember, Val Ames has covered every conceivable inch of the business (or it certainly feels like that!) from childrens and animation to sport, factual, entertainment and drama for both indies and broadcasters alike.

Her freelance roles have been many and varied from rostrum camera right through to Producer. Permanent positions have been as Head of Production at Mentorn Films and at Carlton TV, where she joined as Production Executive and was Head of Production for Children’s and International when she finally left.

Over the past 3 years, Val has produced a 2 hour special on Elton John for A&E in the US and also The Snow Queen, a Christmas special for BBC1 and CBC in Canada and has spent some time at IMG as Head of Production for Entertainment. She now develops her own projects as well as working as consultant Head of Production for Kindle.

Lance Crossey
Director of Finance

Lance fell into television during a placement as part of an Accounting & Finance Degree. His appetite for this more exciting accountancy work led him to Yorkshire TV’s Children’s & Education department, running the finances for programming for both Channel 4 Schools and ITV including How We Used to Live, Scientific Eye and The Big Bang.

Following the merger of Yorkshire and Granada, Lance became Unit Accountant for the combined Children’s department where he was first introduced to Anne Brogan, then Head of Drama. Lance oversaw productions like Children’s Ward, 24Seven and the award-winning My Parents are Aliens.

Lance became Finance Manager for Granada Kids, in a department now including Head of Development Melanie Stokes, which was going from strength to strength. Lance continued with his love of production accounting, managing dramas including The Illustrated Mum, Barking! and Seriously Weird, a co-production with Canada, as well as taking a more strategic role within the department.

Lance joins Anne and Melanie in this exciting new venture as Finance Director of Kindle Entertainment.

Liz Noble
Line Producer

Liz started her career at ITV Yorkshire and she has since worked on virtually every genre - from factual and entertainment to drama and sitcom. Liz was a staff Production Manager for ITV Kids and managed the award-winning My Parents are Aliens for 8 seasons. Her other productions have included Jungle Run, Big Bang, Barking and Jinx. Liz is currently Line Producer on Leonardo, Kindle's brand new adventure series for CBBC.

Sam Hoyle
Head of Development

Sam comes to Kindle from the BBC, having spent two happy years there making lots of Radio Drama and Comedy. Previously, Sam has worked widely in TV Comedy, credits including shows as different as My Parents Are Aliens and 3 Non-Blondes. Sam has also produced loads of live comedy, including the Perrier Winning nobleandsilver show in 2000. However, just to prove it’s not all fun and laughter, Sam subjected herself to a few stints in the film industry. She worked widely in script development, including stints with Little Wing Films, Disruptive Element and the International Film Collective. She is developing ideas for interactive drama.

Pia Ashberry
Development Executive

Pia Ashberry started her career as one half of a comedy double act, Raging Hormones. While she might never scale such dizzying heights again, she did go on to work for the Royal Court Theatre where she read a lot of plays and even wrote one herself for the young people’s theatre there. She has since worked as a script editor and writer for several television companies including Carlton, LWT, United and the BBC. Most recently she has written the interactive elements of AWOL - a ground-breaking online drama for the BBC. She has also worked on Jinx and My Spy Family for Kindle, Kerching for CBBC, The Bill and The Clinic, an RTE drama series.

Clare Batty
Development Executive

Clare started in factual programming but made the move to drama after spending New Years Eve in a Birmingham Hosptial trying to persuade women to give birth live on air (not my finest moment)! At Tetra Films, Clare became Script Editor on the children’s series, Mike & Angelo (series 10 & 11) and Snap (series 2). She also edited What Katy Did, an ITV1 film starring Kevin Whately, adapted by Olivia Hetreed. She left to join the fun at Family Affairs (Thames/Talkback) firstly as a Storyliner then as Series Script Editor. After taking time out to have children, Clare began reading for The Bill before joining the Kindle Entertainment team as a Development Executive.

Richard Pink
Commercial Director - Big and Small

Richard Pink was Kellogg’s UK Promotions Manager before moving on to be Head of Licensing at Entertainment Rights Plc and has worked in Sales, Marketing and Licensing for over 20 years. In 2005 Richard founded Pink Key Consulting Ltd and deals with a range of clients including Discovery Concepts Ltd who design and source premium promotional merchandise ,and the Institute of Sales Promotion where Richard is Associate Director of Education. Richard joined Kindle in June 2008 to help set up the commercial framework to allow the licensing of Big and Small and in October was appointed Commercial Director for the brand.

Jacqueline McGee
PA / Development Researcher

Jacqueline’s early TV years included dressing up as a Womble for a publicity stunt to coincide with a video release of the children’s show; moving onto coordinating children’s drama series, light entertainment shows and a Brit flick in the 1990’s; leading to production managing programmes for Discovery in the UK, and later a documentary on American Gangsters for the Discovery Channel, US.

Jacqueline recently spent four and a half years working in Prague for a film service company where she schmoozed with the likes of Bruce Willis & Colin Farrell on press junkets.

Jacqueline is currently working as an assistant to Anne and Melanie, and helping out in development.

Nina Metivier
Script Editor