Stephen Stewart

Stephen started his media career in local radio in the Thames Valley, producing and presenting programmes and writing and producing commercials for Radio 210.

From radio, Stephen moved to Channel Four for 8 years, as a Network Director. In this role he was responsible for the live playout of the channel, as well as spells producing and scheduling promotions.   Stephen then spent time directing live television programmes ranging from Parliamentary coverage of the Commons, Lords and Select Committees, through to Formula One Television coverage from locations around the world.

Back in the UK, Stephen pressed the button that launched the new Channel Five service in 1997 and then spent the next 6 years launching and managing operations for a number of television channels (TV Travelshop, Flextech Television and Channel Five), before moving to the BBC (now Red Bee Media) as Head of Operations for the playout operation running all the BBC Channels, UKTV Channels, ESPN and Virgin Media.   Following Channel 4’s decision to outsource its Playout and Technology operations, Stephen was appointed as Senior Account Director to lead the overall, multi-million pound relationship between Red Bee Media and Channel 4.

In 2012, with ‘Cloud’ services for media applications becoming a reality, Stephen moved to Deluxe, initially within its Media Technology division and then to its Mediacloud division, to evangelise and launch some of the world’s first truly cloud based playout and content distribution services.

After Deluxe Stephen spent a year dividing his time between providing consultancy services for some of the UK’s leading production and technology companies and project managing his own ‘Grand Design’ self build in South Oxfordshire.

With the house build complete, another global role followed, at BBC Worldwide (now Studios) as Vice President of Global Content Operations- responsible for teams across the world delivering BBC programming worth hundreds of millions of pounds. This included creating local language versions ready to air in foreign territories sometimes within hours of their first UK transmission.

The lure of cutting edge technology led Stephen to a role as Head of Global Operations at Mirriad Advertising plc. Here, the combination of AI and Machine Learning, and Oscar winning video processing technology, led some of the worlds largest broadcasters to engage Mirriad to create an entirely new form of In Video Advertising that allowed them to identify opportunities in existing content that can be sold to brands for their products or messages to be seamlessly integrated into shows.

OTRO Production’s Head of Delivery role followed- this was the specialist production company set up with some of the worlds greatest footballers (David Beckham, Lionel Messi, Toni Duggan, Neymar Jr, Lieke Martens to name just a few)

As Chief Operating Officer at Take 1 Script Services, Stephen was responsible for the Operations, Product and Media Technology teams, delivering thousands of hours of transcription, dubbing and access services to some of the worlds largest production companies and networks. Following a large modernisation and transformation programme led by Stephen and designed to secure external investment, the business was successfully acquired in July 2022.

Stephen is well connected across this industry and is an advisor to Media organisations, the Motion Picture Association’s TPN Ambassador for the UK & EMEA, a member of the IET Media Technical Committee, a mentor for Rise and an active contributor to the Rise Up Academy, as well having served a term of three years as Vice Chair of the Royal Television Society’s Technology Centre.

Outside of work, Stephen enjoys travelling with his wife Tracey to places where culinary experiences usually feature large! When not travelling, cooking is a hobby, as is walking with the family terriers- which helps burn off the calories from the first hobby!