Family Background

Born to Herbert 'Harry' and Eva Orton on 17 June 1943, Peter Orton is the youngest of four brothers. Brought up in Portsmouth, the family was moved out to Petersfield during the war to avoid the bombing. His upbringing was traditional - he remembers his parents' marriage as blissful and old fashioned, with his mother continually cooking for, and feeding four hungry sons. The house was always spotless and dinner was eaten every night as a family round a table laid with a cloth and full cutlery - a legacy of his father's time spent as a steward on the liners. His Dad later worked as a fitter, never making more than £15 a week and devoting his whole life to his children.

Harry Orton was the eldest of Peter's brothers, and the only one to have a 'decent' education as his schooling coincided with their evacuation to Petersfield in the early War years. After gaining eight O-levels, Harry went on to National Service and was then, to the family's surprise, made an Officer. Having failed the exams to become a Customs Officer, he took advantage of a Government scheme to fund a university course for those who had served in the armed forces and studied dentistry. He became Consultant Orthodontist at Kingston University, and to the army, and was one of only two people within the field of dentistry to be awarded A, B and C awards. He was later honoured with the OBE in recognition of his development of the Orton Technique for those people born with cleft palates. Peter only realised the full weight of Harry's achievements at his funeral, when so many influential and important figures within his field turned out to pay tribute to a man they had all held in high regard.

His second brother, David Orton was a very talented intellectual but fell victim to the "Portsmouth problem" of a serious lack of jobs and had to work at the dockyards. He went on to study naval architecture at Durham before emigrating to Canada at 21 where he became a senior lecturer at McGill University, teaching sociology. He was banned from entering the US due to his left wing and Maoist beliefs and is now heavily involved with Greenpeace.

Peter describes his youngest brother Michael Orton as a "wonderful personality" who never left Portsmouth. He has recently retired from his job as a night watchman and still lives in the town.

Career

At the age of 7 Peter Orton, living 'on the wrong side of the road' at 109 Tangier Road, was sent to Copnor Junior mixed school. Upon failing his 11 plus exam he then went on to adjoining Copnor Modern School for the next 2 years. Passing his exams at the age of 13 sent him to Portsmouth Technical College.

Peter did not have a clue what he wanted to do when he left college. His father's suggestion of an apprentice job as an electrician with the Southern Electricity Board shocked him so much that it took him 18 months to get over it.

He finally got his first job as a Naval Tailor - selling uniforms and civilian clothes to sailors. Although he was the most junior salesman, Peter was quick to learn that waiting until the sailors had had their first tot of rum made them much more receptive customers. He earned £4.50 a week plus commission and, aged 17, realised that he would go a lot further with a 'set of wheels' so he saved up and passed his driving test first time. He left the company and joined another Naval Tailor where he was given a van and so could go further afield in his quest for sales. After two years, he decided it was time to leave Portsmouth and he got a job as a salesman with Scholl Foot Company.

Although the initial training period at Scholl was two years, within six weeks Peter was given responsibility for the West Country territory, and a Vauxhall Estate! He based himself in Exeter and was given a hotel allowance while travelling with his job - so he slept in his car and saved the money. Peter soon became recognised as the most successful salesman at Scholl - his star was in the ascendant and in 1964 he was given the sales territory of Scotland. His success continued and the business grew dramatically over the next two years. He returned to Hampshire but, by this time, he was looking further afield for excitement, and his thoughts had turned towards getting into the television industry.

An introduction to David Stirling, who Peter describes as a "wonderful man" gave him his first job at David's company Television International Enterprises (TIE). TIE had contracts with 14 small TV stations in Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East to buy their TV programming, which in those days had to be delivered by aeroplane in cans of film each week.

In 1970, Peter read in Variety that Emilio Escarager, the head of Televisa - the national channel in Mexico, had acquired the worldwide rights to the World Cup to be held in Mexico that year. He wrote him a letter, explaining that he represented fourteen small television stations across Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East and would like to buy the rights to the World Cup for these stations. He received a telegram back with the offer of a meeting in Madrid the following Tuesday - and quickly set about obtaining a passport. The meeting was a success and the senior executive from Televisa told Peter that he could handle the sales for the rights of the World Cup for his stations and also all the other stations in Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean himself - he left Madrid with the realisation that he was now responsible for the rights to the World Cup for half the world. He sent letters and telegrams all over the Middle East and made £350,000 profit in ten days. A pay rise followed and his salary went from £20 to £60 per week. Peter began to understand that there was a lot more money to be made selling programming, rather than buying it.

He read about a show in America called Sesame Street that was becoming extremely successful and popular due to the innovative way that the programme used techniques developed in advertising to sell educational messages to pre-school children in inner city and disadvantaged homes in America. As a consequence, the cast was multi-ethnic and would therefore appeal to the stations in Africa and the Caribbean.

He arranged a meeting with Michael Dann - the most powerful programming executive in the US - at the Children's Television Workshop and had soon sold Sesame Street to all of his stations. As a result of this success, Dann then asked Peter if he would try to sell Sesame Street in Africa and they agreed a 35% cut of all sales for Peter. From Sierra Leone and Ghana to Nigeria and Ethiopia, Peter sold Sesame Street to every station in Africa. Upon his return from Africa, Peter was sent straight out to Asia, where he once again sold the show everywhere. News of his phenomenal success soon reached the Board of the Children's Television Workshop and a meeting was arranged. Michael Dann offered Peter a job, which he agreed to take on the condition that David Stirling was also brought on board as a consultant.

Peter likens the subsequent years working with Michael Dann as the best "MBA in broadcasting". Michael Dann was one of the most successful programming executives in US network television during the 1950s and 1960s. He was known as a "master scheduler" and spent his most successful years at CBS working in tandem with CBS President James Aubrey. During most of his tenure, CBS consistently ranked as the number one network in prime time audience ratings. Living and working in New York, Peter was given a global perspective on the industry and introduced to everyone. However, his long-term girlfriend, Susan, was tiring of his American lifestyle and the amount of time they spent apart and so, he moved back to England was married aged 30.

He became a consultant to CTW and decided to set up 'Sport on TV' - selling sports packages to television stations. This proved to be difficult because of the power of the BBC and ITV and an approach to Alan Hardacre to put on a live match on a Sunday afternoon was unsuccessful. The story was however reported in the newspapers.

In 1974 Peter received a call from Joan Ganz Cooney, the Head of CTW, telling him that Michael Dann was stepping down as Vice President. She wanted Peter to run their international business and agreed a salary of $75,000 per year, plus 7% of the uplift in profits. Peter decided that he wanted to design a concept that would enable Sesame Street to work for other countries, and to teach and educate children. Villa Sesamo and Plaza Sesama were duly made and sold throughout the whole of Latin America. Ten different shows followed all around the world in different languages and cultures and Peter was continually traveling all over the world. At one point he realised that he had travelled to Japan 82 times and spent 1¼ years at the Okura hotel in Tokyo.

Jim Henson had made the puppets for Sesame Street, and by retaining the licensing and merchandising rights, had made enough money to set up his own company, The Jim Henson Company. He approached Peter with his idea of designing a show for international television which eventually became Fraggle Rock.

Peter structured the finance with a co-production contract with CBC, the national broadcaster in Canada, who made a 96-show commitment. Jim Henson went on to make numerous other hugely successful series including The Storyteller and Orton bought back from Robert Holmes-Accort the Muppet Show for $7million. However, although the combination of Fraggle Rock and The Muppet Show made Henson a great boutique business, after eight years he decided to sell his business to Disney. In March 1989 he told Peter that he was going to sell the company to Disney for $149million.

At the age of 46 Peter Orton found himself facing a crisis. With Jim Henson selling to Disney, he didn't know where else he would be able to find a job that paid him an annual salary of £500,000.

He had three options - to go to LA and get a job running a studio, to accept a £250,000 pay cut and take a job in the UK or Europe, or to start his own business. He chose the former and, with £300,000 and a business plan, began to form HIT Entertainment. Roger Luard, of Flextech invested £1.2million for a 20% share of the new company.

Working from the premise that over the years Britain has consistently created some of the world's best-loved children's illustrated characters, HIT Entertainment invested heavily in bringing well-loved favourites to the screen and then turning them into international successes.

In 1998 HIT started to develop a raft of new characters in-house, adhering to the tenants of quality in production and insisting on rich educational content. The most famous of these has been Bob the Builder - an international hit seen in over 150 territories worldwide. HIT is today one of the largest exporters of programmes in the UK, a recipient of two Queen's Export Awards and the largest independent producer in the UK. In the 15 years from its founding, Peter grew HIT from eight employees to over 420 employees, with offices in five countries - UK, USA, Canada, Japan and Germany. This is in addition to the HOT animation studio in Manchester, studio space at Elstree and Maidstone and a stand-alone television studio in Dallas. The company became one of the largest pre-school children's video distributors in the world - second only to Disney in the UK and the fourth largest in the US.

The rapid growth was achieved through strong organic growth and two important acquisitions. The first of these was the 2000 purchase of the Lyrick Group, a Texas-based entertainment company that owned Barney, the purple dinosaur - a classic children's property that has been entertaining pre-schoolers in the US for over fifteen years. In addition to Barney, the acquisition brought with it a state of the art television studio in Dallas and an established home entertainment distribution business serving the whole of North America. Applying this home entertainment business to the HIT brands catapulted the company into becoming the leading US preschool home entertainment video label. The second significant acquisition was that of Gullane Entertainment in 2002, which brought with it the classic Thomas the Tank Engine brand, Art Attack - the evergreen children's favourite and Guinness World Records.

These two acquisitions (alongside the 2001 purchase of Pingu, another classic children's property) provided HIT with a strong portfolio of young children's brands.

Peter believes his strong fear of failure is what has continued to motivate him throughout the years. Although he believes that his parents were proud of him, he didn't feel that they truly understood his achievements, in the same way that they could appreciate the more tangible academic success of his eldest brother Harry.

Impact on the Industry

Peter Orton is a highly respected figure in the industry, a recipient in 2002 of the British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) Lifetime Achievement Award for work in children's television and film and a Fellow of the Royal Television Society. In July 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctor of arts degree by De Montfort University in Leicester 'for his contribution to Children's TV and support for higher education and encouragement of young people in the industry, and in 2005 the Marche Internationale de Television (MIP-TV) also awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award , the first ever presented to a Briton'

In the New Years Honours list in 2007, Peter was appointed to the Royal Victorian Order as a Commander (CV0) by the Queen for his contribution to children's literacy.

It is very difficult to quantify the precise impact of Peter's vision on the UK animation industry - through HIT Entertainment he has allowed storytellers, illustrators and animators in the UK to find a global audience. Between 1997 and 2002 the company invested some £40million in producing British series that generated over £230million in revenues. The majority of this investment was spent on employing British animators, composers, model makers, and voice over artists, editors and many other people key to the production process.

Peter remains an active supporter of industry organisations. This commitment over the years has included sponsorship of the Edinburgh International Television Festival and Wildscreen, the international festival for natural history programming and patronage of the Royal Television Society.

Peter always believed in nurturing young talent and many of the talented young executives who started with HIT are now respected senior industry figures - ten are millionaires. Peter's personal commitment has extended to supporting student bursaries and the sponsorship of lectures for media studies.

Fighting Cancer

Peter Orton had always been healthy and energetic, however, often when he took a bad cold his glands would swell up. On one such occasion some years ago, one of his glands did not go back down. He went to his doctor on Harley Street to have it checked out. At first he was told that the lump on his neck was nothing to worry about, but when it still didn't go down he was taken to the Royal Marsden to have the lump removed - it contained one cancerous cell. This was the start of a long hard fight with cancer, one he continues to fight resolutely.

He has donated 0.5million of his shares in HIT Entertainment to the Royal Marsden as an expression of gratitude. In a private capacity, he has also become Chairman of the Head and Neck Cancer Research Trust. His life experience also enables him to provide valuable counselling to throat cancer victims at the Royal Marsden. Peter Orton is giving back as much as he can.

Peter lives on a farm in Wiltshire with his wife Susan. They have a son, Jamie who works in property development.

For information:

Brian MacLaurin Associates
brian@brianmaclaurin.com
+44 (0)20 8834 1805