"Ireland's Wild Islands" is one of Blue Ant's more popular documentary series. (Blue Ant photo)
Blue Ant Media Plots Ambitious Growth Strategy After Going Public, Buying MagellanTV
January 29, 2026
Carlyn Staudt, president of global channels and streaming for Blue Ant Media, wants to capitalize on the Toronto-based media company’s momentum in the aftermath of its acquisition of unscripted streamer MagellanTV and reverse takeover of Boat Rocker Media last spring.
She’s headed to NATPE Global in Miami early next month to talk up the company’s ambitious growth strategy and maybe cut a few deals in the process.
“My primary agenda for NAPTE is focused on fostering our industry partnerships and supporting our global channels sales team in expanding our global footprint, in particular the global reach of MagellanTV,” Staudt said. “Additionally, our global channels team is at the conference in tandem with our production and rights teams under Blue Ant Studios.
“Together, we are in the marketplace looking for opportunities to co-invest and partner with other studios on IP. I want to leverage our combined commissioning power to find new creative financing models that allow us to greenlight and monetize high-quality content across our entire global network.”
Staudt will also be on a panel discussion Feb. 4 for a “Streaming Breakfast” with fellow executives from Roku, Tubi and BBC Studios.
Blue Ant Media is an international producer, rights business and operator of FAST and linear pay TV media brands. Through its Blue Ant Studios division, the company creates, distributes and broadcasts factual entertainment, lifestyle series, animation, documentaries and 4K natural history shows. Founded in 2011, Blue Ant Media’s diverse portfolio of global brands and IP is distributed in more than 100 countries and across 300 platforms globally, with a library consisting of more than 7,000 hours of content. Last spring, the company went public in a reverse takeover, a move Staudt says “was a major catalyst for our current ambitious growth strategy.”
MagellanTV, which Blue Ant acquired last October for $12 million, is an ad-free subscription streaming service dedicated exclusively to documentaries and factual content, with a library of more than 3,000 titles in such genres as history, science, space, nature and true crime. It offers 4K content, supports offline downloads, and is accessible on multiple devices, including smart TVs, for roughly $4.99/month on annual plans. MagellanTV was founded in 2018 by Greg Diefenbach and Thomas Lucas, who previously worked at National Geographic, PBS and Discovery.
“Our recent activity, including the MagellanTV deal, is the direct execution of the M&A priorities we established when we went public,” Staudt said. “We’re scaling our global streaming business, strengthening our studios, and expanding into media-adjacent opportunities. We are deliberately building an interconnected business that spans production, distribution, and owned media platforms to maximize the value of our IP and maintain end-to-end control over the content lifecycle.”
The coming year, Staudt said, “is about global scaling, genre expansion, and cultivating audiences. While we’ve established a strong position as a factual leader, especially following the acquisition of MagellanTV, we are now looking to expand into other categories and genres where we can super-serve passionate audiences. We are also focused on taking MagellanTV’s successful U.S.-based model and scaling it globally through our international sales and distribution teams.”
Ultimately, Staudt notes, “our goal is to evolve Blue Ant into a diversified, global media business where our studios, channels, and platforms work in real synergy. By aligning our global channels and streaming platforms with our production capabilities, we increase our commissioning power and take a more strategic, end-to-end approach to content and IP. We want to meet audiences wherever they are — across SVOD, FAST, AVOD, Pay TV and an expanding mix of digital platforms — tailoring our offerings by territory to maximize both reach and monetization.”
Streaming isn’t the only endpoint, Staudt maintains. “Increasingly, value is created through how IP travels across platforms and how audiences engage with it over time,” she said. “Ultimately, our ambition is to focus on a set of core, well-defined genres where we have real expertise and can build strong audience communities and long-term fandoms. That means thinking beyond a single platform or window, and growing brands that live across digital, podcasting, social, experiential, and other extensions — creating deeper audience relationships and more sustainable value over the long term.”
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