Ellen Windemuth of Off The Fence: Building a global factual entertainment powerhouse

We sat down with Off The Fence founder Ellen Windemuth to talk about factual television, her company’s dominance in the space, hiring the best people, and ultimately selling the firm she spent more than 20 years building.

Ellen Windemuth started her career nearly 30 years ago in sales of factual television. After working for companies like Atlantis and Fremantle she founded Off The Fence in 1994. Since then she has built the company into the omnipresent global leader that it is today. With a catalog of several thousands of hours of high-quality factual programming, Ellen and her team have, of course, made themselves an attractive target for acquisition and while she resisted the many offers she had gotten over the years she finally struck a deal with ZDF Enterprises in early 2019. Ellen continues to run the company to date and has set her sights on the next frontier already.