Whisper North, part of the Whisper Group, is an award winning production studio based in Manchester, UK.

Whisper North produces a range of high-end quiz shows for broadcasters around the world, including Jeopardy hosted by Stephen Fry and Wheel of Fortune, hosted by Graham Norton.

Whisper Group is internationally renowned for its sports coverage, including Formula One and the Women’s 2022 European Championship. It also incorporates East Media, which produces Riddiculous, hosted by Ranvir Singh (and supported by Cast It Reach).

We spoke with Jamie Barnes, Whisper North Production Executive, and Danielle Davies, Senior Casting Producer, about the work of Whisper North and their partnership with Cast It Reach:

Whisper North produces a number of international hit quiz-shows – what are the biggest challenges in casting these programmes?

Jamie: Time is always our biggest challenge and Cast It Reach have such a seamless system that can handle integrating bespoke quizzes or any other elements we may need to help us work through an application list that can be in the tens of thousands per series and ensure we find the very best contestants for all of our shows.

Danielle: Volume of contestants! When casting high-volume series, it’s so important to have a system which allows teams to work efficiently so they can easily find the best people for the shows, sometimes amongst a very large pile of applicants! Rather than feeling overwhelmed with applicants, teams are able to easily process these using Cast It Reach.

How does the Cast It Reach platform assist the casting of your shows?

Danielle: It transforms the casting process and allows us to process applications efficiently so we can find the best possible people to feature on our shows – whatever the brief.

Jamie: Again referencing time constraints with Cast It Reach being so well used already within TV production and having a very user friendly interface we know that we can bring a casting team in and chances are they have worked on the system before and can start finding contestants straight away. Even if that is not the case the interface is so intuitive that with a bit of coaching either from our internal team or the Cast It Reach team they are up to speed in no time.

What has working with the Cast It Reach team been like?

Jamie: The lead time from a commission being confirmed and us wanting to get our casting campaign live can be a very short window and any days lost can ultimately impact how many applicants we have for a series. Castitreach are well versed in turning around our campaigns quickly and integrating everything we need in an accurate and timely manner and it can (and often has) made a significant difference to our overall application numbers for a show.

Danielle: It’s always a pleasure to deal with the Cast It Reach team. There are often times where we need to make live updates to a campaign and these are always turned around quickly.

Would you recommend Cast It Reach to other production companies and studios?

Jamie: I have already done this with various companies in the UK and also around the world who produce international versions of the shows we make and they have only ever given me positive feedback on the platform and how it has worked for them.

Danielle: Absolutely. It’s the gold standard of casting platforms. It makes our casting teams lives so much easier, and helps us produce the highest quality of productions.