C21January 2021

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January 2021

Lat Am players extend their int’l ambitions

Max factor: HBO streamer looks south

Top players reveal wish lists for 2021

PLUS: London Screenings | ViacomCBS | Factual special A year in kids’ TV | Europa+ | Dan Cohen | Views & more…

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Channel 21 International | January 2021 | Issue #303

UPFRONT

CONTENTS

This thing of ours

I

n 1957, Walt Disney published a blueprint for his company’s corporate strategy that has remained impressively relevant – until now.

The vast web of diversified media assets marks out exactly how everything from TV to feature films, music to comics, theme parks to merchandising and licensing, feeds into one another. It is remarkably similar to the “360” strategies that many brand builders pursue today.

It is missing one thing, though. But perhaps Walt can be forgiven for failing to include mention of the internet, the future impact of which was only properly realised in 1999 by David Bowie, who said: “The potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable.”

Bowie knew what was on the horizon, a future that means every character to ever have appeared in a Star Wars film will one day get their own spin-off series, as we’ll see on Disney+ in the years ahead.

Theatrical films form the core of Walt’s blueprint and rightly so, as the box office has been the driving force behind The Walt Disney Company (TWDC)’s unprecedented success over the decades. But if the blueprint were to be redrawn for 2021 and beyond, you can bet streaming would now replace theatrical films at the centre of the web.

Of course, feature films are still key to Disney.

But as a result of the pandemic and the success of Disney+, TWDC spent 2020 accelerating what was already a pretty urgent direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategy, leaving cinema operators aghast as it zeroed in on families in their living rooms.

This shift has also led to an immense restructuring at the Mouse House, the communications for which come laden with inscrutable business-speak, including “streamlining,” “centralising support functions,” and “rightsizing our organisation.”

Essentially, these phrases all mean one thing:

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job cuts. As TWDC shifts away from what it calls “legacy platforms,” certain jobs become redundant, and there have already been many hundreds of job losses not just at Disney but across Hollywood.

Meanwhile, the rise of faintly ridiculous-sounding job titles such as “chief transformation officer” highlight the extent to which the industry is focused on evolution.

Streaming is now a byword for watching TV. And not just for kids and young people: the data from both sides of the pond confirms the rise of the so-called Silver Streamers – the over-55s embracing streaming for the first time – is a real and lasting trend.

So while the major upheaval being seen across the industry will not be without its victims, namely those working across solely linear TV channels, the sheer amount of content both children and adults are watching will provide opportunities ahead.

Indeed, with projections that the pandemic will cause a deep global recession, we should perhaps be comforted by the fact we’re working in the one part of show business that not only appears resilient enough to withstand the economic strain that beckons but, in many ways, has also been rendered even more relevant and vital by the pandemic.

One upside to lockdown has been the chance it has afforded many of us to finally catch up on certain sacred cows of the TV world that may have passed us by the first time round. I’ve finally been able to get stuck into HBO crime drama The Sopranos. And my ears pricked up the other day during one particularly pertinent piece of dialogue between Tony Soprano and his right-hand-man, Silvio Dante, in an episode from 2002.

“Sil… what two businesses have traditionally been recession-proof since time immemorial?”

“Certain aspects of show business, and our thing.”

Nico Franks

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COUNTRYFILE: Latin America Streaming giants target the region as local players step up their ambitions.

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SCHEDULE WATCH: HBO Max Set to launch in Latin America later this year, the streamer is seeking new voices.

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Content London On Demand Top international TV execs discuss burning issues and their content needs.

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NEWS ANALYSIS: London Screenings A group of UK distributors work together to showcase content online.

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SCHEDULE WATCH: ViacomCBS EMEAA The firm eyes opportunities in Latin America and its European ‘South Hub.’ FACTUAL

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NEXT BIG THINGS: True crime With the genre taking a new direction in 2021, cablenets, pay channels and streamers battle to stay ahead.

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SCHEDULE WATCH: Factual buyers Buyers from the CBC, Discovery, the ABC and History discussed their 2021 content needs at Content London On Demand.

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NEWS ANALYSIS: World Congress of Science & Factual Producers Has audience appetite for environmental content waned amid the pandemic?

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Deeyah Khan The filmmaker and activist discusses her docs and declining trust in journalism.

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AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Kids’ industry How did the sector cope with 2020 and what does it have to show?

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SCHEDULE WATCH: Europa+ The SVoD service’s unique Eurocentric proposition in Latin America.

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Dan Cohen How ViacomCBS Global Distribution is adapting to the streaming era.

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THREE-YEAR PLAN: Media IM Sunny Bunnies distributor hunts new IP.

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DEVELOPMENT SLATE: ON Kids & Family Mediawan brings in Julien Borde.

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THREE-YEAR PLAN: Trio Orange Canuck producer toasts Netflix success.

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PRESENT IMPERFECT FUTURE TENSE Ex-Bristow Global Media CEO Julie Bristow on her Content Catalyst Fund.

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COUNTRYFILE: Latin America

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Lat ambitions Streaming giants are zeroing in on Latin America while the region’s local players continue to step up their international ambitions in search of worldwide hits. By Nico Franks

I

Jaime Dávila of Campanario Entertainment

f there’s one type of content that is synonymous with Latin America, it’s the telenovela. But to assume this genre of TV has stood still over the years would be a mistake, as the groundbreaking and Rose d’Or-winning Argentinian telenovela Pequeña Victoria (Victoria Small) – which stars multiple trans actresses – highlights.

The telenovela form continues to evolve and remains a bastion of Latin American cultural exports, drawing sales for Lat Am companies from broadcasters around the world while fending off stiff competition from a host of other countries and regions.

Moreover, the telenovela is now just one string in the bow of Latin American programme makers these days, particularly as the popularity of non-English-language content continues to grow internationally.

Players such as Globo in Brazil are enjoying the fruits of a shift in strategy to focus on more international, ambitious dramas that they have successfully shopped around the world.

For example, Globo-distributed series such as Aruanas, Sweet Diva, Orphans of a Nation, Hidden Truths and Jailers landed on channels and platforms in countries as distant as Germany, the US and Japan in 2020.

“Globo today has a robust portfolio of series with current themes, in line with society’s trends, which have narratives that talk to people from all over the world. And seeing that Aruanas is gaining more and more space in Europe signals that our strategy is being assertive,” says Raphael Corrêa Netto, director of international business at the Brazilian broadcast and production giant.

Buyer and audience openness to premium non-Englishlanguage content has been helped in no small part by streamers such as Netflix. Watching Narcos – which features both English and Spanish – on Netflix was, for many people, the gateway drug that led them to their foreign-language drama addiction. Since then, another Spanish-language show, crime drama La Casa de Papel (Money Heist), has become one of Netflix’s most-watched originals and its top non-English series to date.

Although it was produced in Spain, the success of the show has clearly given Netflix – and other streaming giants, as we will soon see – the confidence to invest in local programming across Latin America.

Currently, Netflix is used by 11% of the Lat

Am population and is expected to reach 13.4% by 2023, according to data firm Statista. Unsurprisingly, Brazil is the company’s largest Latin American market by number of subscribers, followed by Mexico and Argentina.

One of Netflix’s latest Spanish-language originals, Selena: The Series, arrived to much fanfare on the streamer globally in December last year, telling the story of Tejano singer Selana’s rise to fame and the sacrifices she and her family had to make along the way.

Touting a full Latinx cast, production team and writers’ room, the biographical drama marks the latest step in the evolution of Latin American content. Already renewed for a second season, Selena: The Series quickly rose to the number one spot in Netflix’s top 10 in the US and across other parts of Latin America in December. And though it received mixed reviews, creators across the region hope that the show could lead to more nuanced, creative and wide-ranging storytelling for Latinx viewers in Hollywood and beyond.

Jaime Dávila, president of the series’ producer, Campanario Entertainment, says the company is committed to changing the way Latinx voices are presented and included in mainstream entertainment.

Looking to act as a production bridge between the US and Latin America, the LA-based firm was co-founded by Dávila, former development executive at cable channel Bravo, and Jaime Dávila Sr, a former Televisa chief operating officer and Univision president and chairman.

Dávila believes Selena is important because it reflects a side to Latinx people that goes beyond stereotypes that tend to follow them around on TV. “In recent years, I have been perceived as a ‘narco.’ I watched Narcos and it was very good but I am not one of these people. There are also so many other Latinx stories. I wanted to create a company with a voice that could tell Hollywood and Mexican buyers that there are other stories we can tell,” says Dávila.

These include Bridges, a multi-generational, multicultural Latinx family comedy, which has received a script commitment from ABC and will be made by Campanario with Eva Longoria’s prodco UnbelieEVAble, and Mexican Dynasties, a docuseries for Bravo about elite families in Mexico City.

Meanwhile, Netflix’s hunger for Spanish-language content makes it the latest US media giant to look south of the border for stories to bring not only to Hispanic audiences but viewers around the world.

While Hollywood has been guilty of treating Latin America as a monolith in the past, there is evidence that this is beginning to change via the local arms of US

Channel 21 International | January 2021

studios. MGM International TV, for example, is focused on developing content with Latinx talent both in front of and behind the camera for English- and Spanish-speaking audiences around the world following the opening of a Miami office.

“When one is open to ideas that can come from anywhere, that’s when new talent is found,” says Diego Piasek, senior VP of development and production for MGM International Television, who points to the more than 400 million Spanish speakers around the world.

El Fin Del Amor: Querer y Coger, from Argentinian author Tamara Tenenbaum and starring Lali Esposito, marked MGM’s first Spanish-language project. It has since been followed up by Mariachis, a multi-generational drama about an estranged Mexican family, described as a vibrant love letter to Mexico’s rich culture, musical traditions and the ties that bind families together.

The show, MGM’s first in Mexico, has been developed with Mexican prodco Hippo Entertainment, and demonstrates a shift away from the crime dramas that have arguably acted as something of an albatross for Mexican producers in the past.

Meanwhile, MGM signed up Argentinian showrunner, writer and producer Erika Halvorsen, with whom it worked on El Fin Del Amor: Querer y Coger, a drama about the complexities of modern romance, to a first-look deal in early 2020.

Halvorsen, who is also behind ViacomCBS International Studios and Mediapro-owned Oficina Burman’s aforementioned hit Pequeña Victoria for Telefe in Argentina and Amazon Prime across Lat Am, is developing projects aimed at global audiences with MGM. The two parties have a slate of English- and Spanishlanguage projects in development spanning multiple genres, the intention being that Halvorsen will write or supervise other new Latinx voices on the shows.

These include an adaptation of Gonzalo Demaría’s

COUNTRYFILE: Latin America

novel Cacería, which sheds light on the persecution of homosexuals in 1940s Argentina.

Piasek describes Halvorsen, whose credits also include Amar Después de Amar, El Hilo Rojo, Desearás and What’s Up Mamis, as a “rock-star storyteller with a true, unique voice.”

Argentinian television has a strong tradition of women storytellers, Halvorsen told last year’s MipCancun, but added that the TV industry still needs more women in charge of shows. She believes the “masculine” Latin American broadcast TV industry in particular is guilty of outdated attitudes towards how women should be portrayed on screen, which she is keen to challenge.

“I realised my female characters didn’t have the right to make mistakes. In Latin America, there is a culture of purity – the white heroine who cannot be sexual, or if she does like having sex, then the public will not empathise u

Rose d’Or winner Pequeña Victoria (top) and RecordTV and Amazon Prime Video copro Game of Clones Brazil

Catch C21’s COUNTRYFILE – Your essential marketby-market guide to the worldwide content business.

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COUNTRYFILE: Latin America

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Globo shops Brazilian environmental thriller Aruanas

“

If there is one big change, it’s that streamers are doing more and more unscripted shows, not necessarily instead of scripted content but on top of it.

Laurens Drillich

Endemol Shine Latino

with her. We want to create characters that break with those gender stereotypes, which have ultimately been very toxic for our culture. This is not a trend, this is a debt that is owed,” said Halvorsen, who called for more training to be made available to people in the industry to learn about other perspectives on gender beyond the norm.

Halvorsen is seeking out players who are “prepared to gamble on boldness” and can help her jump over local, traditional barriers by taking her stories global.

This follows in the footsteps of players such as US premium cablenet HBO, which has been producing edgy originals in Latin America for almost two decades, resulting in over 900 hours of content as well as 56 coproductions. “Some networks on national television, which is very important in Latin America, confuse perspectives on gender with feminism and they see feminism as a niche. There is a lot of misinformation,” added Halvorsen.

The increased involvement of streaming services and US studios is not only leading to shifts in the kinds of stories that Latin American creatives tell, but also in the ways deals for new shows are put together.

Laurens Drillich, president of Banijay-owned Endemol Shine Latino, has watched as streamers such as Amazon Prime and Netflix have made waves in Lat Am, while Spanish-language services like Pantaya, a joint venture between Lionsgate and Hemisphere Media Group, have also popped up to commission local shows.

Endemol Shine Latino oversees the production and distribution giant’s Spanish- and Portuguese-language operations across the region, including the studio Endemol Shine Boomdog, which produces original content for both the US Hispanic and Mexican markets.

“I guess you can say that free-to-air broadcasters in Latin America and also in the US Hispanic market are more likely to commission proven shows from our catalogue, shows like MasterChef, Mira Quien Baila, Your Face Sounds Familiar and Masked Singer,” observes Miami-based Drillich. “Meanwhile, the streamers like original development, which may not have rights issues.

But there are, of course, exceptions to both rules. Also, broadcasters that we work closely with in the region are

mostly looking for broad family entertainment, while the streamers often don’t mind catering to more niche audiences.”

Moreover, the two types of buyer aren’t averse to working together, as Endemol Shine Latino has seen with the production of entertainment format Game of Clones, which was jointly commissioned by RecordTV and Amazon Prime Video in Brazil.

How is demand shifting in Latin America when it comes to unscripted formats and scripted content? And what are the main challenges as demand for premium Spanishlanguage content increases internationally?

“It is difficult to generalise, as Latin America is a huge content market. But there are a few trends and a few basic unwritten rules. Telenovelas still make up a large part of all programming on many of the major channels. Even if the channel does not produce the content themselves anymore, they may buy Turkish or Brazilian soaps,” says Drillich.

“From what I see, the shorter, 13-episode or less series usually go to the streamers, not the broadcasters, so that doesn’t interfere with the traditional balance of scripted and unscripted programming on the free-to-air channels.

“If there is one big change, it’s that streamers are doing more and more unscripted shows now, not necessarily instead of scripted content but on top of it. That leads me to the premium Spanish- and Portuguese-language series.

They are, no doubt, very important now to the more established OTTs like Netflix and Amazon, but all the newcomers to the field as well.”

Indeed, Discovery+ and HBO Max are due to arrive in Latin America later this year, with the latter putting over 50 projects in development and targeting production in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia. Disney+ arrived towards the end of 2020, with ambitions to stream more than 70 Lat Am originals that are currently being developed in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia.

As Cecilia Mendonca, head of content development, kids, young adults and family at The Walt Disney Company Latin America, told Mip Cancun recently: “We are open to listening and working with talented people from all over the region.”

Drillich adds: “While this will initially mean that talent might be spread thin and it will be hard for the industry to keep up, it is no doubt extremely good news for the local production industry. Fortunately, Latin America has great creatives and wonderful stories to tell.” .

This is certainly true. But what other common challenges face producers and distributors in Latin America in 2021 and beyond? “I would say, first of all, the economy, which was already not very strong before Covid-19 hit. The other thing is that all of Latin America outside of Brazil is Spanish-language territory and that makes the rights and sales issues ever more complicated,” Drillich says.

Nevertheless, with storytellers from diverse backgrounds top of the agenda for the global TV industry, it follows that a culture as diverse as Latin America’s would be a top priority for a business where language is no longer the barrier it once was.

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SCHEDULE WATCH: HBO Max

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Max effort

The Flight Attendant

Set to launch in Latin America later this year, HBO Max is seeking new voices and diverse talent as it broadens out the core HBO brand.

By Gün Akyuz

F

resh from keynoting at C21’s Content London On Demand towards the end of 2020, Casey Bloys is well versed in the joinedup programming strategy unfolding across HBO and its streamer HBO Max, as the latter prepares to launch outside of the US, initially in Latin America and the Caribbean.

While HBO’s overall programming strategy isn’t changing, HBO Max is enabling the brand to open up to a broader range of voices and genres, with HBO living as “a core brand within the HBO Max service,” Bloys says.

“The idea with HBO Max is to broaden out the offering to make it as attractive to as many consumers as possible,” he says, highlighting the push into areas that aren’t typically associated with HBO, such as reality programming, adult animation and acquisitions.

Priorities for the streamer include finding diverse voices in storytelling,

female-driven and young-adult (YA) fare and tapping WarnerMedia’s DC franchises.

“One of the things we want to do at Max is really lean into our advantages as a company at WarnerMedia. That includes not only the HBO brand but DC, which is a really important brand for us,” he says.

Other notable WarnerMedia brands include Looney Tunes and Warner Brothers movies, plus YA properties such as Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale, he says. “When you put all that together as a company, that expertise in that range of programming is a really, really compelling offering for consumers.”

Launched in the US last May, HBO Max had attracted 8.6 million active US subscribers by the end of the third quarter of 2020, up from four million in July. Combined, HBO and HBO Max reached 38 million subscribers,

exceeding the group’s year-end target of 35 million.

Bloys, who oversees programming for both HBO and HBO Max, acknowledges the unprecedented challenges brought by Covid-19 for everyone during 2020, including “those of us who rely on crowds of people to do our jobs, in terms of producing shows.”

The pandemic aside, programming ventures face continuous challenges anyway, says Bloys. “There are so many things that can go wrong in getting a show from conception or pitch to final product, and making sure that we’re doing everything we can to give artists and producers everything, all the support they need, to do the best show they can. But the biggest challenge is making sure that the collection of shows that you offer breaks through and is meaningful to consumers,” he adds.

“

The biggest challenge is making sure that the collection of shows you offer breaks through and is meaningful to consumers.

Casey Bloys HBO

SCHEDULE WATCH: HBO Max

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Left: HBO’s Euphoria tackled teenage addiction. Below: Issa Rae’s comedydrama Insecure. Bottom: HBO Europe’s Spanish mystery 30 Coins

Despite the competition, with several mega-streamers now vying for viewers in the US alone, Bloys is bullish about there being room for multiple players. “Obviously, we intend to be one of them. But our real advantage is that HBO is this very important brand, and a core brand for HBO Max,” he says.

Bloys points to The Flight Attendant, which launched on HBO Max in November last year, as a series that reflects the potential of the streaming service. The thriller, which stars Kaley

Cuoco (The Big Bang Theory), who also exec produces together with Greg Berlanti and others, was adapted from the book of the same name by Chris Bohjalian.

“It’s very stylish, it’s kind of noir and pulpy. It’s a tough thing to get that tone right and the producers here have done a really, really good job,” says Bloys.

Also in the works is Gossip Girl, shot in New York, which Bloys cites as an example of “leaning into that youngadult storytelling expertise” and of “what we can do at Max that broadens out the offering.”

DC content is an area of programming that would not have typically featured on HBO before Watchmen, based on a graphic novel, launched on the linear channel in 2019, says Bloys.

HBO Max’s slate already includes several series from DC franchises, among them eight-part superhero series Peacemaker, plus a spinoff from The Suicide Squad movie, starring John Cena and written and directed by John Gunn. Also in the works is Green Lantern, plus a series set in the Gotham City police department from the Batman universe.

Alongside scripted series, HBO Max is building up a large complement of reality programming, including competition, dating and lifestyle shows.

“One of the nice things about this job for me is that we’ve done documentaries and doc series at HBO for a long time. But we are now also working on reality shows in that space, which I like as a consumer. We have a lot of really fun and interesting reality programming planned,” says Bloys.

Towards the end of 2020 it was

announced that Conan O’Brien’s long-running late-night show on WarnerMedia network TBS would end this June and O’Brien is now set to host a weekly variety show on HBO Max instead.

While HBO Max is tapping the group’s own sources and its relationship with Warner Bros, Bloys says it is important for his programming teams to look beyond existing partnerships and discover new talent. “We are always open to ideas and producers we haven’t worked with before. That’s where many times you find your best ideas,” he says.

“You have to be careful as a programmer not to continue to go back again and again to the same people but open up your world and make sure that you’re hearing precious ideas whenever you can.”

Bloys cites 2019’s HBO series Euphoria as an example of a property that did not really have an HBO feel.

“The idea of your protagonist being a drug addict in high school doesn’t necessarily feel historically what an HBO show is,” he says.

“As a programmer, it’s important that you’re always testing that brand flexibility. Game of Thrones was obviously a good example of that on paper, of maybe it didn’t feel like what an HBO show was. But that has to always evolve.

“That’s the case for any programming platform. You don’t want to keep doing the same thing.

You want to make sure that you are pushing yourself and pushing the company, and that’s where, hopefully, you discover new voices, interesting shows people come to expect from you.”

Much of HBO’s success and u

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SCHEDULE WATCH: HBO Max

From top: BBC copro I May Destroy You, 1950s road trip series Lovecraft Country and graphic novel adaptation Watchmen

Channel 21 International | January 2021

reputation is based on the premium cablenet’s culture as a place to foster talent and where artists feel taken care of, and that culture is being extended to HBO Max, says Bloys.

“It’s not just in how we develop shows but in how we produce them, how we cast them, how we make deals for them. That experience for producers or artists, of how it feels to work at HBO, I would like that to translate to HBO Max – whether you’re working on a reality show or a big-budget tentpole drama, that there is a feeling this is a place where artists are protected, taken seriously and

given the resources to tell the kinds of stories that they want to tell,” he says.

Bloys adds he and his programming teams have a pretty good idea of what’s lined up for the slates of both HBO and Max over the next couple of years. Within that, the aim is to ensure a diverse slate for both and to “make sure that we’re not too bunched up on crime shows or family shows.”

The exec emphasises the need for diversity in every sense, and to ensure “it is literally diverse but also diverse in terms of the genres, the storytelling, the tone, everything,” he says.

“In order to be a compelling slate, you have to make sure that you’re seeing things you haven’t seen before, or you’re doing things in a slightly different way or looking at something in a way that no one has seen before,” says Bloys.

“But I do think it’s important you’re always aware of how all the pieces fit together.”

Addressing racial diversity and the Black Lives Matter movement specifically, Bloys says there was more that could be done industrywide. “But just in 2020 we had Insecure, I May Destroy You, which we did with the BBC, and Lovecraft Country.

We’ve got Black Lady Sketch Show. We’ve got Between the World & Me, which is a special that we’re airing in a couple of weeks.”

These shows all come from “a very deliberate push,” he explains. “It was a conscious effort to broaden out our programming in all ways. We’re doing it because if you’re looking to do premium content, and you’re looking to reinvent or tell stories that people haven’t heard, [then diversity] is a business imperative.”

Issa Rae, with whom HBO previously worked on shows such as Insecure, is now developing a new reality show for HBO Max, Bloys reveals. “That happens all the time.

It’s one of the great advantages of being in business with really talented people, that they usually don’t just want to do one thing,” he says.

“We discover a lot of our directors or writers that way. That’s another reason why diversity is important, because you discover a lot of great talent. One of the great advantages of working with really talented people, is they tend to work with other really talented people, and our job is to be aware of that and be open to that.”

Although HBO Max’s international business has yet to take off, the HBO brand is well-established in Latin America, Europe and Asia, and a strategy is underway to tap existing partnerships and networks as well as forge new ones. “We’ve had a lot of success with our friends at the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 and we’ll continue to pursue those partnerships where they make sense creatively for us,” says Bloys.

“One of the things that’s been interesting in the whole idea behind this merger was breaking down the silos between HBO and Warner Bros and TBS/TNT, and that also includes our international efforts. We have had a really robust programming effort between HBO and TBS/TNT all over the globe,” Bloys says, noting that up to 40 series have been produced internationally through those brands so far.

The exec in charge of co-ordinating those international programming operations is Jeniffer Kim, senior VP, international originals for HBO Max. “There’s just a lot more communication as a company, so that we can take advantage of everything we’re doing, and a lot of great [HBO] shows around the globe. I believe that the best and most important programming that people do in their territories is local,” says Bloys, adding there is also the opportunity to maximise the reach of such shows with cross-border appeal.

“Part of breaking down those barriers is making sure we are taking advantage of all the really excellent programming we’ve done across the globe.”

In a first for the HBO network, it is set to air a production from HBO Europe, Spanish mystery series 30 Coins, produced in collaboration with HBO Latin America, says Bloys. He also flags up a US outing for upcoming Swedish series Beartown from HBO Nordic, with more to come. Both shows will also be added to HBO Max, highlighting the unique potential for a streaming service to take series beyond borders.

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Content London On Demand

Channel 21 International | January 2021

(Virtual) views Top international TV execs discussed the industry’s burning issues and their programming needs at C21’s online Content London On Demand event last month.

Ade Rawcliffe, group director of diversity and inclusion, UK broadcaster ITV “2020 was an extraordinary year; I don’t think anybody could have predicted what it had in store from us.

From the pandemic that highlighted the global inequalities in communities in a way we could never have imagined, then the horrific murder of George Floyd, I wonder if this is at last the impetus to change our industry for the better forever.”

Sarah Doole, CEO, Red Production Company “There’s a total disconnect between what the buyers want and what the audiences want.

Buyers want to put on screen stories about themselves, meanwhile there’s a massive audience out there that’s seeing nothing of themselves on screen.”

Charlotte Surtees, freelance comedy and comedy-drama producer “Covid throws into sharp focus the mental health of the teams we work with. We work in a high-pressure environment which can be utterly unforgiving for individuals and their families who they leave behind when they come to our sets every single day. And for crews in particular, there is no respite in the edit; they go from one to the other to the other. When Covid goes, the lesson we should all learn is to continue this movement happening in our industry of inclusivity, of stamping out bullying and bad behaviour.

I hope that will be Covid’s legacy, because we’ve all been forced to look at ourselves and at how we look after our teams, our cast and crew.”

Lisa Perrin, MD of international production, ITV Studios “I do think from this dark period there will be a real creative flower that will bloom from it in ways that we can’t possibly imagine. I know writers and development teams have been locked away, unable to meet often but still talking all the time – certainly that’s what I’ve seen at ITV. If anything, pitching has increased, not decreased; the broadcasters are hungrier than ever and looking at scripts they may have passed over, going back to have a second look, which is interesting. So there will be positives.”

Elsie Choi, executive director, Rideback TV Incubator writers’ programme “[We need to] make sure inclusive writers are being hired at the upper levels, because then they have more creative agency and decision-making power. With quotas, even though they are not the most popular, general parameters, like hiring 50% women and BIPOC [black, indigenous and people of colour], are very simple to understand and can work as internal hiring processes.

Also, there are a lot of issues around bias that can be reduced simply by training and supporting managers appropriately. When diverse creators are sending in their scripts or pitching a project, the notes that they get back can sometimes be whitewashed, to be blunt. That’s something buyers need to work on. They need more inclusion in their executive ranks.”

Eric Collins, CEO, venture capital fund Impact X Capital Partners “When we get to commissioners, the risks for them of losing their jobs are so overwhelming it doesn’t allow them to creatively expand beyond what has been done in the past. As an external person who invests, I’m constantly hearing about people not being able to take risks. That’s what keeps us within that same echo chamber, with limited choices and the same things put in front of audiences.”

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Content London On Demand

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Polly Hill, head of drama, UK broadcaster ITV “ITV is very particular in its remit, which is it wants to make big, mainstream, populist content that can bring in as much of the country to watch as possible. Covid-19 has just made us realise that what we’re looking for is big event pieces, big event drama and entertainment shows. Something you can strip across a week or do something with it that makes people think, ‘I’ve got to watch this live.’ We’re trying to get a cross-generational audience to watch live, as opposed to feeding different content to slightly different audiences.”

Caroline Hollick, head of drama, UK broadcaster Channel 4 “For us, a big priority is four-parters. We’ve had a lot of success with the Jack Thorne trilogy, most recently The Accident, and then Deadwater Fell at the top of 2020, and what’s great about a Channel 4 four-parter is you can have a huge range in tone. We’re absolutely looking for more of those high-impact four-parters which ask questions about the world and will help people to make sense of the difficult cases that a lot of us find ourselves in.”

Dan McDermott, president of original programming, AMC Networks, and co-president, AMC Studios “There’s a whole subset of the business right now that is about identifying content that plays across national boundaries and on a global field, and it’s being driven by the Netflixes and the Amazons. But for the terrestrial networks there’s amazing opportunity as well. It’s the future of television, to be honest.

It’s all about storytelling, and good storytelling isn’t about a US story or a French story or an Indian story – it’s a human story. When you find a story that really speaks to our collective humanity, there are no international boundaries.”

Camilla Deakin, producer and joint MD, UK animation studio Lupus Films “I don’t know if we’ll go back to having large studios full of people working Monday to Friday in the same way. People quite like the flexibility of working from home.

The big question is do you keep your large studio space and carry on paying all that rent. Or do you let it go and save yourself a load of money, but then you’re slightly less flexible in crewing up for big projects. We’ve not been able to answer that yet. We’re holding on to our studio for the moment and seeing how things go. But I know some people have let theirs go.”

Piers Wenger, director, BBC Drama “We want to push outside the traditional genres and look into spaces like horror, supernatural or bigger international crime stories that can be beautifully made with all of the same kind of love, care, attention to detail and authorship but feel different. Some dramas we want to be big and broad and some we want to really focus down on specific demos and superserve their needs.”

Jason Maza, coCEO, UK prodco Unstoppable Film & TV “It’s easy now as a commissioner to support someone like Michaela Coel because she’s had loads of success. But it’s about first commissioning Michaela Coel before she’s Michaela Coel. We would love to have it so buyers have to spend a certain amount of money on diverse talent and then there’s no pressure. Unfortunately, some of the people in power view diverse talent as a risk, so it’s about navigating that.”

Jane Millichip, chief content officer, Sky Studios “Our medium- to long-term plans have not changed. We are calibrating our current production slate on a daily basis and are having to deal with increased restrictions at the moment, but we haven’t stood down any new productions as a result of the new UK restrictions. The plan to deliver US$1bn of production by 2024 stands and in 2021 we’ll be delivering 50 Sky originals across drama, scripted comedy and documentary. We’re sticking by that.”

Elly Vervloet, international drama executive, VRT, and lead on the European Broadcasting Union’s Drama Initiative “Some public broadcasters take too long to make decisions. We want to encourage pubcasters to take a very quick look at a project and say if they want to be a part of it. They have to be fast and we have to speed things up, otherwise it’s very difficult to compete with the global streamers.”

Brad Danks, CEO, LBGTQ+ channel and streaming service OutTV “All the premium shows are now going straight to the streaming platforms. We’ve seen that on Disney+ with The Mandalorian and Hamilton.

This is going to take down most of the traditional broadcasting systems that have been set up, because the better product is now going to be on the streaming services, which is going to accelerate cord-cutting. Those who have original content and compelling opportunities will continue to survive in the new environment. But if your business is reliant on acquisitions, particularly from the big studios, you’re more vulnerable.”

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NEWS ANALYSIS: London Screenings

Channel 21 International | January 2021

All Creatures Great & Small

Online shopping With physical markets and events still a way off, a group of major distributors have linked up to showcase content to buyers online. But how much of it will be new?

By Nico Franks

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re-Covid, in the international TV calendar, February had become all about UK programming.

A plethora of London screenings had grown around the annual BBC Studios (BBCS) Showcase in Liverpool, capitalising on the many buyers the latter event brought into the country.

Last year, US studios’ UK arms and local distributors hosted around 20 different screenings in cinemas, venues and private clubs across London, spanning scripted, factual and formats.

Alas, this year there will be no international buyers navigating the Tube to zip from screening to screening in the English capital in February, with everything shifting online and glasses of fizz and ‘sliders’ being swapped for whatever’s in your fridge.

This year the screenings will have far more of a coordinated feel after All3Media International, Banijay Rights, Entertainment One, Fremantle and ITV Studios joined forces to establish The London Screenings as an annual event in its own right.

These distribution giants had been working together to organise their own spring screening events in the UK capital for several years, coming just after the aforementioned BBCS Showcase.

The inaugural event will launch on March 1, again following the virtual BBCS Showcase, which is scheduled to take place from February 22 to 24. The first edition will also be held virtually, with a view to a return to live physical events from 2022.

“Over previous years, the week in London post BBCS Showcase has become a destination for key buyers around the world. This has been down to the calibre of the events and presentations arranged by the key London-based distributors,” the five distributors said in a statement.

“Having listened to our buyers, the logical evolution is for those companies to bring buyers a fully curated series of quality showcases across two weeks, each planned to avoid screening conflicts and all under the official banner of The London Screenings.”

Meanwhile, many of the other UK indies that would have held physical screenings in London at the same time as their larger rivals will also be presenting their latest slates to buyers.

Passion Distribution, for example,

will look to promote its new slate of programming and formats via dedicated bespoke online events, while the distribution arm of Cineflix Media is set to launch a new web platform, Cineflix Content Fest, to showcase its latest factual and scripted shows. Cineflix has commissioned an artist and an indie music festival’s web development team to create an interactive online experience for global buyers, who remain in the market for new content even if they’re confined to their own homes.

The London Screenings, and similar events around them, come after UK television exports rose to £1.48bn (US$1.98bn) in the 2019/20 financial year, according to the annual report by UK production association Pact, released in November. Drama, including shows such as Chernobyl, His Dark Materials, The War of the Worlds, The Feed and Doctor Who, was the key export driver for UK companies and accounted for 48% of all revenue.

Just how much the pandemic will affect the figures for 2020/21 remains to be seen, though bottom lines will have been helped by library sales going through the roof as a result of the production hiatus we saw in spring last year.

According to Pact CEO John McVay, many UK distributors were close to selling up their entire catalogues in 2020.

But how much original programming will be available to buyers? Clearly, UK content remains in vogue around the world, despite the dent Brexit has made in the country’s reputation overseas. These days, many viewers are seeking soothing TV that evokes simpler times, something of a specialty of British producers.

Take Channel 5 drama All Creatures Great & Small, the tale of a 1930s veterinarian in the English countryside, described as “modest and empathetic balm for the chaos of our current world” in a recent four-star review in Rolling Stone.

The UK production sector, like many others around the world, showed immense resolve to get the cameras rolling again in the second UK dramas half of 2020. As a result, buyers like His Dark should have plenty to keep them Materials have glued to their desks during this year’s sold around the world London Screenings.

Supporting growth and recovery UK-wide

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SCHEDULE WATCH: ViacomCBS EMEAA

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Driving south

Atrapa a un Ladron

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Jaime Ondarza

iacomCBS’s ongoing retooling of its international businesses across networks, platforms and content creation arm ViacomCBS International Studios (VIS) continues apace, as it readies more territories for AVoD service Pluto TV and the roll-out of international SVoD proposition Paramount+.

One of the latest regional rejigs within ViacomCBS Networks International (VCNI)’s EMEAA operations was the formation of a ‘South Hub’ in the summer of 2020, with former WarnerMedia exec Jaime Ondarza crossing over in June last year to head operations as executive VP and general manager for the new business.

A subset of VCNI’s larger EMEAA footprint, which spans Europe (excluding the UK and Ireland), the Middle East, Africa and Asia, the new South Hub takes in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, from France, Spain and Portugal, Italy and Greece to Turkey and MENA. “This is a newly created regional organisation,” explains Ondarza. “It was designed exactly to maximise the opportunities of the business changes around the world, and we decided to realign the whole organisation to make sure we continue being as successful as we have been in the past years, and probably even more so.”

Within VCNI’s EMEAA portfolio are well-known network brands like MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr, Comedy Central, Paramount Network and BET in local markets; AVoD service Pluto TV, SVoD Paramount+ and kids’ VoD Noggin; and producer VIS, which unveiled a children’s arm, VIS Kids, led by Nina Hahn, late last year.

ViacomCBS’s ‘South Hub’ in Europe has big ambitions for the region, while Spanish-language opportunities with Latin American colleagues are also being eyed.

By Gün Akyuz VCNI’s EMEAA networks and brands reach 340 millionplus homes in 140 countries. Within that, the new South Hub oversees 27 countries, covering 64 channels, 23 websites and 90 social media accounts.

Working with Ondarza’s South Hub networks and brands is VIS for EMEAA, headed by Laura Abril. It started with a roll-out in Spain in 2019, where a scripted push and a development slate of 20 shows has been established. The plan under the new South Hub structure is to replicate a similar scripted production push in Italy, followed by France.

Abril’s role has been expanded and as well as overseeing VIS’s EMEAA production activities, she has added the role of senior VP for VCNI’s network and digital brands in Southern Europe and the Middle East to her remit.

VIS’s studios operation is divided into local hubs within those regions, Abril explains. “We’re looking to develop and produce content not just for our owner-operated brands and platforms but also for third-parties using different production models. We seek partnerships in different ways in all these territories.”

Ondarza says ViacomCBS and VCNI’s strategy is based on four pillars: its existing networks and brands; the group’s

Channel 21 International | January 2021

digital transformation; content creation operation VIS, feeding its own networks and brands plus third-parties; and live events and offline consumer products.

Referring to its established networks and brands, Ondarza reports strong growth and competitive performances from VCNI’s South Hub networks in Spain, Italy and France.

The future of those ‘traditional’ networks and brands are also now aligned to the group’s second pillar, focused on ViacomCBCS’s transition and transformation to digital, Ondarza says. “The digital transformation is a fundamental element of the strategy for us,” he explains. “It’s a really great view of the future and we have ambitious plans.”

SVoD service Paramount+ and AVoD offering Pluto are the spearheads of that transformation globally and in October 2020 VCNI rejigged its international streaming operations following the departure of Pierluigi Gazzolo, president of streaming and studios at VCNI. Amid preparations for Paramount+’s global roll-out, fuelled by CBS All Access rebranding to Paramount+ in the US, the new SVoD service is already present in the Nordics and developments are underway in Australia and Latin America.

At the time of writing, no plans for Paramount+ had been unveiled for Ondarza’s South Hub, “but we are really looking closely also at this part of the world, because we have great content, especially after the merger of CBS and Viacom, great franchises and brands, a solid presence in the market, global power and local presence and expertise with strong partnerships,” Ondarza says.

Pluto TV is already making its mark. Available in European markets including the UK and Germany, it successfully premiered in Spain towards the end of last year. The service was launched in partnership with Telefónica-owned Movistar in Spain, VCNI’s existing pay TV partner.

Pluto TV offers 40 free channels, including exclusive networks with Spanish and international content, as well as pop-up and branded channels like MTV Originals. It plans to expand this offering monthly to reach 100 channels by the end of this year. Within his South Hub footprint, Pluto TV will launch next in France in the first quarter of this year and in Italy later on in 2021.

Pillar number three is VIS leading the group’s content creation ambitions. “We want to confirm our position as one of the biggest content players in the world, producing A-class content for our networks and our services, but also for third parties,” says Ondarza.

During 2020, VIS EMEAA developed “a great formula in Spain and we want to replicate it in other markets, including in the short-term – Italy first and then France,” he says.

ViacomCBS’s fourth pillar is being one of the biggest players for events like MTV’s European Music Awards and Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards. It also covers consumer products, currently led by preschool brands such as megahit Paw Patrol.

“In an age when people are increasingly having digital experiences, there’s also a huge desire to go back to real life,” especially given Covid, Ondarza explains. “Events didn’t stop, they just became more digital. But we will go back to the real world.”

By late 2021, Ondarza believes the South Hub group will be a leader in both the traditional and digital spaces. “Pluto TV will already be consolidated in Spain, consolidated in France and quite well established in Italy,” he says, adding that he also expects continuing strong performances by the group’s networks and new scripted VIS productions emerging from countries like Italy.

SCHEDULE WATCH: ViacomCBS EMEAA

Although VIS has a broad content remit to populate VCNI’s brands and territories, Abril says VIS EMEAA is largely present in three main areas of content development and production: kids, unscripted reality and comedy, and latterly scripted.

VIS’s scripted development in EMEEA is still young.

However, an early coproduction was Atrapa a un Ladron, a Spanish-language TV remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie To Catch a Thief, created by Spanish showrunner Javier Olivares and produced by VIS and VCNI for Paramount Networks around the world.

VIS’s Spanish hub now has a slate of 20 projects as the group taps an “amazing talent boom,” Abril says. The division isn’t just accessing writing and directing talent but also production talent, she notes, and the intention is to develop those relationships.

Investing in development has also taken a front seat during Covid, according to Abril. “One of the interesting things about our industry right now is that everyone is becoming very receptive to partnering in different ways,” she says, adding that while this trend has been evolving for some time Covid has accelerated it, “because the economy is pushing us towards new ways of sharing cost and sharing content and trade ideas.”

One Spanish series in the pipeline is dramedy When You Least Expected It (Un día de Estos), co-developed with Zeta Studios, maker of the series Élite for Netflix.

Written by showrunning duo Cristóbal Garrido and Adolfo Valor, the drama follows a group of strangers whose u

Top: Spanish comedy-drama When You Least Expected It. Above: Pluto TV is available in European markets including the UK, Germany and Spain, where it debuted late last year

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SCHEDULE WATCH: ViacomCBS EMEAA

African telenovela Isono launched on BET Africa

Nina Hahn heads VIS Kids. Right: VIS EMEAA chief Laura Abril

lives intersect after they join the same support group for bereaved spouses.

Also in development is The Gypsy Bride (La Novia Gitana), co-developed with Banijay-owned Diagonal Television and adapted from a book series, with director and showrunner Paco Cabezas on board.

Finally, a reboot of Stories to Stay Awake, a classic Spanish horror anthology series dating back to the 1960s from iconic Spanish director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, is also in the works.

Stories to Stay Awake and When You Least Expected It are likely to be the first two projects from the development slate to make it to screen. The latter will probably go to SVoD and FTA in Spain, and there’s already international interest in either adapting it or taking the ready-made show, says Abril.

VIS is now deploying the same scripted development strategy in Italy, followed by France. The aim is to create a slate of great Italian stories that can travel within Italy and abroad. “The more local they are, sometimes they become more universally attractive,” Abril says.

“One of the most interesting parts is that the whole world is now becoming so global that we tend to think about ‘glocal,’ as in importing mostly US shows into our international countries and then doing a little bit of local,” she observes. “I now feel there’s an opportunity to even do it the other way around.

“Thanks to streaming platforms, everyone around the world is becoming more open and receptive to non-English-language content, and I feel that opens a really broad opportunity for content creators.”

Already in the works for Italy is a biographical drama about Italian Baroque painter and feminist forerunner Artemisia Gentileschi, which has been greenlit for full development. The project is being exec produced by independent film and TV producer Frida Torresblanco and former ViacomCBS exec Jill Offman, MD of prodco 66 Media and former MD of ViacomCBS International Studios UK.

Channel 21 International | January 2021

“It has originated in Italy because of this amazing character, but has a global objective because it’s going to be done in English and we know that English, in the end, opens many doors internationally,” says Abril.

The series is also timely in terms of its subject matter and ViacomCBS’s own diversity goals. “We have a new policy on diversity and inclusion for productions, which I very much like and support,” says Abril. “It means we won’t greenlight any new show that doesn’t have the right diversity standards that we expect our production to have.

“Of course, diversity is quite a broad concept and really varies from country to country and culture [to culture], but it’s one of our key goals as a company, and certainly in the EMEEA region.”

Elsewhere, VCNI has already launched its first African telenovela, Isono, on BET Africa. The 260x23’ production had been due to launch last summer but ended up being postponed until late September 2020.

For VCNI’s South Hub, the idea is to “deepen” the production pool, Abril says, pointing to potential local versions for VCNI’s other kids’ brands, Italian FTA channel Super!, acquired in 2019, as well as Spanish-language opportunities with Latin American colleagues.

Elsewhere, VIS is already a major producer of unscripted shows in reality, factual entertainment and comedy for brands like MTV and Comedy Central, with third-party partnerships high up the agenda. With VIS producing almost all of VCNI’s shows in association with third parties, it is also a first port of call for external pitches.

“For now we’re taking it on a case-bycase basis, but one triggers the other – one single project may lead to a more in-depth partnership. And one of the positive things about our company is that we are generally very receptive to opportunities,” says Abril.

“And the proof is that we have a very 360º-driven model in our business, on streaming platforms, on pay, on AVoD, with the networks, but also content for third-party partnerships.”

Factual Everything about content

Doc maker and activist Deeyah Khan

January 2021

Top factual buyers reveal 2021 priorities

Investigating true crime’s new direction

PLUS: To what extent is the Covid-19 pandemic driving renewed interest in environmental programming?

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NEXT BIG THING: True crime

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Tiger King

Reorganised crime True crime is pivoting in yet another direction in 2021 as cablenets, premium pay channels and streamers all fight to stay ahead in factual’s most competitive genre.

By Clive Whittingham

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rue crime has, for some time, been factual television’s buzziest sub-genre. Be it serialised on Netflix, limited event series on premium cable or self-contained one-hours on cablenets such as Discovery’s Investigation Discovery (ID) and A+E Networks’ Crime+Investigation, the audience comes in large numbers and stays for a long time.

That audience appetite has driven competition. Winona Meringolo, senior VP of development at ID in the US, says: “There is a perfect storm in true crime. It’s thought of as a niche genre, but I need two hands to count the competitors we have dedicated to it. Other niche genres, such as food and property, don’t have that volume of dedicated competitors.

“It’s like a layer cake where we have the streamers, then premium cable, and then the emerging platforms like YouTube, TikTok and podcasts, which are taking audiences all over the place. Over the last couple of years, audiences – particularly in the midst of Covid-19 – are seeing the streamers as their go-to. Linear is no longer the starting point, and once they go into that streaming universe it’s really hard to get them back, because they just sit there and search and search and search.”

Discovery is now biting back with its own direct-toconsumer (D2C) offering, Discovery+, which rolled out in the US and around Europe at the turn of the year. “We know crime audiences sit down and are mass consumers

Audiences are seeing the streamers as their go-to. Linear is no longer the starting point, and once they go into that streaming universe it’s really hard to get them back.

Winona Meringolo

Investigation Discovery

of this type of content, rabid consumers, so we know once the D2C gets launched they will sit down, tune in and eat it up,” Meringolo says.

One of the ways Netflix had an immediate impact on the genre has been by steering it away from the self-contained one-hour series as seen on US cable towards one story told in serialised form over multiple episodes. They weren’t the first – Canal+ had a prime example with the 2004 series The Staircase – but the streamer’s Making A Murderer brought the style roaring back into the zeitgeist with a 10-part run in 2015.

Tom Brisley is co-founder and creative director of UK indie Arrow Media, which produces See No Evil, American Monster and The Devil Speaks series for ID, and more recently, 90-minute feature doc special JonBenet Ramsey: What Really Happened for Discovery+.

“Netflix crime shows get into the nitty gritty details.

Something you might once have done in 20 seconds now counts for a whole episode and viewers respond to the micro, granular detail.

“They steer away from narration. They want people that were involved to tell you the story. The music is all specially composed, there’s always a cello score in there. We all learn from that in our programming and it influences what we create. It filters into how cablenets want their programmes as well,” he says.

But now things are moving in a different direction again.

Even at the time of Making A Murderer’s success, one leading factual commissioner at Channel 4 (C4) in the UK described parts of the show as “like watching rushes,” and there is a growing feeling the audience is tiring of stories dragged out over multiple episodes using just talking heads, graphics and archive.

Poppy Dixon, appointed as Sky’s director of factual and documentaries ahead of the launch of its dedicated Sky Documentaries channel in the UK last year, says two-

NEXT BIG THINGS: True crime

Channel 21 International | January 2021

to four-episode limited series are the “sweet spot” for audiences currently.

“They can feel over-stretched,” Dixon says. “We’re looking for multi-part docs, anywhere from two to six or seven episodes, but personally I think that two to four is the sweet spot. You don’t want seven episodes of something where there is little or no archive and you have nothing to look at except reconstructions and interviews.”

Danny Horan, head of factual at C4, goes further, saying not only would he not hand an eight- to 10-episode order to such a show but he doesn’t think Netflix would any more either. Last year, C4 aired four-part Murder In The Outback: The Falconio & Lees Story, which launched on Australia’s Seven Network.

“We would commission three or four partners but it’s unlikely we’d go up to 10 parts. It’s not Netflix’s strategy now either, its sweet spot is also three or four. We’ve got two co-commissions with them in that realm,” says Horan.

This view is backed by Koulla Anastasi, who crossed over from commissioning crime shows for Crime+Investigation in the UK to produce them at specialist indie Woodcut Media, the outfit behind the channel’s Murder At My Door With Kym Marsh and other series.

“One change we’re seeing is a move away from the big 10to 12-parters,” she says. “It comes down to the analytics.

Presumably, in the Netflix data they’re seeing that after episode six it takes a very big story to sustain a viewer for another four hours. There aren’t that many big contextual crime stories like OJ: Made in America around. People feel more comfortable in that four- to six-hour crime story.

You can still be multi-layered with twists and turns, but it’s binged much more easily.

“Do we need to tell it in 10 hours? Probably not. Let’s be deft and succinct and not fill. We did The Beverley Allitt Tapes across three hours for Sky, with her police interview tapes forming the backbone of the story. You need a device like that to take you through multiple episodes.”

Both Dixon and Horan have also been taken with the change in tone of recent Netflix documentaries such as Don’t F*ck With Cats and Tiger King – something they would like to play with themselves but feel more restricted than the streamers as they have to follow rules enforced

by UK media regulator Ofcom.

“There can be a default setting in linear TV where we say, ‘This is a very important story and we will tell it with a seriousness of intent,’” Dixon says. “What was interesting with those two shows is they are playful in tone.

“The craftsmanship of British television is still bloody extraordinary. I binged Tiger King and thought it was brilliant but there were also interesting questions about whether it could have been made by a traditional linear broadcaster here. One thing Netflix has done with factual is pushed what factual is. Factual and drama has blurred and they push what is real or not real more than the BBC or Channel 4 does.”

“Tone is definitely something we’re learning lessons from,” Horan agrees. “Culturally, in Britain we’ve always thought we can’t have fun with a story with a murder at the heart of it, but you can have a multilayered tonal series. u

Top: Sky’s The Beverley Allitt Tapes.

Above left: Crime+Investigation’s Murder at My Door With Kym Marsh.

Above: Netflix’s Making a Murderer.

Below: Woodcut Media’s Koulla Anastasi

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NEXT BIG THINGS: True crime

Top: Sky’s Poppy Dixon. Above: Danny Horan says Channel 4 prefers fourparters like Murder In The Outback: The Falconio & Lees Story (below) rather than longer series

“We’re regulated by Ofcom and Netflix is not. We can’t be as fast and loose with story over facts and that could be problematic for us. If we put a series on Channel 4 from Netflix it wouldn’t be able to air in the same way and we’d have problems in compliancy.”

In the US, Meringolo agrees boundaries are being pushed. “Five or six years ago the shows were carbon copies of each other and would rate through the roof.

Now the audience is looking for bold, distinctive, unique approaches,” she says.

“It could be a character or archive you never saw before and can’t believe exists. It could be a world. McMillions [HBO/Sky Atlantic] was nostalgic; you had the Monopoly game and McDonald’s, then you met the FBI character and you’re like, ‘What the hell is this?’ You can’t believe it.”

But, as Anastasi points out, the restrictions imposed on production by Covid-19 protocols and lockdowns could see true crime originals take on a more tried and tested form in 2021, with archive-based shows some of the few that can be commissioned relatively normally.

“Often shows have become a little bit traditional, because we’re having to go back to archives and be less reliant on talking heads,” she says. “Then it’s about bringing something new to the table. Why now? Why this particular story or case again now? An anniversary?

Something in the news? There must be a valid reason.”

One corner of the genre that suffered in 2020 was the so-called ‘ride-along.’ A+E Networks’ A&E channel stumbled across a ratings winner with its Live PD format, following cops live across the US. The network stripped it for six hours across Friday and Saturday primetime, while the show’s producer, Big Fish Entertainment, got a bigmoney buy-out from US studio MGM. However, the show was cancelled after the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police and revelations that Live PD had previously filmed the death of another person of colour, Javier Ambler, at the hands of the police and not aired it due to growing toxicity around US law enforcement. Paramount Network swiftly binned its own equivalent, Cops, often billed as the longest running liveaction show on world television.

Rob Sharenow, president of programming at A+E Networks, was cagey when pushed on the topic at the Edinburgh Television Festival last year, saying: “It was a challenging moment for the brand, country and network.

A&E listens to culture and has prided itself on being part

Channel 21 International | January 2021

of the cultural conversation. We have a lot of plans we’re excited about. We’re bringing back Live Rescue, which had a successful run. It’s important A&E was not a one-show channel either. It has a well-defined brand that leans into front-row experience, the real reality, real people in the real world doing real things.”

The general consensus elsewhere, however, is that ‘live cops’ and ride-alongs, a genre-defining concept chased by every factual producer and network in the western world just 12 months ago, is now probably one to steer clear of.

Arrow Media has produced Body Cam for ID, using footage from the cameras attached to police uniforms, but the company’s co-founder, Brisley, can’t see a network taking a chance on using such content live again in a hurry.

“The ride-along docs where there is a chance you can influence the outcome of police work won’t come back for a long time,” he says. “There’s too much at stake; people’s lives are at stake. It’s not an area to come up with ideas in.

The ride-along genre is gone. Body Cam for me is different.

It’s past-tense stories, we don’t go out with the police, you’re there in the moment with law enforcement but we’re not influencing in any way. We interview victims’ families and police officers and build up what it was like to be a part of. It’s emotional. It’s a balanced programme.”

Meringolo at Body Cam’s broadcaster ID describes herself as “wary” about the genre’s future. “They did some shooting for Cops again but for international rather than the US,” she says. “There is a polarising divide between the audience that wants ride-along and the audience that does not. We have to think about what kind of content we are putting out and the responsibility we have as creators.”

Along with highlighting the role TV plays in reinforcing certain perceptions of real-life institutions, another positive trend to grow out of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is the number of representative true crime stories on air.

Meringolo says ID pulled together its shows such as The Injustice Files, Hate In America, The Atlanta Child Murders and Sugar Town in the wake of last year’s uprisings and will continue to commission shows like that. “It doesn’t always rate, but we don’t care,” she says. “We do it because it’s a conversation that needs to be had.”

Madison Merritt, senior VP of development of alternative programming at producer Entertainment One (eOne), says: “There is definitely more receptiveness than there was at the start of the year, before the death of George Floyd, but more needs to be done.” eOne is currently pitching factual series Burden of Justice with Atlanta attorney Chris Stewart to networks.

“It has opened a door for me because I’ve been trying to do social justice programming. After George Floyd died, networks came out saying, ‘We stand behind BLM and want to buy more content,’ and it is starting to happen.

However, they’re only choosing one project or voice. They have their one and that’s enough. That’s a little unfair. We have four white, blond, blue-eyed Chris’s in public life in America – Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine and Chris Pratt. They’re all stars and working. I want to challenge distributors, streamers and broadcasters; we can do more than one. It’s not a specialist message.”

There could be something in it for networks as well, rather than simply backing a worthy cause with shows that don’t rate, or more cynically as a token box-ticking exercise. In a highly competitive, constantly evolving genre, looking to more diverse voices will likely present stories that haven’t been told before, providing that vital competitive edge.

FROM AWARD-WINNING PRODUCERS STORY FILMS

@all3media_int all3mediainternational.com

24

SCHEDULE WATCH: Factual buyers

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Looking beyond Covid Docuseries Enslaved, fronted by Samuel L Jackson and Afua Hirsch

Top international factual buyers discussed their commissioning priorities for 2021 at C21's Content London On Demand last month – and coronavirus-related programming was far from top of the list.

By Ruth Lawes

Jennifer Dettman, executive director of unscripted content and chair of the documentary channel, CBC For Dettman, factual limited series are high on the Canadian public broadcaster’s commissioning agenda this year.

“We’re really looking for more limited series. It’s really important that there’s a Canadian producer involved. But it can come to us in a myriad of different ways,” she said. “It can come from from a Canadian producer, potentially with an international partner attached, or not. Sometimes it can come from a distributor.”

But while a Canadian producer is a prerequisite for eventual commissions, the content does not need to focus squarely on the North American country. Instead, Dettman is on the hunt for ideas that cover global events.

“There could potentially be a Canadian angle to it. But at the very least, it’s something relevant to a conversation that’s happening in our country,” she said.

Dettman cited Fremantle’s Enslaved, about the transatlantic slave trade and fronted by Hollywood icon and human rights activist Samuel L Jackson and writer/ broadcaster Afua Hirsch, as an example.

“It had very little Canadian in it, because it was really about where these ships travelled from Africa, bringing enslaved people. They didn’t come into Canada. But so much of the understanding of who we are today came from that moment in history,” she said.

However, one global event the CBC is not looking to cover is the pandemic, with Dettman noting that the broadcaster has already aired several coronavirus-focused titles. Among them was The Covid Cruise as part CBC’s long-standing documentary strand The Nature of Things, which explored the outbreak of the virus aboard cruise ship the Diamond Princess.

“We have a number of documentaries that are related to Covid right now. But I’d say in the short term, right now on our factual side, we’re full up in terms of things that are on the nose about Covid.”

Regarding rights and deals, there is no “one size fits all” approach to working with CBC, according to Dettman.

“We’ve got a lot of soft dollars, tax credits, funds that you can access in partnership with us when there’s a Canadian partner,” she said. “That is really appealing for these big event series. Of course, we’re looking for series with big production values. They have to be an event. We’re trying to cobble together deals as best we can, so Canada can bring those extra dollars to the table.”

Victoria Noble, VP of original content for factual, Discovery Despite a challenging year, US factual giant Discovery has continued to see ratings rise, with international viewership increasing by 29% and its UK factual and entertainment channel Quest reaching record audience numbers, according to London-based Noble.

This success is down to shows bypassing the pandemic and instead offering what Noble calls “warm bath-tub viewing.”

“Some of the content we’ve been producing has been particularly appealing during this time in that there’s a lot of escapist TV, hobbies and heritage and those sorts of things. Our viewers have really enjoyed that during a very difficult year,” she said.

Noble said she was able to bolster scheduling during coronavirus-related restrictions and uncertainty by commissioning archive-based shows such as World’s Greatest Cars, from Banijay-owned production company Workerbee, based in the UK city of Manchester.

SCHEDULE WATCH: Factual buyers

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Ed Stafford: First Man Out

“We’ve created a series which is archive-based with interviews that can be filmed at home,” she said. “This means there is actually new footage. There have been opportunities for us to create content rather than air repeats.”

For the year ahead, Discovery is looking for content that will work across multiple platforms, Noble said. This follows the international launch of streaming service Discovery+ earlier this month, offering more than 50 exclusive non-fiction series featuring talent including Sir David Attenborough.

“We’re creating content that is working not only in the UK but is travelling across our networks. If we can create ideas and productions that can travel, it works very well for us,” Noble said. “At the heart of what I do and what I commission, the content has a male DNA, but it also has to deliver a broad audience.”

The key to fostering widespread appeal is shows fronted by “authentic characters,” according to Noble, who singled out the explorer and ex-soldier who fronts Beach House Pictures’ and Discovery International’s survival series Ed Stafford: First Man Out as an example.

“If you look at Ed, he’s a really credible expert. He’s not afraid to show his emotions or his vulnerability,” she said.

“And that’s why he resonates so much with a modern audience.”

Noble summed up her commissioning criteria as “noisy, entertaining factual shows that travel,” pointing to Richard Hammond’s BIG! (10x60’), from UK-based Chimp and fronted by the former Top Gear presenter, as an example.

Discovery’s aim is to deliver evergreen content, which has played into the media giant’s decision to not air a flurry of Covid-19-related shows in the near future. “We’re trying to create returning content that isn’t reflective of the very difficult situation many people find themselves in at the moment,” Noble added. “We want formats that deliver a coviewing opportunity but also deliver scale.”

Jennifer Collins, head of factual and culture, ABC Australia With production schedules thrown out of the window amid the pandemic, the Australian pubcaster launched a Fresh Start Fund to help independent producers begin development in a “super-charged” way.

“It was such good timing in those couple of months when production had completely halted and producers could actually have something there to put towards developing shows,” Collins said. “The fund was across all genres, such as drama, comedy and children’s, and it was very successful for us. We’re seeing the projects come in now. It’s been a great way of kickstarting the industry a little bit further.”

Meanwhile, discussing whether shows need to focus on Australian content as travel restrictions remain in place, Collins said international productions were still in the pipeline: “We’ve got a number of productions where there’s an international component. We’re trying to shoot the Australian part and hope that, by the time we shoot in the next six months or so, international travel will open up.

“Other projects where there is a lot of international elements, we’ve just put them on pause. But we haven’t taken them off our slate. We’re still funding them and we’re still going ahead with them.”

For the year ahead, the ABC is looking for shows that spark “national conversation” and go beyond on-screen content. “It’s not just about the three hours of television, but the content we can use leading up to it and the content that can sit around it and can carry on,” Collins said.

Ideally, shows will make use of the ABC and “all its u

“

We’re trying to create returning content that isn’t reflective of the very difficult situation many people find themselves in at the moment.

Victoria Noble Discovery

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SCHEDULE WATCH: Factual buyers

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Richard Hammond’s BIG!

tentacles” into different areas, leading to related content from radio programmes to educational supplements. Collins highlighted podcast Coronacast, which takes a scientific deep-dive into the pandemic, as an example of successful non-TV content for the ABC. “The good news is viewers want content. They want more and more, and this is our time to shine,” she said.

“With Coronacast, we’re just trying to make the best of the situation, and producers have really stepped up in that regard.”

Equally important to the ABC is diversity on and off screen, with Collins noting that representation across the board is a must for every commission in order for the pubcaster to reflect contemporary Australia. A Media Diversity Australia report released last August, which analysed 81 news programmes over two weeks in June 2019, found that only 6% of on-screen talent had either an Indigenous or nonEuropean background.

In terms of genre, natural history programming is a top priority, particularly in the form of coproductions. “We’re always on the lookout for these opportunities. We’ve got a really good track record of working with international producers. Australia has always done really well with natural history shows,” Collins said.

Full commissions, however, must have an Australian partner. In the past, the ABC has rejected calls for it to be subjected to the programming quotas that apply to commercial broadcasters in Australia.

“Often we do things which are more like an enhanced acquisition. But a full commission needs to be a true copro with an Australian partner or an Australian production company,” Collins said.

Eli Lehrer, executive VP and general manager, History In the past 18 months, US cablenet History has focused on shows that bring to life domestic events from the past, such as Railsplitter Pictures’ George Washington docudrama Washington & Grant: The Legacy of Ulysses S Grant, a six-parter produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s prodco Appian Way together with Radical Media and Lionsgate Television.

But that could change, according to Lehrer. “While they

continue to be fruitful territory for us, we also recognise we have an international business, so we’re constantly looking to expand the pipeline of international subjects,” he said.

“It’s certainly a priority for us as a brand, over the next 12 to 24 months, to have a little bit more of a footprint in international global history.”

Lehrer’s aim is to have a slate that offers a fresh perspective on something obvious, like a new way to tackle Egyptian, Roman or Russian history, or something more unexpected. US prodco Lucky 8’s The Food that Built America (3x120’) is an example of an unfamiliar topic that paid off for History, drawing 18.8 million total viewers in its first season. A second run is now in the pipeline.

“That show is emblematic of our commitment to doing much more core historical storytelling,” Lehrer said. “For a long time, we devoted a lot of our resources to traditional unscripted shows. Over the last year or so, we’ve seen our best results when we’ve gone back to our roots and done historical documentaries.

“We don’t generally do food shows but the producers were able to conceive of a lens into the food world that felt unique to us. It was six hours of the origin stories of iconic food brands like Hershey, McDonald’s and Coca Cola.”

Echoing his fellow factual commissioners, Lehrer said shows about the pandemic were of little interest to History.

This is because the channel’s audience can get content that “grapples with the news of the day” elsewhere, according to Lehrer.

“Our audience are big consumers of cable news, whether it’s CNN or MSNBC or Fox, and they don’t want that from us. They want us to look to the past, help contextualise it and help them understand how the past impacts the present. But they don’t want us talking about elections or the global pandemic. If they want that content, they’ll get it elsewhere.”

Looking ahead, Lehrer said there was “a lot of flexibility” around deals for future programmes as History commits to financing more premium documentary and big event series.

“When we can strike a deal that works for everyone, which limits our financial exposure, we are more interested in looking at those deals than in any other time in the past few years. Obviously, it’s on a case-by-case basis, but we’re certainly interested in bringing on partners, especially on those big event series.”

“

Our audience want us to look to the past, help contextualise it and help them understand how the past impacts the present.

They don’t want us talking about elections or the global pandemic.

If they want that content, they’ll get it elsewhere.

Eli Lehrer History

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NEWS ANALYSIS: World Congress of Science & Factual Producers

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Coronavirus, the climate and TV Is the Covid-19 pandemic driving an increased appetite for environmental programmes or is the audience, exhausted by bad news, switching off? By Karolina Kaminska

T

Sir David Attenborough in Extinction: The Facts

here’s a strong case to be made that prior to the pandemic, audience appetite for wildlife and environmental-themed programming was stronger than ever before.

Sir David Attenborough is among the Western world’s most popular figures, while streamers and broadcasters alike have been falling over one another to commission the most ambitious natural history series yet, many of which highlight the growing climate emergency and global heating crisis.

But are viewers, as they face crises of their own during the Covid-19 pandemic, turning away from the kind of serious natural history programming that educates and informs the public about the many dangers our planet faces?

Speaking during a virtual session on the subject at the World Congress of Science & Factual Producers last month, Mikael Österby, head of factual acquisitions at Swedish pubcaster SVT, suggested this could be the case. This came after the channel’s annual Climate Week TV event experienced a 40% drop in viewings last year versus in 2019.

“For two years in a row, we’ve done a Climate Week where we clear the schedule and show programmes on environmental biodiversity and climate change. In the first year, 2019, it was a super success. I thought it was going to be a walk in the park and an easy victory in 2020. But no, about 40% less people watched,” Österby said.

“Why didn’t it work? The main reason I find is the pandemic. People are tired of watching serious factual; it feels like people can only pick one factual theme in their minds right now. History and some science programming has worked, but a lot of the other factual programmes did less well. We felt like people were coming to TV, but more than ever to escape reality, not for a reality check.”

Anticipating a similar decline in audience appetite for serious documentaries, UK pubcaster the BBC last year decided to hold off airing its latest Attenborough-fronted doc, Extinction: The Facts.

Speaking during the same session as Österby, BBC head of science and natural history commissioning Jack Bootle said he feared viewers wouldn’t be in the right mindset for such a hard-hitting show in the middle of the pandemic.

“The film is about biodiversity loss, which is a global crisis every bit as catastrophic as climate change, but much less reported on. It was scheduled to go out in the middle of March but, of course, in the middle of March, the UK went into full lockdown. Everyone was in a state of panic and despair; people were totally fixated on Covid and it just didn’t feel like the right moment to broadcast that film, so we shelved it,” Bootle said.

Instead, the BBC made a conscious effort to focus on wildlife content that celebrated the environment and helped viewers escape from the harsh reality of life, according to Bootle.

“We make an annual series called Spring Watch, which documents the comings and goings of spring. I had been attempting to

Channel 21 International | January 2021

make it quietly more radical and smuggle in more and more stories about pesticides and climate change and that kind of thing, but we made a very deliberate decision to make it as joyful and escapist and gorgeous as possible, because we thought this is what people want now. They need a hug, not a slap in the face.”

The BBC did end up airing Extinction: The Facts six months later, however, after shooting more material and re-opening the edit to highlight the link between the doc’s subject of biodiversity collapse and the Covid-19 pandemic.

“As the pandemic progressed, it became clear there was actually a very clear link between biodiversity loss and the emergence of pandemic disease. As we encroach further and further into natural habitats, we’re more likely to come into contact with pathogens like coronavirus; and as we destroy apex predators, the smaller mammals that are more likely to carry these kinds of pandemic disease multiply in numbers. This link between biodiversity loss and Covid wasn’t in the film, and that felt like a huge hole in the story, so we shot more material. It’s a really tough watch.”

However, to Bootle’s surprise, Extinction: The Facts was a big success when it aired in September. “What I suspected would happen is people might begin watching it in reasonably high numbers and then they would just switch off because it is so depressing. But in fact, it ended up being the highestrating new factual B-Reel Films and SVT’s I Am Greta (Photo: Anders Hellberg)

NEWS ANALYSIS: World Congress of Science & Factual Producers

title of the year on the BBC. It was an absolutely outrageous success. Against all my expectations, we gained over half a million viewers over the course of the show. So yes, it was extremely distressing, but people really engaged with it and couldn’t tear themselves away.”

Rebecca Huntley, director of research at Australia’s Essential Media, pointed out that a core reason for Extinction: The Facts’ success would have been down to the fact that Attenborough is a trusted and well-loved public figure in the natural history space. “What is really clear and why something like the Attenborough film works is that he is an extraordinarily trusted messenger about anything to do with the natural environment,” Huntley said. “What’s so powerful about that film is that it’s not just factual – it’s a personal story about what he’s experienced over an extraordinary lifetime. People connect with that personal story and the trust he has built up.”

But given the increased audience demand for light-hearted content as Covid-19 continues to force countries around the world into lockdown, are broadcasters still looking for docs on subjects such as the climate emergency in 2021?

The BBC’s Bootle certainly is. “We are back in lockdown but people’s perspectives are opening up a little and there is more appetite for those types of stories out there. I’m going to continue to commission climate programming. Exactly how we handle it is going to shift a bit – I’m definitely keen on moving towards a more solution-focused way of thinking about it.

“As Rebecca was saying, in Attenborough we have a trusted messenger who can tell the viewers very hard truths. He’s not going to go on forever and we do need to find ways to move the conversation forward. But also, I’m really interested in trying to find ways of talking about climate change that don’t feel like climate change.

“At the moment, I’ve got quite a few what I call ‘environmental thrillers’ in development, which really feel like the narrative box sets with twists and turns you might expect to see on Netflix.

They are fundamentally about the climate and the environment, but you come to them for pleasure and for narrative thrills and spills while they tip out an amazing story about the climate.”

As for SVT, the broadcaster went ahead with its third Climate Week this month, despite last year’s disappointing performance, but this time didn’t clear its entire schedule for the event. Two of the main films featured were Extinction: The Facts and feature doc I Am Greta, about Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.

The pandemic, with all its negative economic and social impact, can be seen as a dress rehearsal for what awaits unless we urgently tackle the climate emergency, the organisers of the World Congress of Science & Factual Producers point out.

Moreover, with the World Health Organization warning in late 2020 that more pandemics could follow if we don’t drastically change our relationship with the environment, sugar-coating the situation we’re in just isn’t a luxury we can afford.

“

People are tired of watching serious factual; it feels like people can only pick one factual theme in their minds right now. People are coming to TV, but more than ever to escape reality, not for a reality check.

Mikael Österby SVT

Catch C21’s NEWS ANALYSIS - The stories behind this month’s news Keep reading online and smarten up your programming strategy at c21media.net/department/ news-analysis

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30

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Deeyah Khan

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Shining a light Filmmaker and human rights activist Deeyah Khan discusses her recent documentaries about the US, decaying trust in journalism and the idea of denying a platform to controversial views.

Deeyah Khan filming Muslim in Trump’s America

D

eeyah Khan has never been afraid to walk a controversial path into places she’s not welcome. Born in Oslo to Sunni Muslim parents from Afghanistan and Pakistan, her first passion was music and singing – considered a dishonourable profession for women in many Muslim communities and a cause of abuse and death threats directed towards her and her family.

After that she picked up a camera and started filming stories that fascinated her. Khan’s first documentary, Banaz: A Love Story, focused on the ‘honour killing’ of a Kurdish woman by her family in South London and won a Peabody and Emmy.

In 2017, she made White Right: Meeting The Enemy, embedding with white supremacists and neoNazis leading up to the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia in the US. And, more recently, she’s been back to the US to film Muslim in Trump’s America and America’s War on Abortion. All of these films have aired on UK commercial broadcaster ITV. As well as the challenges that come with filming in a Covid-19-ravaged country, Khan came up against

By Clive Whittingham

predictable issues around access during the filming of America’s War on Abortion, which aired in the UK in the run-up to last year’s US election.

“A lot of organisations, women’s groups and doctors were not interested in being on camera because it would attract attention and potential violence. It’s sad and terrifying to think that, in America in 2020, a democratic and free society,

“

recent projects, but that’s not an idea she subscribes to.

“The point is not to find out what they think, because we know that. It’s to find out what makes a human being susceptible to these ideologies and behaviours,” Khan believes.

“I don’t agree with completely banning or shutting those voices out. It might suit us and we can pat ourselves on the back for having

If I was going into a closed, conservative, Muslim community I would expect to hear about shame and taboo restricting women. But not in America, the land of the free, in 2020.

Deeyah Khan people are terrified to do their job and women are terrified to access help they need.

“If I was going into a closed, conservative, Muslim community I would expect to hear about shame and taboo restricting women. But not in America, the land of the free, in 2020.”

There have been strong calls to deny a platform to the sort of white supremacists and anti-abortion activists Khan has filmed for her

the ‘correct opinions,’ but it doesn’t make those opinions go away. They’re easier to dismantle if you bring them out into the light and scrutinise them.

If we shun and push them away, it feeds into the story that they’re somehow telling a forbidden truth that people can’t handle.”

Khan, who founded and serves as CEO of media and arts prodco Fuuse, has spent much of the last 15 years filming around the US and says it is becoming much more difficult to

travel the country with a camera.

“The whole perception of fake news means anybody carrying a camera in the US at the moment is viewed with suspicion. Everybody thinks you’re out to get them or exploit them in some way,” she says.

“It’s become more dangerous because people are more physically aggressive to journalists and each other. It’s become profoundly divided. Every time I go there now it gets worse and feels worse.”

As for journalism’s issue with ‘fake news,’ Khan says trust needs to be regained, among both the audience and the subjects on film. But it’s not going to be easy.

“We have an uphill struggle to try and undo the sheer number of unreliable sources of information out there now,” she says. “People don’t tend to interact with those who are different, so the only time they get to meet a Muslim is through the media. If they’re all toxic stories of beheadings, stabbings and bombs, no wonder you will be terrified of them and think they have to go and attack them. We have to look at how we contribute to some of the divisions that are deepening.”

32

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Kids’ industry

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Amy & the Afterlife

Go Green with the Grimwades

Weathering How did the children’s TV sector cope with the events of 2020 and what do studios and distributors have to show after a year of development and remote production?

By Andy Fry

I

t would be simplistic to suggest the financial downside to Covid-19, with children’s content business has ad-funded networks likely to trim their come through Covid-19 without any kids’ programming budgets this year. bumps or bruises. But compared with But public broadcasters still provide most sectors inside and outside TV, it valuable support as coproducers.

To illustrate the point, Komixx is weathering the storm pretty well.

Animation studios have had to Entertainment has just completed make adjustments to their workflow, delivery of 52-episode animation but this has meant only temporary series Dog Loves Books for the BBC’s suspensions rather than cancellations, CBeebies, ABC in Australia and says Cyber Group Studios CEO Pierre German children’s network KiKa. Even more significant is the Sissmann. “We had a brief pause on our preschool series Gigantosaurus continued voracious appetite for kids’ while we got animators set up to work content from both studio-backed and at home, but they soon caught up. independently run SVoD and pay TV People have been working so hard platforms. Some of this demand is during lockdown that productivity isn’t met by in-house production divisions, notably Disney, WarnerMedia, suffering.”

ViacomCBS, or by subsidiaries, such Kids’ live action is, in theory, more at as NBCUniversal (NBCU)-owned risk from the virus. But for the most DreamWorks, which struck a longpart, children’s drama productions term supply deal with fellow Comcasthave fewer moving parts than owned pay platform Sky adult dramas – which makes towards the end of 2020. them more manageable. Viacom But there are also abundant International Studios UK’s instances of streamer live-action series commissions, from Goldies Oldies, the Apple TV+ for example, deal for WildBrain’s bounced back from Pip & Peanuts franchise lockdown and rePosy through to Netflix’s entered production in the greenlight of Xilam second half of 2020. animated series Trico.

True, there is a

Xilam has also been the beneficiary of renewed demand from Chinese streamers – recently unveiling a copro deal with Alibaba-backed Youku on preschool series Lupin’s Tales (78x7’).

Further evidence of Chinese support for the global kids’ sector is Tencent Video’s new swathe of copro deals with Luxembourg-based Zeilt Productions as well as Sixteen South and Silvergate Media in the UK. The three partnerships mark the start of Tencent’s multi-year strategy to partner with European studios on copros that will see children’s shows air as originals on the Tencent Kids platform.

Ed Galton, MD and chief commercial officer at UK producer/ distributor Cake, says his company has continued to do brisk business during Covid-19 in both production and distribution. Activities range from a new Angry Birds series for Netflix to the third season of Total Dramarama, produced with Fresh TV for Teletoon Canada and Cartoon Network US, says Galton. Further underlining the growing importance of streamers, Cake is also handling global distribution on Lucas the Spider, a Fresh TV show that will be shared by WarnerMedia-owned brands Cartoon Network and HBO Max.

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Kids’ industry

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Gigantosaurus

Find Me in Paris

the storm Galton is not in denial about the challenges presented by Covid-19, pointing out that the current downturn may also result in households with kids taking fewer streaming subscriptions.

“But the industry needs content. Even if there is downward pressure on budgets, that will lend itself to risksharing coproductions and distribution opportunities,” the exec says. On the latter score, Cake has just sold series including Mush Mush & The Mushables, Pablo and Mighty Mike to broadcasters across Asia.

Cyber Group’s Sissmann echoes the story at Cake. “We can see a dropoff in ad revenue occurring in Europe, but the overall picture for kids remains strong. We are close to delivering a second season of Gigantosaurus to Disney and are also in production on a new show, 50/50 Heroes, for France Télévisions. At the same time, our catalogue sales have almost doubled on 2019, with recently produced series in high demand.”

The company’s increased emphasis on development proves that Cyber Group is feeling upbeat about the future, says Sissmann. “We have boosted development by 20% compared with 2019, so we have 12 series in development right now. Two

of those, Monster In My Pocket and Alex Player, received a very strong response at Cartoon Forum.”

Both of these series are aimed at older kids, underlining a broad trend towards action-comedy animation for the 6-11 demo.

Monica Levy, head of international sales at Federation Kids & Family, says this category has also been a priority for her firm. “We make sure we cover every segment, but there are buyers for this age group across all types of platforms,” she says.

“We recently licensed Squish to HBO Max and have made our first third-party acquisition in the demo, a show called Presto: School of Magic, which is being produced by TeamTO. We’re also developing a 6-9 animation series based on a classic property.”

At the same time, Covid-19 has not discouraged Federation from continuing its expansion into kids’ live action. “Find Me in Paris has been a huge success for us and proved that there is demand for high-quality drama that kids can co-view with their parents. Following that, we are working on two or three more high-end series where the emphasis is on great production quality, strong writing and compelling acting.”

Clearly, Covid-19 restrictions have not been ideal for producing highend live-action series with sumptuous locations. Fortunately for Federation, however, the third season of Find Me in Paris was complete and the new season is in the development phase.

“In the end, it worked out quite well,” says Levy, “because we were able to spend a lot of time with writers. It was a chance to create some really great scripts.”

While a large part of 2020 was about keeping kids’ projects on track and on time, one consistent challenge across the year was how to keep kids stimulated and educated while away from school. In the UK, the BBC has been running blocks of education programming, while Nickelodeon made 450 interactive and educational games freely available on its sites and apps during lockdown. u

“

Catch C21’s AHEAD OF THE CURVE – looking into new trends in the business and where the money is to be made from them Keep reading online and smarten up your programming strategy at c21media.net/department/aheadof-the-curve/

We can see a drop-off in ad revenue occurring in Europe, but the overall picture for kids remains strong.

Pierre Sissmann

Cyber Group Studios

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34

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Kids’ industry

From top: The World According to Grandpa, Mush Mush & The Mushables, Federation Kids & Family’s Monica Levy and Sesame Workshop’s Ed Wells

In the US, Sesame Workshop has been producing both liveaction and animation educational content under its Caring For Each Other banner, says senior VP and head of international media and education Ed Wells. “We turned to our experts to really get an understanding of what kids and families would need during this time,” he notes. “We then developed content and resources on everything from hygiene to body movement to change of routine.”

Pandemic-specific activities have not distracted Sesame Workshop from its other priorities, however. Commercially, says Wells, the organisation continues its drive into the streaming market. “We still have excellent relationships with broadcasters such as the BBC, NHK and Australia’s ABC, but it was important for us to embrace the new platforms that kids and families use. So we have forged a strong relationship with HBO Max on Sesame Street and a new animation series, Mecha Builders.

We also have original content on Apple TV+.”

Crucially, the issue of diversity has loomed large in the past year, says Wells. “Diversity has always been a mainstay of what we do, but the conversation shifted in 2020. So we’ve put a lot of effort into our anti-racism curriculum and created content like The Power of We.” In fact, diversity has risen to become a top priority for the industry.

ViacomCBS recently introduced a No Diversity, No Commission policy, while the BBC is producing new episodes

Channel 21 International | January 2021

of JoJo & Gran Gran, the UK’s first preschool animated series featuring a black British family. Galton points out that his company and Triggerfish are creating Africa-led project Mama K’s Super 4 for Netflix.

Meanwhile, Chi Sim Tang, CEO of Omens Studios, echoes Sesame Workshop’s Wells by saying education has been a key theme for his company during Covid-19. “We have edutainment preschool shows Leo the Wildlife Ranger and Counting With Paula in production. With children taking to home-based learning in the pandemic, we’ve seen increasing interest in our shows, from parents, buyers and commissioners. We feel commissioners are now more receptive when we pitch ideas with educational and social development values.”

At the other end of the spectrum, demand for escapist fare means slapstick shows are also seeing increased popularity, with examples including Trico and Squish. Silas Hickey, executive producer of Omens series Amy & the Afterlife and Dragon Lizzardo, adds: “We are working with showrunners and animators on physical ‘toony’ shows. These are the kind of shows inspired by vaudeville and incorporate slapstick comedy, and nutty, dimensional, wonderfully neurotic characters.”

The upbeat message from producers and distributors is reinforced from the buyer side. Louise Bucknole, VP of kids’ programming for ViacomCBS Networks’ kids brands Milkshake! and Nickelodeon UK, says of 2020: “It’s been a testing year, but we’re still offering a balanced mix of liveaction and animation on Nickelodeon and Channel 5 kids block Milkshake!.

Our animation was able to continue in production during lockdown and, despite some live-action series having to go on pause, our pipelines are well stocked. All of our productions are now back filming and we’ve forged ahead with live-action series including

Go Green with the Grimwades and The World According to Grandpa.”

In 2019, Channel 5 said it would double its content investment in Milkshake!, taking production from 160 to over 300 episodes from 2021 onwards. Nothing has changed on that score, says Bucknole, with CGI series Pip & Posy, a copro with Sky, Mya Go and Brave Bunnies among the titles coming through.

In terms of how Covid-19 has impacted editorial strategy, Bucknole says the company has sought to “remain reflective and relatable to our audience. We’ve commissioned series with topical themes in mind. Go Green with the Grimwades is a reflection of kids’ interest in the environment and ways they can be more green at home. We’ve also produced over 50 shortform ‘stay at home’ episodes to keep kids occupied in a fun, safe learning environment. We’ve had great success with that and will continue to build on it.”

On Nickelodeon and Nicktoons, hit franchises like Paw Patrol and SpongeBob SquarePants have been supported by specific Covidfriendly formats such as gameshow Nickelodeon Unfiltered and Group Chat, “both filmed in a Covid-style production,” notes Bucknole. She says Covid-19 has done nothing to diminish the popularity of Nick’s iconic characters, adding that this will be reinforced by the arrival of The Smurfs this year.

Away from Nick, other big brands that are set to reboot or extend include Hasbro/Entertainment One’s Power Rangers; Mattel’s Thomas & Friends, which is being reinvented in 2D by Nelvana; and Warner Bros’ Batman, which will spawn preschool series Batwheels for Cartoon Network and HBO Max. While this is not a new trend, it seems likely that the kids industry’s preference for the safety net of big brands is being further cemented by Covid-19.

© Ragdoll Productions Ltd. 2021

50 x 5’

cakeentertainment.com

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SCHEDULE WATCH: Europa+

Channel 21 International | January 2021

North America With Simon Reeve

A league of its own Fledgling SVoD service Europa+ has launched with a unique Eurocentric proposition in Latin America. CEO Luis Torres-Bohl outlines its strategy.

By Gün Akyuz

S

ince launching last September, SVoD service Europa+ has been mining a gap in the Latin American market for European content.

Owned and operated by Atlanta-based production and distribution company Castalia Communications, together with Mexican investment fund Innokap, the service has launched across Latin America and the Caribbean with a 1,500-hour library of European fare.

Europa+, also known as Europa Más, is pitched squarely at the region’s one million European ex-pats, plus those who have opted to settle across Latin America, as well as locals looking for alternative fare, says Luis Torres-Bohl, CEO of Europa+ and president of Castalia Communications.

Castalia Communications was the company behind the launch of Mexicanal, a channel for Mexicans living and working in the US and Canada.

Europa+’s mission is a very specific one, but nonetheless one that also taps a general appetite for foreign-language fare that services such as Netflix have proven beyond doubt. It was originally set for a late 2019 launch. A few operational delays, followed by the global pandemic, led to the service eventually premiering in midSeptember 2020.

The concept of a service like Europa+ is not new but its execution as a streamer is, says Torres-Bohl. He adds that the idea took root in the earliest days of his television career, following the publications of the UNESCO report Many Voices One World, undertaken by the McBride Commission to examine the media and its influence around the world.

Fast-forward a few decades and Europa+ is a direct result of that thinking. “We as a company are giving the opportunity for

European expressions of popular culture to be seen and to be heard throughout Latin America,” says Torres-Bohl.

“We’re looking at expats who really have a need to stay in touch with their home countries. There isn’t anything where people can get access to what their countrymen are watching in their home countries. That’s the premise, and there’s a million of them.”

In addition to the one million expats across Lat Am is a larger group of around 44 million expats who have since settled in the region. “You also have all those in Latin America who have an interest in general French, Italian, British, German television, or they just want to watch something good,” Torres-Bohl says.

Another influence was a channel proposal called The Best of Europe, dating back to Torres-Bohl’s days at Canal+-owned Ellipse Cable in the 1990s. “It was essentially Europa+ but as a linear channel,” he explains. However, plans to launch it stateside with cable provider TCI were cut short following the death of the cabler’s head of programming Peter Barton.

With streaming competition in North America for European content already provided by services such as BritBox and Walter Presents, opportunities have focused on the Lat Am The Wild region instead.

Adventures of For now, Europa+ is focusing Blinky Bill primarily on content from the UK, France, Germany and Italy, plus the Nordic countries.

Ninety-five percent of its content is subtitled into seven languages: Spanish, English, Italian, German, French, Norwegian, Swedish and/or Danish.

The plan over time is to add content from Portugal, Spain and Eastern Europe as well as expand the service into Brazil, which will require Portuguese subtitling.

A linchpin of Europa+’s operations is another

Channel 21 International | January 2021

offering something the public and your potential customers might be interested in at a price point that is competitive, and continue to always look after the best interests of the consumer, thinking of them first and foremost.”

Torres-Bohl says the 1,500 hours currently available on the service largely comprises popular shows selected by working with seasoned buyers in Europe and the US. Europa+ is tapping key distributors such as BBC Studios (BBCS), TF1, StudioCanal, Federation, ZDF Enterprises (ZDFE) and NordicWorld.

Though it is too early to reveal any data trends, scripted series are the primary Mediaset’s La drivers for Europa+. Among such shows Regina di Palermo picked up for Europa+ are family sci-fi series Doctor Who (season 11) and period drama Call the Midwife (S6-8) from BBCS; S21 of long-running police drama Der Alte (The Old Fox) from ZDFE; mafia crime series La Regina di Palermo (10x50’) from Mediaset; French crime drama Spiral (S7) and thriller Vernon Subutex, both from StudioCanal; and Swedish comedy Small Town Love (S12) from Nordic World.

The service also includes docs such as North America With Simon Reeve (5x60’) from BBCS and German doc De Grüne Zoo from Autentic Distribution, as well as more “unusual” factual entertainment lifestyle shows like Norwegian makeover series Eventyrlig Oppussing (Amazing Makeovers) from Nordic World. “We’re testing some concepts to see how they French thriller fare,” says Torres-Bohl.

Vernon Subutex Europa+ doesn’t offer movies or carry sport, although it carries motoring-themed industry veteran, Ruben Mendiola, who is chief operating fact ent shows like the UK’s Top Gear and Germany’s officer of the service. “I’ve known him for 30-plus years; Legends of Speed. Another category is kids, including he’s a great executive and is responsible for having gotten animated shows such as Euro copros Miffy and Heidi, French series Arthur et les Minimoys and Australian us to where we are today,” says Torres-Bohl.

The ad-free OTT service costs US$5.99 per month animated series The Wild Adventures of Blinky Bill.

Mendiola is the chief contact for third-party content and is available via an app on a range of platforms and devices, including iOS, Android, Apple TV+, Roku, FireTV, suppliers looking for content partnerships with Europa+ Chromecast and smart TVs. It is also in talks with cabsat in the region. Torres-Bohl estimates that around half of the current titles will have been refreshed over the next operators in Latin America.

Acknowledging the tough economic conditions 12 months. “That depends on what the uptake is, what the triggered by the pandemic, Torres-Bohl says: “There are reaction is from people, how much we keep on, how much no guarantees, and I know because I have had my share we let go,” he says, noting that the data will help decide that.

The exec says user data is key to the service and it will be of heartbreak and failure. But I’m a positive thinker, as is Ruben Mendiola and [chief financial officer] Fernando mining it to help identify viewing preferences over time.

“We have put in place a lot of different mechanisms to Poehler and all the different people that work with us.”

Europa+ will be aiming for 100,000 subscribers within capture, analyse and explain the data that will be coming 12 to 18 months, although “between zero and 100,000 out of the viewing from audiences that have subscribed to the service,” says Torres-Bohl. there’s a lot of sweat and tears,” Torres-Bohl concedes.

It’s also far too early for the company to consider preHe points out there’s never an ideal time to embark on a new project. “One can argue that the economic effects buying or coproducing as part of its plan. However, Torresof Covid haven’t been conducive to launching a new Bohl doesn’t rule it out in the longer term, given parent business. But on the plus side, we’ve seen here in the US, Castalia Communications’ own production activities.

“We’re focusing on developing relationships with those on the channels and programming that we distribute, that people are spending more time in with devices and who produce the programming in Europe, so that we are the partners they want to work with in Latin America, and television sets.”

The aim is not to take on the likes of Netflix, says we can showcase and make their products be known and Torres-Bohl. “It’s a question of being relevant and liked throughout the region,” he says.

SCHEDULE WATCH: Europa+

“

We’re looking at expats who really have a need to stay in touch with their home countries. There isn’t anything where people can get access to what their countrymen are watching in their home countries. That’s the premise.

Luis Torres-Bohl Europa+

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Dan Cohen

Channel 21 International | January 2021

L-R: Yellowstone, The Affair and Ray Donovan

What sort of changes did ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group see in 2020 and how have they impacted your international strategy?

The ViacomCBS merger closed in December of 2019, so we spent most of 2020 assembling what we felt was the strongest team we could. It’s obviously a lot of content. Arguably, when you combine the CBS portfolio with the Paramount portfolio and things from Viacom like Yellowstone, we have the largest library of Hollywood content to take to market – and we are very much still licensing.

There’s a lot of discussion around whether companies like ours should or shouldn’t be licensing our content to third parties. We believe we should and we are. For all the discussion around global streaming, the majority of revenue remains in local deals with local clients. It’s licensing movies and series to clients like Channel 4 or Sky in the UK, much more so than the global streaming deals. They just tend to be the shiny objects that people want to talk about.

Many Hollywood studios are now keeping their content to feed their own streaming services.

Are you adopting that strategy?

We do have a heavy commitment to streaming. We have announced CBS All Access in the US will be rebranded Paramount+ in early 2021. We also own a traditional pay service in the US, with Showtime.

We have announced that Paramount+ will launch internationally, starting with three markets: Australia, Latin America and the Nordics, where there is already a Paramount+ but we are going to beef it up.

So we do have a streaming service, we do own lots of other networks and we do have content that needs to be on them. But it goes back to my first answer. We have more series and more movies than our streaming services would need at any given time. When you combine all the series from the various places that I get them, we have 140,000 episodes of television. When you factor in the joint venture that Paramount did last year with Miramax, we distribute over 4,000 movies. For our streaming service to be successful it does not need all of that content on it all the time. In fact, it would frustrate consumers to have that much content to navigate. We believe there is a way to support

Dan the Last year ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group tackled restructuring, a coronavirus-driven lockdown and new approaches to everything from licensing content to developing cop shows. The division’s president, Dan Cohen, outlines how those changes look set to impact the business in 2021. By Ed Waller the streaming services that we’re launching while also licensing to clients.

How have your licensing deals changed?

I’ve been doing content licensing my whole career.

In the early days it was all about exclusivity. We don’t do much of that anymore. It’s much more about coexclusive licensing. ‘You can license Billions but it’s also going to be over here too; we’ll give you these library movies, but we’re going to use them in this way at the same time.’ It’s about co-exclusivity and sometimes non-exclusivity. Windows also tend to be shorter because content landing on a service has impact. But sitting there indefinitely, it loses some of the impact. It’s better for everybody to move it.

The other thing is deals aren’t as far out. I did a couple of deals in my Disney days that were 10-year deals. We’re hesitant to do that now because I don’t think either side really knows the landscape well enough to want to commit to that.

Are your clients happy to pay for content on a co- or non-exclusive basis?

With the possible exception of pay TV, I would say yes, my clients are definitely moving in that direction.

For example, in the US, we have CBS All Access and Showtime operating but we did a deal with Peacock for two recent Showtime shows: Ray Donovan and The Affair. The ground rules were

that we would license them but not take them out of the Showtime ecosystem.

When I started my career, I don’t know if that kind of conversation would have gone very far. At this point, Peacock understood it and was willing to do business on that basis. Now, arguably, it’s not as valuable to them as an exclusive licence, so they might not want to pay exactly the same amount, but we’re seeing more and more of that happening.

Linear networks now understand they have an audience and it may be different to an on-demand audience, so a licence where they share with an on-demand service is something they’re willing to consider. There isn’t ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to content licensing anymore.

With other Hollywood studios retaining content for their own streamers, do you see a vacuum being created in the market?

Yes, I do. And I wouldn’t limit it to series; it’s happening with movies as well. One of the really fun things about my role at ViacomCBS is while there are new parameters around how we’re willing to license, we are nevertheless willing to license. Not every big media company is operating in this way, so that just creates more opportunity for us.

As we head into 2021 after the events of last year, how else are buyers’ needs changing?

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Dan Cohen

Channel 21 International | January 2021

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distributor Covid-19 really negatively impacted any client we had – US or international – that lived in the adsupported space. Last year, a lot of our discussions were around getting additional runs, getting more utility out of the things they had already paid for due to frozen or reduced budgets; lots of out-of-the-box, nostalgia licensing. For instance, CBS brought back the Sunday night movie after 15 years. It was costeffective programming and worked so well that they did it again for six weeks in the fall. So our clients internationally have taken similar approaches. There is some learning that nostalgia works and that great series can be rerun.

This season has seen a lot of US broadcast networks move to acquisitions and reruns of content from their own streamers. How will this impact your supply lines of fresh content for the global market?

CBS took season one of Star Trek Discovery, which is a CBS All Access original. It’s good programming, it’s cost-effective and maybe it will even attract customers to CBS All Access to see seasons two and three. You’ll continue to see stuff like that.

Importing international series into the US was also smart business. We’ve all figured out it’s a global marketplace and it’s a two-way street. There’s great content out there that should come into the US. The broadcast business is challenged because of streaming, so we have to programme it more efficiently. If we have a big, shiny new series that we know is going to work on CBS but it’s not going to

“

travel, then it’s not good business. CBS can’t carry the load in a vacuum anymore. If my team can’t monetise it through our clients around the world, then we’re probably not going to put it on CBS. All this is going to impact how the world goes postCovid and through 2021.

Last year in the US we also saw a re-evaluation of the cop show genre. Traditional procedurals are a stock-in-trade for CBS, so how will this impact your business?

First, CBS Studios has done an exclusive deal with a [Chicago-based] company called 21CP Solutions to help us tell these stories in a more balanced fashion, a smarter and more responsible fashion, in a way that we feel comfortable doing. The other thing is we’re in discussions about looking for other perspectives in cop shows, not just the detectives, to give a more balanced point of view. It would have been a bad knee-jerk reaction for us to say we’re not doing these shows anymore because audiences really like them and they travel for a reason.

proportion of our catalogue that is from outside of America gets bigger. CBS Studios has a team in Amsterdam headed by [senior VP of international coproductions and development] Meghan Lyvers looking for coproduction opportunities. We feel it’s really important. There’s great content internationally and if it’s a good series and I can get my hands on it, I want to.

Some European networks are coproducing their own US-style cop procedurals. Is that something ViacomCBS might want to get into?

Yes. Dan the distributor loves coproduction.

Specifically, there is one coming through our JV Miramax in early 2021 called Spy City with Dominic Cooper. We’re distributing it outside Germany, where it will premiere in February or March. We love those copro conversations and hope that the

If we have a big, shiny new series that we know is going to work on CBS but it’s not going to travel, then it’s not good business. CBS can’t carry the load in a vacuum anymore.

Dan Cohen

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BACKEND

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Three-year plan

Media IM

Maria Ufland

The London-based distributor behind globetrotting preschool show Sunny Bunnies is on the hunt for more IP it can take around the world.

Sunny Bunnies

Irina Nazarenko

I

f you’re unfamiliar with the Belarusian IP that was brought to screens in 170 territories by a Russian/ Ukrainian, female-owned independent distribution company based in the UK, then just type the words ‘sunny bunnies’ into YouTube.

You’ll soon be met with a vibrantly bright, nondialogue animated short about five beaming balls of light that cause mischief wherever they go, while also spreading laughter and happiness.

With the turmoil the world has seen over the past 12 months, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that something so unabashedly cheerful would catch the attention of audiences worldwide.

Produced by Digital Light Studio (DLS), based in Belarus capital Minsk, Sunny Bunnies has travelled the world since making its debut on the Sunny Bunnies YouTube channel in 2016, when Media IM began managing the brand.

Now, the show can be seen everywhere from Canada to China, as well as other key markets such as the UK, on ViacomCBS-owned Channel 5’s Milkshake, and the US, on Disney Junior no less.

UK-based distributor Media IM has also struck deals with OTT players to grow the cheeky creatures’ footprints, with Netflix, Tencent and Amazon Prime all bringing the preschool show to their subscribers.

In 2020, Media IM launched three localised Sunny Bunnies channels on YouTube, in Russian, Brazilian-Portuguese and Spanish, and in the next three years it will be looking to expand its YouTube presence with more localised channels.

The company wants to grow the brand in Europe and Latin America in particular, while Media IM is

also keen to build Sunny Bunnies in licensing and merchandising in key markets such as the UK, the US, Russia, Canada, France, Brazil, South Korea and China.

Maria Ufland, its co-founder and joint MD, says the company has tweaked the content recently to increase its potential at retail, while it is also conscious of the need to keep the show relevant as it grows and to make it as popular with parents and caregivers as its young audience.

For example, the bunnies can increasingly be seen munching on carrots and apples rather than ice cream and sweets. In addition, two characters have been changed to make them more toyetic, while themes of sport, the outdoors, teamwork and ecology are being weaved into storylines.

“We have also been focusing a lot of our marketing efforts on social media, particularly on Facebook and Instagram, where we can communicate to parents and grandparents with relevant taglines and messaging,” adds Irina Nazarenko, Ufland’s fellow co-founder and joint MD at Media IM. Ufland says that, over the years, Media IM has provided a lot of guidance to creator DLS and accumulated a lot of knowledge about building a brand from scratch to one that has almost as many YouTube subscribers as Thomas & Friends.

Launched in 2014 by former Viacom International Media Networks executives Ufland and Nazarenko, Media IM is now on the hunt for another “positive brand with global appeal” that it can take from obscurity to living rooms around the world.

“We are looking for brands to represent. We have

“

We are looking for brands to represent. We have a huge client base, particularly in the preschool genre. We think we can really help production companies build their brands.

Maria Ufland a huge client base, particularly in the preschool genre. We think we can really help production companies build their brands,” says Ufland.

At the same time, Sunny Bunnies remains its “key brand,” Ufland adds, and the IP looks set to grow over the next three years, with potential spin-offs and “sub-brands” in the pipeline.

“As a company, we’ve done quite well during the pandemic. It’s been a challenging time for everybody in the industry, but there are lots of opportunities for content because of the increased demand with viewers at home,” she continues.

“Financially, advertising revenues have gone down, particularly on the AVoD platforms, so we’ve been affected by that. But, generally, we’ve taken time to reach out to new clients and expand our brand presence. It’s been very busy for us.”

Meanwhile, DLS has not only had to contend with a pandemic in 2020, but also severe political unrest in Belarus following a disputed presidential election.

To its great credit, the company has continued to make the world a sunnier place during it all.

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BACKEND

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Development Slate

ON Kids & Family Paris-based independent media group Mediawan has brought in a veteran French kids and family exec to build a slate of new shows and acquire IP.

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major new player in audiovisual content creation and distribution in Europe was established in 2020, born out of Mediawan’s €100m (US$123m) acquisition of Lagardère Studios after it swooped on several other European production groups.

Alongside Mediawan’s considerable activities in drama, documentaries and unscripted, it is also an increasingly influential player in children’s and family content via Mediawan Animation and ON Kids & Family, as highlighted by the latter’s hire of French kids’ TV veteran Julien Borde last year.

Borde, who has held top roles at WarnerMedia, Disney Channel and France Télévisions (FTV), joined the company as executive VP, head of television and chief content officer four months ago to create new content, open new labels, make acquisitions and set up a digital subsidiary.

The aim is to replicate Mediawan’s strategy in the premium scripted space, where it has been steadily buying up producers from around Europe over the past few years, in kids and family, with Mediawan Rights as its distribution arm.

Co-founded by Aton Soumache, Dimitri Rassam and Thierry Pasquet, ON Kids & Family has around 500 employees in Paris, Montreal, LA, Hyderabad and Luxembourg. To date, its productions include The Little Prince, Le Petit Nicolas, Playmobil: The Movie and Robin Hood, as well as the hit property Miraculous, which continues to travel the world.

“We want to develop our own preschool label at ON Kids & Family and we are actively looking for projects in the market and talent around the globe in that area. Also on my agenda is the development of live-action series for kids and families. The idea is to be able to offer a portfolio of premium content that can work globally,” says Borde.

Left: Julien Borde. Above: Joann Sfar collaboration Mister Crocodile

On the immediate horizon is The Enchanted Village of Pinocchio (52x11’), a coproduction with Mediawanowned Italian producer Palomar, which has Rai in Italy, ZDF in Germany, FTV, VRT in Belgium and Radio Canada on board as broadcasters.

In 2019, ON Kids & Family partnered with French comic book creator Joann Sfar to create a new label, The Magical Society, dedicated to developing projects based on the author’s IP, which is now bearing fruit.

On the dev slate with Sfar are comedies Little Vampire & Me (52x13’), a spin-off from his 2020 feature film targeting 5-8s, and Mister Crocodile (52x13’), a collaboration targeting 6-10s with PJ Masks scribe Simon Nicholson. Set in New Orleans, the show is about a little girl and a croc with nothing in common who nevertheless form an inseparable bond.

ON Kids & Family is also developing a number of action comedies in Animal Force (52x13’) – a copro with La Station Animation described by Borde as Zootopia meets Stranger Things – and Karters (52x13’), as well as comedy adventure The 3 Musketeers (52x13’), which will target

5-8s and sees the famous literary characters re-imagined as girls.

Rounding off the slate is Jo: Go For Gold!

(52x13’), billed as the first TV series to teach kids about the universal values of sport, which is being prepared ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

“There have been series about specific sports, but never a series on all sports,” says Borde, who points to the demand for a wide range of styles and formats among children’s buyers at the moment.

“The huge success of streamers means traditional broadcasters are really opening up to new kinds of shows. It’s a fantastic moment for content because both the streamers and traditional broadcasters are looking for projects that are different.

“I’ve been in the industry for a long time now, so I can remember when things were really just focused on comedy series and you couldn’t do anything else. Now, with the streamers and all the content that is available for kids everywhere all of the time, there is a real need to differentiate in the fight to get kids’ attention. So, you can be really original. It’s a golden age. Plus, there’s a French touch that’s really rich, broad and appealing to kids around the globe.”

BACKEND

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Three-year plan

Trio Orange

Julia Langlois

The Canadian producer is looking to build on the international success of its first scripted show on Netflix while putting in place an all-female succession plan atop the company.

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aunched in 2008, Quebec-based Trio Orange produces youth programming, documentaries, lifestyle series and gameshows, but is perhaps best known for Netflix comedy-drama series Can You Hear Me?.

The French-language show, which is broadcast locally on Télé-Québec, stars Mélissa Bédard, Ève Landry and Florence Longpré (who is also among its writers) as best friends who live in a low-income neighbourhood of Montreal. Viewers follow the trio into their gritty, seldom-seen world as they search for love, redemption and freedom and struggle to hang on to their pride, strength, creativity and sanity in the face of adversity.

A third season is scheduled to launch later this year and the show has given Trio Orange its first taste of major international success – something it is keen to build on over the next three years.

This comes as the prodco promotes five employees to partners and shareholders as part of what the company has called an “all-female succession plan.”

Trio Orange described last year’s appointment of the partners – producers Marie-Claude Brunelle, Julia Langlois, Julie Lavallée and Annie Sirois and director of business affairs Shaney-Kim Carufel – as “a natural transition for the company’s mission moving forward.”

The firm has the support of the Quebecor Fund, which encourages female investors, and was granted C$80,000 (US$60,550) via its Export Assistance Programme. Backing for the move also came from SODEC and the National Bank of Canada.

Carlos Soldevila, president and executive producer at Trio Orange, has no immediate plans to step aside, but is keen for a smooth transition once he does. “Trio Orange has always been a team effort

Can You Hear Me?

“

Even though we’re a very small market, our goal is to do series that are so ingrained in something real that they speak to everyone. If it’s profoundly rooted in society, then you have something everybody can watch and enjoy.

Julia Langlois and the new partnership is a natural progression of this idea. It will help us achieve our goal to become a leading production company in Canada and abroad,” Soldevila says.

Meanwhile, the firm has launched a feature documentary department and is also working with Oscar-nominated director Philippe Falardeau on two projects: a four-part doc about the Lac Mégantic tragedy and a scripted series.

The latter, an epic love story of chaotic farming, everlasting commitments and unpredictable crops, is being written by Can You Hear Me?’s Longpré and follows an overwhelmed young widow who escapes loneliness through an improbable bond.

Langlois, who oversees scripted development at the prodco, has high hopes for the dramedy,

which is set on a rural farm and is due to be shot later this year. “The story is going to touch a lot of people,” says the exec, who has been following international audiences’ growing appetite for nonEnglish-language content, often supplied by local broadcasters but made available by the streamers, with interest.

“Quebec has as much talent as anywhere else in the world. We would like to make our creators, writers and directors better known internationally,” adds Langlois, who points to Can You Hear Me?’s Facebook page – and the comments it attracts in different languages, particularly in Spanish – as evidence the show has a large international footprint.

“Our Facebook fan page is in French, but we’re really happy to be able to touch people around the world,” she says. “It’s a privilege. It’s so exciting to think what will come with more collaboration and coproductions. Shows will travel even faster and easier in the future.

“Even though we’re a very small market, our goal is to do series that are so ingrained in something real that they speak to everyone. I can watch a show in any language, and if it’s profoundly rooted in society, then you have something everybody can watch and enjoy.

“This is what we’re trying to do. We don’t have the budgets to compete with the US, but we can write good stories and be true to what we are.”

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PRESENT IMPERFECT FUTURE TENSE: Julie Bristow

Channel 21 International | January 2021

Giving women a voice

T

he Content Catalyst Fund (CCF) is Former CBC buyer intended to catalyse stories made for and Bristow Global and about women to get them into the Media CEO Julie marketplace. We support creatives from the Bristow on the development process and creation of the Content Catalyst idea right through to the monetisation of that content and everything in between.

Fund, a development It’s about putting a business infrastructure and investment vehicle on to promising commercial ideas so they can focusing on women’s stories get to the marketplace and make sure there isn’t a point between idea and sale where a and storytellers. good idea slips through the cracks. As a female entrepreneur in the media space myself, I saw unscripted marketplace at the moment is more and heard there was a need for this and we Covid-19-friendly than scripted, though that will come later. We already have a slate of 25 hope to fill that gap in the market.

My production company, Bristow Global market-ready projects.

This will inevitably evolve but the starting Media, as a female-founded and -driven production company, became somewhere for point is commercially driven, unscripted women who wanted an alternative place to content. At the beginning of a venture like this bring their ideas. I felt the traditional structure we want to be able to show early success, and status quo wasn’t necessarily supportive so we’re looking for series that can reach of the way female creators wanted to work and audiences in the shortest amount of time at wanted to do business. There’s an opportunity the moment.

The business model for the CCF is to be to partner in a different way from how people in partnership with the creator first to protect were doing it before.

The other problem in the marketplace is rights in a meaningful way. I have spoken to when you go into production on projects the a lot of women who said they didn’t feel their entire energy of the organisation goes into rights were protected in more traditional deal structures.

Protecting getting those productions Figuring out ways rights is important. There to market. Development to finance good will be sharing through and sourcing IP at points that process in terms of becomes secondary. Many ideas is not nearly as back-end and fees. The producers, after a couple of straightforward as it big projects, pop their head has been in the past. We amount of value the CCF will put into partnering with up and realise they haven’t creators will be unique in been paying attention to can’t look at a single development and creation commissioning entity, we terms of the value over time. of content. have to look at all of it.

Figuring out ways We’re super-focused on creating a funnel of great ideas that are pitch- to finance good ideas is not nearly as and market-ready and supporting projects at straightforward as it has been in the past. We strategic points throughout their journey to can’t look at a single commissioning entity, market. That process involves development, we have to look at all of it. We have to look financing, pitching and negotiation of rights and at how brands might be involved. We have they will all be buttressed by the infrastructure the opportunity to ask how else we finance it, support it, bring multiple territories to it. at the CCF. The business is changing, which can be It’s really a mix of influence, relationships, access to capital and a sophisticated strategic scary. But there are also opportunities to ask approach to ensure projects get to market. how we do business differently. Financing is a This is a mission-driven, for-profit business, big part of that. We need to stop thinking that so it’s for commercially driven projects. We’re there are only one or two ways of financing looking at unscripted in the beginning because content. We need to find other ways and it’s predominantly my background. Also, the partnerships will be key to that.

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