World Screen MIPTV 2017

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THE MAGAZINE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA | APRIL 2017

WWW.WORLDSCREEN.COM

MIPTV Edition

EUROPEAN

TELEVISION SKY JEREMY DARROCH PROSIEBENSAT.1 THOMAS EBELING ZDF THOMAS BELLUT FREMANTLEMEDIA CECILE FROT-COUTAZ ENDEMOL SHINE SOPHIE TURNER LAING ALL3MEDIA JANE TURTON BONNIER CASTEN ALMQVIST ITV KEVIN LYGO GAUMONT CHRISTOPHE RIANDEE DR MARIA RØRBYE RØNN TELE MÜNCHEN HERBERT KLOIBER ATRESMEDIA JAVIER BARDAJÍ

AND MORE! JON FELTHEIMER LIONSGATE

JOSH SAPAN AMC NETWORKS

DANA WALDEN & GARY NEWMAN FOX TELEVISION GROUP

PLUS:

David Lynn Talks Channel 5 at 20 Andy Kaplan on AXN’s 20th Anniversary

Michael

Weatherly

+

ELISABETH MOSS PIERCE BROSNAN STEVEN MOFFAT

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CONTENTS

APRIL 2017/MIPTV EDITION DEPARTMENTS WORLD VIEW

By Anna Carugati.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

By Bruce Paisner.

16

VIEWPOINT

By Jérôme Delhaye.

18

UPFRONTS What’s new for MIPTV.

Publisher Ricardo Seguin Guise Group Editorial Director Anna Carugati Editor Mansha Daswani Executive Editor Kristin Brzoznowski

60

20

INTER MEDYA SPECIAL REPORT 37 The Turkish distribution company marks its 25th birthday.

MILESTONES Andy Kaplan on AXN’s 20th anniversary.

56

14

MICHAEL WEATHERLY

PIERCE BROSNAN

Managing Editor Joanna Padovano Tong Associate Editor Sara Alessi Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Elizabeth Bowen-Tombari

66

68

Associate Editors, Spanish-Language Publications Rafael Blanco Sadiel Lebrón Contributing Editor Elizabeth Guider Production & Design Director Victor L. Cuevas

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX 513

Online Director Simon Weaver

WORLD’S END In the stars.

Art Director Phyllis Q. Busell

516

64

Senior Sales & Marketing Manager Dana Mattison

ELISABETH MOSS

FREIDA PINTO

Sales & Marketing Assistant Nathalia Lopez Business Affairs Manager Andrea Moreno

SPECIAL REPORT

78 SIZZLING! This special report on European television includes interviews with ProSiebenSat.1’s Thomas Ebeling, Sherlock and Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat, ZDF’s Thomas Bellut, FremantleMedia’s Cecile Frot-Coutaz, Endemol Shine’s Sophie Turner Laing, all3media’s Jane Turton, Bonnier’s Casten Almqvist, ITV’s Kevin Lygo, Gaumont’s Christophe Riandee, DR’s Maria Rørbye Rønn, Tele München’s Herbert Kloiber, Atresmedia’s Javier Bardají, Lookout Point’s Simon Vaughan and Beta Film’s Jan Mojto.

ONE-ON-ONE

157 LIONSGATE’S JON FELTHEIMER

Contributing Writers Steve Clarke Andy Fry Jane Marlow Joanna Stephens Jay Stuart David Wood Copy Editors Amy Canonico Marina Chao Maddy Kloss Tamara Schechter

The indie giant’s CEO discusses the recent Starz acquisition and other growth prospects across film, digital and television.

Ricardo Seguin Guise President

ON THE RECORD

245 AMC NETWORKS’ JOSH SAPAN

WORLD SCREEN is published ten times per year: January, February, March, April, May, June/July, September, October, November and December.

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Anna Carugati Executive VP

Whether on linear or streaming, the focus at AMC Networks, according to its president and CEO, is IP ownership and developing content that will find passionate fan bases.

Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development

IN CONVERSATION

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301 SKY’S JEREMY DARROCH The group chief executive of Europe’s leading pay-TV operator talks about how investments in the customer experience and original programming are boosting subscriber numbers.

EXECUTIVE BRIEFING

357 FOX’S DANA WALDEN & GARY NEWMAN As co-chairmen and CEOs of Fox Television Group, the executive duo oversees a thriving studio and a U.S. broadcast network.

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©2017 WSN INC. Printed by Fry Communications No part of this publication can be used, reprinted, copied or stored in any medium without the publisher’s authorization.

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CONTENTS

APRIL 2017/MIPTV EDITION

THESE TARGETED MAGAZINES APPEAR BOTH INSIDE WORLD SCREEN AND AS SEPARATE PUBLICATIONS:

BUYERS PROSIEBENSAT.1’S THOMAS EBELING ZDF’S THOMAS BELLUT CHANNEL 5’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY ALL3MEDIA’S JANE TURTON BERGÜZAR KOREL & HALIT ERGENÇ

132 136 140 144 152 154

DEVELOPMENT SLATES PRESCHOOL SHOWS TOY-BASED SERIES STUDIO 100’S HANS BOURLON CYBER GROUP’S PIERRE SISSMANN KIKA @ 20

196 202 208 216 218 220

SINGING COMPETITIONS GAME SHOWS ENDEMOL SHINE’S SOPHIE TURNER LAING BBC WORLDWIDE’S SUMI CONNOCK GLOBAL AGENCY’S IZZET PINTO

278 286 292 294 298

CREATIVE ALLIANCES TURKISH DRAMA AMERICAN GODS’ BRYAN FULLER & MICHAEL GREEN WALTER PRESENTS’ WALTER IUZZOLINO

334 342

380 388 394 396 400

OTT PLATFORMS ZEE’S AMIT GOENKA MNC’S DAVID AUDY

418 426 429

350 352

WILDLIFE TRAVEL SHOWS ID’S HENRY SCHLEIFF 60 DAYS IN’S GREG HENRY SMITHSONIAN’S DAVID ROYLE

FORMAT DEALS STARZ PLAY’S MAAZ SHEIKH

438 444

NOVELAS & SERIES SPT’S ALEX MARIN

462 470

LISTINGS FOR MORE THAN 120 DISTRIBUTORS ATTENDING MIPTV 483

12 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

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WORLD VIEW

BY ANNA CARUGATI

All Eyes on Europe How much can happen in 25 years? Let’s think back to 1992. Boris Yeltsin and George H. W. Bush declared the official end to the Cold War and later signed the START II arms reduction agreement. Bill Clinton was elected president. The Yugoslav Republic was breaking up, leading to the horrifying Bosnian War, and one of the worst earthquakes in California’s history rocked Los Angeles.

On a lighter note, remember the Dream Team at the Barcelona Summer Olympics? Beijing welcomed the first McDonald’s and Euro Disney opened in France.

Queen Elizabeth announced that the year had been an annus horribilus after her daughter-in-law Fergie was featured in the tabloids having her toes sucked by a man other than her husband, and Prince Charles separated from Princess Diana.

Another major event of 1992 was the signing of the Treaty of Maastricht, which established the European Union. It provided the framework for monetary and economic union and common foreign and security policies.

One of the most important provisions of the treaty was the free movement of people and goods across member states and the elimination of border controls. The idea behind the EU was to unite member countries in order to secure lasting peace, while creating a market capable of competing on the world stage.

In 1992 the European broadcasting industry was reaping the benefits of deregulation. For instance, in Italy, Mediaset was running three commercial channels; RTL Television in Germany was eight years old; and in Spain, Antena 3 and Telecinco were two years into operation, as was TV4 in Sweden.

Three years earlier, in 1989, in anticipation of a united Europe, the European Commission put out the Television Without Frontiers directive, which was based on two main principles: the free movement of TV programs within the region and the establishment of quotas, which required that channels should “reserve, wherever possible, more than half of their transmission time for European works.” The goal was to protect European producers from what was perceived as the onslaught of American programming that filled the slates of newly launched channels.

Fast-forward 25 years and boy, has the adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same” been proven wrong. The EU’s very existence is threatened. The U.K. voted to pull out, and other member states are considering similar action as populist parties call for tighter immigration controls and an end to EU regulations. And the ashes of the Cold War seem to be reigniting.

And yet, while the EU may fall apart and political tensions continue to increase, European production companies have never had it so good. Broadcasters and SVOD services in the region are clamoring for product, and

European production companies have never had it so good.

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European drama has reached new heights in quality and innovation. Producers are looking beyond their borders— of course, they want to satisfy domestic audiences, but they are also thinking of the international appeal of their projects. Consequently, a number of European series are being produced in English, like Versailles and The Young Pope. And non-English-language drama—such as Forbrydelsen (a.k.a. The Killing) and Deutschland 83—is traveling to English-language countries, a phenomenon that hasn’t been seen before.

Our main feature delves into these topics and many more. We hear from broadcast groups, production companies and producers who represent the best of the European media scene, including ProSiebenSat.1’s Thomas Ebeling, ZDF’s Thomas Bellut, FremantleMedia’s Cecile Frot-Coutaz, Endemol Shine’s Sophie Turner Laing, all3media’s Jane Turton, Bonnier’s Casten Almqvist, ITV’s Kevin Lygo, Gaumont’s Christophe Riandee, DR’s Maria Rørbye Rønn, Tele München’s Herbert Kloiber and Atresmedia’s Javier Bardají.

As much as populists on both sides of the Atlantic want to build walls and close borders, in television, ideas and trends are traveling back and forth fluidly.

Viewers are more open than ever before to stories about people from other countries, with different backgrounds and lifestyles. The floodgates of ideas have opened and there is no closing them back up.

While writers, producers and programmers are intent on presenting viewers with a broad range of stories and realities, technology is blasting forward, providing a constant stream of new screens and devices. Despite all the change and disruption, certain principles continue to apply to the media business: Quality rises to the top, especially in an abundance of choice. Scale is still necessary.

Consumers demand innovation, choice and variety. If viewers fall in love with characters, they will want to see them brought back to life in reboots and remakes, provided that they are done properly. We speak to Lionsgate’s Jon Feltheimer about his company’s recent acquisition of Starz. Sky’s Jeremy Darroch describes his company’s constant commitment to innovation and customer service.

AMC Networks’ Josh Sapan discusses how the concept of brand loyalty is changing in a world of increasing ondemand viewing. Fox’s Dana Walden and Gary Newman share their experiences shepherding the 24 and Prison Break franchises and giving writers the freedom they need to pursue their visions. Another common theme is that a good idea can come from anywhere, and a lot of them these days are coming from Europe.

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GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

BY BRUCE L. PAISNER

Good Luck, Mr. President In the media industry around the world, powerful interests wait to see how Donald Trump will affect their lives and business. One place they could usefully look is a formative stage in American democracy: President Andrew Jackson and the 1828 election.

When this column last appeared, a mere five months ago, it made short work of then presidential candidate Donald Trump, though it tied the criticism to an article by Peggy Noonan bemoaning the decline of politeness in American politics. At that point, to Ms. Noonan and many others, Mr. Trump was an annoyance. Not so much his policies—who knew what they were—but rather his disregard for what were considered the basic decencies of life. In this particular case, during a rally in the Midwest, Mr. Trump had used the P-word (editor’s note: pussy, slang for a woman’s privates, often used to denote weakness). Of course, as it turned out, this was just the beginning. There is little need to detail the offenses to other people’s sensibilities but in fact, each week brought language, video, audio and tweets, all of which were harsh, to say the least.

So there we were in October 2016 with Donald Trump offending most U.S. tastemakers and such people doubling down on their support for Hillary Clinton. That would have been a good moment to think about the adage that a week is a lifetime in American politics.

Back in October, we were sure Trump could not possibly be elected, for a long list of reasons among which his language was really the icing on the cake. Given the seismic shifts that occurred over the next few weeks it is, I think, particularly worth focusing on the language. We now know that his opinions and policies appealed to mainstream viewers, but so, apparently, did his language and the rough male camaraderie he seems to relish. It didn’t take a lot of additional votes to win him the Electoral College and thus the election. Is it possible that his tasteless exchanges with Billy Bush actually increased his vote totals in crucial voting blocs?

Back in the fall, I was arguing that we are in a transitional period on language, as in so many other things in our complex lives in a changing society. Now it appears that language may be just the tip of the iceberg covering significant fault lines below. Is it possible that the Age of Trump will be more like the Age of Jackson in American life? Andrew Jackson was the seventh president of the United States, serving from 1829 to 1837, and unlike his six predecessors, Jackson was a career soldier who fought and won battles with the Western Indian tribes, a British Invasion Army and the Seminoles in Florida. He was born on the border of North and South Carolina and had the crudeness then associated with the American

Is it possible that the

Age of Trump will be more like the Age of Jackson in American life?

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West. He was a frontiersman who adored the Constitution and a soldier who had little use for the bankers, business oligarchs and socially prominent people of his day. In that era, nothing was more powerful or more sacred than the Bank of the United States. Jackson opposed it fervently. He felt it favored big companies and the Eastern Establishment at the expense of his constituency. He attacked the bank endlessly, until he prevailed. His critics called him “King Andrew” and derided him for his coarseness. It is interesting to compare him to Trump and wonder if Trump’s time in office will in some ways resemble the Age of Jackson in American life, an era of jettisoning policies and programs that had been part of society for many years and were thought to be permanent. Many U.S. voters are entering the Age of Trump with some trepidation but also with a sense that too much has not been reviewed or rethought for too long and needs to be. Andrew Jackson would be intrigued.

It is clear, however, that whatever direction political events take, the next few years will be a tougher time in the world. At this time of the year, when the International Academy presents its Kids Emmy Awards, it is worth reflecting on our responsibilities to the young people who will grow to maturity during these challenging years. In the wake of World War II, all the Western democracies built an amazingly stable world order, and that world order is collapsing in some places, changing in others. I don’t think anyone can not feel that there’s a rough period ahead, but one thing we know for sure is that lots more kids are going to be born and grow up during this period. We owe them a bigger obligation than ever since they will continue, as they have for many years, to get most of their entertainment and a lot of their information from television. For those of us who care about getting through this period to the next period of calm—because we will—we have an even deeper obligation to the kids. Everybody can meet that in their own professional way. For us the key to the obligation is great television that really makes a difference, that really means something.

The Emmy stands for that and promotes that more than anything else in the world. One way to meet that obligation is to make the Emmy stronger than ever and more meaningful to people who make kids’ television. It’s an important time for us to be here doing this.

Meanwhile, good luck, Mr. President.

Bruce L. Paisner is the president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

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VIEWPOINT

BY JÉRÔME DELHAYE

New Frontiers of Storytelling Over 11,000 delegates from 100 countries, including some 4,000 buyers, will converge on Cannes at the start of April for the 54th edition of MIPTV, the leading television and digital content event for the global entertainment industry.

This year, MIPTV has chosen the “New Frontiers of Storytelling” as the central theme of its conference program. From producers to brands, content creators are angling to devise the next binge-worthy story in the multi platform world of entertainment. It’s against this background that storytelling is being adapted to short-form series watched on mobile devices, traditional long-form series for national and international broadcasters, the new viewing experiences opened up by VR and an increased understanding of viewer habits provided by big data.

Among the A-list speakers making keynote addresses on the subject of storytelling, MIPTV delegates will hear from Roy Price, the head of Amazon Studios, as he describes how the studio has created a worldwide video service that delivers highly-acclaimed original content to over 200 countries.

Jørgen Madsen Lindemann, MTG’s president and CEO, will discuss how MTG is adapting storytelling to the demands of new technology and shifting audience behavior. From go90, Ivana Kirkbride, chief content officer, will talk about her company’s development of original programming for mobile-first audiences.

Addressing changes in storytelling from a brand angle, PepsiCo’s VP of marketing and cultural connections, Adam Harter, will explain how Pepsi is building its content development capacity to connect with its target audiences. Pepsi is MIPTV 2017’s Brand of the Year.

With VR increasingly positioning itself as the next massadopted entertainment medium, Rikard Steiber, the president of Viveport at HTC Vive, is set to share his views on content development within the VR ecosystem. Of the major entertainment companies attending MIPTV, The Walt Disney Company, Sky, ARTE, Discovery, the BBC, Red Arrow, A+E Networks, NBCUniversal, Viacom, Sony, Netflix and Amazon Studios are all focusing on how to bring VR to their audiences.

In December 2016, telecom and entertainment group Orange partnered with Twentieth Century Fox Innovation Lab and Warner Bros., and VR tech developers Wevr and Felix & Paul Studios, on a series of experiments in Europe called the Orange VR Experience. Subscribers to Orange’s OCS platform can use Samsung and Sony VR gear to watch movies and videos in a customized virtual living room.

High-end drama continues to be the Rolls-Royce of entertainment programming, capable of federating

MIPTV has chosen the “New Frontiers

of Storytelling” as the central theme of its conference program.

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multimillion audiences domestically and internationally.

MIPTV will have plenty of drama on show for the 2,000 buyers who specialize in acquiring the genre.

Following last year’s successful launch, the MIPDrama Screenings return for a second year, with 500 leading acquisition executives and specialist journalists set to discover 12 new drama series on April 2. The new shows will appear in two categories: finished programs and work-inprogress programs.

Monday, April 3, sees the MIPTV World Premiere TV Screening of Sky Vision’s Riviera, created by Neil Jordan and starring Julia Stiles, Lena Olin, Adrian Lester, Iwan Rheon, Dimitri Leonidas and Roxane Duran. Following its 2016 MIPTV World Premiere TV Screening in Cannes, A+E Studios’ Roots went on to close distribution deals in 220 territories.

Tuesday, April 4, will provide delegates with the inaugural MIPTV Asian World Premiere TV Screening, as Kansai TV brings the Japanese police action drama Crisis to the international market for the first time.

MIPTV 2017 will also host its first Pre-L.A. Screenings Showcase on April 4. Disney Media Distribution and Lionsgate will give MIPTV delegates a sneak preview of new shows they are bringing to the L.A. Screenings in May. Another first in Cannes is MIPTV’s Digital Short Form Series Pitch. This brand-new forum will provide a showcase for creators and producers of drama and kids’ animation and youth live-action content to pitch their projects to a jury of leading network and digital platform program commissioners, including executives from the BBC, Canal+ and The Walt Disney Company.

With the prestigious International Emmy Kids Awards on April 4, 1,200 kids’ programming distribution and production companies and 1,300 children’s entertainment buyers in Cannes, MIPTV will bring together the international community operating within the kids’ content ecosystem.

Similarly, MIPDoc and MIPFormats—respectively the leading factual co-production, screenings and conference event and the world’s largest gathering of format commissioners, buyers and distributors—will play host to over 560 companies and 1,800 participants, including over 400 buyers from 67 countries.

Among the highlights of the pre-MIPTV weekend, the MIPDoc World Premiere TV Screenings will showcase ZDF Enterprises’ groundbreaking ocean series Big Pacific and the story of Tokyo’s resurgence from 20th century destruction, Tokyo Phoenix: The Rise of Modern Japan, presented by NHK, ARTE France and CC&C. Jérôme Delhaye is the director of the entertainment division at Reed MIDEM.

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UPFRONTS

all3media International

Innocent

Clique / Love, Lies & Records / The ABC The team behind the hit youth drama Skins has a new series, Clique. The drama is about female friendship that is tested to the extremes. From the pen of BAFTA Award-winning writer Kay Mellor and starring Ashley Jensen (Extras), Love, Lies & Records will be available for presale. The series explores how women, in particular, have to juggle their lives. Meanwhile, The ABC is a brand-new drama from The Forge, creators of National Treasure. “Told in a deft, emotional and witty style, The ABC charts an uncompromising and entertaining path through the minefield of growing up in an ever-changing world,” says Stephen Driscoll, all3media International’s executive VP for EMEA and European co-productions. “This six-part school-based drama offers a contemporary view of multicultural teenage life.” The catalog also includes Innocent.

“Our continuing work with some of the industry’s leading production and creative talent is resulting in a significant number of prime-time drama series coming through the pipeline.”

—Stephen Driscoll

AMC Networks International AMC Global / SundanceTV Global AMC Networks International, which has rolled out AMC Global and SundanceTV Global throughout the world, has new programming highlights coming to its bouquet of services. This includes the new season of the critically acclaimed martial arts drama Into the Badlands and the newest installment of the darkly comic anthology series Hap and Leonard: Mucho Mojo. Premiering in April in select markets is the epic drama The Son, which stars Pierce Brosnan and is based on the best-selling novel by Philipp Meyer. The cast of Into the Badlands includes Daniel Wu and Aramis Knight, along with Nick Frost, who is new to the show this season. Hap and Leonard: Mucho Mojo, based on a book by Joe R. Lansdale, features James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams in the lead roles.

Into the Badlands on AMC Global

American Cinema International Age of Calamity / Queen Victoria’s Black Prince / Amish TV movies Based on the best-selling book by Chris McKinney, Age of Calamity is a six-episode miniseries that follows Bruce Blanc, a man who is about to turn 41 and was just released from prison after a nine-year sentence. Also a miniseries, Queen Victoria’s Black Prince is based on the true story of the last King of Punjab, Maharaja Duleep Singh. “We call it our Indian Downton Abbey,” says George Shamieh, the CEO of American Cinema International. The company also has four TV movies that are set in the world of the Amish: An Uncommon Grace, Reality Runaway, Finding Heart and When Love Comes Calling. “Each title has its own appeal, which together reaches out to a diverse and worldwide audience,” Shamieh says. “We are very excited to bring these various titles to MIPTV this year.”

“We are focusing on expanding our production slate this year for both afternoon slots and prime time.”

—George Shamieh An Uncommon Grace 20 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

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Applicaster App features

Zapp app publishing platform Applicaster’s aim is to combine technology and content to create new audience experiences. “Whether for a single program, a single channel or a multi-channel app, our app publishing Zapp platform quickly delivers a feature-rich interactive experience for any type of content,” says Sharon Gelbaum-Shpan, the company’s new CMO. “Our customers’ apps powered high-profile live events and tournaments such as the Super Bowl with DIRECTV’s The Dan Patrick Show and The Rich Eisen Show, and Mediaset’s successful Gran Hermano VIP, which offered viewers live interaction and exclusive behind-the-scenes videos and photos throughout the season.” Gelbaum-Shpan says that 2017 already looks promising for Applicaster: “We are expanding into new markets both in terms of geography and customer focus.”

“We arrive at MIPTV with new customer success stories to share and present.”

—Sharon Gelbaum-Shpan

Artist View Entertainment

Chokehold

Chokehold / Dead Draw / Z-Rex: The Jurassic Dead The female-led action movie Chokehold delves into the world of a young MMA fighter from the rough streets who gets her shot on the professional circuit. Dead Draw is a heist film the follows a veteran team of thieves as they begin to turn on each other after pulling off the ultimate crime. Z-Rex: The Jurassic Dead is a creature feature that pits zombies against a very hungry dinosaur. A hot-wired militia squad teams up with a crew of college hipsters to take action. “Though each one of these films could not be more different from the other, the key to all three is they offer up the type of action elements that allow them to be commercial on a worldwide basis,” says Scott Jones, the founder and president of Artist View Entertainment. “The films have known talent, and the production values are high.”

“We are very proud of our diverse catalog.”

—Scott Jones Love and Hate

ATV Love and Hate / Orphan Flowers / Wedlock Cappadocia serves as the setting for ATV’s new drama Love and Hate. MIPTV will be the first time the series is being presented to buyers from Europe and Asia, says Ziyad Varol, ATV’s licensing and digital manager for acquisitions and sales. The market will also be a time for ATV to promote the new season of Orphan Flowers, which has already sold to such countries as Chile, Croatia, Greece and Indonesia.

“Orphan Flowers stands out among all the Turkish productions with its high and stable ratings performance even in its second season,” Varol says. “The main story leads to many sub-stories, and the strong dramatic background hooks the audience every Monday in prime time.” Wedlock is a newly finished production, which has a particular draw with female audiences.

“The visual characteristics of Love and Hate are very rich.”

—Ziyad Varol 22 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

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Breakthrough Entertainment Wonder Women / Breaking Bread with Brooke Burke / Uprooted Women around the world who are breaking ground in maledominated fields are the focus of Wonder Women. “They are adventurers, heroes, trailblazers and explorers,” says Caroline Tyre, the senior director of international sales and acquisitions at Breakthrough Entertainment. The company is also promoting Breaking Bread with Brooke Burke. The titular host, of Dancing with the Stars fame, visits her famous friends, preparing meals with them and sharing memories of food and family. “This isn’t just your regular cooking show,” says Tyre.

“It focuses on a holistic approach, from growing your own vegetable garden to the love you put into your meal preparation in the kitchen and the company you share it with.” Meanwhile, Sarah Sharratt navigates her way through her new life in rural France in Uprooted, another highlight.

“In a crowded marketplace, we’ve focused on premium content that breaks through the noise.”

—Caroline Tyre Uprooted Vikings, a Canada-Ireland co-production

Canada Media Fund Funding / Research / Promotion of Canadian content Of the variety of initiatives that the Canada Media Fund (CMF) engages with, developing new co-production opportunities for Canadian producers continues to be a top priority. “As consumers have growing access to content from all corners of the world, the production community benefits greatly from working on the international front and sharing expertise, talent and access to markets,” says Valerie Creighton, the president and CEO of the CMF. “Maximizing the potential of co-productions is one of our goals for the current year. This is why we are developing and renewing partnerships with funding organizations similar to ours in countries around the world.” A focus for the CMF at MIPTV is to showcase the wealth and diversity of on- and off-screen talent in Canada that can “engage international audiences and reach new markets,” Creighton says.

“The CMF is a unique private-public partnership created to support television and digital media production in Canada.”

—Valerie Creighton

Carsey-Werner Television That ’70s Show / 3rd Rock from the Sun / Roseanne Well-known names such as Topher Grace, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher and Wilmer Valderrama headline the classic comedy series That ’70s Show, which is in the Carsey-Werner Television catalog. The show, which has 200 half-hour episodes in total, is centered on a group of teenage friends who are coming of age and coming to terms with hormones, parents and the bizarrely changing America of the late 1970s. Also a comedy classic, Roseanne is a family series that ran from 1988 to 1997, featuring Roseanne Barr and John Goodman as the heads of the working-class Conner family. Carsey-Werner Television has 222 episodes of the sitcom to offer. The plot in 3rd Rock from the Sun follows four aliens who land on Earth and pose as “normal” Americans as they try to adapt to human life.

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CJ E&M The Gobbler Race / Crazy Market / Golden Tambourine The food-themed reality show The Gobbler Race looks on as four contestants eat their way through various cities around the world. “The Gobbler Race is every foodie’s dream come true,” says Jangho Seo, the general manager of the global content business division at CJ E&M. The company is also presenting Crazy Market. “Set on a unique conveyor-belt stage, this delicious game show comprises three battle rounds [pitting] contestants against food specialists, with sets of questions related to every aspect about the food.” Another highlight is Golden Tambourine, a new studio-based entertainment format that CJ E&M is launching for the first time to international buyers at MIPTV. “The unique stage element, as well as exotic performances by the contestants, adds an entertaining layer to this all-around music entertainment format.”

“CJ E&M will bring fresh and innovative programs to MIPTV and seek various partnerships to create more original IP.” —Jangho Seo Crazy Market

Comarex Save to Win / Separated by Love / Runaways The play-along game show Save to Win is being offered as a format by Comarex. The series gives savvy shoppers the chance to win big money by showcasing their knowledge of everyday household brands. Two teams compete in shopping-themed games in a studio store. Comarex is also offering the telenovela Separated by Love, which follows the story of a young woman who leaves her country home in search of a better life in the big city. She falls in love with Alejandro, not knowing that he is the son of the woman who swindled her parents and had them killed. Another novela highlight is Runaways. The story centers on four women who, for different reasons, end up in prison. They decide to break out together and try to restore their lives.

Runaways

Content Media 21 Thunder / Date My Dad / Cries from Syria The prime-time drama 21 Thunder makes its premiere this summer on CBC in Canada. “21 Thunder offers international audiences not only a story of love, crime, race, sex and athletic glory but also a core message about how this group of kids/footballers and the coaches all unite, even when life is spiraling out of control,” says Greg Phillips, the president of distribution at Content Media. The comedic drama Date My Dad tells the story of a former professional baseball player who is a single dad raising three daughters. It delivers “a very entertaining perspective on modern life and relationships, exploring all the universally relatable drama, dilemmas and hilarity of family life,” Phillips says. The documentary Cries from Syria made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and debuted on HBO in the U.S.

“We’re looking forward to working with our broadcast partners to ensure these new titles reach their strong potential around the world.”

—Greg Phillips 21 Thunder 26 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

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Deutsche Welle/DW Transtel euromaxx / The Migration Millennium The diverse range of programming that DW Transtel has to offer from Deutsche Welle is on full display. The long-running euromaxx program has been revamped with a new look and feel, though it continues to showcase European luxury and lifestyles with an exclusive look at art, culture, fashion and entertainment. The Migration Millennium delves deep into the issues surrounding migration. “With topics like migration, we know that we will strike a chord with viewers worldwide,” says Petra Schneider, the company’s director of sales and distribution. “euromaxx has proven year in and year out to be one of the most popular titles we have to offer, and this year, it’s got a new look, too. We can’t wait to meet with distributors to see what they have to say about our new lineup.”

“This year’s MIPTV gives us a great opportunity to showcase our full range of captivating factual entertainment.”

—Petra Schneider The Migration Millennium

Dick Clark Productions Fail Army / Golden Globe Awards / Virtuosos The user-generated clip series Fail Army hits 100 episodes this year. “Fail Army continues to surpass even our highest expectations,” says Bob Kennedy, the senior VP of sales and acquisitions at Dick Clark Productions. “Fail Army integrates amazing brand awareness with the successful production of an internet sensation that has the look and feel of a quality television show.” The company also has in its catalog awards programming such as the Golden Globes.

“The Globes keeps growing in stature, as well as audience, year on year, thanks in part to our production values and the increased high quality now seen in scripted television,” Kennedy says. Another company highlight is Virtuosos, a format based on the hit Hungarian classical-music competition featuring highly talented children and young adults.

“We have some great series currently in development that we look forward to sharing soon.”

—Bob Kennedy Virtuosos Dumb

Dori Media Group Dumb / The Best of All / Complicated The crime drama Dumb has been a hit for HOT in Israel, with ratings success leading to second and third seasons being ordered. The series is about an actress who goes undercover as a student to help her ex-boyfriend, who was arrested for dealing drugs. Another drama on the Dori Media Group slate is Complicated, which has been commissioned for a second season. The series centers on a man who is twice divorced with three daughters yet still believes he can find the perfect love. The company’s catalog also houses the new shiny-floor game show The Best of All, which puts the theory of the “wisdom of the crowd” to the test. Nadav Pali, the president and CEO of Dori Media Group, says the game show is “different and interesting— just what buyers are looking for.”

“Dori Media’s catalog consist of almost 100 titles, offering each client the best solution for their needs.”

—Nadav Pali

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Heart of the City

Eccho Rights Phi / Heart of the City / Maria Wern From the Turkish drama powerhouse Ay Yapim, Heart of the City is penned by the same writer as the hits Fatmagül and Forbidden Love. Another Turkish drama highlight is Phi, which is offered as a 20x60-minute series. There’s also the Swedish title Maria Wern, which has been on the air for a number of years already. “On the Turkish drama side, we are representing the most innovative and high-quality productions in the marketplace,” says Fredrik af Malmborg, the managing director of Eccho Rights. “We are moving deeper into the world of international co-productions as we have now established a brilliant team of very knowledgeable experts in the field, and we continue to establish and strengthen our relationships with new producers in exciting territories such as India and Korea, which are bringing more great content to the world.”

“Heart of the City is another amazing story from Ay Yapim.”

—Fredrik af Malmborg

Electus International The Toy Box / Running Wild with Bear Grylls / Bellator Debuting April 7 on ABC in the U.S., The Toy Box is billed as the ultimate toy-competition series. “Thanks to our great partners at Mattel and our host Eric Stonestreet (Modern Family), we’ve created a show that combines the best of a business format with the entertaining world of kid judges, all the while giving toy inventors an opportunity to fulfill their lifelong dream of seeing their toy produced for children all over the world,” says John Pollak, Electus’s president of worldwide television and Electus International. The company is also offering Running Wild with Bear Grylls and the MMA action of Bellator. “These are two of our biggest returning titles, and their proven track records have given buyers all over the world the confidence that they will be successful for them as well,” says Pollak.

“Our mission is to continually deliver the best content from the biggest broadcasters around the world.”

—John Pollak The Toy Box

Entertainment One Mary Kills People/Gap Year/Full Frontal with Samantha Bee The provocative drama Mary Kills People is set in the world of assisted suicide. “It’s a unique idea paired with bold, complex characters and gripping story lines that brilliantly balances drama with some humor,” says Stuart Baxter, the president of Entertainment One (eOne) Television International. Gap Year, formerly known as Foreign Bodies, is a series about a motley group of travelers who embark on a three-month trip across Asia. “This charming series features a diverse cast as well as smart and witty writing that explores the pleasures and pains of traveling,” Baxter says. The eOne slate also includes Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Baxter calls it a “strong factual series that has taken the late-night talk shows by storm with its candid and satirical coverage of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

“Our strategy is to partner with the best creative talent, resulting in highend, compelling programming that will appeal to audiences globally.”

—Stuart Baxter Mary Kills People 30 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

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Escapade Media Charged & Disbarred / JC Tha Barber / Rottnest & the Mystery Islands MIPTV sees Escapade Media release the in-production 4K series Charged & Disbarred. “This series offers the viewer a unique twist on crime programming by exposing those who we turn to in times of trouble and who abuse their position of power and trust,” says Jessica Stonehouse, the company’s head of sales, partnerships and business development for the U.K. and U.S. Also done in 4K, JC Tha Barber follows celebrity barber JC Hammons as he heads into the homes and dressing rooms of stars from the worlds of film, hip-hop and professional sports. Available as a commission and presale, Rottnest & the Mystery Islands is currently in the development phase. It was filmed using high-speed 4K Ultra HD cameras combined with 4K underwater and drone footage and comes with an interactive VR experience.

“This show exposes the evolutionary secrets of the amazing animals on Rottnest and the Mystery Islands.”

—Jessica Stonehouse Rottnest & the Mystery Islands

FremantleMedia International American Gods / Kate Humble: This Woman’s World / Alarm for Cobra 11 Bryan Fuller (Hannibal) and Michael Green (Heroes) worked with noted author Neil Gaiman to bring his international best-selling novel American Gods to the small screen. “Featuring fantasy and [touching on] old and new mythology, the series has universal themes that will resonate with a global audience,” says Jens Richter, the CEO of FremantleMedia International. The company is also presenting Kate Humble: This Woman’s World (working title).

The series “explores a subject at the forefront of global politics: what it means to be a woman in today’s society,” Richter explains. The long-running German series Alarm for Cobra 11 is on offer as well. “The show promises highoctane episodes ready to thrill both established and new audiences,” says Richter.

“We have nearly 70 new or returning bold and ambitious series in our catalog and cannot wait to showcase the titles in Cannes.”

—Jens Richter Kate Humble: This Woman’s World

Gaumont The Art of Crime / The Frozen Dead / Hannibal The six-part murder-mystery event The Frozen Dead was shot in a Nordic noir style but is set in the French Pyrenees.

The series is directed by Laurent Herbiet, who also directed Malaterra, the French version of Broadchurch. Set in the world of art, the series The Art of Crime pairs a hot-headed detective with an art historian from the Louvre. Their relationship is “like fire and ice as they delve into mysteries that that really capture French culture and history in a way that we believe is a first,” says Vanessa Shapiro, the president of worldwide distribution, TV and animation at Gaumont. She adds, “After a very successful run, we are now entering our second-cycle sales for the award-winning Hannibal.” The series explores the early relationship between Dr. Hannibal Lecter and the young FBI criminal profiler Will Graham.

“With the procedural drama The Art of Crime, we are taking crime series to a new level to intrigue audiences all over the world.”

—Vanessa Shapiro The Art of Crime 32 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

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GRB Entertainment Arabia Motors / Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter / Day 5 Viewers enter a world of lavish lifestyles and motorheads in Arabia Motors, which GRB Entertainment is bringing to international buyers at MIPTV. The show follows the partners of the most popular car magazine in the Middle East as they increase their readership and test-drive and profile cars in the region, from classics to luxury collectibles to the most expensive ones ever made. The thriller Day 5 is set in the aftermath of a fatal sleep epidemic. “Day 5 capitalizes on the post-apocalyptic trend that has been so popular lately— if you fall asleep, you die,” says Michael Lolato, the senior VP of international distribution. “Just like in The Walking Dead, these people are obsessed with survival, making this great, high-anxiety drama.” There’s also the roundtable interview series Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter.

“In addition to the great factual and unscripted content that GRB Entertainment is known for, we have begun distributing films.”

—Michael Lolato Arabia Motors

IM Global Television Scripted / Unscripted & alternative / International distribution & co-productions Under IM Global Television’s scripted division, led by Mark Stern as president, there’s a slate that includes an adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle with Noah Hawley at FX; Night Terror with Bryan Singer; the music series Muscle Shoals, executive produced by Johnny Depp; and I, Rebel, which counts David S. Goyer as an executive producer.

Unscripted and alternative is also a focus for IM Global Television since bringing on Phil Gurin as president last year to spearhead these efforts. The company’s distribution division, led by Eli Shibley, is the international licensing and coproduction hub for its third-party TV catalog, including the Spike Lee-directed documentary Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall, the Arabic-language drama Justice and the Funny Or Die parody film iSteve.

Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall

Incendo Early Release / Sometimes the Good Kill / Love Blossoms Two new thrillers lead Incendo’s slate: Early Release, starring Kelli Williams, and Sometimes the Good Kill, featuring Susie Abromeit. There is also a Hallmark movie in the catalog for the first time, Love Blossoms, which stars Shantel VanSanten and Victor Webster. The story follows a perfumer who enlists the help of an inexperienced botanist in order to come up with a signature scent by Valentine’s Day. Their professional relationship soon turns romantic, but it threatens to derail their deadline. “We are excited to be branching out into new types of films, including romantic comedy and Christmas movies,” says Gavin Reardon, the company’s head of international sales and co-productions.

“We are proud of the programming we produce,” he adds.

“For us, this is not just television; it is our art.”

“Broadcasters around the world praise the style and quality of Incendo films.”

—Gavin Reardon Love Blossoms 34 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

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Inter Medya Endless Love / In Between / Join Instant Young lovers Nihan and Kemal live in the same neighborhood but are from different walks of life in the drama series Endless Love from Turkish producer Ay Yapim. “Endless Love is one of our most important projects that we are taking to MIPTV,” says Can Okan, the founder and CEO of Inter Medya. Alongside Endless Love, the company is presenting In Between, which Okan describes as “one of the most successful dramas.” He adds, “The production quality of our titles is world-class, and the strength of their stories is quite well accepted worldwide.” The Turkish dramas in the Inter Medya catalog are also “fast-moving and very exciting,” Okan says. The company is growing its formats offering as well, with the online interactive quiz elimination game show Join Instant being a top title.

“This year, we celebrate our 25th anniversary, and as part of that, we have decided to change our name to Inter Medya.”

—Can Okan In Between

Lionsgate Entertainment Dirty Dancing / Candy Crush / Ten Days in the Valley Lionsgate Entertainment is presenting an adaptation of the beloved romantic drama Dirty Dancing, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2017. “Dirty Dancing has been a hit for 30 years, and our aim was to build upon the original and introduce the story to a whole new audience around the world, as well as appeal to those who know and love the theatrical movie,” says Peter Iacono, the president of international television and digital distribution at Lionsgate. Based on the popular gaming app, Candy Crush is a new prime-time physical competition show executive produced by Matt Kunitz (Wipeout, Fear Factor). Another Lionsgate highlight is Ten Days in the Valley, a drama starring Kyra Sedgwick. Iacono describes the show as “a tense and dynamic thriller series, which will have audiences gripped from the very start.”

“Lionsgate is known for making platform-defining programming that stands out in the marketplace.”

—Peter Iacono Dirty Dancing

MarVista Entertainment Shockwave: Countdown to Disaster / Negative / Love at First Bark MarVista Entertainment is introducing the new movies Shockwave: Countdown to Disaster, a disaster thriller; Negative, an action spy thriller; and Love at First Bark, an endearing romance. “Our team is always seeking input, which is why MarVista Entertainment and its movies have a reputation for delivering what the marketplace wants,” says Fernando Szew, the company’s CEO. “Our clients and their viewers want action, intrigue, thrills and mystery, and a little romance too, which contributed to the three films we’ll be focusing on at MIPTV. Additionally, we are delivering with our thrillers stellar special effects and cinematography that give Shockwave and Negative a high-production-value, cinematic quality.” Along with expanding its movie business, MarVista has been working to bolster the slate of series in its development pipeline.

“MarVista Entertainment works closely with buyers and channel partners to determine the types of movie projects and actors they want to see on their networks.”

—Fernando Szew Negative 36 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

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1992 Foundation of Inter Medya as a company distrib- 2011 Ahmet Ziyalar joins Inter Medya as Chief Operating uting American feature films to Turkish TV channels. Officer. Inter Medya signs an agreement with Ay Yapim, 1994 The number of feature films Inter Medya dis- one of Turkey’s leading production houses, for the exclutributes exceeds 1,200. Those titles include block- sive distribution of Red Scarf. Now, the partnership busters such as The Silence of the Lambs, The between the company and Ay Yapim comprises the distribution of the series 20 Minutes, Black Money Love and Terminator, Platoon and RoboCop. Endless Love.

1999 Inter Medya expands its operation beyond Turkey to Central and Eastern European countries, 2015 Inter Medya builds a creative team internally and begins to develop and present game show, reality TV and especially Romania and Bulgaria. adventure formats to the world.

2000 Inter Medya expands into the CIS countries.

2016 Inter Medya produces Fifty Fifty, a format devel2003 Inter Medya’s content reaches over 5,000 hours oped by its own creative team, for ATV, one of Turkey’s in the countries where it operates. leading TV channels. On top of that, the company is 2008 Inter Medya signs worldwide distribution awarded the first and second prizes for earning the two agreements with some of Turkey’s most successful highest international sales revenues in 2015 for Black production houses. The titles that the company Money Love and Black Rose, respectively. For format begins to distribute include Broken Wings, the most sales, the company signs a distribution agreement with expensive TV series at the time, produced by Avsar Secuoya Group, one of Spain’s leading media companies.

Film; Star Fish, the most watched daily daytime TV 2017 Inter Medya celebrates its 25th year. The company’s show in Turkey; and One Thousand and One Nights, logo is modernized to symbolize its international idenwhich becomes a television phenomenon not only in Turkey but in all the countries where it is broadcast. tity. In addition, the company creates a set of sub-brands under the larger umbrella of Inter Medya, reflecting its 2009 Inter Medya becomes the exclusive distributor various departments and operations. Due to the expandfor all the content produced by Avsar Film, Focus ing workload and staff, the company moves into new Film and Medyavizyon. offices inside Istanbloom, one of the newest and most 2010 Inter Medya becomes the exclusive worldwide prestigious skyscrapers in Istanbul. The company conrepresentative of Fox TV Turkey and the only distrib- tinues to grow its partnership with Secuoya Group by developing and distributing new projects worldwide. utor of its content.

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By Mansha Daswani

Founded in Istanbul in 1992 as a domestic distribution outfit, Inter Medya has been riding the dizi Turkish drama wave for the last few years, establishing itself as one of the genre’s most successful distributors around the world. Aligning with leading producers, Inter Medya has created a catalog that includes Black Money Love, sold to more than 100 markets, and Black Rose, licensed to over 70 countries. Can Okan, the founder and CEO of Inter Medya, tells World Screen about the company’s evolution, cracking new markets and expanding into format production and distribution.

WS: What kind of company did you want to create when you established Inter Medya?

OKAN: Many new private television broadcasters were launching in the early 1990s and I established Inter Medya in 1992 as a content distribution company, mainly supplying content to those channels.

We started our business by buying feature films, predominantly from the United States, and selling them to Turkish TV channels. In time, also compelled by the economic conditions within Turkey, we decided to broaden our operational area to Central and Eastern European countries as well as CIS territories, where we became an important content distributor.

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WS: How did you move into representing TV series?

OKAN: Towards the end of 2008, due to the recession, in order to minimize our risk, we decided to pull away from our “buyer/reseller” identity and assume a sales agent role. In a period when Turkish TV series were becoming more and more popular around the world, we started to become the sales representative for some of Turkey’s most known producers, whom I also knew personally.

At the time, we were undertaking the sales of all of Focus Film’s daily daytime series, Avsar Film’s weekly primetime series as well as all of TMC’s series, which were very successful in Turkey and abroad.

WS: How did you start building relationships with Turkey’s top drama producers?

OKAN: Before I established Inter Medya, I had advanced to the position of general manager at our family company Fono Film, which is Turkey’s most advanced postproduction facility. Almost all of Turkey’s production houses were using Fono Film’s services and I knew them quite well, so started to work with them again. This time, however, instead of providing them with post-production services and taking their money for it, I was making them earn more money by distributing their TV series and feature films in the international market.

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WS: Tell us about your commitment to providing the best level of service to your broadcaster clients.

OKAN: Since I was a buyer for many years, I know very well how important it is for a broadcaster to have wellprepared broadcast and publicity materials. For that reason, we made it a point to send all our broadcaster clients the highest quality broadcast materials and the richest publicity materials in the quickest possible way. At one market, the acquisitions manager of a channel that we had not sold anything to yet said, “I hear a lot of great things about your company’s delivery and materials policy.” That day, I thought to myself, we must be doing a good job.

WS: How has the Turkish drama-distribution business evolved over the last few years?

OKAN: The increase in sales prices, hand in hand with the economic status of the MENA region where Turkish drama series first gained popularity, have definitely been a trigger in the exportation of Turkish content. The marketing and advertising efforts that we carry out together with other Turkish distribution companies, as well as our expansion into Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, have also tremendously increased the number of territories where Turkish content was sold to. This number is still increasing every day. Of course, in the past couple of years, the opening of the Latin American market to Turkish content and the expansion of Turkish drama series in that region has been an important factor, too.

WS: What have been your best markets, and where do you wish to be doing more?

OKAN: Even though local productions have increased in this territory, the MENA region is still a major market for us. In addition to that, Latin America also became one of our most important markets in a short amount of time. Although there have been some declines from time to time, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia are still territories where good quality productions always find a buyer. Recently, we started to receive a lot of interest from Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

I believe that we will quickly spread in these newer markets just like we did in all the countries and regions where Turkish content has been broadcast.

WS: What led to your move into formats?

OKAN: Inter Medya had managed to reach an important position as a series and feature film distributor in the international market and we decided to start a format business in order to increase our product diversity and extend our network of buyers and our sales territories.

We started to grow our catalog with formats conceived by our in-house creative team, as well as formats codeveloped with creators from various countries, including Turkey, Israel, France and Italy. At last year’s MIPCOM we also proudly signed an agreement with Secuoya Group, one of Spain’s leading companies in the format business. Secuoya Group trusted us with the sales of many of their formats in a large number of territories.

We are currently working on the development of some collective projects with Secuoya, which we intend to present in the international market very soon.

WS: Do you intend to enter into the production business as well?

OKAN: While we were planning our format business, we also built an in-house production team to undertake future productions. Last year, we produced a ten-episode season of our format Fifty Fifty for ATV, one of Turkey’s biggest broadcasters. We also completed the production of the pilots of two of our own formats, The Box Challenge and Guess Who? I truly believe that you will soon hear Inter Medya’s name as the producer or co-producer of a number of formats in Turkey as well as other countries.

WS: What are your goals for Inter Medya’s business over the next one to two years?

OKAN: As always, we plan to boost the sales of Turkish drama series and feature films to newer regions and bigger masses. We also wish to become one of the main companies in the industry by taking solid steps into format development and production.

“35 years of friendship and seven years of business partnership have built a strong bond between Can and I. I am happy to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of Inter Medya with my partner in crime!”

—Ahmet Ziyalar, COO, Inter Medya 4/17 WORLD SCREEN 5

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Southside with You

Miramax Crow’s Blood / Miramax movies / Revolution Studios library The Japanese horror/drama Crow’s Blood, which marks Miramax’s first Asian series, stars two members of the hit J-pop group AKB48. The series is executive produced by Darren Lynn Bousman of the Saw film franchise. Miramax also boasts a wide array of new films, including Southside with You and Bridget Jones’s Baby. Additionally, Miramax is home to the Revolution Studios library, which includes xXx and xXx: State of the Union. “With the global boxoffice success of xXx: Return of Xander Cage, there’s a renewed interest in going back to the films that launched the franchise, and we’re proud to represent those titles and the rest of the Revolution Studios library,” says Joe Patrick, the executive VP of worldwide TV sales and home entertainment at Miramax.

“Our new films appeal to a broad range of demographics.”

—Joe Patrick

Multicom Entertainment Group Cuba Libre Collection / Larry King Presents… / Spike Team Since the beginning of 2017, Multicom Entertainment Group has acquired three new libraries, including more than 25 films and series featuring well-known stars and relevant topics. For MIPTV, Darrin Holender, the president of Multicom, is highlighting the Larry King Presents… package, which features factual, travel, documentary, food and news programs such as Larry King Now, PoliticKING with Larry King, Off the Grid with Jesse Ventura, The Real Girl’s Kitchen with Haylie Duff and Brown Bag Wine Tasting with William Shatner. Meanwhile, the Cuba Libre Collection is a trio of feature films about Cuba’s past, present and future. It features interviews with Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro and Hugo Chávez.

Another highlight is the animated series Spike Team, about six young women who play volleyball around the world.

“Multicom continues to grow and is very active in the marketplace.”

—Darrin Holender Larry King Now

Muse Distribution International The Kennedys: After Camelot / Bellevue / The Fixer Upper Mysteries Katie Holmes and Matthew Perry star in the event series The Kennedys: After Camelot. The four-hour miniseries looks at the Kennedy family after the murders of Jack and Bobby. “At MIPTV, Muse Distribution International will be completing the presale phase for The Kennedys: After Camelot, as well as for the mystery drama series Bellevue, starring Anna Paquin and Allen Leech,” says Shawn Rosengarten, the company’s VP of distribution. Bellevue is set in a small blue-collar mining town. Paquin (True Blood) stars as a cop whose personality puts her at odds with her straight-laced hometown. “Muse is also introducing two new franchises of MOWs produced for Hallmark Channel: The Fixer Upper Mysteries, starring Jewel, and The Emma Fielding Mysteries, starring Courtney Thorne-Smith,” Rosengarten says.

“Developing and producing event miniseries, series and movies with A-list talent enables Muse Entertainment productions to stand out.”

—Shawn Rosengarten The Fixer Upper Mysteries 4/17 WORLD SCREEN 45

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Nippon TV Mother / Meet Me There / Ghostwriter to the Rescue The drama Mother, which Nippon TV is offering as a scripted format, follows an elementary-school teacher who runs off with a child from her class that she believes is being abused at home. “Broadcast on Nippon TV in 2010, the series grabbed the attention of viewers due to the actresses’ powerful depiction of child abuse,” says Shigeko “Cindy” Chino, the senior director of international business development at Nippon TV. “Now reborn as one of the most tweeted about drama series in Turkey, Mother has become the talk of the international industry.” Nippon TV is also showcasing Meet Me There, which seeks to reunite couples. Ghostwriter to the Rescue stars celebrities who have made a name for themselves for being funny, romantic or dramatic and asks them to script a special moment for someone else.

“Visit us at MIPTV to find your perfect match from our collection of even more new formats we are unveiling.”

—Shigeko “Cindy” Chino Mother

ORF-Enterprise Wild Caribbean: Rhythms of Life / Mysteries of the Stone Age / Fast Forward The waters of the Caribbean islands are explored in Wild Caribbean: Rhythms of Life. “ORF’s world-renowned nature and wildlife brand Universum does us proud once again with its unique depiction in Wild Caribbean: Rhythms of Life, a three-part series featuring awe-inspiring and never-beforeseen 4K impressions of the Caribbean in spectacular action,” says Marion Camus-Oberdorfer, the head of international content sales at ORF-Enterprise. Mysteries of the Stone Age takes viewers back in time to explore the secrets of an ancient civilization. In the scripted arena, Fast Forward follows a female investigator working in Vienna’s criminal investigation department. Camus-Oberdorfer highlights the show’s “unique interpretation of an empowered woman combined with high action and crime sequences.”

“A wonderful selection awaits our buyers this year.”

—Marion Camus-Oberdorfer Fast Forward

Pure Flix/Quality Flix Encounter / Pure Flix Comedy All Stars / The Case for Christ The Pure Flix movie Encounter has inspired a new 8x26-minute series of the same name. “The mysterious tone, similar to The Twilight Zone, with an inspirational message, will resonate around the world,” says Ron Gell, the VP of international sales and distribution at Pure Flix/Quality Flix. The 13x26-minute Pure Flix Comedy All Stars, hosted by Sinbad, Jeff Allen and three-time Emmy Award winner Louie Anderson, is billed as the first family-friendly stand-up comedy series created for TV. The company is also promoting the film The Case for Christ, which is based on a worldwide best-selling book. The movie, which is being released in U.S. theaters and is available worldwide, follows an atheist reporter who learns that his wife has become born again, and he sets out to prove that Christianity is a cult.

“Our objective is to establish relationships with top distribution companies and broadcasters in all territories.”

—Ron Gell The Case for Christ 46 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

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Silver Wolf International Salam Ramadhan Korea / Salam Ramadhan UK / Morocco at the Crossroads The holy month of Ramadhan is the focus of Salam Ramadhan Korea and Salam Ramadhan UK, which Silver Wolf International is offering to MIPTV buyers. “The titles that we’ve highlighted aim to educate and enlighten audiences on a subject that not many people usually talk about,” says CEO Abdul Rashid Budin. Both Salam Ramadhan Korea and Salam Ramadhan UK examine how Muslims observe this special time. “The communities in each country observe the holy month differently based on the culture of the country they are in, etc.,” he says. “These titles are educational because most people think that it’s done the same way everywhere in the world, but what they do not know is that each country varies here and there.” Silver Wolf is also presenting Morocco at the Crossroads.

“Programs that have the ability to educate and evoke emotions will resonate with everyone.”

—Abdul Rashid Budin Salam Ramadhan Korea

Sky Vision Walking the Americas / Tin Star / Travelers Levison Wood undertakes a new journey in Walking the Americas, the third installment in the series. “Levison Wood’s Walking... franchise is unique in its blend of exciting adventure and authentic discovery,” says Jane Millichip, the managing director of Sky Vision. Kudos (Broadchurch) and Rowan Joffe (28 Weeks Later, The American) are behind the revenge thriller Tin Star, set in the Rocky Mountains. Tim Roth (The Hateful Eight) and Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) star in the ten-part series. Eric McCormack (Will & Grace, Perception) leads the action in the sci-fi series Travelers, which has been picked up for a second season by Showcase in Canada and Netflix. “Travelers is an intelligent and original concept with both high production values and entertainment at its heart,” says Millichip.

“Travelers has all the hallmarks of a long-running franchise with global appeal.”

—Jane Millichip Travelers

Smithsonian Channel America in Color / Aerial America / The Lost Tapes There is a range of new programming highlights coming to Smithsonian Channel, among them America in Color. “We are incredibly excited about America in Color, an epic new series that puts the color back into American history for the first time and brings the last century to life in a way that is unbelievably compelling,” says David Royle, the executive VP of programming and production at Smithsonian Channel.

“We are also very excited to be bringing the latest programs based on our landmark Aerial America series. These programs have sold worldwide, and now we’re adding Aerial Africa, Aerial New Zealand and Aerial Ireland. They are all shot in 4K/UHD and are visually stunning.” There are two new The Lost Tapes installments, The Lost Tapes: Pearl Harbor and The Lost Tapes: The LA Riots, as well.

“The key for us is finding partners who share our commitment to great dramatic storytelling, told with credibility and visual flair.”

—David Royle Aerial Ireland 48 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

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Sonar Entertainment The Son / Mr. Mercedes / The Shannara Chronicles Pierce Brosnan stars in The Son, a 10x1-hour series that Sonar Entertainment is presenting for buyers. Another company highlight is Mr. Mercedes, based on the best-selling novel by Stephen King. The series was adapted for television and executive produced by David E. Kelley (The Practice).

Sonar is also bringing to MIPTV the second season of The Shannara Chronicles, which counts as executive producers Jon Favreau, Al Gough and Miles Millar. “All three of these series are at the forefront of the convergence of feature film and scripted series television, which draws buyers, audiences and critics alike,” says David Ellender, the company’s president of global distribution and co-productions. Coming up for Sonar is Das Boot, an eight-part sequel to the acclaimed movie and novel.

“Our series have been attracting attention because of their high production values, riveting stories and talent in front of and behind the camera.”

—David Ellender The Son

Storybox Entertainment A Heavenly Christmas / Love Locks / Love at First Glance Kristin Davis (Sex and the City), Eric McCormack (Will & Grace) and Academy Award winner Shirley MacLaine (Terms of Endearment) headline the holiday movie A Heavenly Christmas. The real-life couple Rebecca Romijn (X-Men, The Librarians) and Jerry O’Connell (Scream Queens, Mistresses) star alongside each other in the romantic comedy/drama Love Locks. The story follows as a woman returns to Paris after 20 years and reconnects with her college boyfriend and first love.

Also in the romantic-comedy genre, Love at First Glance features Adrian Grenier (Entourage) and Amy Smart (Justified).

Francisco Gonzalez, the head of international at Storybox Entertainment, says that the A-list casts in these movies, “together with the best production value offered in the marketplace,” make them stand out for international buyers.

“We continue to bring the unique brand and breadth of original content from Crown Media Family Networks and its channels in the U.S. to the international market.”

—Francisco Gonzalez A Heavenly Christmas Trust Me

STUDIOCANAL Ride Upon the Storm / Something’s Rockin’ / Trust Me From Borgen creator Adam Price comes Ride Upon the Storm. The character-led story is produced by Camilla Hammerich (Borgen) and stars Lars Mikkelsen (House of Cards). Something’s Rockin’ is inspired by real events and tells the story of Radio Mercur, a pirate radio station founded by a small group of music-loving dreamers in the late ’50s.

The four-part drama Trust Me, set in Edinburgh, centers on a nurse who loses her job by whistleblowing and is forced to take drastic measures to provide for her daughter and start a new life. “With so many opportunities to view [programming] on multiple platforms, it’s even more important for distributors to deliver drama that can be established as a strong brand,” says Katrina Neylon, the executive VP of sales and marketing at STUDIOCANAL.

“We deliver mainstream programming that has global appeal.”

—Katrina Neylon

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The Story Lab Ninja Warrior / Game of Clones / Hall Pass The physical game show Ninja Warrior from TBS in Japan is distributed by The Story Lab and Dentsu. The show is “already a big hit across most of Western Europe and is now also in production for Antena 3 in Spain,” says Luci Sanan, the format director for The Story Lab. “Its ongoing appeal with family audiences is securing new license deals and recommissions with leading broadcasters in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands.” The Story Lab is launching Game of Clones, the latest innovative reality hit from youngest Media. The show offers a new twist on dating as it allows one singleton to create their ideal partner and then delivers eight of their creations. Hall Pass, meanwhile, sees what happens when couples allow each other to behave as if they are single for 72 hours.

“We are constantly scouting for premium entertainment content ideas from all over the world.”

—Luci Sanan Ninja Warrior

TV Azteca International Nothing Personal / Iron Lady / Missing Bride A story filled with action, love and political suspense, Nothing Personal will be a central focus for TV Azteca International’s sales team at MIPTV. Another key highlight is Iron Lady, about a woman nicknamed the Iron Prosecutor who is on a mission to bring down the drug lord responsible for the death of her father. The series is based on a true story. There is a mystery at the center of Missing Bride. It tells the story of Francisco, who discovers many family secrets while searching for his mother, who went missing the day before her wedding. Fidela Navarro, the director of TV Azteca International, says the style and production values of these series are sure to grab the attention of international buyers. Another company highlight is Timeless Love.

“These productions walk the line between telenovelas and series that incorporate innovation.”

—Fidela Navarro Timeless Love

Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution Prison Break / APB / The Mick Prison Break is back with a new event series that features original stars such as Wentworth Miller, Dominic Purcell and Sarah Wayne Callies. In the all-new event series, clues surface that suggest a previously thought-to-be-dead Michael Scofield may be alive. Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution is also offering the new police drama APB. The show, which features a high-tech twist, comes from executive producer/director Len Wiseman (Lucifer, Sleepy Hollow) and executive producers and writers Matt Nix (Burn Notice) and Trey Callaway (The Messengers). The single-camera comedy The Mick, meanwhile, centers on Mackenzie, a.k.a. Mickey, played by Kaitlin Olson (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). Mickey is an unapologetic degenerate, who suddenly finds herself stuck in an affluent town raising her spoiled niece and nephews.

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Vision Films Executor / Death Fighter / Boone: The Bounty Hunter Four new TV-friendly action movies are among the highlights Vision Films is showcasing in Cannes. Executor stars Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas) and Mischa Barton (The O.C.) and tells the story of a ruthless assassin who reevaluates his life after saving a young boy from one of his own assassination attempts. Don “The Dragon” Wilson (Batman Forever) and Cynthia Rothrock (Eye for an Eye) lead the cast of Death Fighter. The film follows an American cop who teams up with a mercenary in Thailand to avenge his mentor’s death.

Lise Romanoff, the managing director and CEO of worldwide distribution at Vision Films, is also presenting Boone: The Bounty Hunter, featuring former WWE superstar John Hennigan, as well as Ultimate Justice, about a team of former elite soldiers who are unexpectedly called back into action.

“In addition to attending MIPTV to license our current lineup, Vision Films is looking to acquire new films and documentaries for domestic release.”

—Lise Romanoff Boone: The Bounty Hunter

ZDF Enterprises Big Pacific / Maltese / Dance Academy: The Comeback The central factual highlight for ZDF Enterprises (ZDFE) is Big Pacific, which will have its World Premiere Screening during MIPDoc on Saturday, April 1, and will also be shown at the market on Tuesday, April 4, during a UHD/4K screening program. “In our groundbreaking series, the world’s best cinematographers, producers and researchers capture its most guarded secrets to share with viewers everywhere,” says Alexander Coridass, the president and CEO of ZDFE. Then there is Maltese, a crime show that will also have a special screening in Cannes. Further highlights include Before We Die, a Nordic noir that is set in Stockholm, and Dance Academy: The Comeback, a feature film based on the popular liveaction drama series for teens.

“We work with renowned producers and popular actors— some of the greatest talents of their generation.”

—Alexander Coridass Dance Academy: The Comeback

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Michael Weatherly or 13 seasons on NCIS, Michael Weatherly was known to viewers around the world as Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, the handsome, confident, street-smart, skilled, wisecracking, movie-loving agent who fought crime for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. When word leaked early last year that Weatherly had decided to leave NCIS, fans were bereft. But Weatherly understood his responsibility to the show and worked with the writers to craft a fitting exit for DiNozzo. Though fans were hoping that they would see Weatherly reprise DiNozzo in guest appearances on NCIS, it was announced that he would be the lead in a new show, Bull, about an intriguing, somewhat aloof, yet highly effective, trial consultant. Airing on CBS right after NCIS, Bull is one of the highest-rated new shows this season. Weatherly talks about creating this new character, his gratitude to CBS and his

By Anna Carugati continued affection for NCIS.

WS: How did Bull come about and at what point did you become involved in the project?

WEATHERLY: I had made the decision to leave NCIS, and I was concentrating on developing a few things and squaring myself with the NCIS experience, making sure that [DiNozzo’s story] was resolved correctly. Another CBS drama was the last thing on my mind! Having said all that, I got a phone call about the script, which I read over a weekend in January 2016. I thought it was different than the police procedural stuff that I had done before. I loved the psychological aspect, and I loved who was involved in the show: Rodrigo García, who did In Treatment at HBO, Paul Attanasio, who played a very big role in bringing the TV show House to the world, and Steven Spielberg—we don’t have to say anything more about him! The really wild part of it was Dr. Phil McGraw, whom I had met before; I understood that he was an extremely interesting guy with a background in trial consultation and analysis. He had worked with Oprah and many other people and companies. I talked to my manager, and he said, This probably won’t happen, but let’s go through the motions. Lo and behold, within a very short period, I found myself on a set in New York City playing a guy named Bull, while I was still shooting NCIS. I was flying back every weekend to see my kids, and it’s really been a whirlwind since the end of NCIS and the beginning of Bull.

I’m so excited that Bull has sold to over 200 territories and is going to get sampled by a huge number of people, and I hope they like it.

Bull is a show about human behavior as it pertains to jury selection, but it also asks, What’s the judge thinking? What

are the witnesses thinking? In an election year like the one we’ve had, not just with the Trumpness but with the Brexit and what is happening all around the world, it seemed to be the right time for a show about human behavior.

WS: How did you prepare for the role and what research did you do?

WEATHERLY: I prepared by reading the script many times, which is usually your first clue. I’m a little bit of a lateral thinker and have been known to digress, so I let myself go and digress and I started watching a lot of different aspects of jury consulting. The O.J. Simpson documentary O.J.: Made in America was airing at the time. I watched that and found it so interesting that they used a jury consultant during that trial, someone who was very much like Jason Bull. I watched a lot of Italian movies, particularly Fellini. I felt there was something absurd and playful combined with cryptic storytelling. So I found myself thinking of Bull when I watched 8½ and La Dolce Vita, and that’s where Bull’s glasses came from. I was thinking of Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. It was a smorgasbord of little samples that I put myself through. What I found, through all of those different tiles that made up the ultimate mosaic of Jason Bull, was that he is a very compartmented, fragmented person, who can conduct everyone else’s symphony but his own. And on some level he was a bit of a mystery even to himself. Then I thought, OK, I won’t make any more decisions about him until we start shooting. I learn more about him every episode. I try not to say he wouldn’t do something because we may think we know who we are, but then 4/17 WORLD SCREEN 57

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solve the puzzle and put all those things together, maybe not as the writer intended, but for the audience. It takes a huge amount of effort to prepare for Bull. It’s a harder job.

Bull has emerged not only as one of the strongest performers of the 2016—17 season in the U.S., but also as a significant hit globally, with CBS Studios International licensing the show into 200-plus markets.

we find ourselves in a new situation and can be radically redefined by circumstances. To me, Bull is not Gibbs [Leroy Jethro Gibbs from NCIS], right? But I have this big poster of Marcello Mastroianni in the film The Stranger hanging in my dressing room, and any time I’m trying to put myself into the role of Jason Bull, I will spend a little time gazing at Marcello’s painted face in that poster. I’ll think, all right, a little bit cold, a little bit removed, a little bit sensual and playful.

I like to pull inspiration from unpredictable places because I find that juxtapositions can make a character more interesting. It’s my job now to make sure that the stories are as good as they can be, and that people are allowed to access Bull and go on a journey with him. We will see. It’s a funny thing when you are building a character, the way that he presents himself to the world—the glasses, the hairdo, the sweater that he wears underneath the suit, which is a bit of a therapist’s cardigan—is a very fastidious and specific series of choices. I find that Bull is all about that, which means I really can’t get lazy and relaxed when playing him. He’s the opposite of DiNozzo in a lot of ways, so that’s fun, too.

WS: How much research do the writers do and what consultants do you have on the show to make sure the trial analysis is accurate?

WEATHERLY: We have an executive producer on the show who has done jury consulting. I leave it up to the professionals to make sure that we’re doing things moderately truthfully. Anytime you are doing a medical show or a cop show, you have to compress time, so sometimes things can get a little unrealistic, but overall I’m always trying to make sure that the behavior is as realistic as possible.

WS: In a previous interview, you told me that you had a unique way of preparing for a scene on NCIS. You said that you didn’t work on the script the night before a shoot, rather, during a shoot you would listen very carefully to the other actors and get into the scene as the camera moved in from long shots to close-ups. Are you using the same approach on Bull?

WEATHERLY: It’s a totally different approach because DiNozzo was this big, crashing, noisy character and Bull is much more of a main sail or rudder. You need to know where you’re going with a character like Bull. A lot of acting is about solving a crossword puzzle, and for me, the best part is being challenged to make these connections and

WS: As the lead actor, what atmosphere do you want on set? I’ve read that the NCIS set was extremely cordial and like a family.

Are there elements of that set that you want to bring to Bull?

WEATHERLY: I do enjoy a very loose sense of camaraderie, and the feeling that we are all in this together. Whether you are a dolly grip or an electrician or a prop man or an actor, we are all there on set. The camera only shows the people wearing makeup, but there are a lot of people that make every episode of television come together—it’s a huge undertaking. So, given the size and the expense of the show, I do have a more relaxed approach to the on-set vibe, if you will. What that entails mostly is playing a little bit of music, making people laugh, reminding everyone that this is not brain surgery. My wife is a primary care doctor, and she reminds me all the time that acting is not brain surgery!

WS: You played Tony DiNozzo for 13 seasons. Was it difficult for you to make the transition to Jason Bull? Was there any wisecracking or anything about Tony that rose to the surface in your performance of Bull?

WEATHERLY: When you are playing somebody like DiNozzo there is definitely a habitual go-to, whether it’s comedy or facial expressions or the way you pitch your voice. So I did a lot of work, and over the first few episodes of Bull, I tried to hone that. I did a series called Dark Angel for a couple of years before NCIS. One of the biggest compliments I ever received on NCIS was when I was working with this actor and halfway through shooting a scene he said, Oh my God, you’re that guy from the Jessica Alba show—which had been off the air only a couple of years at that time. I said, Yeah, Dark Angel. And he said, I watched every episode. You were in the wheelchair and you were skinny [laughs] and you had glasses. I took it as high praise that I was invisible. It’s funny, people didn’t think I had a sense of humor when I was on Dark Angel, and then after playing DiNozzo, people thought I did. People always assume that you’re the character you are playing, and that’s fine; I have no issue with it. I’m just very grateful that CBS gave me the opportunity and had faith in me to try and create a guy named Bull. What a strange new world for them. It would have been much easier for CBS just to do DiNozzo 2.0—DiNozzo in Europe with his own team of agents. I wasn’t interested in doing that either, and CBS, very much to their credit, never tried to turn Bull into an NCIS kind of show. And I am the number one fan of NCIS. I’ve been touting it for a decade and a half. But Bull is a different show, and it can appeal to the same audience because there is resolution at the end of the episode and there is insight into why we do the things we do. There is also a colorful cast of characters that the audience can plug into and feel an affinity for. I don’t know if people see themselves in these characters, but that’s a tried-and-true formula for a lot of television.

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PIERCE BROSNAN ith his charm, disarming good looks and rich, baritone Irish brogue, Pierce Brosnan has graced the stage as well as the large and small screens. He trained in the theater in London before moving to Los Angeles, where he won the role of a thief-turned-private-investigator in the popular TV series Remington Steele. He then followed in the footsteps of Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton in the James Bond franchise, starring as 007 in four films, including GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. He set up his own production company, Irish DreamTime, and produced numerous features, including The Thomas Crown Affair and The Matador. Brosnan returns to television in Sonar Entertainment’s The Son, a family saga that spans three generations, which is based on Philipp Meyer’s eponymous novel and will air on AMC. Brosnan plays patriarch Eli McCullough, who sets out to build a ranching and oil

By Anna Carugati dynasty in Texas after suffering great loss early in life.

WS: How did you hear about The Son and what appealed to you about the project?

BROSNAN: I thought I was going to rush and make a movie, but it fell apart. I said to my agent, I don’t want to sit around on my backside, I want to work. He said, You’ve been offered an AMC series called The Son. I said, I know that book! And he said, The scripts for five episodes are coming over to you today.

I read them, I enjoyed them, and I had a meeting the next day with the writers and producers. My wife and I went to CAA and we did the deal by the end of the day. It was as simple as that. What appealed to me was the character of Eli. I identified strongly with this man as a father, as someone who is a survivalist, and as someone who, in his case, was burnished by violence and the loss of three families by the age of 40. There was something of an archetypal American hero about him. Against all odds, he’s bringing his family into the 20th century. He’s a forward-thinking man. He’s a man, as I said, who was burnished by the greatest brutality that could be bestowed on someone—losing his mother and father, then another family and a Comanche family—and he still manages to have forward motion in his life. And the writing appealed to me—Philipp Meyer’s writing is so glorious! We had him on the set with us every day and that was a luxury unto itself.

WS: Eli has an extremely dark view of human nature. Is it hard to inhabit a character whose traits are very different from your own?

BROSNAN: You can lend yourself to those traits very easily if you have the imagination, the wherewithal and some education of life and humankind. That’s my job as an actor—to interpret that violence and that malevolence of mankind, which you can read every day in the newspaper and see on the news every night. Most people don’t have to go to that place, but if you’re an actor, whether you choose a Jacobean or Shakespearean tragedy, the story is swamped in blood and gore and what man does to man. There is a great release and satisfaction in portraying these types of characters and walking a tightrope with the audience, so you don’t lose them. You’re toying with the emotions of an audience, or you’re trying to take them to a place that might be uncomfortable for them without losing them. That’s part of the challenge of playing Eli, but what softens him is his granddaughter, so there is a theatrical device there that you can use. He is a good man, he loves his sons, he has the greatest love for his family and he is of good heart. But he will let nothing stand in the way of getting what he wants.

WS: You mentioned Eli’s granddaughter, with whom he has a unique relationship. She turns out to be very successful in the oil industry.

BROSNAN: He identifies most strongly with her and also wants to protect her because he knows that it’s a very dangerous era for a woman to grow up in and he doesn’t want anything to befall her. She is the one who is most like Eli. She is the one who makes his world turn and the one that he lives for.

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Pierce Brosnan plays Eli McCullough in Sonar’s The Son, which premieres on AMC this spring.

WS: The television industry has changed enormously since you starred in Remington Steele. Did you see a difference in the way The Son was produced and shot?

BROSNAN: The mechanics are the same, but yes, the production values on this were superb. It’s like making a 10-hour feature film, really. I sat with the producers beforehand, and they showed me the technicians and the people they were using and their credentials were impeccable. Then you just hit the road and you do it. It’s a TV schedule, so it’s fast, which I like because that’s how I was trained when I came to America back in 1981 and I did Remington Steele.

That never leaves you—that repetition, that fierce scheduling—which I like. Sometimes in movies, a performance can die on the vine because you have so much time on your hands. Working on The Son was very agreeable to me. I loved working down in Austin, Texas, though the heat was fairly severe. I have said if we do [another season] I’d like to go later in the year just because it’s brutal.

WS:What projects are in the works at your production company?

BROSNAN: I lost my producing partner Beau Marie St. Clair last year. We shared 30 years of friendship and many years of making movies, including The Thomas Crown Affair, The Matador and Evelyn. My wife Keely and I are now Irish DreamTime, and she has just completed her first documentary, Poisoning Paradise, about pesticides and GMOs [genetically modified organisms] on the island of Kauai. The film won Best Documentary at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival. Now, Keely and I are looking at material that has been in operation for some time in our company. We have spent a year mourning Beau’s passing and now Keely and I, as husband and wife, will step out there and try and make movies together. We have two boys; one is at USC studying film, and

the other is going to be out the door soon enough. This allows Keely and me to have a life together and go and have some fun making movies and documentaries.

WS: Is Irish DreamTime looking specifically for feature films or would you like to try television as well?

BROSNAN: Oh, I’d like to do TV. TV is a glorious medium. I’ve done my feature films, and I’ve gone out and been a “movie star,” but I’ve always been an actor first and foremost. It’s just that I’ve always wanted to do movies. I love movies, but I just love acting. So at Irish DreamTime, we’ve got to put the documentary to bed and then we’re going to move on and look at feature work and go out as a partnership to do features as independents. I love the independent film world; it’s harder now than it ever has been, but there are so many outlets for the work. I watch my son Sean, who has just made his first feature film, My Father Die, and he’s had success with it. He and I are also collaborating on a piece we want to do. The idea is you have fun and hopefully make something that is meaningful, and you might even make some money!

WS: What feature films do you have coming out this year?

BROSNAN: The Foreigner is a thriller that I did with Jackie Chan. Martin Campbell directed it; he and I did the James Bond film GoldenEye together. There is another film called The King’s Daughter, which I made over a year ago. I’ve got bits and bobs here and there, and The Son. I’d been looking for some time to find a series, because television is so fertile. I wanted to have something that had a resonance of security to it and I believe that we’ll get a second season out of this. I’ve signed on for three seasons and if that happens then that would be wonderful! But I always manage to work one way or another, so one just keeps showing up!

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that we keep to ourselves. My job is to show both; that is what I find both interesting and challenging.

WS: The subject matter is pretty dark and some scenes are rather gruesome. How do you disconnect at the end of the filming day, or do you take that with you?

MOSS: I’m very, very good at letting go and at disconnecting, both on and off set. I’m not a method actor at all, and to remain in that dark space isn’t helpful because it just becomes all you know. It’s important to be able to reconnect with reality so that you can be intelligent and objective about your work. It sounds crazy, but we have so much fun on set. Because Gilead is such a dark place, we’ve consciously tried to bring some levity—dark humor, perhaps, but humor. The voiceover is a huge part of [creating some distance] because the voiceover [functions as] the audience. It allows the viewer to step back for a second and go, OK, someone else also thinks that this is crazy

Elisabeth Moss

By Anna Carugati

Elisabeth Moss has been working as an actor since she was a child.

She has appeared in numerous feature films and TV series, including Girl, Interrupted and The West Wing, but it was her role as Peggy Olson in Mad Men that earned her international attention and multiple award nominations. This year, she headlines the adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale for Hulu, and returns for a second season of Top of the Lake. She talks to World Screen about the complex, layered characters that she is portraying.

WS: In The Handmaid’s Tale, your character, Offred, keeps so much bottled up inside of her. How did you prepare for the role and get into Offred’s mind and her emotions?

MOSS: In a way, I feel more connected to this character than anyone I’ve ever played, probably just circumstantially, because she’s a woman in her 30s who is having her rights taken away. I wanted to play her as if I, or you, or my friends, were going through that experience. I wanted to play her as somebody that was extremely identifiable; not a heroine but a real person. That’s how I always try to get in with any character, by finding what is real and true about them and what is identifiable. At the same time, when we pick up [the story] in the pilot, she’s been in this world for about three years and she’s had terrible things happen to her. In the totalitarian Republic of Gilead, Offred is not allowed to talk or express her feelings, so my job is to figure out how to express something on the outside without saying anything.

That was not only the challenge but also the most fun. You’ll see as the series progresses that she obviously starts to break out of that and express more and start to fall apart and also gain strength in many ways.

WS: Do you look for characters that have interesting personality dualities?

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and dark and messed up. [Laughs] When you’re dealing with a dark subject matter, it’s important not to take yourself too seriously because otherwise it just feels like it’s a morality lesson or a history lesson. The way that the book is written is very darkly humorous and we’ve tried to capture that tone.

WS: You also have a producer’s credit on the show. What added responsibilities do you have?

MOSS: I watch all the cuts, I give notes, I’m involved in the larger picture—ideas as far as marketing and scripts—and the smaller ideas, down to a particular prop or piece of costume.

It has been a lot more work than I expected, but it’s also been a lot more gratifying than I expected. To have been doing this as long as I’ve been doing it, it is an incredible experience for me to be able to have a say and a voice. I have to give credit to the people I work with because not only do they give me a voice but they also listen to it, and we are all about making the best show possible.

WS: You also have season two of Top of the Lake coming out. What can you tell us about that?

MOSS: As crazy as it might sound, I think that the second season is a lot darker than the first, and more complex.

The crime [in the second season] is based a bit more in reality, and the scripts, in my opinion, are next-level compared to the first season. It’s much more interior. It’s in Sydney, and all the sets, the space, the light, everything is so different in Australia compared to New Zealand. Four years have gone by, and the character I play has been through a lot. Jane [Campion, creator and writer] approached me about doing a second season when we were at the Emmys for the first season. I said to her, I would love to; my only requirement is that it be darker, more challenging and more messed up than the first one. You have to give me something more to do. And she did in spades! [Laughs]

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freida Pinto

Freida Pinto has pursued an eclectic movie career since earning plaudits for her work in Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, starring in a mix of independents and Hollywood blockbusters, from Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and Julian Schnabel’s Miral to Tarsem Singh’s Immortals and Twentieth Century Fox’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Guerrilla, a limited series from award-winning 12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley for Showtime in the U.S. and Sky Atlantic in the U.K., marks Pinto’s first scripted TV work. From Fifty Fathoms and ABC Signature, the six-parter, set in 1970s London, is being executive produced by Idris Elba, who also stars in the project. Pinto tells World Screen about the experience of working with Ridley and about what drew her to the series, which has been

By Mansha Daswani launched to the global market by Endemol Shine International.

WS: Tell me about your role in Guerrilla, and what appealed to you about the project?

PINTO: I play Jas Mitra. I did the show for many, many reasons.

The top being, as female actors, we rarely come upon roles where we’re celebrated for our beauty, and the ugliness of it all, which I think is beautiful. Sometimes the flaws are masked by the superficiality of the puritan woman, where everything is perfect. I was quite sick and tired of even reading roles like that. Where the only thing a female character says in a whole script is, “Help me!” Jas doesn’t say “help me,” which is probably a problem—maybe she should say it sometimes! It was very important for me to be able to play a character who is quite certain of her voice and lets it build over the many episodes.

And the second reason for me is John Ridley. And the third reason is Babou Ceesay [who plays Jas’s love interest].

WS: What resonated with you about the story line, which is set against the backdrop of black activism in the U.K. in the 1970s?

PINTO: It’s quite apparent that even though it’s 2017, the same things that we fight for today—identity, our right to be who we want to be, our right to a job and equal pay—somehow or other, it’s the same thing that people spoke about in 1971. Police brutality, Black Lives Matter, Brexit.

It’s the world over. That’s one of the things that I think is fantastic about Guerrilla. That even though it’s set in England there

are universal themes of identity, love and hope. For me, it’s about a relationship.

WS: What was it like working with John Ridley?

PINTO: I feel like I’m going to have trouble leaving Guerrilla and doing anything else now. There was a scene he let me do again, and I said to him, Can I please request you to write my rom-coms, my comedies, all the action films I want to do, all my TV shows, everything from now on? I don’t think I can even look at another script again and go, It’s not all there but I’ll take it on. Literally, this came to us as a complete package. One of our co-stars, Nathaniel Martello-White, termed it as N.A.R.— no acting required. It feels like we’re talking like you and I are talking. Through rehearsals, he helped us embody our characters. He’s really passionate about what he’s doing.

And even though he’s an American telling a part of British history, it’s not like he is struggling or trying to get his bearings right. He’s all there, at every point in time. At the end of the day, he knows that history and political backdrop are great, but the people who are in the mix are not just numbers, they’re real people.

WS: Given that it’s an era that hasn’t been explored much in filmed entertainment, how did you try to understand these characters and the times they’re living in?

PINTO: [Some of the things that were happening at the time] we had no idea even existed. Sometimes we got really angry reading the material. And sometimes we found ourselves feeling frustrated. But despondency has never led to anything good in life. We realized that if we’re put in the series to do something, then let’s tell this story without letting frustration and anger [get in the way]. Anger is not a bad thing if you channel it right.

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WS: AXN has been such a success story. What are the strengths of the brand? How has it evolved over the years? What does it represent to pay-TV operators?

KAPLAN: AXN has definitely evolved as a brand. The channel started out 20 years ago in Singapore, and it launched as a very male, action and extreme sportsoriented channel. Twenty years later, over time and geography, and by trying to be receptive to local audiences, it has evolved into much more of a general-entertainment channel with an edge, still high-energy and actionoriented. A lot of the franchises that we’re associated with in most of the AXN territories—CSI, NCIS, Lost or The Blacklist—have a certain feel to them that is consistent with that brand positioning. We’ve tried to find a global connective tissue that makes the channel have consistent brand recognition, while at the same time being sensitive to what works in each region. So while many of the AXN channels share similar shows, there is also plenty of room for unique programming and positioning on a territory-by-territory basis.

By Anna Carugati

AXN celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. What started in 1997 as a predominantly extreme sports channel has evolved over the years in response to pay-TV operators’ needs and viewers’ tastes. Today, AXN is one of the most recognized and successful channel brands in the international pay-TV landscape and is available in 84 countries across the globe, reaching 270.5 million homes. It offers the best in high-adrenaline, action-packed American TV dramas, blockbuster feature films, reality series and sports events.

The AXN brand has spun off a number of sister services, including AXN Sci-Fi, AXN Mystery, AXN Black and AXN White.

AXN is part of Sony Pictures Television Networks, a portfolio of some 160 channel feeds that reach more than 1 billion households around the world. Andy Kaplan, the president of worldwide networks for Sony Pictures Television, oversees these channels, which, in addition to AXN, include SET, Sony Channel, ANIMAX, ONE and MAX, as well as a group of brands customized for the Indian market.

Kaplan and the AXN teams around the world have been increasing the number of original productions that air on the AXN channels, looking for shows that can complement the action-driven U.S. fare. This programming mix is boosting viewer loyalty to the AXN brand. As Kaplan explains, in a media world in which cable and satellite operators are looking to reduce costs, channels with high-quality programming and robust brand connections are well positioned for the future.

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WS: How important have original productions been to AXN? KAPLAN: Original productions are more important than ever. We’ve done a handful of what I’ll call “global originals,” where we are production partners and owners of programs that air on most or all the AXNs— like Hannibal, where we partnered with Gaumont, or Crossing Lines, which we did with TANDEM, or The Firm, which we did with Entertainment One. We’re producing a new show ourselves called Absentia, which stars Stana Katic from Castle and should launch later this year.

These global originals give us the flexibility to have complete ownership and control of all the rights, in partnership with our distribution and sales division.

Regionally, we announced the second-season renewal of Asia’s Got Talent, which was incredibly successful for us last year on AXN Asia, and we aired season five of The Amazing Race Asia, which has been a terrific regional program for us. We also have Cash Cab in Asia and the Philippines. We’re very active in original productions in that part of the world.

In Poland, we produced a scripted drama specifically for AXN called Zbrodnia and based on its success we expect to do more originals in that market.

Partly due to incentives, we have a lot of local programming in Brazil. For example, we did a show with YouTube personalities called Entubados, and that was both really successful and very, very local.

In addition to the global originals, we’re doing more and more programming that is either countryspecific or pan-regional, and we’ll continue to increase the volume and the ratio of original productions over time.

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would expect a whole lot of growth to come in that market, and we’ve hoped that was going to be the case for many years. I think you’re going to see a lot of disruption there and the possibility of a lot of over-the-top activity or telco or mobile activity because the traditional cable and satellite business hasn’t gained penetration.

There are other markets that have 60- to 80-percent penetration. Latin America continues to be a very healthy pay-TV market, and penetration continues to grow there, and some of these more nontraditional or disruptive offerings haven’t caught on as quickly. It’s harder to disrupt a fully developed market.

U.S. imports like CBS’s MacGyver have been key drivers of AXN’s ratings gains.

WS: So it’s about finding a balance between the acquired product and the originals?

KAPLAN: That’s exactly right. The big Hollywood programs are still the cornerstone of AXN’s brand, but the competition for them is high, and it becomes more and more challenging to acquire all of the rights that we need to deliver a full 360-degree digital experience as well as a linear feed to our affiliate partners. As a result, the investment in original productions gives us more and more flexibility on that front. But it is still very much a balance. The franchises like CSI and NCIS, and shows like Criminal Minds, are important pillars of the programming grid.

WS: What do Sony’s channels offer advertisers, and in particular, how are they responding to the portfolio of originals that you have on the various channels?

KAPLAN: The AXNs, the Sony Channels—the offerings that are well established and fully penetrated, with great brand recognition and great programming—are always a good and solid traditional offering for advertisers. But the original productions are where you can do more and more things in terms of integrations, special sponsorship packages and a lot of digital offerings that you couldn’t necessarily do with acquired programming. So, again, it goes back to why the investment in original production is so important—it gives us much more flexibility and another conversation to have with advertisers that we couldn’t otherwise have.

WS: I imagine it varies territory by territory, but how would you describe the health of the pay-TV business?

KAPLAN: It does vary territory by territory, country by WS: Tell us about the importance of airing episodes of country, and has to do with the evolution of pay TV shows on the same day, or as close as possible to the and subscriptions in a particular market. This has same day, as they air in the U.S. always been true, but a lot of what happens in the U.S. becomes the real precursor for what’s going to happen around the world. In a lot of these markets we’re in, the pay-TV business is very, very healthy. Having said that, operators are all trying to reduce their costs, and they’re all trying to deliver to their customers digital, nonlinear, on-demand, flexible experiences. I think we’ll see more and more skinny bundles popping up, but it just depends on the market and how evolved and penetrated and developed the cable and satellite worlds are versus the telcos. In Africa, as an emerging market example, there’s not a lot of cable and satellite penetration relative to the size of the population, and I think you’re going to see a lot of telco and mobile activity happen over time.

Another interesting case is Indonesia, which has probably 10- or 12-percent pay-TV penetration. You AXN has renewed Asia’s Got Talent, based on the FremantleMedia format, for a second season.

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wait a few weeks in Latin America because the needs in that particular region are different from a scheduling or a marketing standpoint, then we will. I don’t know that the viewer in Brazil cares whether a show is launching at the same time in Singapore.

AXN has a deal with NBCUniversal that covers titles such as the sci-fi series Killjoys.

KAPLAN: It is important in a lot of markets. One, because of piracy, but also because of the social-media environment we’re living in where everybody around the world knows exactly what’s happening in the U.S., and you don’t have a lot of time or advance opportunity to tell your own story.

There are markets where we are trying, if not day-and-date, a 24-hour or 48-hour turnaround. In Asia, we’ve got The Blacklist and Quantico going within 12 hours of the U.S. airing, and that’s been an important strategy for us in Asia, which still airs a lot of content in English and where we don’t have dubbing and subtitling delays and challenges. If you have to subtitle or dub, and if it’s a broadcast show whose production cycle does not give as much of a lead time as maybe a show that’s produced in advance for binge-watching and offers you lead time to dub or subtitle, then the logistics [of a 24-hour or 48-hour turnaround] are complicated. But because it’s become more and more of a necessity, suppliers have gotten better and faster and more efficient at delivering us shows with sufficient lead time.

WS: And what about global premieres—launching a show on the same day and date across regions?

KAPLAN: A day-and-date launch globally is not as important as it might have been in the past. We are trying to be much more locally oriented, so if the opportunity exists to launch a show on a day-and-date basis across the region because it happened to work on a local basis, that’s great. But I don’t think it’s the priority that it might have been a few years ago. If it makes sense to launch a show in Asia on a particular date but 72 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

WS: Viewers don’t only watch linear channels. How are you making your content available on multiple platforms?

KAPLAN: We realize that the days of delivering our channels only on a linear basis are really behind us. It’s not what the operators want because it’s not what the customer needs. So, we’re developing and investing in various digital offerings around the world and are continuing to push them out. In Latin America, for example, we have launched a TV Everywhere app with AXN and Canal Sony. In Central Europe, we have an OTT app that’s available through most of our affiliates.

Crackle, which is our big OTT AVOD offering in the U.S., is being rolled out in Latin America and Brazil on an SVOD basis with our pay-TV partners—not around them, but with them as an additional offering that we can supply to them. In the Netherlands, our Film1 channel just launched on PlayStation, so that’s a new opportunity that will, I think, evolve around the world over time.

We made an investment in a company called Hopster, which is a young kids’ app. Our kids’ business is starting to grow significantly, and we already have a big presence in the U.K. with the kids’ channels POP and Tiny Pop. We’re looking at growing those brands around the world, so we dipped our toe in the water with our investment in Hopster to learn more about that business.

And, of course, in India, which is a huge business, our digital offering is an app called Sony LIV, which is becoming more and more an important part of their ecosystem every day.

WS: Speaking of India, SPT operates several channels there. How does AXN complement the rest of the channels in the portfolio?

KAPLAN: India is our biggest business and a market in which we are one of the major broadcasters. As a result, we have a huge portfolio of channels—Hindilanguage general-entertainment, music and comedy channels, English-language channels like AXN, our movie channel and a number of sports channels.

Sports is an important pillar of our business in India, and we are in the process of growing our sports business even more through the acquisition of TEN Sports.

We have a fully vertical and horizontal offering for the cable and satellite players there. In India, there is a voracious appetite for English-language content, but the audience is relatively small compared to the national Hindi-language businesses or some of the regional-language businesses. Within the Englishlanguage world, AXN is one of the top players, and it’s an important part of our diverse offering. But if you look at AXN’s ratings compared to Hindi-language Sony Entertainment Television, AXN’s are smaller.

WS: Sony was one of the first companies to launch channels in India. What factors have contributed to its success there?

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so wherever we are we should ultimately have a linear and nonlinear offering in some form or another.

That’s the strategy we’re pursuing.

Original productions have been very successful for AXN, among them The Amazing Race Asia.

KAPLAN: In India, Sony certainly had an early mover advantage. Twenty years ago, it was Sony, Fox under the Star TV brand and the local player Zee. Being one of the first to invest significantly in India, and then hanging in there through a challenging operating environment, has reaped a lot of benefits for us and has contributed to the fact that we’re so big and successful there. Our investments in sports rights and cricket have also been a very important growth driver for us and add to the breadth and depth of our offering; and now the investment in digital—all of which has contributed to us being an overnight success 21 years later!

WS: Do you see opportunities to launch more channels or new brands in any territory around the world?

KAPLAN: We are being very selective. The days of launching or acquiring as many channels as you can are probably behind us, certainly in markets that are much more developed. We’re looking at opportunities to expand our existing brands and are being very tactical and selective. There are still opportunities out there, but, as opposed to some of our competitors who took a position in the last number of years of trying to acquire as much “real estate” as they could, and launch as many channels as they could just to have a big and wide offering, we have taken a more narrow and selective approach. Our plan has been to have fewer but stronger channels. Now, in an environment where MVPDs around the world are trying to reduce their own content costs, I think it’s ultimately going to end up serving us well. Having said that, I think there are more digital opportunities for us around the world as we continue to leverage our existing infrastructure, 74 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

WS: Are there lessons and best practices that you have learned from Crackle, SPT’s multiplatform streaming service, that you can apply elsewhere in the world?

KAPLAN: Yes. We’re very committed in the U.S. to Crackle’s AVOD model. We think we’ve carved out a unique niche. Where most players are playing in the SVOD space, we think we can win and succeed in the AVOD world here. We tried AVOD in Latin America, and while the offering was really good, I think we were just too early and the digital advertising marketplace wasn’t ready for us. So we’ve taken this opportunity to pivot to an SVOD offering in Latin America, in partnership with our MVPD partners there. In Latin America, the SVOD world is still in earlier stages than in a lot of other places, so we saw a good opportunity to do that.

As we look around the rest of the world, and we evaluate whether to pursue an AVOD versus an SVOD strategy, I think it’ll be a market-by-market decision in terms of where a particular market is in its evolution of digital advertising and whether or not it is strong enough to support an AVOD offering like a Crackle, or whether pursuing an SVOD strategy is the way to go. So we’ll take that case-by-case, but Crackle is a very flexible technology platform. We have a terrific infrastructure that is powering the digital technology of our whole network portfolio around the world. I think we’re going to have the ability to achieve some economies of scale on that, which should hopefully be an opportunity for us.

WS: How important are brands in this environment, where people are either diminishing their cable bundles or watching programming online?

KAPLAN: Brands are really important. One of the things we’ve tried to do more recently is to create a stronger association between our channels and the Sony brand.

We want to embrace our connection to one of the greatest and strongest consumer and technology brands in the world, both on a B2B and a consumer basis, so you will see that many of our channels worldwide now carry the endorsement, “a Sony Network.”

In line with this, we’ve also invested in rebranding or updating the look and feel of many of our channels around the world, including AXN. A strong brand helps a channel develop a connection to the audience—as was the case with AXN—and as skinny bundles and over-the-top models evolve, strong brand connections and quality programming will keep our networks successful for many years to come.

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Banijay Rights’ Versailles.

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SIZZLING! European content is hot across the globe, Jay Stuart reports, even as the region faces challenges at home. t has been a good many years since politics and regulation loomed so large over European TV. At the dawn of the ’90s, the thrust was toward further integration. The EU’s ambitious and intrusive Television Without Frontiers directive, with its quotas on non-European programming, was broadly welcomed by many producers as a needed bulwark against the inflow of American shows.

Fast-forward to 2017 and the trend has been reversed to potential disintegration, as epitomized by the U.K.’s Brexit decision. The latest EU regulation currently under discussion for the television space— involving a digital single market—is being viewed suspiciously by many in the industry as potentially harmful. But, more on that later.

Ironically, as Europe faces internal challenges, the international market is becoming more accessible for European program-makers.

In light of the growing international profile of successful European shows, the idea that the region still needs programming quotas—the directive mentioned above was extended to the internet ten years ago—can appear to be a quaint illusion from a bygone era.

But quotas are by definition more about quantity than quality, and the fact is that non-European

I

imports easily account for more than half of TV series on European channels, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory. From 2009 to 2013, the share of nonEuropean fiction on private channels increased in Germany, Sweden and the U.K., three countries associated with thriving program production.

Let’s be clear at the outset that Britain, because of the obvious commonality of language and culture with the U.S., and a long track record of international success, is an anomaly in any discussion of European production. The television business is certainly one area where defining Brits as Europeans—while of course still a legal and political reality, as important as that is—remains a bit of a fiction creatively, especially in scripted, where British companies have excelled for years.

“What’s driving the international market are audiences who want better-quality product,” says John McVay, the chief executive of the U.K.’s Pact. “Markets are developing, and people are better educated and more aware. There’s a rush to the top rather than to the bottom.

Viewers want big-budget drama, and big-budget factual as well.”

Louise Pedersen, the CEO of all3media International, notes, “Now that audiences are seeing the best from everywhere, they’re becoming more exacting. It feels like continental Europeans are a bigger factor in the program market.

Shooting in English has been a break through for them. The Germans and French have wonderful writers and directors, and they have of course already been making fine shows, but broadcasters can be more broad-minded when the programs are in English. I welcome that. All competition is good.”

QUALITY MATTERS Alexander Coridass, the president and CEO of ZDF Enterprises, agrees that demand for quality is a primary driver in the global market and that this is encouraging European producers to make better shows and to take more risks.

“It’s about talent, creativity, nonmainstream productions and success with global audiences,” Coridass reports. “We are seeing that there is an ongoing trend to produce high-quality drama where top-notch storytelling is the paramount goal. Germany is just a canvas for these new types of sophisticated narratives and programs. Ku’damm 56 and Deutschland 83 are good examples of series that have the power to travel the world and find their audiences everywhere.”

ZDF Enterprises is involved in many projects with Italian, Belgian, Central European, French, British and Spanish partners, to name a few. “As a European company at our core, we take pride in our strong Eurocentric lineup and in the fact that we specialize in bringing

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European-produced high-quality programs to media outlets around the world, and we will continue to invest in European products.”

ECONOMIC MUSCLE To a large extent, quality boils down to investment. The capacity of continental European producers is basically in proportion to the size of their TV markets. That means Germany is first by a big margin.

Total German television and video revenue will grow to $14.59 billion by 2020, according to PwC. Secondplace France will reach $9.61 billion by the same year.

Tim Mutimer is CEO of Banijay Rights (formerly Zodiak Rights), whose 20,000-hour catalog includes the likes of big-budget Canal+ flagship drama Versailles, sold in more than 135 territories, and Norwegian political thriller Occupied, which is actually in three languages (talk about risk!).

“Production budgets in Europe have increased, and more shows are being commissioned than ever before,” he says. “And, of course, success breeds success with breakout shows from across Europe becoming international, including hits such as The Killing and our own dramas Public Enemy from Belgium and The Returned from France. We have a strong sales team based in London, Copenhagen and Paris. Having a presence in the latter two markets means that we are able to monetize the strong Nordic

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ZDF Enterprises has become a prolific distributor of Scandinavian drama, co-producing titles such as Before We Die, set for SVT and ZDF. and French-produced programming in our catalog.”

He points to a big development in the media landscape that has enabled the launching of such hits: SVOD. “The growth of SVOD and digital means there are more opportunities for content to find its way to expanding audience numbers.”

Henrik Pabst, managing director of Red Arrow International, zeroes in on that point. “There’s no simple answer for the higher profile of European programming these days,” he says. “One major factor has been the positive impact of the big SVOD platforms. They have distributed European content in the original language, so audiences have become more accepting of subtitles, and local shows stand a better chance of traveling.”

Pabst continues, “Europe also has great talent. Previously the business was very U.S.-driven. That has changed. Now we can create coproduced scripted programs that work locally in the U.K., France and Germany, for example, and nowadays even the U.S. is tapping into European talent.”

biggest current area of work for European institutions in 2017. The industry is happy to see that the issue of portability will apparently be resolved, to allow people to continue to watch content on their devices from subscriptions based in their home countries as they move around Europe. More worrying are proposals to extend the principles of a single market in satellite and cable to cover online rights. That principle means that rights cleared in one country are cleared for the entire single market. This undermines the business model of territorial exclusivity.

“Online is effectively television,” says Grégoire Polad, the director general of the 33-member Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT). “We have already embraced a total video environment. That’s what TV is now. Our aim is to continue to foster great content on any platform. We are moving toward a pan-European licensing system. That would help the very large players like Google and Amazon, but it would mean less diversity and less investment in content. We want to be sure that we can produce and that we can reach addressable homes that enable us to monetize content.”

RULES & REGULATIONS Any discussion about IP, windows and rights very quickly bumps up against the complex edifice that is European regulation. And this year is a special one for television regulation. Media is the single

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Two issues, inextricably tied together, are at work. One is copyright regulation. The other is the issue of contractual agreements, the subject of a current investigation focused on Sky. To simplify a complicated scenario, the European Commission wants to clear the way to allow so-called passive sales, meaning that content providers like Sky would not be allowed to refuse to provide their services to customers anywhere in Europe. In principle, this would not be a huge problem if a provider could geo-block individual programs in countries where the rights were not cleared. In effect, it could say, Yes, you can get our channels, but you can’t have Game of Thrones because we don’t have the rights in your country.

BORDER PROTECTION “The problem is that the change in copyright rules could eliminate the ability to geo-block,” Polad says.

“But it’s difficult to see the copyright issue in isolation because the rules on contractual agreements are not known.”

Polad continues, “Public broadcasters have been pushing to open the market so that their channels can be more easily carried on platforms throughout Europe. This works better for them because they tend to produce more of their own content and are less dependent on premium licensed programming than pay-TV and other commercial operators are. But the fact is that they invest a lot in production and produce a lot of quality programming themselves. The financing of European content is 40 percent public TV, 40 percent commercial TV and 20 percent from funding bodies. So while the new regime might help public-service broadcasters clear rights, it would hurt them as rights holders. So be careful what you wish for.”

The timeline for all of this is very much up in the air. The Council of Ministers keeps kicking the contractual freedom question down the road. It’s unlikely anything will happen before 2018.

A portability regulation that allows subscribers to take their channels with them from their

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Netflix is betting big on European content commissioning, beginning in the U.K. with The Crown; the first season had a reported budget of $130 million, making it the most expensive TV series ever. home markets sits well with Red Arrow’s Pabst. “But geo-blocking is still a necessity: a world where geoblocking is not permitted means that we will all have a problem, and the financing would become almost impossible if one does not go with a global player.”

ZDF Enterprises’ Coridass supports online regulation that ensures fair competition and consumer and personal data protection, irrespective of nationality or place of residence. “This can create opportunities for new start-ups and allow existing companies to expand in a market of over 500 million people [in the EU]. However, there are still a lot of issues to be resolved before we get there, such as protection of copyright.”

THE BREXIT CONUNDRUM European media regulation is just one of many factors at play. There is also the unsolved puzzle of Brexit.

Adam Thomas, lead analyst for global TV markets at London-based consultancy Ovum, observes, “The big immediate threat from Brexit comes from uncertainty. Despite some efforts by the U.K. government to provide some clarity, this has not been delivered with any great confidence. So uncertainty will continue to impact spend on

media by consumers, advertisers and investors alike.”

“The core question about Brexit is to what extent European regulations will continue to apply in the U.K. We won’t know this until we see what the future agreement is and we understand how much of EU law that’s incorporated into U.K. law the British parliament wants to keep or undo,” ACT’s Polad says.

“Remember that there is a quota regime in operation in Europe.

British productions might no longer qualify as European, so they would lose market share in Europe. That’s almost a mechanical effect. They might also lose access to direct and indirect European funding.”

Brexit could also affect portability—the idea being that when you take Sky from the U.K. to Spain on your device, it’s still being consumed in the U.K. and thus in Europe. But if the U.K. is no longer in Europe, then that would no longer be the case. Brexit could also impact the country of origin of satellite channels. As things stand, dozens of European broadcasters are based in the U.K. and reach their markets from there.

“The fact is that the audiovisual sector is so important for the U.K. that it might be one area where the position of remaining in Europe

might prevail to a great extent,” Polad adds.

According to Ovum’s Thomas, this could impact investment. “Production investment in particular, which often comes from several different sources, is likely to be affected until a framework for cross-border investment and taxation is clarified,” he says. “From a U.K.-specific perspective, a weakening currency should benefit exports, and with the U.K. being a big net exporter of content to most countries, there will be some positives there. But that scenario comes with the potential for a negative impact on content importers.”

Because British content is popular across Europe, proposals to create a digital single market could become even more complicated following Brexit. “If new trade agreements are required in order to keep selling U.K. programming, then this implies that there will be new time-consuming negotiation and bureaucracy involved,” Thomas notes. “If the licensing process becomes significantly more onerous, then there is a possibility that demand for U.K. programming could be hit as a result.”

ZDF Enterprises’ Coridass predicts, “As far as content production and distribution is concerned, I feel that Brexit will make business

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abroad more complicated for companies in the U.K. Naturally, Brexit came as a big surprise for us as well. At the moment, it is still difficult to say whether this will be rather beneficial or rather detrimental to our business. We see both opportunities and risks in Brexit. In any case, the U.K. will remain an important partner in all our lines of business. So we’re looking at things in a professional and relaxed manner and will evaluate the consequences as soon as the real facts of Brexit have been negotiated. And this might still take a while.”

WAITING GAME Pabst is sanguine about Brexit. “It could mean that Europe gets smaller, but we have invested in the U.K. because of the creativity, and that will not change. I do not see immediate consequences.”

From his perspective, Pact’s McVay says that he doesn’t see any short- or medium-term challenges from a production point of view. “If you are a broadcaster based in the U.K. depending on country of origin to access Europe, maybe you’ll have problems. But that’s not the case for program-makers. The U.K. is a signatory of the [European Convention on Transfrontier TV], which is

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British drama is a popular commodity, with shows like all3media International’s long-running Midsomer Murders landing on Acorn TV in the U.S. and on broadcasters across Europe. recognized by the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive. That means our programs qualify as European works, even if the U.K. is no longer part of the single market.”

McVay believes that “the only possible threat would be the imposition of tariffs or non-tariff trade barriers. It’s very hard to see how that would happen because it could actually damage European broadcasters, whose audiences are fans of our shows. If you’re a Danish broadcaster that can’t have Midsomer Murders anymore, that’s going to hurt. At the end of the day, U.S. movies and TV shows don’t have any special access to the single market and they do quite well. We have co-production treaties with European countries. Most of these are about feature films, but we are working to press for trade agreements covering television.”

He also cites British television’s reputation globally. “We are not perceived as European. We are seen as Brits. That’s good for us, because British television is seen as one of the best R&D labs for television on the planet. Many American executives get the British overnights so that they follow the new shows that are bubbling up that might work in their market. The unique British experiment between commercial

television and the BBC has tended to drive quality. There’s a lot of competition. We are a market with relatively few channels. For a program to get a prime-time slot, it has to be pretty good.” There’s another factor at work, McVay continues. “We don’t have any public money for cultural objectives. We only have tax credits and you can only access tax credits if your program has been commissioned. A producer can’t ask for help for a project ahead of time because of its supposed cultural value, as in other countries. That imposes market discipline on British producers.”

A number of British producers are represented by all3media International, where Pedersen says the focus is on “bold creative ideas rather than the formulaic. Our program Fleabag is an illustration of what I mean, with a strong female voice and a sense of humor. The Missing season two does something different by progressing the story of a missing child into the story of a child who’s returned.”

The examples cited by Pedersen reflect the extent to which European production is becoming more international—both have landed in the U.S. European players are becoming more global operationally—and more American. Red

Arrow Entertainment Group, for example, has 19 different companies in seven countries. Nine of them are based in the U.S.

COMING TO AMERICA “We are always pleased to have U.S. partners on board” as co-producers, says ZDF Enterprises’ Coridass.

“This is a vital part of our business, but it is at least as important to make projects happen with other partners—Australians, Chinese, Japanese, Brits and continental Europeans. The success of German miniseries and Scandi noir and German-Australian teen liveaction series shows that projects can be sold to the U.S. without any financing by American partners.”

Of course, it depends on the size of the budget. “For a larger project, it may be important to have American financial partners on board, but most of our projects are still financed within Europe to date,” Coridass explains.

Red Arrow’s Pabst says it’s not always necessary for the U.S. to be involved. “But, it depends,” he says.

“It’s a matter of taking things project by project. If we can get a U.S. company on board, I’m delighted as long as the DNA of the project has not changed. The bigger the show, the more important that is. Europe

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can only cover a certain proportion of a big budget, and the American financial contribution is important.”

“If you are seeking a substantial co-production partner, it is helpful to have a U.S. partner deliver a significant percentage of the budget,” says Banijay’s Mutimer. “However, it isn’t always vital. For instance, our drama hit Versailles was funded in Europe and sold to Ovation and Netflix for the U.S.” The good news for producers and distributors is that the demand for quality is not likely to diminish. As audiences around the world become accustomed to seeing exceptional programming, the race to the top will continue. For viewers and producers able to make quality shows, the outlook for Europe has never been better. The biggest challenge may be a matter of scale and timelines. “The incredible demand for high-quality content, from more and more sources, is really putting pressure on producers to speed up their delivery times,” says Ovum’s Thomas. “So there will very likely come a time when, eventually, the ever-increasing demand for production volume cannot be met.”

Isn’t that the sort of industrial challenge that the European single market is, or was, supposed to remedy?

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Sky

By Anna Carugati that brand, we developed our NOW TV Smart Box and that allows customers to get access to over 60 free-to-air channels alongside the best of our pay content. And for the first time through NOW TV, they can get a whole-home service where they can consolidate all their viewing in the home. We got into NOW TV driven by our consumer insight and our relationship with our customers. It’s a service we thought would complement Sky and speak to all our skills and customer innovation.

WS: Is there any concern that NOW TV will erode the base of subscribers who do have a contract-based subscription?

DARROCH: No, there isn’t. Today, NOW TV is a highly complementary service to Sky. We launched it as a second brand because we wanted to differentiate it in the market and we didn’t want to confuse the NOW TV brand proposition and promise with the Sky

Giving customers what they want is an age-old, triedand-true guarantee of running a profitable business.

Offering subscribers programming and sports events they can’t find elsewhere, at various price points, while constantly updating products to ensure the best viewing experience, have been crucial to the success of Europe’s leading pay-TV platform, Sky. For group chief executive Jeremy Darroch, choice and innovation are essential to Sky’s continued growth, especially in a competitive media landscape.

WS: Why were NOW TV and the NOW TV Smart Box offered and how have they been received?

DARROCH: We got into NOW TV, a separate streaming service, largely because we could see the way consumer behavior was changing.

While the full all-you-can-eat Sky service was brilliant and had a lot of growth ahead of it, there was a new emerging sector of customers who wanted to consume their content in a slightly different way and probably take a little less, initially. They liked the idea of a contract-free flexible service. From that came the idea of NOW TV, which was a way we could offer customers the very best Sky content but allow them to consume it slightly differently from the way we offered it in the past.

NOW TV has been well received by customers. It’s rapidly established itself as one of the leading streaming services in the U.K. and in our markets. As we continue to develop

More people wanting to get into this market is just a sign of the potential that exists in it. We will compete and work with the likes of Netflix and Amazon as we continue to grow the market size over time. I imagine they are pretty happy with how they have done. It’s another sign that the way consumers choose to take their TV and media is evolving all the time and we want to be at the forefront of that.

WS: Sky acquires some sports rights and not others. What is your strategy, and how have you been amortizing the cost of sports rights through different ways of offering sports to customers?

DARROCH: It all starts with having a very clear view of what sports are important to customers and what sports complement each other. In all sports, if you just keep doing more and more, customers actually get less value incrementally, for example, for just having

Sky is Europe’s leading pay-TV platform, with some 12.7 million subscribers in the U.K. and Ireland alone and almost 10 million in Germany, Austria and Italy. proposition and promise. What we’re finding is that 90 percent or so of customers who take NOW TV weren’t really considering Sky. I think inevitably at the margin there will be a little bit of movement between packages, but the opportunity to continue to grow pay TV in all of our markets as a sector, and also to increase our share of our sector, remains significant. We have found and will continue to find NOW TV a highly complementary service to the Sky service and a way that we can get to more customers.

WS: What has been the impact of Netflix and Amazon so far on the U.K. market in general and on Sky in particular?

DARROCH: In general, both Amazon and Netflix have established themselves and have grown pretty well in the U.K. and Ireland. We find that they are very much add-ons to the main Sky subscription. There is always a reasonable proportion of households and people in the U.K. that like to have access to everything, so they tend to double up on subscriptions. That is a trend that we’ve seen, a little bit like NOW TV, and personally, I see it as a good thing.

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ever more football or ever more golf or cricket.

So there is a line between knowing when to invest and when to say we have enough.

Across all the Skys we have a clear view of where we invest and where we pass and say we have enough now. Then in any business, you want to create the biggest pool of revenue and the biggest pool of customers, so we have developed daily passes and monthly passes to our sports business, which sell through NOW TV. We distribute a huge amount of sports over mobile networks. We work with partners in all of our markets to get our sports to their customers as well, whether it’s the Virgin network in the U.K. or telco networks elsewhere in Europe. We try to get them to take Sky sports in a way that works for them [and that enables us to] get to more customers. You put all those things together and you have a bigger base of customers and you’re very clear about what’s important. That drives our choices in how we invest, where we spend and where we pass.

For more from Jeremy Darroch, see page 301.

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ProSiebenSat.1 Media

By Anna Carugati original series called Jerks, which is also the first German-language VOD series. And we have a number of distribution partnerships, especially with mobile platforms and cable and IPTV operators, to enable viewers to access our content everywhere, at all times, and on every device.

WS: What has been driving the positive performance of the TV segment?

EBELING: ProSiebenSat.1 leads in both the audience and TV advertising markets in Germany. In years like 2016, when major sports events such as the summer Olympics and the European soccer championship are airing on public TV stations, we have to ensure we have a strong lineup. In 2016 we had hit formats playing, like The Voice of Germany and Germany’s next Topmodel, as well as new shows with our German power hosts Joko & Klaas. And it paid off again that in past years we had founded new free-TV stations. This allows us

With a stable of TV stations in Germany that target different audience demographics, a popular video-ondemand platform, a multichannel network and a number of profitable digital services and e-commerce businesses, ProSiebenSat.1 Media, helmed by CEO Thomas Ebeling, is one of Europe’s major media companies. More than any of these assets, what has gained the group international attention is its content production and distribution arm, the Red Arrow Entertainment Group.

WS: As viewing habits continue to change, how is ProSiebenSat.1 providing content for all screens and devices?

EBELING: First of all, it is important to remember that in Germany, linear TV still accounts for 86 percent of daily video watching. So the German TV market differs a lot from the U.S., not least because [in Germany there are] considerably fewer commercial breaks and because people are a lot less willing to pay for TV services.

Big sports events, high-quality series and films are all available on free TV in Germany.

This being said, it is also true that media usage habits are changing, especially with younger viewers. With our digital offerings, we are in the perfect position to service their demand to watch TV—regardless of time and place. These include our own video-on-demand portal maxdome, our multichannel network Studio71 and the streaming apps of our seven free-TV channels. Maxdome recently launched its first

WS: One of the ways you have diversified ProSiebenSat.1’s revenues is by setting up the Red Arrow Entertainment Group. What strategic moves have contributed to its success?

EBELING: Today, Red Arrow is a global creative network of 19 companies in seven countries, including nine companies in the U.S. alone.

Our strategy, to focus on the U.S. and U.K. markets in particular by strengthening our presence there, has proven a success. Today, more than 70 percent of Red Arrow’s revenues are generated in the U.S. In 2016 we made major acquisitions, such as 44 Blue Productions and Dorsey Pictures, in order to further secure access to globally attractive English-language IP. We are very proud that Red Arrow has established the company as a dynamic international production business with popular shows, like Bosch for Amazon and Married at First Sight for A&E.

While its broadcasting business is focused on Germany, ProSiebenSat.1’s diversification strategy has seen it make big bets on contentproduction outfits in the U.S. and the U.K. to attract both new audience groups and advertising customers. In 2016 alone, we were able to attract more than 260 new clients to our advertising business.

WS: Are there plans to launch more stations or channels?

EBELING: We’ve made full use of the opportunities that have come from the fragmentation of the TV market and launched four new freeTV channels in the last six years: sixx, SAT.1 Gold, ProSieben MAXX and kabel eins Doku. We continue to evaluate the potential for additional channels, but for now, I do not have any concrete announcements to make. However, we are always striving to improve our programming offer. Just recently, we closed a partnership with Scripps Networks Interactive, which provides exclusive U.S. factual entertainment to our channels sixx, ProSieben MAXX and kabel eins Doku. These programs are centered on food, home and gardening, DIY and travel, and offer attractive additional marketing environments for our advertisers and our own commerce businesses.

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WS: Do the British and American markets remain key areas for continued growth? Are there other territories that show growth potential?

EBELING: Our focus clearly remains on these key English-speaking TV markets. In the coming years we want to expand further and organically grow our U.S. portfolio, as this TV market remains the most attractive, with the highest broadcaster programming spending.

But Red Arrow has also grown into a strong program supplier for our German-speaking ProSiebenSat.1 stations, and its German production company Redseven Entertainment has been showing strong growth as well. For example, Redseven successfully produced the hit shows Married at First Sight, Kiss Bang Love and The Taste for our channels—formats created by other companies in the Red Arrow group. We will tap further into this synergy potential and leverage the tight connection between Red Arrow and our TV stations. In 2018 around 20 percent of our local commissions are set to come from the Red Arrow production network.

For more from Thomas Ebeling, see page 136.

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Doctor Who & Sherlock

By Mansha Daswani way. “Vision” sounds too pompous. To be honest, I think what we now call “showrunner” is a job I’ve done since I first started working in television and was just a writer. It’s just being a hugely intrusive, hugely evolved writer. When I started, there was no such term as “showrunner.” But I was at all the dubs, the edits, the meetings.

Everything that affected the creative facets of the show, I was there for. It’s being a writer across a show that probably has more than one writer.

It’s a fancy word for the head writer and executive producer and glorified rewrite man.

WS: Do you need to be somewhere in particular to write? Are there things you have to do to get into the mind frame you need to be in?

MOFFAT: I contemplate my deadline! I pace up and down my office. I have places I like to write.

I’ve got an office in my London house. We have a house in Cardiff, where they make Doctor Who and Sherlock, and I’ve got an office there, too.

A lifelong Doctor Who fan, Steven Moffat began writing for the series when it was reintroduced in 2005 after 16 years off the air. Five years later, he was elevated to head writer and executive producer.

At the same time, Moffat was working with fellow Who writer Mark Gatiss on a contemporary drama based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s quintessentially British detective Sherlock Holmes. Over the course of just 13 episodes in four seasons, Sherlock became a worldwide phenomenon.

WS: What skill set did you need to develop to move from being one of the writers on Doctor Who to managing the entire series?

MOFFAT: Well, I creatively manage the show. I’m in charge of the fictional world and everything that affects it. Brian Minchin, my co-executive producer on Doctor Who, takes care of managing the show and running the mighty beast. I wouldn’t be any good at it, and I don’t do it. Of course, I’ve defined our roles far too clearly there. There are times I end up getting involved in the other parts of the management of the show. And there are times when Brian gets involved in the creative side. The indispensable thing if you’re the showrunner is that you must run 12, 13 episodes of Doctor Who or three episodes of Sherlock, and you must be in charge of the creative aspects of all of that. I’m trying to do everything not to use that awful word “vision,” but you are trying to say, This is the kind of show we’re going to make, and this is the wrong way to do it, and that’s the right

it and it doesn’t work, you can’t say, I have to write it anyway even though it doesn’t work, you have to throw it away, that’s it. It doesn’t matter how long that plan has been in existence for or how many people approved it or how many people said, that’s a great idea. The show has to work.

And particularly TV has to work in the moment.

Every scene has to justify itself, not because it’s a setup for later but because it’s in and of itself interesting and exciting and if it was the only bit of the show you saw you’d think it was good.

Mainly, you’ve just got to work really hard. I wish there were a better answer I could give anybody about anything, but I swear the only solution to any problem is, work harder than other people. There’s no such thing as talent. There’s no such thing as intelligence. There’s just working harder. It’s the ultimate cheat code of the universe. If you work harder than other people, yes, you will do better. By hard I don’t mean a lot— though I do mean a lot. But it doesn’t just mean

For the last few years, Steven Moffat has been at the helm of two of Britain’s biggest exports—and most talked-about scripted series.

Those are my favorite places to write. And because of my hectic schedule over the last few years, I’ve had to keep writing on holiday. There are certain holiday destinations where I’m comfortable writing, certain hotel rooms I’m OK with.

If I’m not in a place that I feel is right for writing, I can’t do it. I’ve got to be able to pace up and down and talk out loud. I can’t write with somebody else in the room, that’s impossible for me.

One sip of wine—as much as I love wine—and I can’t write. I can’t ever do that. The moment I have a sip of wine, the rest of the day is gone! It’s just about focusing and trying to get it right. Every morning I start the script again from the beginning. I start from page one and read my way through it and rewrite as I go, so I feel the impetus of where we are, and I don’t forget the tone of what we’re heading for. I always have a plan in my head—sometimes quite Byzantine and complex, sometimes stupid and complicated— but I never write it down. I can’t write it down; I must have it in my head. If I write it down, it becomes a rule. That means I can’t change it. If you’ve got this plan that you’ve been sitting on for six months, and you get to the business of writing 92 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

working a lot. You push yourself, make the difficult choices, try to do everything right, and try not to lose concentration when you f**k up!

Because you will, and often, and in public.

WS: Why are you leaving Doctor Who after this next season?

MOFFAT: I think the more apposite question is why have I been here so long! It’s the longest I’ve ever done anything. The first four to five years I was one of the writers while getting on with other shows, and then I took it over and it was a full-time job, plus doing Sherlock on top of that. I’m astonished at how long I’ve been doing it! I sort of miss my own job of making up television shows and doing the new things, which is the real job of a writer.

I’ve been curating and looking after and worrying about Doctor Who and Sherlock for several years—these two huge franchises that threw up brand-new problems every single day—in addition to writing. You’re never more a writer than when you write something new; you try something different. I miss all that. I miss being, as it were, a proper writer.

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WS: What qualities did you look for when casting the new companion for the Doctor?

MOFFAT: The new companion is very interesting. Very much more so than with a new Doctor, it’s a chance to start the show again. With a new Doctor you change the flavor of the show and the style of the show, but essentially it’s the same old Time Lord, with a new face. Nothing begins again. When a new person comes on board the TARDIS, a new person has to learn the rules of time travel and the TARDIS, has to worry about who the Doctor is and slowly decode what he’s up to and whether he’s a hero or a villain. It does feel like a brand-new beginning. The first episode of the new season is specifically designed so that if it were the very first episode of Doctor Who, it would completely introduce you to the show as Pearl [Mackie] is introduced to the show. That’s quite exciting. The place you start from is: Through whose eyes do we want to see the Doctor? What point of view would refresh us about the Doctor? What kind of person would be a good one to get to know him through? That’s where you begin. And you begin a new story. I’m always getting into trouble for saying this: in a way, the Doctor, despite his changing face, doesn’t change that much. He’s not learning and growing. He’s the Doctor and has been for centuries. The person who learns and grows and changes is his best friend, so it becomes their story. As I always put it, the Doctor is the star, and the companion is the lead. It’s two different functions. Just as in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. Watson is the main character, and Sherlock Holmes is the star.

WS: How did you and Mark Gatiss map out the fourth season of Sherlock?

MOFFAT: We started talking about it by accident one day. We were shooting “His Last Vow,” the third episode of the third series. It was raining so we took shelter in one of the production vehicles. As we sat there, we came up with the idea of [Sherlock’s] sister, which we’d been kicking around for a while.

What if she was the smartest one of the lot, but the one who had no moral compass at all? We knew that Mary [Dr. Watson’s wife] was going to die because Mary doesn’t stay around—that’s just a fact of the Sherlock Holmes story. Dr. Watson, for most of the run of the stories, is a widower. He has to be that. We had to get him there. We knew we were going to do that. We knew we had to tie up whatever apocalypse Moriarty had planned for Sherlock Holmes after his own death. And that wove quite neatly into the

BBC Worldwide’s Sherlock. introduction of the sister. It was such a fun thing to do that. Everyone thinks he has another brother. How long can we trick [the viewers] into making that fairly simplistic assumption, that because there are two brothers, there must be three? There’s a fairly obvious alternative! So we just went for it.

We were careful with our pronouns until the final moment when not only is it revealed he has a sister and she’s evil, but you’ve been watching her for two weeks. That was a brave plan. We didn’t know if we could find anyone to pull that off and make it work. It’s quite a phenomenal performance from Sian Brooke in the several roles she played. As a piece of acting craftsmanship, it’s right up there. It’s extraordinary.

WS: I was quite gutted by Mary’s death—and that surprised me. I didn’t realize how much I had grown to like her.

MOFFAT: We didn’t want to introduce her and then just shoot her. It’s awful when you do that.

We wanted to introduce her and against everybody’s expectations successfully make her part of the team. Not make you resent her, not make you think she’s an interruption or the nagging wife—actually make you think, She’s really cool, I like her, it’s almost better with the three of them. And then having got her there, [we had to] take her away again. Also, this is not an element that’s in the original story, but it is in our version: it is her legacy that they then live, it’s her saying, This is who you have to be, you have to go and consciously be Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Sherlock Holmes will now wear the silly hat because Mary liked it. It just felt right. You’re always aware that people worry, and I can absolutely see why, about what they call “fridging,” which is where a female character serves no 4/17 WORLD SCREEN 93

other function than to motivate the male characters. But Mary served many, many more functions than that within our show. She changed and illuminated the path of the show. So I felt we were safe from that. Although we never will be safe from that accusation since they call it fridging even when it doesn’t abide by those rules!

You can’t have a rule that says you can’t kill female characters. You just can’t, that’s madness.

But you should have a rule that says the death of a female character cannot simply be a device.

It has to be an event in its own right. It has to be something important and personal.

WS: Any words of advice you’ll be sharing with Chris Chibnall as you prepare to exit Doctor Who? MOFFAT: Advice, oh Lord! [Laughs] First of all, he’s a very, very experienced showrunner himself, so he doesn’t need advice. The advice I gave him, which I won’t share, was not about how to run Doctor Who but how to have a life while you’re running Doctor Who. The things you must make sure of. He’s a family man, like myself. You’ve got to make sure that you survive it! [Laughs] And the support you’re going to need and what it’s going to be like at 4 in the morning when you’re rewriting some other bastard’s script and not even putting your name on it. What that’s going to feel like. That is what I talked to him about. He has his own ideas about how to do Doctor Who. The advice I’ve given him is all prosaic and all quite, Make sure this happens, make sure you get that and don’t let them do this. I won’t tell you what those things were! [Laughs] But it’s really about, you’ve got to see your kids now and then. You’ve got to go home now and then. You’ve got to keep living. It is a monstrous workload, Doctor Who, monstrous.

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ZDF

By Anna Carugati WS: What has been the strategy behind ZDF’s drama offering?

BELLUT: That’s one of our particular strengths. Our expert editorial teams at ZDF and creative German producers work well together here. We have extensive experience and outstanding relationships with our producers. This also applies to our international partners, such as those in Scandinavia or the U.K. We know what our audience wants and its preferences, and we offer a broad spectrum of content to match. This ranges from event TV movies to crime series, comedies, family movies, and a [variety] of German series.

We are simultaneously expanding our stock of programs. This allows us to successfully fill a lot of time slots with a mixture of premieres and reruns.

WS: Tell us about ZDF’s new youth online channel, funk.

BELLUT: Funk is an experiment. For the first time, we are offering a wide range of programming for

With a programming mix of drama, entertainment, sports, documentaries, news and current affairs, ZDF has been the most-watched network in Germany for the last five years. Director-General Thomas Bellut encourages innovation in programming and in ways of reaching young audiences. Many of ZDF’s shows that capture loyal German viewers, especially drama and factual programs, are finding equally enthusiastic audiences in other countries, thanks to the sales efforts of the public broadcaster’s commercial arm, ZDF Enterprises.

WS: What were the strengths of ZDF’s programming schedule in 2016, and how are you building on those strengths in 2017?

BELLUT: ZDF’s core output has kept us at the forefront of the German TV market for five years.

The program schedule is obviously working well. We focus on continuity and reliability.

Within the program schedule, we are also optimizing our range of offerings and are always developing new formats. Our daytime programming consists of a mix of TV series reruns, current information, and entertainment formats.

TV movies, magazine programs, documentaries, talk shows and comedy formats are popular in the prime-time slots. Live sport is an important addition, but it’s not critical to our overall success. There is still some room for improvement in terms of major evening shows. We are continually testing new formats, but we’re not quite there yet.

Netflix and Amazon haven’t yet had an influence on traditional TV consumption. It was always possible to watch movies or TV series outside the scope of traditional broadcasting, such as at the cinema or on DVD. The range of German productions available on global platforms is quite modest and cannot at all compete with what TV broadcasters are offering. A lot of content that typically shapes TV, like live sports, news reports and talk shows, are practically non-existent on these platforms. And with our new online media library, we are well positioned for nonlinear distribution of our content.

WS: In what ways does ZDF Enterprises support and enhance ZDF? BELLUT: Since 1993, ZDF Enterprises has been successfully acting as an independent market player that interacts with its shareholder, ZDF, based on an arm’s-length approach. The company has vast experience and an outstanding

A public broadcaster in Europe’s largest economy, ZDF is raising the bar with its documentary and drama investments, which are also strong sellers globally. a defined target group without broadcasting it on a TV channel. There is no blueprint here. We have put together a young team and given them a lot of creative freedom. Working together with a large number of players who have been putting their own offerings on video platforms for some time, we have established a content network. The platform launched with 40 formats, and another 30 are currently in development. The spectrum includes services, information, comedy, and a knowledge-based format that centers on a selection of school subjects—mathematics, physics, chemistry, German and history. Funk is important to us because it enables us to close a gap between our children’s TV channel and [our information channel] ZDFneo. But the other thing that makes funk so important is that it allows us to try out something different. By doing so, we’re learning more about what makes young people tick and how we can reach them with our content.

WS: What is the impact of SVOD platforms like Netflix on the German market?

BELLUT: We are monitoring these services with interest but are relaxed about them. YouTube, 94 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

international reputation in two main areas of business: trading rights and managing its corporate investments as a shareholder of an efficient portfolio of media companies. Its long-standing international activities, global network and experienced staff with deep knowledge of international markets and industries allow ZDF Enterprises to inform us very early on about the latest global programming, production and economic developments. As a private company, it can also operate more flexibly and take higher risks in the marketplace than we can as a public broadcaster. Thus, ZDF Enterprises is often our co-production partner in the realization of important projects at both a national and international level, acquiring additional rights at its own risk. At the same time, the company is free to do business with any partner worldwide. Its global success also strengthens ZDF’s reputation as an innovative and high-quality broadcaster.

And finally, ZDF Enterprises is economically successful and its profits contribute to the fulfillment of our mission as a public broadcaster.

For more from Thomas Bellut, see page 140.

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FremantleMedia

By Anna Carugati Hulu exist means that there are shows that can be financed now that could not be financed five years ago by advertiser-funded channels. As global subscription platforms, they have different economics, and they look at content in different ways and use it to differentiate themselves. What this means is that on the one hand, the business model evolves, probably for the better, but it’s a little more complex. On the other hand, it stretches the range of shows that can be made. I always say that Narcos would have probably never seen the light of day if it hadn’t been for Netflix because if you’re an English-language network, you probably can’t afford it. If you are a Spanish-language network you can’t afford it either, so you need a global platform like Netflix to take that kind of bet.

WS: How has FremantleMedia diversified its content to produce not only shows for mass audiences but also for more niche audiences?

FremantleMedia produces some of the world’s best-known entertainment brands and has a catalog of more than 20,000 hours of drama, entertainment, factual and children’s programming, which it sells to broadcasters around the world. Currently, digital platforms are among the outlets that have the biggest appetite for content. As CEO, Cecile FrotCoutaz has helped broaden FremantleMedia’s focus and production capabilities so that it can supply long- and short-form programming to linear and nonlinear platforms.

WS: Given the constant changes in the media landscape, what are some of the biggest shifts that you and your teams have had to make in seeking talent and in producing programming?

FROT-COUTAZ: You have to break down the change that we’re seeing into several parts. One of the changes has been in the distribution platforms, and another is the nature of the content.

We should think about those aspects differently and separately. On the distribution platform front, we all know what’s happening; it’s the advent of the SVOD services. The main consequence of that is more on the business side in terms of where you launch shows, windowing shows and how shows get financed—those are the main changes there. Separately, the nature of the content that’s being bought by new platforms is different—not all, but some of it is different [from what traditional ad-supported linear channels are buying]. The fact that Netflix, Amazon Prime and

but each episode is almost like a movie. It’s incredibly visual with a very complex character and a relatable theme—it’s about faith and loneliness. It’s not something that you put on in the background while you make a cup of tea! It requires your full attention.

And again, that’s not a free-to-air show.

That’s very much a pay or an SVOD show.

It’s probably a show that you wouldn’t have been able to finance or make a few years ago. Wildside is also developing Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels for television, which should go into production at some point later this year. It’s a very raw, honest take on what a friendship between two girls can be—the closeness, love and dependence, but also the jealousy and the slightly darker undercurrent. It explores that incredibly well over a lifetime.

This year we’re also launching American Gods, which will have a worldwide release at

With offices in more than 30 countries, FremantleMedia has been tapping into a global pool of talent to make more than 10,000 hours of content a year.

FROT-COUTAZ: Mostly what we’ve done in terms of addressing the needs of the platforms is we’ve gone into high-end drama, like everyone else. In the last couple of years, we spoke a lot about Deutschland 83, our German show, which did very well internationally and is coming back. At the moment, we are writing the second season, Deutschland 86. The interesting thing with that particular show is that the first season, Deutschland 83, was financed by RTL in Germany as a prime-time series and also by the international market.

The second season, 86, will be primarily financed in Germany by Amazon—RTL will have the secondary free-to-air window— and by international sales. That’s a good example of how the funding of that show shifted over the last few years. It’s also a good example of how the environment has had an impact on a show like Deutschland 83.

Our Italian company, Wildside, produced and launched The Young Pope last year, which is written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino and stars Jude Law. That’s an example of a show that is a real auteur piece. It’s ten episodes, 96 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

the end of April. Within 24 hours it will be on Starz in the U.S. and on Amazon internationally.

We’re going to see more and more of these— but again, two years ago, a global release from season one would not have happened.

Those are some examples of things we are doing. Like our competitors, we’re all looking at the same landscape, but this is our response to it. We are trying to offer projects to the market that we feel are talent-driven and unique, coming from people who have a very specific point of view and hopefully will find a very passionate audience.

WS: FremantleMedia has also been active in short-form content for digital platforms.

FROT-COUTAZ: Everyone is learning more and more about what works and what doesn’t work with short-form video, and there are probably more questions than answers. The eyeballs are there, but everybody is struggling at the moment with the monetization formulas. I suspect that in the next 12 to 18 months we will continue to learn more about this space. It’s interesting because there are different

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shows is that they are not all going to work. The ones that are resonating at the moment are the comedic ones. Family Feud is comedic, obviously Match Game is comedic, and so is To Tell the Truth. Instead of thinking of them as game shows, I see them as shows that are vehicles for comedic performers. That’s a better way of characterizing these formats.

FremantleMedia’s Modus. creators working in short-form video and a different audience for it, but I think the business model is still challenged and we’ll have to see if the dollars do indeed follow the eyeballs.

WS: FremantleMedia has invested in some production companies recently. How do they complement the existing companies in the group?

FROT-COUTAZ: Some of the investments that we have made have been about [adding to our] pipeline [of content]. We make a minority investment in a company because we believe that they have great creatives and that they are going to deliver shows, whether formats we can produce or finished shows for our distribution business. Other investments are about diversification. For example, buying into Wildside in Italy was about getting into high-end drama in Italy. Our acquisition of a majority stake in the production company Abot Hameiri in Israel was about getting into Israel in a meaningful way. All the investments are about complementing our portfolio.

WS: What are your priorities for the U.S. market? You do a good deal of business in the U.S. FROT-COUTAZ: It’s always been a big market for us because our shows are always bigger there than anywhere else. American Gods is going to be a very important one for us. It’s a very ambitious show. We’ve been working on that for the last three or four years, and now

it’s finally launching. On the unscripted side, we still have America’s Got Talent, which is doing really well. We had a very successful game-show block on ABC that launched last summer, with Match Game hosted by Alec Baldwin, Celebrity Family Feud with Steve Harvey and To Tell the Truth with Anthony Anderson. That’s been very strong for us. We also have Original Productions, which produces [shows like Deadliest Catch and Storage Wars] for U.S. cable networks, and 495 Productions [producer of Blue Collar Millionaires and Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party], so we have a very diversified business in the U.S. It’s probably one of our most diversified, ranging from docusoaps for cable to big scripted series like American Gods.

WS: What is giving game shows such longevity?

How is FremantleMedia refreshing the gameshow genre for younger audiences?

FROT-COUTAZ: The business is cyclical. A few years ago nobody would have bought a game show. Now there are more on the air, and some seem to be working again, so it moves in cycles.

But if you have a big game-show format, they will be popular for a few years, and then they will go away for a few years, and then they’ll come back. That’s where owning a library of classic games and formats is very valuable because you know that over a long period of time you’ll go through these cycles, but they are evergreen. The other thing I’ll say about game 98 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

WS: FremantleMedia formed a partnership with CCTV Creation and co-developed the Dutch format The Eureka Moment, which aired on CCTV-1. What other opportunities is the Chinese market offering, either in production partnerships or distribution?

FROT-COUTAZ: China is not an easy market.

We have a very good team in China, and they are doing a very good job, but at this point we cannot produce in China. It’s a very different model, so we have an enhanced formatlicensing model because you can’t produce as a foreign entity and the restrictions on foreign formats have only increased in recent years.

This might change, but for a foreign company doing business in China, it’s a bit harder than it was four or five years ago. That’s not to say that we don’t have a good business there.

Doing The Eureka Moment with CCTV on Sunday nights was fantastic. They’ve made a brilliant show on a very big scale, with great production values and created a big event.

WS: Are there some countries where you are looking to increase FremantleMedia’s presence?

FROT-COUTAZ: [Our footprint] is probably about right. There may be one or two markets that we have in our short- to mid-term horizon.

With production, there is a fixed cost that you need to have for your infrastructure. So if the market is too small, it’s going to be very hard to have a profitable business, and you’re better off licensing either to broadcasters or local production companies. We have companies in 31 markets. I don’t see us going much beyond that, maybe one or two additional ones, but we’re close to capacity.

WS: What are the biggest opportunities and challenges you see in the next 12 to 24 months?

FROT-COUTAZ: I think it’s going to be more of the same. There is increasing competition for talent. Yes, there is more demand for content, but at the end of the day you need the talent, and there is a lot of pressure on talent. And figuring out the model for shortform programming is also a big challenge that everyone is wrestling with.

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Endemol Shine Group

By Anna Carugati that has sold to 144 countries, or Peaky Blinders from Tiger Aspect, which set a fashion trend for newsboy caps!

But it’s not just the Brits. The fantastic Max Wiedemann and Quirin Berg, our drama producers in Germany, are working on Netflix’s first original German drama. Then there’s El Vato, our first commission for NBCUniversal, which was produced in Mexico and is now going into its second season. It is brilliant—the production qualities are second to none on a budget that the Brits would certainly find challenging!

We’re also very proud to have had our first original drama commission from a telco, with the brilliant political drama Brussels, produced by Endemol Shine Netherlands for KPN, which launched in January. It was KPN’s first foray into content, and it’s a really interesting example of how our customer base is growing and diversifying across platforms.

The Endemol Shine Group consists of more than 120 companies, spread across the globe, that produce unscripted and scripted fare. While these shows are meant to serve domestic audiences first, such as MasterChef, Big Brother, Bron and The Fall, many of them find success in other countries as well. CEO Sophie Turner Laing credits the group’s diversity of voices and creators with supplying a continuous flow of shows, which is essential in today’s media landscape as linear and nonlinear platforms constantly clamor for product, especially drama.

WS: How does Endemol Shine provide outlets with diverse scripted programming?

TURNER LAING: We are incredibly fortunate to have some of the world’s most well-respected drama producers within our group. And they’re not just from the U.K. It’s true that English-language drama is the most indemand, so we are very lucky to have a number of unbelievably brilliant people there.

Black Mirror, for instance, is exquisite. It is Charlie Brooker at his very creative best. The show is in production for the next six episodes on Netflix, which will come out later this year. I love the fact that people even define his genre as “near-fi,” or near-future sci-fi because you watch and think that these things really could happen in the next five years. When you have a genre named after you, that’s something! And there are so many more, whether it’s Broadchurch from Kudos

WS: Many in the industry say there is just too much TV. Do you share that view?

TURNER LAING: I do think it’s funny that people talk about there being too much TV. Nobody ever complains about there being too many books, nor do people talk about too many films. But the current TV boom does, of course, come with its inevitable challenges, not least of which is a considerable strain on talent. There were an estimated 450 original scripted series airing in 2016 just in the U.S., and in terms of talent, all of those productions are looking for the best of the best. And rightly so—if you’re looking at multimillion-dollar shows, you need people with real experience working with those kinds of budgets, and there aren’t very many of them. What’s more, if you think over the last three completed seasons in the U.S., only 15 percent of all scripted pilots ordered remained on the air; that’s a very low risk-to-reward ratio.

Last year, content powerhouse Endemol Shine made 700 productions, across a broad range of genres, in 66 territories and broadcast on more than 260 channels.

WS: Have you seen the quality of non-Englishlanguage scripted programming increase in the last few years, and does it travel better than it used to?

TURNER LAING: Oh, definitely. You and I have been around long enough to remember when nobody in an English-language territory would even consider reading a subtitle, and we were way too grand to allow dubbing. Just think of all that wealth of content that we missed out on for all those years! Hopefully, we are catching up. I think the BBC in the U.K. was the first to really support foreignlanguage programming, closely followed by Sky. The OTT platforms have been very welcoming to non-English-language content and are tapping into a discerning audience out there that likes different kinds of stories and settings. I think it’s great for us all, and it’s a growing part of our business. Last year, for example, we set up Endemol Shine Studios in Israel. We wouldn’t have gotten behind drama in the non-English-language territories in the way we have if there wasn’t the market for it that there now is.

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All that said, there are many more opportunities today, and with drama being so distinctive, it puts a hugely valuable stamp of quality on any service, broadcast or OTT platform.

WS: Are you starting to see IP move back and forth from nonlinear to linear?

TURNER LAING: Yes—for instance, we’ve got these great French comedians called Le Woop Gang. They’ve got a strong digital following, and Canal+ is now trying them out in a special. It’s almost like piloting them. They may just exist long-term in digital and may not ever need to come back to broadcast, but the fact that there’s the flexibility, either way, is exciting. The one fact that I think is so extraordinary is that Mr Bean, which started its life on TV, has become the number one entertainment brand on Facebook and has more than 2.4 billion views on YouTube. There is a lot to be said for very carefully curating and growing your TV IP. For more from Sophie Turner Laing, see page 292.

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all3media

By Anna Carugati and Neal Street Productions, respectively. We started up a drama company called Seven Stories, a drama and unscripted company called Two Halves Pictures and an unscripted business called Caravan. We’ve got a few others that we are discussing currently.

WS: Are there territories where you would like to increase all3media’s presence?

TURTON: Yes, we are expanding our distribution footprint. We opened offices in Singapore and New York in addition to the office in London. In terms of production, we still view the U.K., America and Germany as the three big, main markets for us. We are pushing very hard to continue to develop those, and our focus remains on building the talent and program base in our key markets. When we look at opportunities around the rest of the world, we look both at investment and at interesting ways of working in partnership with other people in

Set up in 2003, all3media has since grown into a U.K.based super-indie with a network of production companies that supply a range of finished programs, as well as formats, to outlets around the world. Its offerings range from dramas such as Midsomer Murders and The Missing to factual and factual-entertainment shows like Cash Cab and Undercover Boss. CEO Jane Turton has been spearheading the group’s international expansion, either buying or investing in existing companies or setting up startups, with a primary focus on the U.K., U.S. and German markets.

WS: Do you prefer investing in established companies or in startups?

TURTON: We like both. Whether we are buying an existing company or starting up new businesses, it’s all about the talent. When you are doing a startup, you start, obviously, with nothing.

You build it from the ground up, and the talent has to be entrepreneurial and creatively brilliant.

When we’re making an acquisition, we’re partnering with the people in the business and investing in the IP and the future development and production slate. It’s a slightly different model, but acquisitions have much in common [with startups]—it’s just that the timing and the risk are a bit different. We’ve most recently bought Two Brothers Pictures, the production company behind the comedy-drama Fleabag.

In the last couple of years, we’ve acquired the two big drama producers responsible for The Missing and Call the Midwife, New Pictures

talent. It’s about getting the right development and production resources on the ground. As you can imagine, a lot of what we do centers on trying to find the best people and making sure we’ve got them properly incentivized, happy and supported in what they do. For example, we’ve taken a fantastic guy named Jimmy Fox and spun him from Objective Media Group America into his own label, Main Event Media, which will sit alongside Objective. Then we hired Jilly Pearce to run Objective in America. We try to find creative ways of increasing the number of development and sales people while maintaining this very special federal structure.

WS: What have been the highlights in Germany?

TURTON: all3media Deutschland is a very successful business for us. We’ve got Filmpool Entertainment, which makes a lot of shows for the commercial broadcasters in Germany and is very strong in scripted reality. We also have

Super-indie all3media, jointly owned

by Liberty Global and Discovery Communications, continues to extend its reach beyond U.K. shores. territories where we currently have no physical production presence. In New Zealand, we’ve got a very strong scripted business, and we are putting a lot of effort now into our Dutch business as well. We’re looking at opportunities but still focusing largely on building out the core markets, with America being the single biggest overseas focus in the next couple of years.

WS: Tell us about the business in the U.S. TURTON: It’s about a third of our production revenue now, and we’re pushing hard to grow it.

There are 23 production companies within all3media and 11 currently represented on the ground in the States, some in Los Angeles and some in New York. We have a federal model, which works extremely well for us. It’s a very good way of running a creative business. There is complete creative autonomy in each of those different labels. We will continue to put resources into the development and production units in America to grow all3media America, through a combination of formats that travel to the States from other territories and new and original content that is developed there. It’s about 102 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

an entertainment business that we run in conjunction with BBC Worldwide, Tower Productions. Tower makes the BBC and all3media formats in Germany. We have a drama business called Filmpool Fiction that makes prime-time series. And we are now looking at doing more corporate development to add to that area in the German business. It’s a very strong part of our portfolio. It’s just short of 20 percent of business from a production revenue perspective. Historically, in Germany you tend not to keep the rights in quite the same way as you do in the U.K., so you’re running a big producer rather than a big secondary exploiter.

Nonetheless it’s still a very important part of the business, and we are gaining traction on retaining rights that we can exploit. We are now looking to make a big success of the German business in the U.S. by putting more people on the ground in Los Angeles working for all3media Deutschland and with the team at Filmpool Entertainment, in particular. It will be fascinating and interesting to see how that works.

For more from Jane Turton, see page 152.

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Bonnier Broadcasting

By Anna Carugati transformation in steps, the first ones in the freeto-air business. Moving from viewers to users has been a huge mind shift for us. Just the very word “broadcasting” is a paradox. It indicates that we, the producers and editors, claim to know what the viewer wants. We decide that on Friday, Idol and then a comedy is best for our viewers. We have been working like this for 25 years. Now everything is turning upside down since the users tell us what, how and when they want to watch.

This simple insight is the fundamental element in our strategy. It is in a way the opposite of our free-to-air strategy from ten years ago. About three and a half years ago, after we made this viewer-to-user shift, we decided to be platformindependent in the way we organized our free-TV business. No more separation between linear and digital, no more digital departments. All content and sales people are working jointly for all platforms. And we talk about total viewing and full reach, not just reach on platform A, B or C.

The Scandinavian media market is one of the most competitive in the world, and one of its major players is Bonnier, whose businesses span newspapers, magazines, business and trade press, books, film and digital media. The group’s free-TV and pay-TV assets are housed in the broadcasting business unit, headed by CEO Casten Almqvist. This unit includes the TV4 portfolio of channels in Sweden, the MTV brands in Finland and the pay-TV platform C More. Almqvist recently restructured his businesses to keep pace with changes in technology and consumer habits.

WS: Bonnier Broadcasting was reorganized last year. What was the reason for the reorganization?

ALMQVIST: It’s a new operative model. We want to achieve two things: first, increase our transformation speed and flexibility and second, we want to enhance focus on our pay-TV business. Since free-to-air TV—TV4 in Sweden and MTV in Finland—is the biggest unit in Bonnier Broadcasting, we want to create a more balanced mix between pay and ad revenues going forward.

WS: You have also been following changing viewing patterns.

ALMQVIST: Very much so. Our overall analysis is very simple: we need to move from a viewer perspective to a user perspective. However, executing on this analysis is another thing—it’s a massive change for an organization like ours, or any broadcasting company. Therefore we’ve pursued our

market is by far the fastest moving part of the video industry, and another very competent player, Amazon, has just joined the club, alongside Netflix and HBO! Even in the old days when it was all about linear, we had more players in the market than most Western countries did. SVOD has been really competitive, especially in Sweden, but now also in Finland. C More is growing twice as fast as the market and has been the fastest-growing SVOD service for two years now.

WS: How has C More achieved that?

ALMQVIST: Historically we’ve had an on-andoff relationship with C More. Three or four years ago, we were joint owners of C More with the big telco, Telenor. We had discussions about whether we should leave C More but eventually decided to buy out Telenor and be 100-percent owners because we clearly saw that SVOD was the future. We needed

One of Europe’s oldest media companies, Bonnier has made digital transformation a key element of its growth strategy as it keeps track of changing consumption habits.

To accomplish this, we needed a shift in competence in our company. We had to let go of quite a few people to be able to recruit a new generation of Bonnier Broadcasting colleagues that were primarily in technology—programmers and developers from different companies. Three and a half years ago, TV4’s staff turnover was around 1 percent per year because people loved working here and we had been growing for 25 years.

To achieve a shift in competence and bring in these technology-developing colleagues, we had to increase the 1-percent turnover rate to 25 percent. For a while, we had a dramatic period when we changed a lot of people. That was another example of what we did to reach this fully merged operation between platformindependent content and between pay- and free-to-air channels and platforms.

WS: The SVOD market is very competitive in Sweden. What growth do you see in C More?

ALMQVIST: Massive growth in viewing and industry turnover but also crazy competition.

The Swedish market is probably one of the most competitive in the world right now. The SVOD 104 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

SVOD in combination with a very strong freeto-air offering.

We then defined C More’s program offering [and aligned it] to the TV4 offering, and concentrated on domestic programming, primarily in two genres: sports and drama. If you love sports, all the big Swedish leagues are on C More: soccer, hockey, handball and so on.

We wanted to position ourselves as the strongest Swedish domestic alternative, while our main competitor in this part of the sports market, Viaplay, is strong in international sports rights like Premier League or Champions League. We did the same with Swedish drama and movies, especially original TV drama. For any Swedish drama we invest in, and our investments have increased compared to just a couple of years ago, the first window will be on C More exclusively, nowhere else, [and it’s] primarily Swedish crime. Four to eight months later, you can see the same series on TV4 and another six months down the road it will be a library offering on C More. And while it’s being promoted heavily on TV4, as a free offering or catch up on TV4 Play, you can also

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Farang on C More and TV4.

WS: Scandi drama has been traveling very well. What type of investments have you been making?

ALMQVIST: We work very closely with most of the production company community in Sweden, including Endemol Shine Group, FremantleMedia and Banijay, as well as companies associated with the Bonnier group like SF Studios and FLX. The key to our success in drama is our commissioning model. It’s similar to ITV or BBC. We put money and competence into developing and commissioning by being very close to our partners. If you are a new entrant into the market, this is our number one unique advantage. For our competitors to match this it’s not just about having a lot of money or even, God forbid, stealing some of our great colleagues. It’s about a structural strength we’ve built up over a long time. Our commissioning ability is key, and we now have a central content department serving both TV4 and C More.

joined the company five years ago. Now it’s completely different; TV4 Play has become a go-to destination where many Swedes start their TV experience. We’ve had tremendous growth in TV4 Play, both in terms of the number of stream starts, but more importantly in the amount of time people spend within the service. People like to spend far more time on TV4 Play than on most other AVOD services. While many AVOD services, YouTube included, have a consumption-perstream start measured in seconds, the average time spent on TV4 Play is 14 minutes per start, and often up to 40 minutes. That means users like what they get and advertisers can reach their consumers in a premium environment. However, we ran into a challenge a year ago where we felt that the TV4 Play user experience wasn’t as good as some of the big SVOD services in the market. That was because of one simple reason: we didn’t know exactly who you were when you visited TV4 Play. So we had to decide if we should ask viewers to log in. However, doing that in a free-TV culture, where everything is about reach and making things easy and not limiting or imposing pay walls, is a very big decision. Eventually, we decided to create a login, increase the quality of the service and also provide a very strong offering for our advertisers through that. We launched in May 2016, and at that time, our year-end target was 500,000 log-in users. By the end of 2016, we had 2.2 million users, and we are currently growing by 10,000 a day. This is the most revolutionary thing within our free-to-air business in recent years, and we think we have something that will create massive growth in the next 12 to 18 months.

WS: As you look ahead 12 to 24 months, in what areas do you see opportunities for growth?

ALMQVIST: Our two major growth engines are the online services C More (pay) and TV4 Play (ad supported). TV4 Play started as a catch-up service for the linear offerings, and that’s what it was when I

WS: How is the Swedish ad market?

ALMQVIST: The Swedish economy is hot, so we are enjoying a very strong period since advertising spending is closely connected to the overall economy. Television is also extremely hot right now, and that goes for TV4 Play as well

watch it without ads on C More. By doing this, we have put far more resources into these two categories, sports and drama. Finally, we have made heavy investments in technology for C More.

Our new CTO, Henri Caddeo, has raised the whole level of features on our main online services C More and TV4 Play. You can have the best content in the world, but if you don’t have the technology backing it up, you don’t have anything. Before we invested heavily in technology, we weren’t really up to speed with our competitors. Now we are, and that’s why we have the growth.

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as traditional linear television, but more importantly, our total video offering is what advertisers are looking for. And the log-in offering on TV4 Play is enjoying very strong demand from the market. We also see a strong trend where advertisers who shifted quite heavily into digital advertising, but did not get the effect they wanted, are shifting back to more TV and video advertising, both to TV4 Play and to the linear channels.

WS: What challenges will Bonnier Broadcasting and the Swedish market in general face in the next year?

ALMQVIST: Traditional viewing is going down in the Swedish market, and this will probably be our number one challenge in the next year or so. We need to have a very high pace to continue transforming our company into a platform-independent business, so we’re not left on the shore, so to speak, when the ship sails and traditional ratings are too low. It’s all about keeping the pace.

One of the challenges we have on the freeto-air side is that young audiences, 13 to 25, are not really with us the way we would like. So we have launched a project called ENT, which is our creative talent network primarily for talent that we find on new digital platforms. We bring them into our community, back them and let them develop their ideas. It could be anything from continuing to be on YouTube or Snapchat, but promoted by us, all the way to having their own shows on TV4 Play or even hosting linear shows. We have ENT sidekicks in our own Strictly Come Dancing show, for example, or on Idol. Here, young talent that we found through ENT are part of traditional TV formats, and we create value for them, for our advertisers and for ourselves. I think ENT is an exciting example of how we are trying to address the challenge of attracting young viewers.

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ITV

By Mansha Daswani on are ever more important, and I’ve made it a focus to resource them more heavily and treat them like the crown jewels that they are. Later this year we’re introducing an extra episode of Coronation Street. We had to treat it very carefully and make sure that everybody, from the cast to the writers to the producers, was happy.

We’ve spent over a year preparing to get that episode so it seamlessly arrives and sits there forever. Our Saturday nights are very strong. The Voice was the first big new thing this year, and that started strongly for us. We’re delighted with how it’s performing. That will be followed by The Voice Kids, which has not been done in the U.K. before, so we’re hopeful about that.

WS: What are some of the other new things you’re trying?

LYGO: Though it may not sound that radical, buying Lethal Weapon from Warner Bros. and trying that in ITV peak time for 18 weeks is quite a risk.

Kevin Lygo has worked across every sector of the British free-to-air television landscape. He started his career at the BBC before moving on to Channel 4, and then Channel 5, and then back to Channel 4. In 2010 he joined ITV to run ITV Studios, the U.K.’s largest production company that also has outposts across Europe and in the U.S. Last year he was tapped to succeed Peter Fincham as the broadcast group’s director of television.

WS: What have your priorities been in your first year as ITV’s director of television?

LYGO: The first thing you’ve got to get right is the team of people around you. You’re going to fail miserably if everyone’s not on the same page. So it’s been a year of changing teams, refreshing key roles, bringing in a lot of new commissioning editors, making a change in the scheduling/strategy team. A lot of time and effort has been invested in that, and we’re there now. I’m thrilled with the new team around us. We’re all eagerly getting on with 2017 and beyond.

WS: Were there parts of the schedule or genres that you felt needed particular attention?

LYGO: We’re in a good place to make some changes this year because the bedrock is solid.

The performance of our daytime schedule is very strong. It had been an issue in the past, but our morning show is performing well now. That affords us a kind of security blanket to try a few things that are a bit riskier. The soaps that we rely

11 o’clock hour might be able to do now. If you imagine the night that Lethal Weapon plays, it’s going to be Lethal Weapon into The Nightly Show, with a big star presenting it, and then the news at 10:30, and suddenly, whoops, it’s 11 o’clock, I should be in bed right now! I think it’s quite a different feel for the channel, one of confident entertainment.

WS: Netflix and Amazon are in many U.K. homes and are starting to commission drama out of the U.K. Does your strategy change as the market becomes more competitive?

LYGO: As a TV viewer, I’m glad Netflix is here. It’s proper competition, but it doesn’t eat into our main source of income—advertising. It’s a good, healthy thing to have. It’s a bit like the competition we’ve always had with the BBC. But I think we do need to realize that when there’s something of a particular nature, and that tends to be drama, with a cliffhanger ending, [people want to

ITV serves many demographics with its family of commercial channels and has been driving millennial engagement with the multiplatform ITV Hub. It’s been nearly a decade since an American show was played in a proper peak-time slot. It is quite risky, but I want to do it because I love American programming and I think it’s terribly accessible for a mainstream audience. And it brings a glamour and production value, and a cultural difference and attitude, from American TV that will feel fresh on ITV. So the hope is that it feels new but at the same time appropriate for our schedule. We launched The Nightly Show every weekday at 10 o’clock. It’s a half-hour talk/entertainment show, with a different host each week. It’s an eight-week experiment. The real intention is that it lifts the channel in the mind of the viewer and, to a certain extent, the advertiser that we’re still an entertainment destination until 10:30 p.m., when our news will find a regular place. In a way, The Nightly Show and the news are umbilically linked because I need both of them to perform well to feel like it’s been a success. I find it frustrating that we’re directly up against the BBC One news every night. There’s hope that at 10:30 we might even go up because we’re not directly against the bigger competition. So we’re very excited about what that 10 to 108 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

binge-watch]. It does make us wonder, are we scheduling our thrillers once a week in the same slot in the right way? There’s something very satisfying, as a viewer, about watching three or four episodes in a row when you want. We need to work out how we do that. Some of that comes from how we schedule, some of that comes from how we commission and what we commission, and thinking about if we’re doing exactly the right thing for what we have. I don’t think it affects at least half of what we do, which is traditional highquality episode-ending dramas—Midsomer Murders, Vera. We’ve got some on at the moment, and they’re doing exactly what they always do. I don’t think it affects something like Victoria or Cold Feet or The Durrells, which are warm, feel-good shows that you’re happy to watch on a weekly basis but for which you’re not desperate to watch the next episode straight away like you would be for a thriller. We can’t ignore [the OTT platforms]. They’re not biting into our viewing heavily, but our antenna is twitching about the way they’re offering [content]. We have to be honest that it’s glorious to watch a bunch of episodes until you’ve got to go to bed.

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had the good idea of not reinventing the show— but it’s been 13 years since we last saw them, what have they been up to?

ITV Studios Global Entertainment’s Prime Suspect 1973.

WS: How much viewing is taking place on the ITV Hub, and what’s resonating particularly well on an on-demand basis?

LYGO: The ITV Hub [ITV’s online destination for on-demand, catch-up and live streaming] is growing. We’re very happy with the performance technically—it never crashes, it always delivers when it says it will. You take all that stuff for granted once it’s there. But it wasn’t always like that. It used to stick; it used to crash. Now it’s a really efficient technical service. The uptake is dramatic, and it’s growing faster than the BBC iPlayer and Channel 4 [on demand] are growing.

It’s from a lower base and all that, but it is attracting a lot more people and certainly the everelusive 16-to-34s. Over 50 percent of all 16-to-24s in the country have registered to use the Hub. That’s a big thing for us. The types of shows that are most watched are ones that are deliberately younger skewed. For example, we had a big hit on ITV2 with Love Island, a big, brassy, fun reality show that we ran in the summer. Much of its effect was felt on the Hub. It averaged around 1.3 million viewers consolidated, but also around 1 million requests per episode on the ITV Hub. It was incredibly strong for 16-to-34s. So you can see how [linear and online] can work in tandem.

The old-fashioned way [for viewing] was that BBC One had a good drama at 9 o’clock, and we had a good drama at 9 o’clock, so you made a choice on that night and you’d watch one. But you’re now more inclined to record the other one and catch up and watch it later. So we get around a 20-percent [ratings] increase over the course of a week. And this year, with some of our dramas it’s a bit more. Again, what does that mean about the way we schedule? What type of drama does this most affect? Everybody is thinking this through at the moment. Of course, because your dramas take a year to deliver, you’re

making judgments quite well in advance of the reality. But at the moment it just means more people are spending more time with ITV. WS: Tell us about your deal with AwesomenessTV for a block on ITV2 targeting millennial audiences.

LYGO: All the mainstream broadcasters are mindful of what 16- to 34-year-olds are doing. They are the most tricky to get ahold of when you want to get ahold of them. They’re still watching a hell of a lot of TV—on tablets and phones and at different times of the day. [The deal with] Awesomeness was a way to combine our studio ambitions and our network ambitions here for attracting 16-to-34s. American shows, when they’re good, are sometimes the best way of getting younger viewers. It doesn’t really matter what it gets on a linear overnight viewing. How is it affecting viewers on the Hub over time? Are we attracting more 16- to 34-year-olds to come and watch the channel, be familiar with ITV and associate younger-skewing brands with ITV? It’s a good experiment to test the waters with that.

WS: What’s the thought process that goes into bringing back successful franchises like Cold Feet and Prime Suspect?

LYGO: I suppose the first thing that was done was Endeavour, the prequel to Inspector Morse. It was an original, fresh, clever idea. And that’s what we’ve done with Prime Suspect. We’re calling it Prime Suspect 1973. With Cold Feet, it was born out of a slight frustration that these non-genrebased shows, so not crime, not thriller, are so hard to get traction on. With Cold Feet, everybody has their own fond memory of the series. It was a way of getting a relationship drama, if you like, on air with a head start. Because the cast was all up for doing it, that was interesting in itself. The writer 110 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

WS: What goes into keeping your longestablished entertainment brands like Got Talent fresh every season?

LYGO: With the great big shows like X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, there is absolute evidence that they can run and run. It’s so rare to find shows that get massive audiences. The job of the broadcaster and the producer now is to very carefully think, How can we keep this show on air? It’s not, shall we do one more series and then out? Invariably whatever you replace it with doesn’t do quite as well. Even though they may be lower rating than they were at their peak, they’re still monstrously big shows. The way I organized the commissioning team, we have people whose job it is to be utterly focused on reenergizing and keeping fresh the old shows that audiences love. That’s what we’ve done with the big returners. It’s a challenge, there’s no doubt about it because so many similar talent-based shows are on now and these shows are ten years old. But if we weren’t happy with them, they wouldn’t be on. So it’s a nice challenge. They’re still doing better than most things, so it’s absolutely as important to try and reinvent them and refresh them as it is to find new shows.

WS: Are you happy with the current ratings system in place in the U.K.? Are there areas where you wish you had better viewing data?

LYGO: It’s a gold standard, so we have to accept what we’re given. You can see that around 86 percent is still live viewing. The overnights are still a drug. I don’t think we’re quite as addicted to them as we used to be. You can see that dramas, in particular, do increase by quite a significant number [in catch-up]. As a broadcaster we need to be clear with ourselves and then communicate outwards, Does it matter if a viewer is overnight or on the catch-up systems? There are all different ways you can catch up. Does it matter if it’s later that night or seven days later or 30 days later? I think we’re all struggling a bit to be sure of what we prefer. If we could get them all in one night, overnight, would we like that? I think we would probably still say yes. But the devil is in the details of how we monetize these viewers. In the old days, you got everybody in one night, and then everybody would be talking about [the show]. Now that you spread audiences over a longer period, not everybody is talking about it at once, but they’ll get there eventually.

And we need to balance the two.

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Gaumont

By Anna Carugati and everyone else was doing pilots. Since we already had a TV business in France, producing for the local market, we decided that our U.S. TV business would be more international in scope. And we were able to grow rapidly due to the large expansion of the market, which has grown from around 250 scripted TV projects a year when we started to around 500 now.

WS: Is the straight-to-series model still your preferred model for TV series?

RIANDEE: Yes, but since the inception of the company, there have been many more scripted TV shows produced in the market—almost double in five years—so there is much more competition. A lot of financing is coming into the TV model because it is less risky than the theatrical movie model, and television programming, especially with the digital platforms, has a much

For decades, Gaumont, the French motion picture studio established in 1895, has been offering cineastes some of the best French and international films. In 2010, as a growing number of feature-film talent was showing interest in television, Gaumont Vice CEO Christophe Riandee decided to set up a TV production business in Los Angeles. Within a short period Gaumont’s U.S. tele vision operation had Hannibal on NBC and Hemlock Grove on Netflix, followed by Narcos; all three have earned considerable critical acclaim. Riandee recently moved Gaumont’s animation and international television distribution teams from Paris to L.A. as well.

WS: What’s been your strategy in building your TV business?

RIANDEE: As part of Gaumont, the oldest film company in the world, we were producing a few feature films in the U.S. a number of years ago, and the talent we were working with were constantly saying that they were interested in doing TV. This was the start of everything, and we decided to work with a new straight-to-series model in order to bring the independent-moviefinancing model to the scripted series business. This is what we offered the market, which was very new at the time. Netflix had just started producing its original series the same year as we started our TV business. There was no Amazon, no Hulu

can access an Italian-language show or a German-language show. Anybody in Asia can access a Latin American show, such as Narcos. Yet nobody sees Narcos as a Latin American show. It’s seen as an American show even though most of the time the actors are speaking in Spanish. So it’s true globalization. Not only [are shows traveling] from the U.S. to the world but also from every other country to global audiences.

This provides a lot of opportunity for everyone because a niche show can reach a very large worldwide audience. It offers a lot of opportunities to producers like us, to broadcasters and to platforms like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. It’s been said that this is the golden age of television; maybe it’s the platinum age or the diamond age!

WS: Are there European stories you feel haven’t been told yet that you would like to tell?

Gaumont has extended its storied featurefilm expertise to the television world, bringing to the scripted series space new financing models and creative alliances. wider audience than theatrical movies. So the size of the television market is bigger and the composition of the market is much different from what it was five years ago.

We still prefer the straight-to-series model because that is the way the platforms are operating now most of the time, but we are exploring other models like pilots when they are required or financed by broadcasters, or backdoor pilots.

WS: How did Gaumont become involved in Narcos and what lessons have been learned from its success?

RIANDEE: We were producing Hemlock Grove for Netflix when Eric Newman [Narcos’s showrunner] came to us with his project.

We were already exploring ideas for Netflix, which at the time was looking for a project for the Latin American market. The worldwide success of Narcos was unexpected, but the lesson of this success is that borders are totally disappearing and our world is much more globalized. The entire world has access to global content. Anybody in the U.S. 112 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

RIANDEE: Yes, we are investing in European projects. The European market is opening up; for example, Medici: Masters of Florence was commissioned by Rai, which is a more traditional broadcaster, and they commissioned it as an Italian period piece in the English language. It was a huge success for Rai and we expect they will expand this policy. I think it’s a very good sign for all the countries in Europe that local stories can be told to an international audience, and obviously international means [producing in] English. On the other hand, there is the success of Deutschland 83, the German-language show that traveled all around the world. The market is opening up in Europe—broadcasters are ready to invest and there are a lot of stories to be told. There are many period pieces, but we are also discovering a lot of contemporary procedurals and family dramas that could travel outside of Europe.

WS: What is Gaumont Television working on now?

RIANDEE: We have around 40 projects in various stages of development between

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the U.S. and Europe; 20 of these are projects from the U.S., and we anticipate making some exciting announcements about them in the coming weeks. Also in the U.S., we are currently in production on season three of Narcos and season two of F is for Family. In Europe, we are working on Spy City, which is set in Berlin after World War II with British, American, French and Russian spies. We are also in production on the sixpart series The Art of Crime, one of the first procedurals set in the world of art that captures French culture and history in a way we believe is a first. This series will debut this fall on France 2. In animation, we are in development on Do, Re & Mi, with Kristen Bell attached. We are in the process of selling that and we’ll make some announcements in a few weeks of a major broadcaster in the U.S. We have lots more, but we can’t reveal them for the moment.

WS: Tell us about Gaumont’s animation business.

RIANDEE: We hired Nicolas Atlan to run our animation business and moved the management of animation to Los Angeles because we see the same evolution in animation as we’ve seen in

live-action programming. The digital platforms and all the newcomers need animation for their kids’ audiences and also sometimes for their adult audiences, like the series we did for Netflix, F is for Family.

Our strategy in animation is to continue to do as much European production as we’ve done before but to also produce two to three U.S. series each year and develop a few movies.

WS: When you set up the business in L.A. in 2010, did you imagine Gaumont’s U.S. TV operation would be where it is today?

RIANDEE: Frankly, I don’t remember! We were not expecting such rapid growth because we now have 25 people in L.A. We produced three seasons of Hannibal and three seasons of Hemlock Grove. We are in production on the third season of Narcos, the second season of F is For Family and have 20 projects in development in the U.S. We didn’t expect such a global success for Narcos. We are extremely happy with that, but nobody expected it.

We also didn’t anticipate so much change in the market or the importance of digital platforms. Now, everybody under-

stands that they have changed forever the nature of our market, even for movies.

Nobody expected that, either. The market grew very quickly and so did we.

WS: In such a rapidly evolving market, it must be essential to remain open to change.

RIANDEE: We need to remain very open to change, that’s my obsession! We also need to work together. The creative teams in France and in L.A. are working very closely on a week-to-week basis. We are taking advantage of our unique position in the market of having a strong presence in Europe and strong presence in the U.S. F is for Family was created because I asked the animation team in Paris to work with the live-action team in L.A. We also recently hired a film executive because we want to develop movies in the U.S. It’s very interesting; we started as a movie company in France, then we set up a TV business in L.A. With that success we also started to develop TV series in France, and now we are starting to develop movies in L.A. It’s a very small company at the end of the day— we have 250 people who work together collaboratively on each project.

Gaumont’s Narcos.

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Danish Broadcasting Corporation

By Anna Carugati than DR1 in its profile. We have a channel called DR K that offers culture, art and history. Then we offer the Danish audience three channels for children and young people. We devote all this space to children because it’s part of our obligation and also a strong part of Danish culture.

We want our children to grow up with a quality content offering that has the aim of educating and making them independent and curious citizens. We start very early because we think it’s so very important for their future life as citizens in our society.

WS: Denmark is a small country. How do you explain the amount of creativity that comes from the market?

RØRBYE RØNN: Yes, Denmark is a small country, we have a very weird-sounding language, and we have small budgets [compared to other countries]. I’m proud that, despite being so small, we are known as an innovative and creative nation.

It’s hard to believe that a country with only 5.7 million people has been able to generate some of the most innovative drama series of recent years. But DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation), headed by Maria Rørbye Rønn, CEO and director general, has been able to tap into local talent that delivered such dramas as The Killing and Borgen. These series not only meet DR’s requirements of entertaining and informing but also, because they are imbued with universal themes, resonate with viewers outside of Denmark.

WS: Tell us about the channels in DR’s portfolio.

RØRBYE RØNN: We are a public-service organization founded on the model of the BBC in the U.K., so we have an obligation to serve the entire population of Denmark with programming that informs, educates and entertains in order to help make strong citizens, allow them to take responsibility in democracy and strengthen our cultural identity. We do have an obligation to reach everybody with relevant content, and because the audience is more fragmented today than it was years ago, we need various channels in order to reach everybody. So our main channel, DR1, targets a very broad section of the population. It airs debates, news, lifestyle, drama and entertainment. With DR1 we want to start broad discussions about life and values that are important to the individual and society. DR2 is more focused on challenging programming: public affairs, public lives, society, we air a lot of documentaries and fiction around these topics. It’s narrower

always taken very clear artistic risks to push our own creative boundaries. We have always made it a goal to give new, up-and-coming talent a chance to grow. Whether it’s actors, screenwriters, directors or producers, we always make sure to bring new talent to the Danish public when we produce a new drama. That has secured an extremely strong pipeline [of talent] and a foundation in the creative environment in the Danish drama industry. By doing this, we get the public used to meeting new talent and, at the same time, feed their expectation for innovation and creativity. The two go hand in hand.

WS: What types of stories does DR want to tell?

RØRBYE RØNN: We are always striving to try new ideas because we like to stop when we are at the peak of success. We try to challenge ourselves to make new content. But the fundamental elements in our series are the same: our stories are not just stories. We want to tell stories with strong

Maria Rørbye Rønn was honored with an International Emmy Directorate Award in 2016 for DR’s contributions to excellence in television with its drama hits.

And it is beyond doubt that our Danish drama series have an important role in branding Danish values and products. I think there is a connection between being a small nation and constantly striving to produce something different and unique. We are very aware of our cultural heritage, and we use that in our creative processes. As our head of drama, Piv Bernth, always says, the more local, the more global. By that, she means we are grounded in very local stories and in the lives we are living in our country. By focusing on that, we become very authentic to our own culture, identity and values, and because of this, our stories become relevant and interesting to people all over the world as well. They can relate because our stories hit this nerve and have an authentic feeling. I might even dare to argue that we are compensating for being so small by being innovative and creative.

WS: Does the Danish audience expect a certain amount of innovation, and must you provide that with each new series you produce?

RØRBYE RØNN: Yes, the audience does create pressure to meet high expectations, and we have 114 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

narratives, but we always add a social, ethical layer because we want people to reflect. We want to create conversations throughout the country and among generations. A good example was Borgen. A lot of people said, You cannot make a drama series about Danish democracy, it’s not possible to make it interesting to the entire population. But, we did it. And we did it by not only having a strong narrative but also adding another social and ethical layer—there was the personal story of a tough female politician and her struggles balancing politics and her personal life. Suddenly the story became relevant across borders because viewers could identify with her situation. We always work with double layers, having social and ethical themes combined with a strong narrative.

WS: What are the biggest issues facing the Danish television market in the next year?

RØRBYE RØNN: First of all, the fragmented audience on so many different platforms causes a lot of challenges for everybody, because we need to do more with the same amount of money. And furthermore, we

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DR’s The Killing. need constant innovation to stay relevant and keep the high quality of our programming, because anyone in Denmark can get programming from anywhere in the world.

WS: How is DR’s financing and do you have the money you need to meet all your programming requirements?

RØRBYE RØNN: For the past ten years, our income has been stable. We have a license fee, as they do in Britain, paid by the Danes. That is why it’s so important that we reach everybody and that everybody finds that we create value and that we have a uniqueness and distinctiveness in our programming compared to that of the commercial broadcasters.

At present, there are a lot of discussions about public-service media financing throughout all of Europe. This makes it even more important that we are able to do more with less money, that we are able to increase our productivity in general, and that we are always looking for new ways to have an efficient organization. We look through the whole value chain from ideas to distribution. We have succeeded over the last ten years at getting more and more efficient in administration and technology, and we allocate the funds we save in those areas for programming. This is important because it is the Danes who fund DR, and they expect us to be efficient and to deliver quality content. We have both a commercial sector and a public-service broadcaster in Denmark, but it’s important that we at DR distinguish ourselves, so the audience sees that we do deliver a different kind of offer.

WS: In the U.S. and elsewhere, news organizations are losing credibility. There is also this awful rash of fake news. What is DR’s relationship and reputation with its audience?

RØRBYE RØNN: The challenge you are mentioning is worldwide as people everywhere are losing trust in journalists and politicians. But in Denmark, we are fortunate that more than 80 percent of Danes find that our main daily newscast from DR is extremely trustworthy. Furthermore, we provide radio news, which is also ranked as highly trustworthy. So the population has a strong trust in public service. I do think that the fact that we are completely independent of political and commercial interests is a part of that. We do not have any agenda that we follow other than to inform the public.

WS: How does DR offer programming beyond the traditional TV set?

RØRBYE RØNN: It’s a reality that all modern media must operate on all platforms. Neither television, nor radio networks, nor the web can stand alone.

You need to be on all platforms. Having an obligation as DR has to serve the entire population, we see the fragmentation of how the public is using media more than ever. We need to have highquality programming on TV because it is still the broadest medium: 88 percent of the population in Denmark watches traditional linear television on a weekly basis. But when you look at the different audience groups, young people are streaming more and more and so are people 40 and 50 years old, so we need to be relevant on those platforms.

We also need to develop content depending on the platform we are operating on. We are working on this every day, and fortunately, our digital offers are very popular. In an average week, we reach 42 percent of the population with our digital offers. And across TV, radio, apps and its website, DR has a total reach of 96 percent.

WS: What impact are SVOD services like Netflix having on the Danish TV landscape?

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RØRBYE RØNN: Netflix has been a great success in Denmark, and I believe they have reached 35 percent of all households in a few years. That is extremely fast. Of course, we are competing for the attention of the same audience, and of course, it is a challenge for us because organizations like Netflix and HBO have budgets that are so much bigger than ours. The competition is tough, but I do think that we exist alongside each other because there is a difference in the offers.

Netflix is still mostly focused on American films and series, and we are focusing very much on Danish content, news, current affairs, documentaries and children’s programming. We want to work with themes that have a different substance to them. We are here not only to entertain, but we are also here to inform and educate. I think people want to be able to have Netflix and watch all those high-quality American series, but they also want our programming because it’s quite different. We offer characters that have an opinion about Danish society.

WS: What opportunities and challenges do you see for DR in the next year?

RØRBYE RØNN: Staying relevant with the young generation is our absolute biggest challenge. It’s also the biggest opportunity, but we need to tell our stories in new ways in order to engage youth.

They want to be included and they don’t want to be lectured to. They want to use the platforms they prefer. They want different ways of storytelling. Plus, in Denmark, the young generation has grown up with English as a second language, so they can navigate content from all over the world. We need to be an interesting alternative in order to stay relevant to young people. This is an important opportunity, as we don’t see public service as only being relevant for the older generations.

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Tele München Group

By Anna Carugati Film, which provides many hours of drama, cop and detective shows. It is a public company in which we took an interest six years ago and recently made a takeover bid, and now we are the 85.23-percent majority owner. That should be a solid step in expanding the number of hours and volume of our produced programming as opposed to our licensed and traded product.

WS: How do you decide what to invest in as the media business changes so rapidly?

KLOIBER: We keep a very close eye on the businesses we’ve set up and nurtured and obviously when we feel that the wheels are starting to come off, as we do with the physical home-video business, we very much go to the forefront of development of on-demand platforms and channels and EST [electronic sell-through]. Also, with my son, Herbert Jr., who’s been here for five years, I have divided how we look into the future, and we invested in more productions and development

When Herbert Kloiber founded Tele München Group (TMG), he envisioned a company that would service German-language territories with high-end films, TV fare and classical music programming. He soon set his sights beyond Germany’s borders, selling content, forging partnerships and participating in international coproductions. In response to European broadcasters’ demand for homegrown product, Kloiber is shifting a significant portion of TMG’s investments from rights trading to production.

WS: What factors have contributed to the increase in the volume of European drama?

KLOIBER: First of all, a lot of U.S. content has moved far away from the tastes of European TV audiences, and the Hollywood studios can no longer just sign an output deal with one or another partner and have all their product on the air. So, in Europe, a lot of money has shifted toward production. For three decades, Beta Film and TMG have been at the heart of trying to make things work between the U.K., France, Italy and Germany and sometimes the U.S. In several instances, that has worked well, provided the TV movie or miniseries was shot in English and used fairly prominent English writers and directors and incorporated transatlantic tastes into the European concepts and subject matter.

Now, 90 percent of the drama that works here is domestic. It’s no longer shot in English. As a consequence, we recently acquired one of the big production companies in Germany, Odeon

WS: What are the biggest challenges facing the major German broadcasters?

KLOIBER: Major broadcasters are shifting a lot of focus to their news and sports operations where they are still very dominant, although, the rights to the Olympics from 2018 until 2024 have gone to Discovery Communications. Everybody said they will still cut a deal with ARD and ZDF to split the rights. But the negotiations collapsed and therefore the Olympics will most probably not air on the public networks where they have been forever and ever. Still, programming investments will continue to flow toward events that will garner 6, 8, 10 million viewers and much less into acquisitions.

WS: What growth opportunities do you see for TMG in the next 12 to 24 months?

KLOIBER: The integration of our production business into the whole company is important so that we get more writers and directors and people

Tele München Group owns stakes in RTL II and TELE 5 and is ramping up its position as a supplier of European content to platforms around the world. as opposed to acquisitions that have limited rights possibilities. We invest about $150 million a year in U.S. acquisitions, so with the exchange rate with the U.S. dollar being an uncertainty for the next number of years, we’d like to see more of the $150 million going into European production, mainly German. We will continue with our broadcast interests in RTL II and TELE 5. I have disposed of our two-channel broadcast operation in Austria. Our $250-million business worth of licensing and reselling product has matured. We feel that those margins will be eroding in the future as the German networks are using less and less U.S. product in reasonable time slots. The only shows of the last few years that came from the U.S. networks or majors were Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, on which ProSieben depends basically eight hours a day.

But none of the shows from Fox or Paramount or Warner Bros. or any of the other studios play in prominent time slots. All the small channels that the RTL Group and ProSiebenSat.1 have created, which reach 1.5- or 2-percent audience share, are the ones that are currently using Hollywood studio product.

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who bring in ideas to fuel both our theatrical and television distribution. That’s mainly where our growth lies, other than the performance of some of our subsidiaries, like RTL II, which had a great 2016, and TELE 5, whose 2016 was better than ever. But we’ve had a fluctuation in our theatrical business, which comes from if you’ve got The Twilight Saga you’re doing well, but with Divergent you’re not doing so well on a huge investment per acquisition. We’re trying to mitigate that by making four or five German pictures for which we retain worldwide rights. This provides us with a better margin and a better profit share. It also allows us to control all the on-demand rights and all the pay windows. So that’s where the growth is, becoming more independent from acquired product and redirecting a good part of our investment into production and making our rights chain longer and less cumbersome. We are also looking to continue to invest in businesses where we can leverage our core strengths in the German-speaking market, where we reach young audiences directly, or where we participate in the international expansion of proven business models.

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Atresmedia Televisión

By Elizabeth Bowen-Tombari 5.3 percent. In this market, television is the most important medium, with a share of just over 40 percent. Television is the platform that is best resisting the internet’s push, as it is the second ad-spend platform. Our share of television advertising is between 42 and 43 percent.

Atresmedia’s platforms—television, radio and the internet—encompass one-fourth of the total market in Spain. With Atresmedia Publicidad, innovation comes from having a close relationship with clients and actively listening to satisfy their needs; from analyzing other countries; and from having internal talent and leveraging new technologies.

WS: What programming strategies have contributed to Antena 3’s ratings success?

BARDAJÍ: Our strategy is to create compelling television for audiences that is also attractive and effective for advertisers. We look to content that delivers quality and profitability, is relevant to the

Spain was hit hard by the global economic crisis in 2008 and 2009, but the country’s economy has begun to rebound, thanks in part to austerity measures and reforms. Atresmedia Televisión, which manages the channels Antena 3, Neox, Nova, Nitro and laSexta, has similarly navigated the storm by rigorously containing costs and diversifying its revenues. But as the division’s general manager, Javier Bardají, explains, a key factor in his stations’ ratings successes has been a steadfast commitment to quality programming.

WS: What lessons did Atresmedia Televisión learn during the economic crisis?

BARDAJÍ: During the period when the crisis was the most intense, we implemented a cost-control plan for all our activities. Although this still continues, television has best been able to capitalize on the market’s slow recovery, thanks to a strategy of innovation and improvement that reflected the strength of our model. Our capacity to adapt has helped us overcome the obstacles and challenges in such a complex and dynamic activity as ours. We are in this position thanks to the fact that in the most challenging times, we’ve been able to anticipate [headwinds] and lay the foundation that currently makes us stronger, to take full advantage of the gradual market recovery. But we’re still far from pre-crisis figures.

WS: What is the state of Spain’s ad market?

BARDAJÍ: The Spanish market is recovering slowly after the crisis. Growth in 2016 was

BARDAJÍ: We’re very satisfied with our TV exports. Tu cara me suena, for example, is the most-exported Spanish entertainment format [as Your Face Sounds Familiar]. Gran Hotel was the first Spanish fiction series aired in the U.K. and can be seen in over 30 countries. El tiempo entre costuras, Velvet, El secreto de Puente Viejo and Vis a vis air in dozens of countries. Also, Atresmedia’s international channels Antena 3, Atreseries and ¡HOLA! TV are seen in 45 million homes in over 30 countries. We are the European operator with the most channels overseas.

WS: How much has Netflix affected the Spanish market?

BARDAJÍ: We think it’s a complementary offering and a client to whom we sell some of our productions. Our TV is free and creates appointment television. Our leadership has not been limited to just ratings and financial

With its portfolio of networks, Atresmedia Televisión commands almost 30 percent of the audience share in Spain’s competitive landscape. public and is developed with creativity, great talent and diversity in mind. Thanks to this strategy, we’ve cemented ourselves as the factory for audiovisual content on every platform in the country. Our strategy is supported by the belief that our model is a successful one. We’ve demonstrated this by adapting to the continuous changes in the market and viewer trends.

WS: What are some of the programs that received the highest ratings in 2016?

BARDAJÍ: We have a constant commitment to news through Antena 3 Noticias and laSexta Noticias. In 2016 Antena 3 had moments that made TV history in Spain: the series finale of Velvet reached over 4.3 million viewers; El Hormiguero 3.0 consistently won its time slot with more than 2.7 million viewers; Tu cara me suena was the most-watched entertainment show in the history of our country; and Salvados: Una hora en La Moncloa was the most-watched show on laSexta.

WS: How have Atresmedia’s productions sold globally?

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results. We’ve expanded our capacity for setting an agenda and generating conversations that are important to the public. Additionally, our content is not only viewed on free TV but is also distributed by pay-TV operators in other countries, Atresplayer and different platforms.

WS: How has Atresmedia diversified its revenues?

BARDAJÍ: In 2013 our CEO, Silvio González, saw it was necessary to diversify our activities.

Atresmedia Diversificación was created as a new division geared toward generating revenue not dependent on advertising. It is based on three main pillars, in addition to leveraging our content in the international market: investment in emerging companies through the media-forequity model; new business, which encompasses diverse activities such as exploiting offpeak time slots, licenses and merchandising, contests, online games and e-commerce projects, such as Tualbum.es; and music rights management, through the music publisher Irradia and record label Atresmúsica. Results from this division have grown 20 percent in 2016 compared to the previous year.

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Lookout Point

By Anna Carugati fast path [to production]. Even the most successful projects need patching together these days and doing the rounds of various broadcasters, not just in England but also in America and maybe another country or two.

That’s quite normal now if you are trying to finance a TV series, particularly a big, ambitious TV series. There is a lot of schlepping and lots of dog and pony shows! What we’re saying is, if we love the project and we love the people and the material, and we know and trust them, let’s take the schlep out of it and just make the project free from any marketing process. It feels a bit like the book publishing industry. The writers are left free to write their work, and the publisher publishes their work. That’s how we see Benchmark.

We’re fully financed to greenlight the projects in the meeting if we like them enough. Getting our money back is where

Simon Vaughan has more than 25 years of experience producing scripted television for outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. He’s the chairman and joint CEO, with Faith Penhale, of Lookout Point, an independent production company focused on highend British drama, of which BBC Worldwide holds a 49-percent stake. Lookout Point has made ambitious series such as War & Peace and The Collection. Vaughan has recently partnered with Access Entertainment and BBC Worldwide to form Benchmark Television, an entity that offers a new way of bringing projects to market.

WS: Tell us about your new venture, Benchmark.

VAUGHAN: It came out of a conversation with Danny Cohen [of Access Entertainment] who Faith [Penhale] and I knew very well from the BBC. When he was at the BBC, he had been a key man in helping us set up War & Peace with Harvey Weinstein. [Danny and I] talked about this idea of agnostically greenlighting drama before we take it out to the marketplace. We’re looking to work with the cream of the independent producing world. It’s really about getting the best people in a zone where they can do their best work and give them that creative space and protection. We hope they choose to work with us, a) because they know and trust in Faith and Danny, who are experienced in commissioning and talent-relationship management, and b) we hopefully offer a

VAUGHAN: It’s even bigger! It’s an epic. Harvey is back on board. We’ve got a fantastic creative team. It was recently announced that Chris Carey is producing. Chris is probably one of the U.K.’s leading producers and is behind the hit series Apple Tree Yard. We are about to announce a wonderful director, and we’re crewing it up as we speak. It’s big and expensive, and it looks like we’re going to shoot in France and Belgium. Harvey is pulling out his phone book to help us attract the biggest and best cast we can.

We’re trying to unpack and retell a book that is arguably one of the greatest novels ever written. It’s a real privilege and not one we take lightly. The creative risk on War & Peace was terrifying. We take that incredibly seriously.

With Les Misérables we are in very safe hands with Andrew Davies. He’s now written and delivered all the scripts and it’s fantastic. It tells the story that many people won’t have seen. It’s

Simon Vaughan has been involved in some of the U.K.’s most prestigious, and expensive, dramas, including the HBO co-production Parade’s End and last year’s War & Peace. we and BBC Worldwide come into it. BBC Worldwide in my view is the world’s best distributor with impeccable global partnerships and relationships.

WS: It seems the demand for drama is at an all-time high. What stories do you want to tell?

VAUGHAN: At Lookout Point and Benchmark we are focused on working with the top writers, producers and on-screen talent. We are a writer-driven company. We just delivered a project with Sally Wainwright about the Brontë sisters called To Walk Invisible.

We’re in preproduction on Les Misérables, written by Andrew Davies. We’re in preproduction for Press, our newspaper industry drama written by Mike Bartlett. The common denominator is that we’re working with the most significant writers from the U.K. telling the stories that they feel passionate about.

WS: Is Les Misérables going to be another big production in the style of War & Peace?

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a lot of the bits that aren’t in the musical, which is what most people know it from.

WS: Is it easier to get some projects sold today than it was five or ten years ago?

VAUGHAN: It’s definitely easier because there’s a platform in each country that is probably right for any good project, emphasis on the word “good.” Niche projects are more in demand in some cases than mass-market projects. You can make more subtle idiosyncratic worlds, and you can play less to the crowds and really focus on what the creators want to say, what’s their unique vision? Sally Wainwright is a very good example of that. Sally doesn’t play to the crowd. By not playing to the crowd, her projects are phenomenally successful.

WS: Is it realistic to say that good quality work always finds a home?

VAUGHAN: Absolutely. The cream rises. I don’t think there is any danger that great projects won’t sell. Great projects sell very well. The trick for us is to make sure we only invest in great projects!

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Beta Film

By Anna Carugati new. International exposure brings prestige and acceptance. Success [in your domestic market] lasts a very short time—one or two weeks, or, if you have a series, 12 weeks—and then something new is scheduled. If you have a series or product that is successful domestically and also internationally, that extends the product’s life cycle.

WS: How have you seen co-financing models change over the years?

MOJTO: Given the fragmentation of the market, financing has to come not only from the commissioning broadcasters but also from other sources, which may be other platforms, such as SVODs, or the international market. That’s the new situation. What you need to do is guarantee the quality of the production in order to enable international success. If your product is good and visible enough, and if it’s distributed and marketed properly, chances are good that you will recoup your financial investment from the

Since its founding in 1959, Beta Film has been bringing the best of American product to Europe, and the best European films and TV programming to other European countries and the rest of the world. Over the years, under the stewardship of Jan Mojto, Beta’s CEO, the company has become a major player in financing and co-financing films, TV series, miniseries and TV movies, and has also significantly increased its production of original content.

WS: How have you seen European drama evolve?

MOJTO: Everything that is being produced in the world is trying to get international attention. This is a very important new element and is even true for a drama produced in a small country. How do we define what will get international attention? It’s the quality of the storytelling, the quality of the production and, last but not least, marketing. Although one has to say that the best marketing doesn’t help if the product is not what you are promising.

WS: Has the quality of drama been increasing in Europe? What factors have contributed to this?

MOJTO: Yes, the quality has been increasing everywhere. As far as Germany is concerned, it had been a self-sufficient market for years. The only important element for drama was national success on the national broadcasters. In the global world that we all live, think and act in today, international exposure is an element in which German TV executives are starting to be interested. This is

push those who are producing to do it the best way they can.

Take, for instance, Babylon Berlin, a German series that takes place in Berlin in the 1920s. It has the highest budget for a series in the history of German TV. There was a high deficit, and we decided to invest in the production to guarantee its authenticity. That also meant shooting it in German. With all due respect, how could someone from New Zealand, for instance, know how to tell a story that takes place in Berlin in the ’20s?

WS: There is a lot of European drama traveling to English-language territories.

MOJTO: I think the driving force is technology [as well as the fact that] there are hardly any limitations, both in the number of potential clients and in the content. You have smaller channels, and they are all looking for product that has the potential to differentiate them from their competitors. The conviction that foreign-language

Beta Film is riding the wave of European drama’s newfound global profile, betting big on scripted projects from Germany, Spain and beyond. international market. This is one of Beta’s biggest achievements. We want our clients to understand that we make a conscious decision to have the international market in mind and aim for quality.

In this fragmented world with a little channel here, an SVOD platform there and telecoms and big international entities, an organization that is an aggregator and has a sense of quality, like Beta, is a very interesting partner for the new players.

WS: In jointly produced projects, is it getting easier to ensure that all the partners share the same vision for the product?

MOJTO: It’s impossible to expect that all the partners will share the same vision. I think the number of partners in an efficient joint effort is limited. It is essential, though, that someone is guaranteeing the creative integrity of the product. It’s not about pleasing everyone; it’s much more about guaranteeing that what is being produced achieves the highest level of quality in storytelling and production. Trying to get all the partners to agree on everything is impossible. Our model is that we trust the showrunner or writer/producer, and we try to be a complementary partner and 124 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

drama can’t work in the English-speaking world has been practically abolished by the fact that it has indeed been successful. Obviously, subtitled drama is more difficult to consume than something that is shot in English. But still, it’s all about quality. If the story is good, original and different from what one has seen, there is a potential for it in English-speaking territories. Look at the Italian series Gomorrah or the German Generation War, which was the first non-English-speaking drama in ten years to make it into prime time on BBC Two—and the ratings were as good as those for English-language productions.

WS: Beta is now also offering nonfiction product.

MOJTO: In recent years, we made an important decision to move heavily into production. We have invested in several production companies because we are convinced that a sophisticated combination of distribution and production is necessary in order to have better product to offer and also to produce better programs. So Beta today consists of two main elements— distribution and content creation, including unscripted formats.

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ONE-ON-ONE

o say that the past year has been a good one for Lionsgate would not be an exaggeration. It completed its acquisition of the premium pay-TV company Starz, its television division increased its revenues and CEO Jon Feltheimer has been diversifying the company’s businesses. Last, but certainly not least, Lionsgate’s film division released La La Land, one of the most talked-about films of the year, winner of seven Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy. Lionsgate’s films La La Land, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water and Deepwater Horizon were nominated for 26 Oscars and won eight.

Last December, Lionsgate acquired Starz, which has some 25 million subscribers in the U.S., for nearly $4.4 billion in cash and stock. The combined company boasts a film and TV library of more than 16,000 titles, film and TV production and distribution, and a portfolio of OTT platforms.

The deal offers numerous advantages to both companies.

Lionsgate gains a distribution outlet for its product as well as the creative talent of Starz’s team, headed by Chris Albrecht, who will continue to serve as Starz’s president and CEO. Albrecht was behind several hits during his tenure as chairman

and CEO of HBO and has shepherded Power, Black Sails and The Girlfriend Experience while at Starz. Starz benefits from Lionsgate’s financial backing and broad international-sales arm. The joint entity pledges to invest $1.8 billion in new film and television content. Together, they are better positioned to attract A-list talent in front of and behind the camera, at a time when top talent is at a premium since there are so many television series in development and production—all clamoring for the best actors, writers, producers and directors.

Lionsgate Television Group continues its platform-agnostic production strategy and is developing series for SVOD services and linear channels while supplying Orange Is the New Black to Netflix, Nashville to CMT, The Royals to E!, Casual to Hulu, Graves to EPIX and Greenleaf to OWN. Integration between Lionsgate and Starz has taken several months but has not distracted Feltheimer from other initiatives, such as increasing business in the Chinese market, forming partnerships, developing branded film labels that target specific audience segments, and setting up theme parks and Lionsgate-branded leisure centers.

JON FELTHEIMER LIONSGATE

By Anna Carugati

WS: Would you take us back in time and tell us how the idea for the Starz acquisition came about? What made the deal appealing?

FELTHEIMER: The Starz deal checked off all the boxes for us. I’ve known Chris Albrecht for 35 years, and he’s one of the best programmers in the business. He’s been transforming Starz into a modern, consumer-facing platform for the past five years, and we believe that the combination of our two companies will only accelerate the progress he has already made. Starz has been a great network partner for years, dating back to our television series Boss.

Strategically, the Starz deal is consistent with our longterm strategy of building our global content platform through a combination of organic growth and strategic, accretive acquisitions in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The combination of Lionsgate and Starz also reflects the industry trend toward consolidation that is evident in deals like the AT&T/Time Warner merger, aligning premium content with a world-class distribution pipeline.

WS: What will be the benefits of the deal for Lionsgate, for Starz and for shareholders?

FELTHEIMER: The deal creates a massive intellectual property machine that benefits everyone. Lionsgate and Starz will invest over $1.8 billion in new film and television content this year. Together, this will enable us to scale what is already one of the largest independent television businesses in the world.

It also provides a great opportunity for Kevin Beggs, Sandra Stern and the rest of our television group to collaborate with Starz on the same kind of platform-defining hits we’ve created for AMC (Mad Men), Netflix (Orange Is the New Black), Showtime (Weeds and Nurse Jackie), Hulu (Casual) and OWN (Greenleaf).

In addition to these operational and strategic benefits, we expect this to be an accretive transaction for our 4/17 WORLD SCREEN 157

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Chronicle, that can be leveraged across multiple platforms.

We’re adding to our stockpile of content all the time through the inhouse development of crown jewel properties, such as La La Land and the John Wick franchise, as well as the addition of exciting brands, like Power and Outlander through the Starz acquisition. That’s why we view the Starz deal as both an opportunity to scale our platform and continue the vertical integration of our business and as a content play that will strengthen our IP machine for global audiences.

Jenji Kohan has an overall deal with Lionsgate Television Group that includes her buzzy binge hit for Netflix, Orange Is the New Black.

WS: Are there benefits to having greater scale when attracting talent for films and television series?

FELTHEIMER: We expect our merged companies to be a magnet for talent by creating greater opportunities across our film, television and network platforms. As Chris Albrecht has said, “It broadens our shoulders in the creative comm unity.” It also brings us closer to consumers through our combined suite of over-the-top platforms and the Starz app.

The need to scale up in order to continue competing successfully was one of the catalysts for the deal.

Simply put, size matters in the current environment, though we’re mindful of the need to balance the benefits of scale with the importance of remaining agile and disruptive.

by year-end. We completed our deal financing with better terms than expected, and we’re on track to achieve our target of over $200 million in annual synergies.

Looking at the steps we’ve already taken to make our respective businesses stronger, we’ve integrated our worldwide home entertainment and television distribution operations, creating a home-entertainment powerhouse with a 12-percent market share.

We’re distributing six of the nine Academy Award Best Picture nominees this year, including La La Land.

We’re already collaborating on three premium television series in the Starz development pipeline, with more on the way. And at our first NATPE together, only six weeks after closing the deal, we syndicated the subscription streaming rights to the Starz series Black Sails to Hulu— just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we can do together.

WS: How are you integrating the two companies?

FELTHEIMER: We have a track record of integrating assets quickly and efficiently, and the Starz integration is actually progressing ahead of our expectations.

From an executive perspective, we continue to take a “best and brightest” approach to assembling our leadership teams. We’re bringing our employees together to streamline decision-making with a new shared office in New York and plans to co-locate Lionsgate and Starz’s West Coast employees

WS: Is it still beneficial for a media company to own its content as well as the “pipes” for distributing it?

FELTHEIMER: Absolutely. With an ever-expanding array of buyers, owning content is more important than ever. Our content partners today include over 100 SVOD platforms, compared to just a handful a few years ago. At the same time, the number of premium, basic and broadcast network partners with whom we’re in business also continues to increase.

Turning to our own distribution, we see Starz as a branded content

shareholders that generates strong free cash flow and a diversified, stable revenue base.

platform, not a “pipe.” Their addition to our portfolio of businesses not only creates fresh opportunities to monetize our content, but also increases the impetus for developing new properties, like Step Up, Dear White People, Dirty Dancing and the upcoming The Kingkiller

WS: Given consumers’ viewing habits, are the distribution platforms increasingly OTT and mobile, rather than traditional broadcast or pay TV? FELTHEIMER: We don’t see it as an either-or proposition. The simple fact is that more content is being viewed across more platforms than ever before, whether it’s fat bundles, skinny bundles or no bundles at all.

The Royals, the first scripted original for E!, was recently renewed for a fourth season.

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La La Land was a critical darling this season, scoring seven Golden Globes, five BAFTAs and six Oscars—out of a record 14 Academy Award nominations—including best director for Damien Chazelle.

We believe that we’re well positioned to supply premium content to nearly everyone.

Though we’ve emerged as the content supplier of choice for the streaming services, we also continue to strengthen our relationships with traditional partners such as Showtime, which recently acquired its third Lionsgate original series, the Jamie Foxx-produced White Famous.

We’re currently developing new shows for a diverse array of traditional and digital network partners that also includes HBO (American Lion), ABC (Dirty Dancing), Netflix (Dear White People), YouTube Red (Step Up) and Discovery, with whom we’re partnering on two new premium scripted series as they build their presence in long-form scripted programming. We now have a series airing, in production or in fast-track development at every subscription pay platform. The diversity of today’s media ecosystem plays to our strengths as a platform-agnostic supplier of premium content.

We also see opportunities for Starz across the entire media landscape. Driven by the strength of its programming and the sophistication of its technology, Starz is currently offered or about to launch on every new package, from traditional MVPDs and digital platforms alike.

As we like to say, every new platform needs Starz.

WS: What are Lionsgate’s plans to increase its suite of OTT services?

FELTHEIMER: We continue to roll out a suite of OTT services distinguished by strong brands, backed by our 16,000-title film and TV library and targeted to affinity audiences that we’ve been serving for years. Tribeca Shortlist builds on our roster of prestige films and world-class talent.

Laugh Out Loud features the exclusive online content of one of the biggest urban mega stars in the world, Kevin Hart. Our Spanishlanguage SVOD service leverages the Pantelion film brand, partners us with the leading Hispanic media companies and is designed to be the first premium movie service for Latino audiences in the U.S. We’ve been growing our SVOD business the Lionsgate way, with great partners and modest capital investment. Now that we’ve made such a large investment in Starz, we see an opportunity to pivot a little and make them the anchor platform of a “federation” of OTT services that would benefit from greater scale and a unified brand. This federation would include not only Lionsgate’s existing and soon-to-be-launched OTT services and Starz’s OTT offering, but also other, unaligned and free-standing SVOD platforms.

WS: What has been driving the success of Lionsgate’s television division?

FELTHEIMER: There’s really no secret sauce; it’s a combination of several factors. First, executive talent: Kevin [Beggs] and Sandra [Stern] have done an incredible job of scaling and diversifying our television business, and we also have great bench strength with rising executives like Laura Kennedy. Second, creative leadership: we continue to create original, noisy, platform-defining hits. Third, financial innovation: we continue to develop game-changing business models that adapt to a changing ecosystem. Fourth, diversification: we’re growing a strong unscripted business through a combination of internal development, with network reality brands Kicking & Screaming and Candy Crush, and our investment in Craig Piligian’s Pilgrim Media Group, a leader in the unscripted space. And finally, globalization: we continue to ramp up our television business in the U.K. with the hiring of creative executive Steve November and investments in production companies such as Primal Media, alongside our premier independent film brand in the territory.

WS: What is Lionsgate/Starz’s relationship with Netflix and Amazon?

FELTHEIMER: We see the streaming services as both partners and competitors. Dear White People, which premieres in April, will be our

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second original series streaming on Netflix, and Casual leads a roster of our shows on Hulu. We have great properties in development at Amazon (Time Out of Mind, based on the music of the great Bob Dylan) and YouTube Red (Step Up, a series adapted from our hit global film franchise).

Though these services have become aggressive bidders for films on the festival circuit, we’ve already partnered with Amazon Studios on three film-distribution opportunities in the past year: Woody Allen’s Café Society, the Oscar-nominated Manchester by the Sea (through our sister company Roadside Attractions) and the upcoming Sundance acquisition The Big Sick.

We’re all in the content business together, and there are plenty of opportunities to create win-win scenarios for everyone—if we’re flexible enough to think beyond the conventional wisdom.

WS: What opportunities do you see in the film business? What is on Lionsgate’s slate for 2017?

FELTHEIMER: We were fortunate to begin the year with La La Land, one of the most celebrated properties in our company’s history, and John Wick: Chapter 2, continuing a run of successful films that began in 2016 with Hacksaw Ridge, Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween

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In addition to our franchises, including The Hunger Games, Twilight, Saw, Divergent and Now You See Me, the growth of our location-based entertainment business is coming from a broad range of properties. We just opened a live stage event based on recent installments of the Step Up franchise as part of the MOTIONGATE theme park in Dubai, and iconic television properties Orange Is the New Black, Mad Men and Nashville are expected to become centerpieces of the shopping destinations that we’re launching with our partner Parques Reunidos in Europe.

We’re always adding to our pipeline of great IP, and we’re already exploring a stage play and other brand extensions for La La Land.

Best known for his feature films, including Up in the Air, Jason Reitman developed his first television project, Casual on Hulu, with Lionsgate. and Hell or High Water with our partners at CBS. These films reflect our strategy of releasing a diverse portfolio and demonstrate our ability to generate hits without swinging for the fences.

Our upcoming slate also includes a number of films in our sweet spot, targeting one or two quadrants of moviegoers with star-driven releases that have breakout potential for success—Wonder and The Glass Castle, based on criticallyacclaimed best-selling books; All Eyez On Me, the Tupac Shakur biopic; two more films from the incomparable Tyler Perry; The Hitman’s Bodyguard, with Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson and Salma Hayek; and the return of Jigsaw in our Saw reboot.

We also have a number of higherprofile properties that include Otto Bathurst’s Robin Hood: Origins starring Jamie Foxx and Kingsman’s Taron Egerton; Chaos Walking,

featuring Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley and Spider-Man’s Tom Holland in the film adaptation of the awardwinning young-adult book trilogy; films based on the Hasbro brands Monopoly and My Little Pony; and The Kingkiller Chronicle, shepherded by producer and musical mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Although our approach to putting together our slate remains fundamentally unchanged, we’re continuing to innovate our film business to address new patterns of content consumption. At a time of massive audience fragmentation, we’ve developed several branded labels that are specifically targeted to affinity audiences—Pantelion Films for Latino moviegoers, Codeblack Films for African Americans, our sister company Roadside Attractions for specialty films and Lionsgate Premiere for multiplatform releases.

We also continue to explore opportunities for early premium

VOD windows with our theatrical exhibition partners, and we’re creating new paradigms for next generation moviegoers with Atom Tickets, which is designed to energize the theatrical box office by transforming the way consumers go to the movies with their friends.

WS: What are Lionsgate’s plans for theme parks?

FELTHEIMER: We continue to focus on leveraging our portfolio of brands into ancillary businesses, and in the three years since we launched the initiative we’re pleased with our progress in building a vibrant location-based entertainment infrastructure.

We’ve already announced themepark attractions and Lionsgatebranded leisure centers in the U.S., U.K., Europe, Dubai and China, and we expect to attract a total of 25 million visitors to our properties by 2020.

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WS: In which businesses and in which territories do you see the greatest opportunities for growth in the next 12 to 24 months?

FELTHEIMER: China is a major area of focus. Our box office there increased 62 percent last year, and the territory now accounts for more than 20 percent of our total international box office.

With a state-of-the-art content licensing deal with online giant iQiyi, investments in co-productions and local theatrical product, a cofinancing deal with Hunan TV & Broadcast Intermediary’s TIK Films, the Chinese-language sequel to our worldwide box office franchise Step Up and next year’s planned opening of a Lionsgate indoor entertainment center in Hengqin, our opportunities in China are greater than ever.

In addition to opportunities in individual territories, we formed the Globalgate Entertainment consortium last year to source intellectual property for local-language production around the world. Globalgate now encompasses 11 world-class distributors, including Televisa, Gaumont, Nordisk and Kadokawa.

The Globalgate template has already spawned remakes of Pantelion’s Spanish-language hit Instructions Not Included in territories around the world, including Demain tout commence, a French-language version starring Omar Sy, which was a breakout hit in that territory.

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ON THE RECORD

ince AMC Networks was spun off as a separate company from Cablevision Systems Corporation in 2011, it has grown its portfolio of channels and significantly bolstered its brands with some of television’s most-watched and most critically acclaimed series.

In the U.S., AMC Networks comprises AMC, SundanceTV, IFC, WE tv and a stake in BBC America, in addition to ondemand and streaming services. Under the leadership of Josh Sapan, who has been president and CEO of AMC Networks since 1995, AMC has been transformed from a channel that offered classic American movies to a destination providing quality original series, including Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. Sundance Channel rebranded to SundanceTV, and while remaining true to Robert Redford’s original mission of showcasing distinctive storytelling and unique voices, the channel has placed high-end international TV series alongside the best of indie films. IFC has been repositioned as a comedy network, and WE tv offers a range of unscripted shows. A 49.9-percent investment in BBC America brought AMC Networks not only a channel with distinctive programming but also a partnership with the BBC

to co-produce series. Recent projects include Top of the Lake for SundanceTV, The Night Manager for AMC and more in the works.

As Sapan and his teams have recognized the importance of owning content, they have set up AMC Studios, which has been producing originals such as Into the Badlands and The Terror. One of the best ways of guaranteeing the exposure of content is to broaden AMC Networks’ reach, and the company has done so by launching AMC and SundanceTV internationally and by acquiring the MGM and Chellomedia channels from Liberty Global.

Well aware of viewers’ changing viewing habits, Sapan has also been making strategic investments in streaming services.

First, AMC Networks launched its own services, such as Sundance Now and Shudder, and it also took stakes in third-party sites, including Funny Or Die, RLJ Entertainment (parent company of Acorn TV) and BritBox. For Sapan, the future growth of AMC Networks depends on accessing and owning compelling IP and finding the best ways of getting it in front of passionate fans—whether on traditional linear channels or on nonlinear platforms.

JOSH SAPAN AMC NETWORKS

By Anna Carugati

WS: Tell us about the partnership with BBC Worldwide.

How has it benefited AMC Networks?

SAPAN: The partnership with the BBC has been just splendid. It’s now been some time that we have been married—if you want to call it that! We have a joint venture that is running very smoothly and very productively for us, and I think for them, too. Through a joint venture with BBC Worldwide, we manage the BBC America channel in the U.S., and then we have coproduction relationships with the BBC, which resulted in The Night Manager and the upcoming McMafia. They have been terrific to work with. We think we have sympathy with them editorially. We are on the same wavelength from a business point of view, and [the collaboration has] been very fruitful.

WS: AMC Networks has made a number of investments recently. Why were they important, and are you looking to do more?

SAPAN: As a company, we have made opportunistic acquisitions over the past five years since we spun off as a separately traded company from Cablevision Systems Corporation. The first significant acquisitions were the channels overseas; we bought the MGM and Chellomedia channels from Liberty Global. We now have AMC Networks International, and we are in Latin America, Europe, Africa and other various parts of the globe. We made the arrangement with BBC Worldwide in which we purchased a 49.9-percent stake in BBC America.

More recently we made investments in Funny Or Die [the digital comedy site founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay] and RLJ Entertainment. There are two things in those arrangements that motivate us and are related. One is that there is intellectual property, and we think that owning IP is highly desirable and smart for who we are today and who we will be tomorrow.

And the second is that, in the case of RLJ Entertainment, they operate two streaming services. One is called 4/17 WORLD SCREEN 245

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Now in its seventh season, The Walking Dead, about life after a zombie apocalypse, is still AMC’s biggest hit, generating a wealth of social-media traffic and live and on-demand viewing every week.

Acorn TV and offers British drama, and the other is called Urban Movie Channel. Those are two streaming services that we think are very attractive.

Our BritBox association is an extension of our relationship with the BBC and includes the U.K. commercial broadcaster ITV. Again, there is a pattern. First, those are two world-class companies, arguably best in class, that are great studios and creators of content, great owners of IP. And second, that deal is set up to specifically be a streaming service on the internet. If I were to say it simply and succinctly, we want to own and control more IP, and we’d like to be more significantly in the streaming business.

WS: Speaking of streaming services, how did Sundance Now come about?

SAPAN: It is a little bit “back to the future” in that the earliest promise of cable television, when it came on the landscape decades ago, was that there could be very specific audiences targeted in an uncompromising manner. They could be served and super-served with exactly what they wanted that they otherwise couldn’t find, all collected and/or made for a particular interest.

Over time, as cable television became more successful, particularly ad-supported cable television, which we are in, to some degree that targeting has slightly expanded, maybe significantly expanded.

That’s good, and we are very proud of what we do on the cable TV dial.

We also think it’s very interesting, appealing and a great opportunity to be in a highly specific service. So Sundance Now is for a very particular taste. It’s a very niche streaming service. Likewise, Shudder is our streaming service for horror fans and aficionados, and we can program it in an absolutely uncompromising way.

WS: I like having something that is curated, because I don’t always want to look in many places for what I want to watch.

SAPAN: That’s a relevant point, because much of the world likes something that is curated. They might want to explore, but they also want to have some editorial selection done for them with a voice or a hand that they trust.

WS: In this crowded and growing media landscape, what do linear channels have to do to remain relevant?

SAPAN: They, too, have to be in service of a demographic, and they have to be highly desirable. And they have to have big scale. They have to have wide, in our case, distribution in the U.S. and globally. There is a big place for a scheduled service, we think. People like it. It doesn’t mean it can’t have an on-demand component on the internet or cable VOD, but it is appealing to watch The Walking Dead on Sunday night at the same time that everyone watches it. It’s appealing to watch Talking Dead afterward. It’s appealing to have a curated selection of programs.

WS: AMC Networks has recognizable channel brands and hit shows. Is it important to be on Sling TV, on PlayStation Vue and on DIRECTV Now? What’s your strategy in terms of how you decide where to place your content?

SAPAN: To date, we have participated in each of the MVPDs [multichannel video programming distributors]. We’ve also participated with Sling, with PlayStation Vue and with DIRECTV Now. In each of those instances, we made a determination that it was desirable for us, and we were able to reach an agreement with them regarding terms,

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conditions and rates. In general, we think it’s good to be where consumers are. It doesn’t mean that every single opportunity that comes up will be one that is imperative for us and is the first choice, but so far we have made this determination.

WS: In this on-demand world, do you have to rethink how you brand your channels or what brand loyalty is?

SAPAN: Yes, very much so; I think it’s an unanswered question and we could probably go on at some length about it. The word “disintermediation”—which feels like it has one too many syllables!—is perhaps overused, but it is interesting because it does generally allow all of us to get more quickly to what we want. That means that shows can become more heroic versus channel brands.

At the same time, if one were able to get every article ever published anywhere on the internet, for me, it wouldn’t cut down my desire to subscribe to whatever I subscribe to, whether it’s the fancy magazines like The New Yorker or The Economist or the less smart ones.

The fact is that we do want curation, and we want packaging. It remains to be seen, in three years, five years or ten years, how much individual show titles matter and how much

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channel names matter. If I had to guess, I would say both matter.

WS: And as a content producer and owner, is it also necessary to control the output of your content?

SAPAN: We’ve always found it desirable to be a producer and, increasingly, to be a producer—our AMC Studios now has a dozen shows in production—as well as a distributor.

So we think it’s smart, certainly for us, maybe not for everyone, to be on both sides of those two activities.

WS: Given the proposed Time Warner and AT&T merger, and the completed Lionsgate and Starz merger, does there continue to be the need for scale in the media world?

SAPAN: There has been consolidation in the media industry over the past 10, 20 years, particularly on the distribution side and particularly in the U.S. where the so-called cable companies have gotten larger and larger. I think it’s less proven and less certain that scale matters in itself, because each of those arrangements and deals have individual financial elements and/or benefits associated with them, so I

Better Call Saul, AMC’s Breaking Bad prequel, broke ratings records when it premiered in 2015 and has since landed 14 Emmy nominations. don’t think scale is an imperative.

I think particularly on the content side there is a less certain conclusion about scale. Just to illustrate it, I would point out that Time Warner itself, which is now being proposed to be put together with

what was a so-called telephone distributor, actually separated its very own elements right before selling itself. Not very long ago, AOL was part of Time Warner, and Time Warner Cable was a part of Time Warner, and Time Inc. was a part of

Time Warner, and they no longer are. So they made a decision to “spin off.” Now they are choosing to consolidate. So I don’t think there is one conclusion you can reach if you look at a span of activity that goes longer than the last 12 months.

WS: Do you see AMC Networks being an acquisition target?

SAPAN: There is much conversation in the atmosphere, but we focus on running our business every day, performing well, making great content and doing highly selective acquisitions and investments that we think are uniquely beneficial to us.

Fear the Walking Dead airs on AMC’s international footprint—reaching more than 125 markets—within 24 hours of the U.S. broadcast.

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WS: What opportunities for growth are there for AMC’s international channels?

SAPAN: There are tremendous opportunities across the world, and I would begin by saying that we think it’s not imperative but highly desirable to have a channel platform that extends beyond the U.S., because the world is much bigger than the United States. So we are very pleased now to have realized something that was in our mind’s eye for some time, which is to have a footprint that extends well beyond the borders of one sovereign nation. That has

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AMC Networks has a wide-ranging association with BBC Worldwide that includes 49.9 percent of BBC America, home of the upcoming series Class. been achieved, and we now have a channel called AMC that’s well known, and we converted other channels, including MGM. There is much more growth potential in certain geographies that are less well developed, such as Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Then there will be opportunities to expand from that position, and that becomes incumbent to the streaming world. And—this is a bit of an argument for scale—when we make a TV show, we can do it with greater certainty that it has a home around the globe on one or multiple platforms. We have been happily able to sell our shows into very welcome markets where we don’t have channels, but it is nonetheless nice to have that certainty of footprint distribution when you are producing.

WS: SVOD services like Netflix are to some an enemy and to others a friend. How does AMC Networks view SVOD services? And does it still wait a year to make episodes of its series available to them?

SAPAN: Since we did our first deal with an SVOD service, which is now going on five years ago, our determination was that it was com plementary to our business, but we had to be careful about something

that was conventional in the content management business, which was the proper windowing of series. We had to be very careful about when the episodes of our series became available on SVOD services. So we came up with a point of view that we largely adhere to [waiting a year to make episodes available] and we are following it today. I would say that we consider those SVOD entities to be friends. This is not to say that when you love your family members, you love

them every hour of the day. You love them, and you don’t love them any less, but sometimes in the morning you are cranky—that comes with having a family!

WS: What impact might VR have on storytelling, and how far off is that?

SAPAN: There are others who are better authorities on the pace of implementation, but as viewer, VR seems to have attributes that have the potential to bring a new dimension—literally—to the physi-

cal experience, the physiological experience and potentially the narrative of television storytelling. The reason I find it so interesting and exciting is that each time there is a technological change, generally, it’s first the technology that people get enthusiastic about—features like, It does this, or, The picture is prettier, or, I can watch it when I want. And then what happens is that content creators begin to adapt what they are doing, with or without premeditation, to the new format, and a new form is born.

Then it gets to be fun, because something wholly unanticipated occurs in storytelling as the [medium improves]: the stage becomes bigger or is in the round, or movies are made, or technology allows you to watch when you want so that people can pay more attention. All that stuff has truly given life to new forms of storytelling.

WS: Or, premium channels have no commercial breaks, so an episode’s story can be told differently.

SAPAN: That’s exactly right. So VR seems to hold all that potential. I don’t know what the manifestation of it will be. Generally, it’s not as it first appears. It first appears with the “easy tricks” and then comes the more interesting part.

BBC America’s cult hit Orphan Black landed Tatiana Maslany her first Primetime Emmy Award for her portrayal of several clones.

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IN CONVERSATION

ky, Europe’s leading pay-TV company, has built its business on three main principles: sourcing and producing the best and broadest range of programming, news and sports; providing content in the most userfriendly means and continually enhancing the viewer experience; and always placing customers’ needs first.

This commitment to content, innovation and customer service has yielded steady growth, first in the U.K. and Ireland, then by expanding into Italy with Sky Italia and finally with Sky Deutschland in Germany. Today Sky reaches some 22 million customers, of which 4.9 million are in Germany and 4.8 million are in Italy.

Alongside a bouquet of international channels are the Sky brands, which include the general-entertainment channel Sky 1; Sky Atlantic, home to genre-defining drama as well as HBO and Showtime series; Sky Arts; Sky Living, which offers some of the most popular U.S. series; Sky Cinema; Sky News and Sky Sports.

This content is offered in a variety of ways and products for linear and nonlinear consumption, from a selection of traditional contract-based pay-TV packages to the NOW TV contract-

free streaming service. Last year, Sky introduced the Sky Q box, which allows subscribers to enjoy Sky content throughout their homes on multiple devices and screens, save recordings and watch them on the go.

Sky is one of Europe’s leading investors in content, backing original productions that range from the dramas Fortitude, The Last Panthers and Gomorrah to comedies Mount Pleasant and Stella. Last year the three Skys co-produced The Young Pope with Canal+ and HBO. Sky is also acquiring key sports rights for the three territories and has launched a Sky Kids app to better serve young viewers.

Sky closed 2016 with a 7-percent increase in revenues, which totaled some £12 billion ($14.65 billion) and a 12percent increase in operating profit to £1.6 billion ($1.97 billion), a testament to the effectiveness of the content-innovationcustomer-service strategy.

Jeremy Darroch, group chief executive, is quite pleased with these developments and talks to World Screen about the company’s numerous accomplishments, growth prospects and a future that may see shareholder 21st Century Fox take full ownership of Sky.

JEREMY DARROCH SKY

By Anna Carugati

WS: Has Sky Q been well received?

DARROCH: It’s done very well. We launched a very different viewing experience and different technology.

The first thing we wanted to do was establish it in the tech press because this is where customers initially look to get a sense of how good a product is. We’ve won pretty much every major tech award and that has been very satisfying.

You then start to see word of mouth and consumer advocacy take over. As more people get a service like Sky Q, they start to talk to their friends and families about it, and we are starting to see that happen. We’ve already got something like 1 million boxes deployed in the U.K. and Ireland. We’re seeing customers use more and get more value out of their subscriptions, so the amount of content they are watching has gone up, which is always good to see. They are also starting to use services like our transactional service Sky Store more, so we’re showcasing the very best and latest content in a way that works for customers.

I’m delighted with the progress that we are making with Sky Q and we’ve got a whole host of features to come. But inevitably, when you are trying to get a product to market, there is a point where you have to draw the line and say that’s enough, you have to wait a while and then come back with new offers. So over time, we’ll be introducing things like voice search and voice control, greater personalization, the ability to record six shows while watching the seventh, and a whole raft of things that will add value to Sky Q. We’re very upbeat about its prospects.

WS: Have original productions helped in differentiating Sky’s offer from its competitors?

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Amazon in the U.S. has come on board as a co-production partner on Sky Atlantic’s ambitious new drama series Britannia, penned by Jez Butterworth and distributed globally by Sky Vision. done in drama or comedy or some of our factual entertainment, we’ve been able to do bigger productions and have a lot more control than if we were just acquiring the content.

From a marketing point of view, we can get behind originals as a business and elevate that content. Much of what we produce can be informed by our day-to-day relationship with our customers. We collect a huge amount of knowledge and data regarding the type of content they would like to see and would like to see us develop. Originals complete that loop of working for customers and understanding their needs and preferences and of saying how do we build a bank of content that delivers for our customers. Originals have worked really well, and it’s something we are going to be doing more of.

WS: What will your level of investment be in originals this year?

DARROCH: We don’t call out an individual number for our originals, but

this year our overall programming investment will soon be almost £6 billion [$7.39 billion] across the Skys. In terms of how much we spend on our original productions there is no upper limit; it’s more driven by the quality of ideas. We will have something like 1,000 original hours going into production, with 11 major dramas this year. We have five original comedies, including Mount Pleasant and Stella. So a greater proportion of our content over time will come from our original productions to complement what we acquire from the market.

WS: With the success of The Young Pope, if the project is right, will there be more co-productions among the three Skys?

DARROCH: Yes, co-productions across the Skys definitely will be the case, but also developing and producing with our other partners, like HBO, Showtime, Amazon and ARD in Germany, on multiple productions. This allows us even

greater scale, and through a partner we can get to markets where perhaps we don’t have an opening ourselves. That leads to bigger productions, and the bigger the production, the bigger the budget and typically the more we can do. We enjoy working with others. We think that the combination of us and some of the big distributors elsewhere in the world just leads to a better outcome, and I would expect to see more of them.

WS: Nobody knows what the outcome of Brexit will be, but are you concerned that the co-production area might be impacted?

DARROCH: Not significantly. Clearly, we are moving into a less certain period for Europe, and the U.K. will have to work through that. One of the things that we’ll be seeking to do is to be flexible. We see so far no diminution of customer appetite for the type of quality content that we’ve done. We’re a very big business. We are very well funded so we

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have the ability to keep committing to the things that we know are most important to our customers. Our focus for the U.K. will be making sure that the environment, whether it’s for producers or other talent, will continue to be an attractive place to create content.

WS: Speaking of Europe, are Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia on track to reach the goals you have set for them?

DARROCH: They are, and I’ve been delighted by the progress we’ve made bringing the Skys together.

We’ve pretty much reached all of our initial goals for the businesses.

All of the Skys share a common culture and ethos about how they go about business, and they are working well together. Both Sky Deutschland and Austria and Sky Italy are great businesses. They have great teams, are very enthusiastic and are doing well. Germany is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, pay-TV opportunity anywhere in

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the world. So if we grow penetration of pay television in Germany, it’s a big market, Europe’s richest market, where we think we can have a long tail of growth, which is why we are so focused there.

And our business in Italy, while a more challenged economic environment, is doing really well. We grew our revenues by 4 percent in the first half year. We were delighted with that result. The creative and cultural backdrop of Italy and the team there is a powerful creative force—they add to the whole of Sky. I’m very pleased with the progress we have made; we just have to keep pushing on and doing more.

WS: I have family in Italy and the U.K. and they have Sky. When I visit I am so envious of the offer and service they have, which is so much better than what U.S. cable companies offer!

DARROCH: [Laughs] That’s great to hear! One of the reasons for that is that all of the Skys have always

been so focused on our relationships with customers. Being in so many customers’ homes every day, we have this huge research capability. We are talking with customers all the time. Taking that insight and crafting services has been the goal of the business. You can see some of the outcomes of that effort and so far that’s the thing that drives the business.

WS: Has the way customers interact with Sky changed over the years?

DARROCH: Yes, it has very much so.

We’ve seen a trend—probably most developed in the U.K., but we’re certainly seeing it in Italy and just starting to see it emerge in Germany—of an appetite among customers to consolidate more of their services with Sky. We spend a lot of time working on customer service, and they like the service proposition that we offer them. So when we go back to customers and say we’d like to sell you something else, maybe broadband or mobile, which we are

launching in the U.K., or Sky Go, which is our mobile TV service, they are very happy to consolidate some of those household services with Sky. That has enabled us to broaden. They like us when we do more, particularly on screen. If you were to take a channel like Sky Arts, [it is offering] the level and quality of arts created today. When we do that and customers see something that is a little surprising to them, they tend to respond well.

Having said all that, they just want us to keep getting better at the things they really care about. What do they care about? They care about great TV more than anything else. They care about technology that enables them to get the most value out of their subscription— things that are easy to use, are robust and reliable, and if they have a service problem or question, an infrastructure that sorts things out very quickly. It’s interesting, when you think of us as a scale business, at one level it’s very, very big and

very complex, but actually, when you distil it down, it typically boils down to three or four things that you have to keep doing well.

WS: As you look ahead 12 to 24 months, Sky has so many businesses, where do you see growth opportunities?

DARROCH: You said it, one of the challenges we face is that we have so many ways that we can grow, so optimizing them and getting the balance right will be important.

Certainly adding more customers across all our markets across Europe. It’s important to remember that growing pay-TV market penetration in Europe remains the single biggest opportunity. We think the opportunity for growth in Germany remains very, very strong. We’re launching into mobile in the U.K.— that will be the next big leg of communications business in the U.K., and that’s a market that so far we haven’t competed in and we’re just getting going there.

Sky 1 continues to invest in high-end local drama, commissioning the eight-episode period piece Jamestown, about the first British settlers in America, from Carnival Films.

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Optimizing the viewing experience, the Sky Q box allows subscribers to record more than 1,000 hours of television, watch on multiple devices and take their shows out of the home.

We have a brilliant targetedadvertising service, Sky AdSmart, which allows us to target ads directly into customers’ boxes.

That’s done very well so far. We’re working with something like 1,000 advertisers already. We get premiums for our advertising, and our advertising partners get internetquality targeting, but to the TV screen, so it’s very powerful. I see growth in our major innovations, the streaming services in particular and Sky Q across Europe. We’ve got a fantastic kids’ app that we launched in the U.K. and Germany and will launch in Italy. So there is a plethora of opportunities, some bigger some smaller, that we are focused on, but all are anchored to the core things we do, which are really about TV and innovation. If growth opportunities flow from that, then they’ll be based on our core capability and we’ll do it very efficiently. There will be lots more to come in the next 18 months. It’s going to be an exciting time.

WS: You’ve been chief executive for ten years. I read that when you started at Sky, you felt the Sky brand wasn’t strong enough. Are

you happy with the branding and the positioning of Sky today?

DARROCH: I am. The business in the last ten years has changed at almost every level. It’s a very different business today than it was ten years ago, much more diverse, much more profitable and with a huge number of customers relative to where we were. At the heart of that is the brand, the promise we make to our customers in all of the markets we operate, but also I think the Sky brand should be a window into Sky. When you see the Sky brand, you should get a feel for what it’s like as a business and the group of people behind it.

I’m very pleased with the progress we have made, but as always, we constantly want to renew and improve. I see the last ten years as a basis on which we think how we can keep renewing and rebuilding the business for the future because if you keep that environment, the business will continue to be successful. What we do may change, but how we do it as a brand will remain pretty constant.

WS: Many people in the industry are concerned about the future of

linear channels as viewers increasingly watch on demand.

What’s your view?

DARROCH: The trick is not to get caught at the extremes. Sometimes people will go to future outcomes or extremes a little bit too quickly. It’s fair to say on demand is growing relative to linear channel consumption and that will continue. There are more ways to consume content than ever before, and that will have an effect on the linear channel business. We see that. In some genres, we can already see some channels not doing as well.

So any channel business needs to think about the on-demand world and how it takes its channel and also its content into that world. But the important thing to remember is that these are trends. They are occurring, but they are occurring over time, so I don’t see any singular inflection point. The businesses that will be successful in the future will understand those shifting plates, will see those trends and push into them. And as they push into them, that will give them the option to go quicker or slower

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according to individual business segments or how things evolve.

What I wouldn’t be is a business trying to resist change because I think it’s inevitable. You have to be at the forefront of change, and you have to have at the heart of your culture a desire to step into the future and embrace it. The businesses that will be successful ten years from now will look back and say they were changing and were stepping into the on-demand world rather than resisting.

WS: Can you make any comment on 21st Century Fox’s bid to acquire all of Sky? DARROCH: Only to say the process is well in place and it’s proceeding pretty well from what I can see.

Our job as managers is to just keep building a better business. I think the fact that a company like Fox with all their capability wants to acquire Sky is a testament to our strategy. We will have to see in the next few months how the bid proceeds. Certainly, Fox and Sky know each other very well and have the potential to create a better company.

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EXECUTIVE BRIEFING

artnerships don’t always work, but when they do, the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts.

For nearly 20 years, Dana Walden and Gary Newman, the co-chairmen and CEOs of the Fox Television Group, have been working in lockstep, sharing creative sensibilities and business objectives.

They first started working together in 1999 as heads of Twentieth Century Fox Television, the studio that brought to life a diverse range of hit shows, from 24 and Bones to Glee and Modern Family. In 2014 Newman and Walden also took the helm of the Fox Broadcasting Company, at a time when all broadcast networks were witnessing declines in audience shares. They reinvigorated FOX’s schedule with Gotham, Empire, Sleepy Hollow and a reboot of The X-Files. This season they added to the schedule Lethal Weapon, 24: Legacy and the much-anticipated return of Prison Break.

Today, the Fox Television Group includes FOX, the studio and Fox 21 Television Studios, which produces for premium and basic-cable outlets. While one priority for Walden and Newman is to provide FOX with compelling breakthrough

shows, they feel an equal responsibility to the creators and showrunners that work at the studio, to make sure their passion projects find the best possible home. They remained true to this pledge this season with Dan Fogelman’s series This Is Us, which has been a breakout hit for NBC, and Scott Silveri’s Speechless, the critically acclaimed comedy on ABC. As Walden and Newman tell World Screen, putting the needs of talent first has always been a goal of their partnership. They have repeatedly reaped the rewards of this strategy, supporting talent such as Ryan Murphy, who after Glee created the anthologies American Horror Story; American Crime Story (the first season of which, The People v. O.J. Simpson, won multiple awards); and this year’s Feud: Bette and Joan, about the rivalry between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Howard Gordon, who shepherded the 24 franchise as well as Homeland with showrunner Alex Gansa, also has a home at the studio. More recently, Fox aligned with Lee Daniels, the force behind Empire and, this season, Star. As Walden and Newman point out, this commitment to talent has yielded a range of different voices and points of view, which not only satisfies audiences but also is good for business.

DANA WALDEN AND GARY NEWMAN FOX TELEVISION GROUP

By Anna Carugati

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FOX rebooted its 24 franchise with a new hero—Corey Hawkins as Eric Carter—racing against the clock to stop a series of terrorist attacks in 24: Legacy.

WS: In your roles as heads of the studio, what were some of your goals when you were planning this season?

NEWMAN: When we were thinking about the 2016–17 season, it was not that different from our normal process. We have always thought that the primary goal of the studio is to supply the FOX network with great development and a diverse slate of distinctive programming.

Secondarily, we think about the outside networks and positioning key selective projects with them.

Maybe the thing that made this last year a little different was that we were facing a challenge at the broadcast network, because it was going to be the first midseason in 14 years without American Idol. So we knew we had pretty big programming needs for midseason. We went through development with those things in mind, and at the studio we set up a lot of great projects both at FOX and elsewhere.

When I now look at the 2016–17 season, among the things that we are particularly proud of at our network are 24: Legacy, Star and The Mick, which is currently the toprated comedy. Looking beyond FOX, This Is Us is the number one new show on NBC, and Speechless, over at ABC, has gotten so much critical acclaim and strong ratings.

It’s been a very strong development year for the studio.

WS: You mentioned This Is Us. A lot of people welcomed a family drama.

WALDEN: That is so much a part of why it is so successful right now and why it’s hit this nerve, along with its extraordinary storytelling.

It’s a twist on the traditional character ensemble piece in the way that Dan [Fogelman, the showrunner] and his team play with time.

Spending every week with a group of people who love each other, who are committed to each other, who are optimistic about their relationships with each other, feels great and is something that was missing on television.

WS: I love Kate’s story. It’s one of the first times we’ve seen that on network television.

WALDEN: It’s written from a very personal place. Dan has a situation in his own family where they dealt with weight issues, and that is a struggle he knows very well, so he’s telling it from a very personal perspective. He’s writing not as an observer but as someone who has lived in a real situation that is relatable. To so many people around the world, but certainly in this country, obesity is a real issue, and there are

a lot of people who fight routinely with their weight. This character is so vulnerable and yet confident. I love that the actress Chrissy Metz has so much confidence. She is not playing a character that doesn’t like herself. And talking to Chrissy, [I’ve learned] she has always been in a relationship; she’s never had a hard time dating. This isn’t a woeis-me character, but she has a very specific challenge that sometimes overwhelms her—that creates great drama.

NEWMAN: When Dan first talked about this show, he described it from Kate’s point of view. For him, this was a show about Kate. It’s not that the other stories aren’t important—they are. But that one was so personal to him that he really locked into it. The show is—there is no other way to describe it—a joy to watch.

WS: There is a lot of anticipation for Prison Break. When you bring back a popular series, what do you want to keep from the original, and what do you want to refresh to draw in new viewers?

WALDEN: We look at these event series on a case-by-case basis. I would say our primary goal is to reconnect with the original creators

This Is Us, a family drama produced by Twentieth Century Fox for NBC, scored an impressive two-season renewal early into its freshman season.

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so I would say the great news for us about our partners and overall deals is that a lot of them move back and forth, from cable to broadcast, depending on the story they want to tell and how they want to tell it.

who have the passion for telling more stories. [Creator and showrunner] Paul Scheuring came in with [actor] Wentworth Miller when we had our first meeting, and he had a really good reason to tell the stories in this world. He had an idea of where these characters were going, on a new journey that was compelling. It was great to just listen to his vision for the return. When you reunite the cast of one of these shows that was so successful, there is something so satisfying about that—satisfying to the fan base in letting them reconnect with characters that were meaningful at points in their lives, and satisfying to create entirely new journeys around those characters. It feels like a reward for the original viewers and a great opportunity to introduce these great characters to new viewers.

WS: What has contributed to the longevity of the 24 franchise?

NEWMAN: It’s one of those amazing concepts. The real-time element at the heart of the storytelling of this series creates an urgency and propulsion that you don’t see on other shows. Whether it is Jack Bauer or now Eric Carter, played by Corey Hawkins, [we are watching] someone who is making a sacrifice to protect all of us, someone who is putting the well-being of the country ahead of his own life, even ahead of some of the people he loves. These guys are given a nearly impossible choice, and they are heroic. They rise up and, against all odds, do the right thing. It’s the sort of storytelling, for a viewer, that makes for great emotional rides.

We happen to have unbelievable pros at the helm of that show.

Howard Gordon has been there since season one. Manny Coto and Evan Katz also joined very early.

This is the type of storytelling that they have developed a knack for.

WS: With more outlets producing original programming, is it increasingly difficult to find talent in front of and behind the camera?

NEWMAN: There is no question that it is more difficult than ever. There are so many shows in production— this year it’s more than 450, whereas just five years ago it was

After bringing back The X-Files last year, FOX slated Prison Break as a limited event this spring. about 250—so talent is very tied up.

It’s a challenge, but at the studio we are all about the talent coming first [and have been for] a long time. We try to create an environment where we allow people to develop the shows that are closest to their hearts. Then we take those projects and figure out where they can best be developed, rather than saying to people we are in business with, “You’ve got to do shows just for FOX or just FX.” We have found that that has made us a pretty great home for talent. I can assure you that Dan Fogelman is feeling incredibly supported on This Is Us, a show that [is well placed on NBC].

Pitch felt like a show that could work on the FOX network. Now with talent in even higher demand, those are the kinds of conversations that we can have with talent or their representatives about what sort of opportunities we can offer.

WS: What is the environment at Fox 21 that has yielded so many critically acclaimed shows? Because

they write for cable, do those creators and showrunners have even more freedom than some could have writing a broadcast network show?

WALDEN: Yes, I think there is a greater degree of freedom. The trade-off is that it’s very difficult on cable to hit that big culturally relevant show like This Is Us or Empire, but you can be more targeted and more true to certain viewers. The team at Fox 21 is made up of great executives who all have a lot of experience working with fantastic showrunners. I would say if there is a super skill involved in any of this, to the extent there is for executives, it’s seeking great writers.

They have very good taste in creative partners. When you start a show with Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon or Ryan Murphy, you’re betting on the best of the best. You are betting on people who are inspired and have stories they want to tell. We’ve had the great fortune of having very long-standing relationships with many of them,

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WS: Are there advantages to limited series or anthology series?

NEWMAN: The biggest advantage of limited series is that you’re not asking talent for a multi-year commitment. Typically actors, but also some directors, might not want to do television because it would be a 5- or 7year commitment. Just last year, Fox 21 hired John Travolta, Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange to do projects that only required a oneseason, 10- to 12-episode commitment. From a marketing standpoint, it’s a mixed bag because for the network you need to invest a lot of money to create awareness and build people’s excitement for the show, yet you’re not going to have the benefit of that for multiple years.

Instead, you just have the benefit for one season. On the other hand, these limited series tend to be bigger ideas with big hooks, and they lend themselves a little more easily to mounting a marketing campaign for the project. I think that’s why, in this very crowded market, you see networks peppering their schedules with limited event series.

WS: What improvements need to be made in audience measurement and in the type of ratings that are used?

NEWMAN: Ratings measurement is very challenging. Obviously, we would like measurement that really represents total viewership, no matter what platform people are watching on and no matter when.

We would like to have that data and to be able to aggregate it. That creates some challenges for advertisers who sometimes have timely messages, and so you have to be flexible in the way you do business with advertising partners. Ratings haven’t kept up with changing viewer habits, and change always comes a little bit slower to incumbent companies. I feel that Nielsen is trying to be more inclusive in the way they measure ratings [on multiple] platforms. I think it’s difficult

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FOX’s top-rated comedy, The Mick, about an irresponsible woman tasked with looking after her niece and nephews, stars Kaitlin Olson and has been renewed for a second season by the network. for them to measure but the technology exists, certainly, to be measuring on a 30-day window. But I don’t think any of us are selling our advertising that way yet. We may be selling 7-day windows at best. But there is a lot of viewing happening between day 8 and day 30. I imagine, over time, we will be able to convince Nielsen and, hopefully, our advertisers to both measure and take seriously the fact that all viewers who are watching a show are valuable.

WS: How have you seen marketing techniques evolve as viewers are watching on demand?

WALDEN: As distribution has evolved from just exclusive opportunities on platforms, our goal is to get our programming in front of our viewers wherever they want to watch it, for the most part. Obviously, we have to be able to monetize those viewers, but to the extent that we can, it’s beneficial for us to be following our audience. And that is true with our marketing as well.

When Gary and I first came over to the network, we approached our marketing the way we approached the development of our shows. Our philosophy is, you have to have a great degree of showmanship, you have to have great content that breaks through, and you have to

create content that is consistent with our shows and involves the input of our great creators. And you have to be extremely aggressive so that your marketing is penetrating and you are not using an old-school [strategy] such as, We are going to do a certain number of GRPs [gross rating points] across cable to promote a drama. You have to create events.

[For season ten] of The X-Files, our PR team created a fantastic event at a shopping center in Los Angeles that made it look like a UFO had just landed there. Then, together with people in the shopping center who started posting on social media about what was going on, our marketing team amplified it and created quite a buzz on both Facebook and Twitter. I would say that our goal right now is to make sure that our shows are top of mind, and that takes events. We just had a fantastic partnership with Samsung on 24: Legacy. We put one of the show’s creators, Howard Gordon, with the Samsung marketing team, and together they came up with the idea to do a VR experience called The Raid that is exclusively available on Samsung platforms. It’s a VR experience of the raid—with our star, Corey Hawkins—of the terrorist compound that leads to the beginning of our show. We are using it as a prequel, and Samsung has been

really happy with this partnership.

As a matter of fact, they bought media across the Super Bowl to support The Raid that also supported the premiere of our show.

That’s not a traditional marketing lever that you would pull, but when you have an engaged marketing team that is experienced and creative and willing to try things that are out of the box, it’s amazing how you can amplify a message.

WS: For the studio and for FOX, what have been the advantages of diversity?

NEWMAN: We have a very diverse audience of viewers. Telling stories that come from different points of view, and [having] great shows with actors that look like our friends and neighbors and people across the country, creates an inclusive network, one where viewers can tune in and feel that they are going to see something that welcomes them and has something to do with their experience. Clearly, not every show can serve every constituency in our society, but it’s important, if you want to be a broadcaster, that your slate of programming offers diverse points of view and experiences. We do it because it’s a good thing to do and we feel that it’s right, but beyond that, it’s great business. We don’t feel in any way that we are

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sacrificing our business agenda to do this—the two link up perfectly well. We are doing the right thing and also the smart thing. We feel so great about so many of our shows.

We first started learning this lesson back with Glee and Modern Family.

They had such an impact on our culture. We got feedback from so many viewers who responded to seeing diverse characters. I think what took longer was to get diversity behind the camera. This year, half of our pilots are written by women, and we feel great about that. We’re going to have a slate of pilots that represent more points of view and that is good for a broadcast network.

WS: It leads to more viewers seeing characters on screen that they can relate to in a very personal way.

NEWMAN: Definitely, and the interesting thing is that one shouldn’t have the illusion that only women can write for women, and only men can write for men, and only African Americans can write for African Americans—that’s far from true.

All these people have stories to tell. They all bring their own unique points of view, and that makes our projects far richer and more layered, which I think the audience appreciates.

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ADVERTISERS’ INDEX

4K Media 189 9 Story Media Group 203 A+E Networks 361, 366 ABS-CBN International Distribution 417 Alfred Haber Distribution 75 all3media International 81, 83, 321 AMC Networks 2, 3 American Cinema International 27 Applicaster 29 Armoza Formats 252, 253, 267, 269, 271 Artist View Entertainment 49 Asia TV Forum 447 Astro 415 ATRESMEDIA Television 85 ATV 93 Australian Children’s Television Foundation 187 Banijay Rights 273, 275, 314, 315, 377 BBC Worldwide Latin America/US Hispanic 469 BBC Worldwide 105, 258, 259 beIN Media Group 209, 434 Beyond Distribution 367 Bomanbridge Media 432 Brand Licensing 485, 487 Brightcove 126, 127 Busan Contents Market 123 CAKE 191 Calinos Entertainment 349 Canada Media Fund 89 Canamedia 397 Caracol Internacional 325 Carsey-Werner Television 47 CBS Studios International 69, 145 CJ E&M 95, 237, 256, 257, 316, 317 Comarex 91 Content Media Corporation 11, 13 Corus Studios 369 Cyber Group Studios 162, 163, 215, 223, 244 Deutsche Welle/DW Transtel 393 DHX Media 169 Dick Clark Productions 109, 111 DISCOP 443 DRG 385 Eccho Rights 76, 77, 306, 307 Electus International 97, 283 Entertainment One 21, 23 Entertainment One Family 151, 221 Escapade Media 101 Filmax International 99 Forum des Images 355 FOX Networks Group Content Distribution 371 FOX Networks Group Latin America 465, 467 FremantleMedia 249, 262, 300 FremantleMedia International 71, 125, 305, 362, 363, 409, 433 Gaumont 119, 227, 518 Global Agency 250, 251, 254, 255, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313 Global Screen 327 Globosat 107, 179, 181 GMA Worldwide 295, 337 GO-N Productions 233 GRB Entertainment 115, 117, 339, 399 Hasbro Studios 199 Hat Trick International 285 HBO Latin America 461 Imagina International Sales 129 Incendo 35 INK Global 174, 176, 178 Inter Medya 1, 45, 86, 87, 260, 261, 318, 319, 481 International Academy of TV Arts & Sciences 512 Jetpack Distribution 207 The Jim Henson Company 229 KABO International 287 Kanal D 356 Keshet International 289, 329 Lightning International 428

Lionsgate Entertainment m4e MarVista Entertainment Mattel Creations Mediaset Distribution Mediatoon Distribution Mercis Millimages Miramax MISTCO Mondo TV Multicom Entertainment Group Muse Distribution International NATPE NBCUniversal International Distribution Nelvana NHK Enterprises ORF-Enterprise Passion Distribution PBS International Pol-Ka Producciones Portfolio Entertainment Pure Flix/Quality Flix Rabbit Films Rainbow Record TV Red Arrow International Rewind Networks Rive Gauche Television RTVE Russia Television and Radio/SOVTELEXPORT Saban Brands Scripps Networks Interactive SDI Media Serious Lunch Sesame Workshop Silver Wolf International Sixteen South Sky Vision Smithsonian Channel Sonar Entertainment Sony Pictures Television Networks Asia Splash Entertainment Star India Storybox Entertainment Studio 100 Media STUDIOCANAL Sunny Side of the Doc Sunrights Superights TCB Media Rights Telefe Telefilms Telemundo Internacional Televisa Internacional Terra Mater Factual Studios The Story Lab TM International Turner Asia TV Asahi Corporation TV Azteca International/AZ Content TV5MONDE Asia-Pacific Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution Twofour Rights Universal Cinergia Vietnam Media Corp.

Vision Films VR Educate Warner Bros. International Television Distribution WDR mediagroup WWE ZDF Enterprises Zodiak Kids

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6, 7 238 4, 5 183 299 212, 214 193 235 25 345, 347 161, 211, 213, 243 517 51 448, 477 73 225 383 65 403 379 297 239 63 291 166, 167 449, 450, 451 265, 323, 373 431 389, 391, 405 156 333 195 408 143 171, 173, 175, 177 240 103 241 121 53 8, 9 423 205 341 17 197 59 407 201 164, 165 364, 365 459 479 480 139 387 19 51 413 279 31, 455 421 15, 149, 263 277, 457 475 425 437 410 147 231, 281 55, 453 33, 61, 155, 331, 375 185

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WORLD’S END

IN THE STARS Almost every national constitution forbids the establishment of an official state religion. But this secular bent doesn’t stop people from looking to the heavens for answers to life’s most troublesome questions: Will I succeed? Will I find love? Will I

Richard Simmons

Pamela Anderson

Jim Parsons

Emma Watson

RICHARD SIMMONS

JASON MOMOA

Global distinction: Work-out wiz.

Sign: Cancer (b. July 12, 1948) Significant date: March 10, 2017 Noteworthy activity: A new podcast called Missing

Global distinction: Game of Thrones’ Khal Drogo.

Sign: Leo (b. August 1, 1979) Significant date: March 8, 2017 Noteworthy activity: The actor takes his two kids to

Richard Simmons sparks rumors that the former Sweatin’ to the Oldies fitness guru, who disappeared from the public eye back in 2014, is being held hostage by his housekeeper. LAPD performs a wellness check and finds that the once flamboyant 68-year-old is “fine” and just wants to be left alone.

Horoscope: “Come out of your shell.... Allowing others to invade your privacy for a few hours could turn out to be a good thing.” (mercurynews.com)

the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Los Angeles. He snaps a photo while backstage of his daughter posing with bassist Flea and posts it to Instagram. The picture is quickly flooded with comments, as it appears that the musician might be completely naked, covered only by his instrument, next to the 9year-old girl.

Horoscope: “Do everything you can to protect your family from negative influences.” (heavenschild.com.au)

people rely on these daily,

PAMELA ANDERSON

JIM PARSONS

weekly or monthly mes-

Global distinction: Baywatch beauty.

Sign: Cancer (b. July 1, 1967) Significant date: March 9, 2017 Noteworthy activity: The blonde bombshell is repeat-

Global distinction: On-screen nerd.

Sign: Aries (b. March 24, 1973) Significant date: February 26, 2017 Noteworthy activity: The Big Bang Theory co-star is

edly spotted heading into the Ecuadorian embassy in London, sparking rumors that she is involved with computer hacker Julian Assange, the founder of whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, who has been holed up there for almost five years to avoid extradition. Though she has never officially confirmed if the two are an item, Anderson, known for dating bad boys, pens an open letter titled “My Julian” on social media. “My Julian is the most intelligent, interesting, and informed man in existence,” she writes. “Yes, I think he’s quite sexy.”

Horoscope: “Not everyone will approve of your choice in a mate—as long as you are happy, that is what really counts.” (hellobeautiful.com)

denied access to the Academy Awards as a result of getting locked out of his house and having no form of identification on him. Thankfully, the Emmywinning funnyman, who documented the snafu in a series of Instagram posts, is eventually able to retrieve his ID and attend the second half of the ceremony, including the dramatic part when the wrong movie was announced as the best picture winner.

Horoscope: “Spend time preparing for events. Make sure you have everything you need to meet the challenge or rise to the opportunity.” (articles.latimes.com)

snap a pic with a semi-nude rock star?

Every day, papers, magazines and websites worldwide print horoscopes— projections for people born in a specific month, based on the positions of the stars and planets. While many

sages for guidance in their lives, some readers skip over them entirely.

The editors of WS recognize that these little pearls of random foresight occasionally prove pro phetic.

But rather than poring over charts of the zodiac to predict world events, our staff prefers to use past horoscopes in an attempt to legitimize the science.

As you can see here, had some of these media figures remembered to consult their horoscopes on significant dates, they could have avoided a few surprises.

MARY-KATE & ASHLEY OLSEN Global distinction: Former Full House stars.

Sign: Gemini (b. June 13, 1986) Significant date: March 9, 2017 Noteworthy activity: The former child stars agree to pay $140,000 to a group of 185 interns who are suing their company, Dualstar Entertainment Group, claiming they completed overtime hours for no compensation or college credit. One former intern even alleges that she was hospitalized for dehydration due to demanding work conditions.

Horoscope: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.

Treat respect with respect.” (gotohoroscope.com) 516 WORLD SCREEN 4/17

EMMA WATSON Global distinction: Harry Potter alum.

Sign: Aries (b. April 15, 1990) Significant date: February 28, 2017 Noteworthy activity: Backlash ensues after Vanity Fair publishes a cover story on the 26-year-old accompanied by a photo that reveals much of her breasts. Critics say the actress is hypocritical for agreeing to pose for what they consider to be a racy image since she has made a name for herself as an outspoken proponent of feminism.

Horoscope: “It’s possible someone will accuse you of being a hypocrite. Instead of brushing away this accusation, take it seriously. There could be some truth to this complaint.” (southphillyreview.com)

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