BritBox CEO opens Streaming Summit with North America SVOD strategy keynote

Robert Schildhouse, CEO of Direct-to-Consumer at BBC Studios, will open the 2026 NAB Streaming Summit on Monday April 20 with a fireside keynote titled "How North America Became British TV's Biggest Opportunity." The 9:30–10:00 a.m. session is the first slot of the two-day Summit and the first time a BBC Studios or BritBox executive has headlined the Summit opener in the event's history.

BritBox operates in North America outside the conventional US streaming bundle structure, building a subscriber base through cultural specificity rather than content volume. That positioning makes Schildhouse's strategy a working data point for how narrowly defined, non-US streaming services can compete with general-entertainment platforms — a question relevant to any rights holder considering direct-to-consumer streaming without the catalog depth of a Netflix or Amazon.

Summit organizer Dan Rayburn's choice to lead the program with this session signals that the non-US SVOD-in-America model is now considered a first-tier strategic topic rather than a regional curiosity. The two-day Summit runs April 20–21 in the West Hall and features approximately 85 speakers across two concurrent tracks covering business strategy and streaming engineering. Will Law of Akamai, Sandeep Tiku of DAZN, and Brad Boim from Amazon Prime Video Live Sports are among the confirmed speakers for the wider program. Registration is priced at $699–$849, with an All Access Pass at $1,699–$1,999.