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THE MAGAZINE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA • JANUARY 2013
www.worldscreen.com
NATPE Edition
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contents
JANUARY 2013/NATPE EDITION
departments
Publisher Ricardo Seguin Guise
WORLD VIEW
10
Editor Anna Carugati
A note from the editor. UPFRONT
Executive Editor Mansha Daswani
12
New shows on the market. MARKET TRENDS
41
FremantleMedia’s Thom Beers. IN THE NEWS
43
The World Screen and Global Agency Formats Project. MILESTONES
66
The hit series MythBusters celebrates its tenth anniversary. ADVERTISERS INDEX
255
WORLD’S END
258
In the stars.
44
12
Managing Editor Kristin Brzoznowski
54
Contributing Editor Elizabeth Guider Special Projects Editor Jay Stuart
spotlight
35
BBC WORLDWIDE’S HERB SCANNELL
Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Elizabeth Bowen-Tombari
As the president of BBC Worldwide America, Herb Scannell is charged with expanding the presence of the BBC brand across a variety of platforms in the U.S. —Anna Carugati
RED HOT!
Clear brands, innovative dramas and a close relationship with audiences have been central to the success of America’s top cable networks. —Anna Carugati
one-on-one
54
Associate Editor Joanna Padovano Associate Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Jessica Rodríguez
special report
44
Executive Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Rafael Blanco
Online Director Simon Weaver Art Director Phyllis Q. Busell Sales & Marketing Director Cesar Suero Sales & Marketing Manager Vanessa Brand
TELE MÜNCHEN GROUP’S HERBERT KLOIBER
Business Affairs Manager Terry Acunzo
Herbert Kloiber, the chairman of one of Germany’s leading production, broadcast and distribution groups, is being honored with a Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award. —Anna Carugati
Production Director Meredith Miller Senior Editors Bill Dunlap Kate Norris Contributing Writers Chris Forrester Bob Jenkins Juliana Koranteng Joanna Stephens David Wood
WORLD SCREEN is published eight times per year: January, March, April, May, June/July, October, November and December. Annual subscription price: Inside the U.S.: $70.00 Outside the U.S.: $120.00 Send checks, company information and address corrections to: WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, Suite 1207 New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. For a free subscription to our newsletters, please visit www.worldscreen.com.
Ricardo Seguin Guise, President Anna Carugati, Executive VP & Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani, Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development
WORLD SCREEN is a registered trademark of WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, Suite 1207 New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.worldscreen.com
35 THE LEADING ONLINE DAILY NEWS SERVICE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA INDUSTRY. For a free subscription, visit www.worldscreen.com/pages/newsletter
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©2013 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
JANUARY 2013/NATPE EDITION
These targeted magazines appear both inside World Screen and as separate publications. RACE TO THE TOP Executives from Disney, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, CBeebies and KidsCo discuss their strategies for success in a highly competitive landscape 74…INTERVIEW Cyber Group’s Pierre Sissmann 84
FREE TV A look at the region’s top terrestrial broadcasters 138…MILESTONES: AZTECA Ricardo Salinas, Mario San Román and MarcelVinay reflect on 20 years of the Mexican group 210…MILESTONES: RECORD A Q&A with Alexandre Raposo, as the Brazilian broadcaster turns 60 222…INTERVIEWS MundoFox’s Emiliano Saccone 228… Cisneros Group’s Adriana Cisneros 232…Canal 13 Chile’s David Belmar 234 TEEN DREAMS Youth-targeted novelas are rolling out worldwide 158…EMILIO AZCÁRRAGA IN CANNES The head of Televisa was interviewed on stage at MIPCOM by World Screen’s Anna Carugati 162…INTERVIEW Gustavo Bolívar 164
COMIC TIMING Exploring the science behind making comedies for kids 190…ON DEMAND The impact
of
new-media
platforms
194…
INTERVIEWS Saban Capital’s Haim Saban 198…Cartoon Network’s Stuart Snyder 200
World Screen Distributors Guide 2013 Don’t miss out on being included in the most comprehensive guide to the top distributors in the entertainment industry. Bonus distribution at MIPTV.
Space Reservations . . . . . . . . . March 1 Ad Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . March 7
For more information, please contact Ricardo Guise (rguise@worldscreen.com)
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world view
BY ANNA CARUGATI
Times They Are a-Changing Can you imagine a new house costing less than $18,000, a new car less than $4,000, a gallon of gas 29 cents and a loaf of bread 22 cents? Of course, with these unimaginably low prices, the average annual income is around $6,000. Is this the economic scenario for an alternative-universe sci-fi series or a lavish period drama? No, these were real conditions in 1963—50 years ago. NATPE is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and changes in the media business in the last five decades are just as mind-boggling as how much the cost of living has increased.To begin with, the word “media” wasn’t used in the everyday vernacular of the early ’60s to describe TV shows, movies, newspapers and magazines.And secondly, the technology was vastly different. Just think back to the good old TV set. It was big, solid and bulky and came in tabletop and console varieties. While color TV was first introduced in the U.S. in 1953, color sets didn’t start selling in great numbers until the late ’60s, mainly because of a dearth of color TV programming. Now, if our shows aren’t in HD, we complain. Remote controls didn’t become popular in homes until the ’70s or ’80s. Before that you actually had to get up out of your seat to turn the TV on or off, change the channel or adjust the volume up or down. CHANGES IN THE MEDIA Today, any number of devices can be programmed remotely from a smart phone or tablet. If you BUSINESS IN THE LAST FIVE wanted to get a drink or snack or go to the bathroom, you waited DECADES ARE JUST AS for the commercial break. And if you missed an episode, well, you missed an episode, unless the netMIND-BOGGLING AS HOW work aired reruns during the summer.Today, there are multiple ways catch up with missed episodes. MUCH THE COST OF LIVING to In 1963, there were three main players in the U.S., the HAS INCREASED. three networks, NBC, CBS and ABC. Many TV stations across the country were affiliated with one of the networks, while others were independent and needed to find their own programming instead of airing what the network provided. NATPE offered an invaluable market for programming execs hunting for hits. Some of the most popular shows at the time were Bonanza, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show. Hit TV shows routinely scored audience shares in the 30s, 40s and even higher.Today, network execs can only dream of having a series garner a 30 share! Beatlemania was infecting both sides of the Atlantic and the group’s songs were being released on vinyl records— 10
World Screen
45s and LPs that could only be bought in a store. The motion picture Cleopatra made movie history not only because of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s steamy off-screen love affair, but also because its budget ballooned from $2 million to $45 million (it remained one of the most expensive movies for a long time). Compare that to the $200 million spent on Titanic and close to $250 million on Avatar. It is widely agreed that television news came of age in 1963, from that day in Dallas when shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository, killing President John F. Kennedy. The networks provided nearly nonstop live coverage from the first reports of the president’s death on Friday, November 22, through to his funeral on Monday, November 25. During one of the darkest weekends in America’s history, television was there offering shocked, grieving, incredulous viewers eyewitness accounts, tremendously moving images—who can forget 3-year-old JohnJohn saluting his father’s casket?—and some semblance of an explanation for what had happened. For anyone old enough to remember, that footage is seared into our memories. During that tragic weekend and in the tumultuous ’60s and beyond,TV tied people together. Besides the morning newspapers, evening newscasts became the main source of news for domestic and international developments. Primetime shows have reflected changes in society, and some, like All in the Family, masterfully triggered conversations in the living room about race and gender relations. NATPE has grown with the evolution of television in the U.S. It has had to reinvent itself when independent stations were gobbled up by consolidation and as cable networks competed with broadcast networks for viewers and critical acclaim. Today, many of the best shows on television air on cable, which is the topic of our main feature. NATPE has also become a prime venue for Latin American distributors and buyers, and in TV Latina we look at the top free-TV programmers and have interviews with the most important executives in the media business. Ah, see, now we use the word “media” all the time to describe the industry—one that is constantly challenged by innovations in technology. But as we contemplate the dizzying pace with which our industry has changed, we can lounge in front of our wide-screen TVs and not have to get up to switch channels. Or we can binge on our favorite TV shows online and still have time to worry about the cost of a gallon of gas surpassing $4.
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upfronts A+E Networks www.aetninternational.com
“We always seek to strengthen our relationships
• Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition • Superhumanos • The Men Who Built America
in Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador while looking for new opportunities in Argentina, Venezuela and Central America.
”
Formats are a major push for A+E Networks at NATPE. Leading the slate is Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition, which centers on young dancers who are on the road to stardom. “Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition is a highly entertaining, competition-based format that’s easily adaptable in every territory both as a series and a format,” says Mayra Bracer, the company’s television sales representative for Latin America. “We also have bigger shows from our LatAm channels A&E, HISTORY and BIO, including the all-new El Fashion Hunter, and that’s always really fun because these programs are made in the region,” says Bracer. From the regional catalogue, A+E Networks is presenting Superhumanos, which spotlights Latinos who have extraordinary powers. The show, hosted by Leo Tusam, is a spin-off of the hit U.S. franchise Stan Lee’s Superhumans. From the factual portfolio, the company is showcasing The Men Who Built America, which Bracer says has “Hollywood-movie production values and a powerful, engaging story that will definitely be a draw for Latin American audiences.”
—Mayra Bracer
The Men Who Built America
ABC Commercial www.abccommercial.com/contentsales • The Search for the Ocean’s Super Predator • The Adventures of Figaro Pho • Redfern Now
The hidden depths of Australia’s Southern Ocean are explored in The Search for the Ocean’s Super Predator, an hourlong natural-history title being offered by ABC Commercial. Among the company’s top children’s titles is The Adventures of Figaro Pho, which is the work of Australian director and children’s book illustrator Luke Jurevicius and creative consultant Deane Taylor, who is well known for his art direction on Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. ABC Commercial also has a strong drama slate, including Redfern Now. Emma Levingston, the sales manager for the U.S.A. and Latin America at ABC Commercial’s content sales division, expects that the drama will “generate interest due to Jimmy McGovern’s involvement as story producer as well as the key cast, many of whom recently starred in the acclaimed feature film The Sapphires.” Levingston adds, “These premium titles are unique and offer the market something completely different.They have high budgets, superb production values and great talent, hopefully appealing to the international market.”
“
We are aiming to increase awareness of ABC Commercial’s high-quality properties and to enhance relationships with new and existing clients.
”
—Emma Levingston
The Adventures of Figaro Pho
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Band Contents Distribution www.band.com.br/distribution • Panic • The Amazing Professor Ambrosius’ Mansion • Olé
Olé
In addition to building on relationships with existing clients this NATPE, Band Contents Distribution is seeking out business opportunities in new markets. “Although most of our customers are in Latin America, we have a varied catalogue, with many genres, so we can fill the needs of clients worldwide,” says Elisa Ayub, the company’s director of international content. Among other highlights, Band’s slate consists of a trio of titles that will bring “joy and fun to spectators,” according to Ayub. Panic watches as comedians and other entertainers satirize such topics as politics, sports, celebrities and music. “Panic is already responsible for one of the largest audiences of Band, mainly attracting the attention of young adults,” Ayub says. The Amazing Professor Ambrosius’ Mansion, an animated kids’ show, is a combination of edutainment and comedy. The program “enchants children with its crazy adventures,” Ayub says. There is also Olé, which focuses on the world of sports in a relaxed and amusing manner.
“ Humor is one
of the greatest features a program can have to attract the audience.
”
—Elisa Ayub
Beyond Distribution www.beyond.com.au
“ Lifestyle and factual programming are in huge demand by the cable channels.”
• Mother of the Bride • Fatal Vows • Love It or List It
—Sherry Fynbo
Chile, Brazil and Argentina are among the top territories that Beyond Distribution has its eye on for NATPE sales, according to Sherry Fynbo, the company’s senior VP of sales for the Americas. Especially important, Fynbo says, would be to secure free-toair deals in Brazil and Chile at the market. To achieve its sales goals, Beyond is bringing out a slate that includes Mother of the Bride. The show features dress consultants who help the moms of soonto-wed women look their best on the big day. Beyond is also presenting Fatal Vows, which uses interviews and reenactments to tell the stories of marriages that ended in murder. Each episode sheds light on how divorce could drive a person to commit a cold-blooded crime. There’s also a third season of the real-estate/homedesign show Love It or List It, in which homeowners must decide whether to stay in their newly remodeled abodes or look for new living quarters.
Love It or List It
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CBS Studios International www.cbscorporation.com Elementary
• Elementary • Vegas • Beauty and the Beast
International buyers are constantly on the hunt for programming they think will rate well on their channel; if a series is successful in the U.S., it certainly has a higher chance of repeating that strong performance elsewhere. This is why CBS Studios International has high hopes heading into NATPE that its stable of hit U.S. series will grab the interest of a variety of buyers from around the world. The catalogue includes Elementary and Vegas, both of which were breakout hits of the U.S. fall 2012 season. Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu star in Elementary, a modern take on Sherlock Holmes. In this version, Sherlock is now living the big-city life in New York. Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis star in Vegas, a drama set in the 1960s. It centers on the true story of Ralph Lamb, a rodeo cowboy turned longtime sheriff of Las Vegas. Another drama from slate is Beauty and the Beast, which stars Kristin Kreuk and Jay Ryan in a modern-day romantic love story that features a procedural twist.
Beauty and the Beast
Content Television www.contentmediacorp.com • The Bletchley Circle • Larry King Now • Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn
The Bletchley Circle
Due in part to the significant increase in registration numbers announced by NATPE, Content Television is expecting a very busy market in Miami, according to Saralo MacGregor, the company’s executive VP. “NATPE tends to be attended primarily by buyers from North America and Latin America, so that will be our key target territory during the market, but we will be meeting with clients from the full range of international territories represented,” she says. One of the properties being offered up by Content is The Bletchley Circle, which centers on a group of women investigating homicides in London. The former CNN anchor Larry King is back with an all-new half-hour talk show, Larry King Now.The show features King conversing with celebrities from the worlds of politics, sports, entertainment and pop culture.“This brand-new series is an ideal showcase for Larry’s personal humor and wit alongside his highly experienced, one-of-a-kind interviewing skills,” says MacGregor. Also on the slate is Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn.
“ As our first market of
2013, NATPE will be a great opportunity to introduce all of our latest properties ahead of MIPTV and the L.A. Screenings and to follow up on discussions that we started at MIPCOM.
”
—Saralo MacGregor
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Dori Media Group www.dorimediadistribution.com • S.Y.P.D. • New York • Galis
Galis
The diversity of the Dori Media Group catalogue allows the company to cater to all territories as well as a variety of client types, says Michal Nashiv, the CEO and president of Dori Media Contenidos. Covering dramas, comedies, entertainment shows, reality series, documentaries and kids’ content, the Dori portfolio features programs that “have sold worldwide and have proven success in ratings,” Nashiv points out. Among them, NewYork was originally produced by Dori Media Darset forYes in Israel, where it had much success on air. Galis was originally produced by Dori Media Darset for Israel’s Noga Communications. It went on to become one of the most-watched series on cable platform HOT’s kids’ channel. Second seasons of both are already in production and will air this year. The company is also presenting S.Y.P.D. for NATPE buyers. Nashiv says that the story lines in Dori’s programs are very international, making them easy to play to various markets. “Their themes are relevant and unique, which makes them outstanding,” she adds.
“ In territories
where we are strong, we are working to get even stronger, while trying to reach new territories as well.
”
—Michal Nashiv
Entertainment One www.eonetv.com Primeval: New World
• Primeval: New World • Saving Hope • The Spiral
The sci-fi series Primeval: New World is based on the acclaimed British show Primeval, which is in its fifth season on UKTV and ITV.This North American spin-off, sold by Entertainment One (eOne) Television International, comes with “a built-in audience and international brand recognition,” says Valerie Cabrera, the company’s executive VP. Cabrera also highlights the second season of the medical drama Saving Hope from the eOne slate.“Season one of Saving Hope resonated very well internationally and with Canadian viewers, [as is] proven by its ratings success on CTV. It was such a hit that CTV upped the season-two order from 13 to 18 episodes. Season two only gets better: think Grey’s Anatomy meets The Sixth Sense.” Another notable show that the company is hoping to close new deals on is The Spiral. Cabrera says, “The Spiral encompasses European content with suspense, intrigue and international appeal.” Latin America and the U.S. are the prime focuses for eOne’s sales at NATPE. Cabrera also says the company is keen to firm up some new digital deals internationally.
“ I expect it to be a good market overall, with
lots of positive responses to the ever-growing eOne catalogue.
”
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—Valerie Cabrera
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Fun World Media www.funworldmedia.com • The Bright Side of the Moon • Santa’s Summer House • The Easter Bunny Puppy
There is a host of new feature films and TV series that Fun World Media is introducing at NATPE. This includes several family titles, among them Santa’s Summer House, The Easter Bunny Puppy and A Talking Cat!?! There is also some heavier fare, with the suspense thrillers The Bright Side of the Moon, about a lottery winner who is kidnapped, and Death’s Door, centered on a group of young men and women who are invited to a “killer” party and get locked inside. “Fun World Media has a unique ability, through our own studio in Las Vegas, to produce quality entertainment at a reasonable budget, and our relationships with other independent producers enable us to offer an array of unusual and distinctive films and television series,” says Andrew Schreiber, the company’s president of sales. Schreiber says that he is particularly looking forward to attending NATPE as an opportunity to “strengthen relationships with buyers in the U.S. and Latin America, and to announce our upcoming kids’ series, coming on the heels of our breakthrough series The Jadagrace Show.”
“ Our primary goals are to
Viaplay
make significant inroads into the Latin American market with our slate of product, and to find U.S. broadcast homes for our television series.
”
—Andrew Schreiber
The Easter Bunny Puppy
ITV Studios Global Entertainment www.itvstudios.com
“ We’re particularly looking forward to speaking
• Rectify • Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan • Come Dine with Me
with clients in Latin America, the U.S. and Canada, as well as catching up with our European friends.
”
—Tobi de Graaff
The emphasis for ITV Studios Global Entertainment (ITVS GE) at NATPE is on world-class drama, iconic factual titles and hit entertainment formats. Among its scripted highlights is the American drama series Rectify, from the team behind Breaking Bad.“ITVS GE is known for its standout dramas and we are continuing in this vein with Rectify,” says Tobi de Graaff, the company’s director of global television distribution.“In factual, we’re looking to establish global brands, as we have with the hugely popular River Monsters and I Shouldn’t Be Alive franchises,” de Graaff shares. “Titles like Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan boast wellknown characters and compelling stories that resonate with viewers around the world.” ITVS GE has already placed the format Come Dine with Me in 35 territories and is looking to add to this at NATPE. “Given our wide and varied formats portfolio and following the success of Come Dine with Me in Brazil, we have strong aspirations to increase our formatted entertainment discussions across North and South America,” says de Graaff.
Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan
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Keshet International www.keshetinternational.com • Master Class • Prisoners of War • Mother’s Day
“ We want to tighten up relations with the
”
creative community, producers and broadcasters.
—Alon Shtruzman
Having already established relationships with producers and channels in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, Keshet International hopes to expand its reach to include other Latin American territories this NATPE. Among the highlights from Keshet’s catalogue is Master Class, an elimination-free singing competition featuring 8- to 14-year-old performers who receive only positive feedback. “Master Class is a clever and respectful way to produce a talent competition with young contestants, delivering two elements that work well in Latin markets—music and kids,” says Alon Shtruzman, the company’s managing director. Also on offer from Keshet are Prisoners of War, the successful format that inspired the Emmy Award-winning series Homeland, and Mother’s Day, a comedy. “Prisoners of War is a great story that has already proven to be a big hit in multiple territories and languages.... I have no doubt this story can compel the Latin audience as well,” says Shtruzman. “Mother’s Day is a smart comedy—which was very successful in Israel—that puts on the center stage a strong, complex feminine character.”
Master Class
Lionsgate www.lionsgate.com • Nashville • Anger Management • Orange is the New Black
Anger Management
One of the biggest breakout hits of the U.S. fall season in 2012 was Nashville, starring Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere. Both actresses earned Golden Globe nominations for the show, which is being offered to the international market by Lionsgate. “A true prime-time drama, Nashville centers around the careers, politics and love interests of three iconic women in the music industry,” says Peter Iacono, the company’s managing director for international television. Then there is Anger Management, an FX original comedy in which Charlie Sheen portrays an unconventional anger-management therapist who is also trying to sort out his own issues. Ninety additional episodes of Anger Management were picked up following the successful run of the first ten in 2012. Lionsgate is also presenting Orange is the New Black, which is scheduled to premiere on Netflix in the spring. The show, based on the book of the same name, takes place in a minimum-security prison in New York.
“ In an increasingly diverse and competitive
marketplace, our programs define culture, explore untold stories and transcend boundaries.
”
—Peter Iacono
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MarVista Entertainment www.marvista.net • Power Rangers Megaforce • Collision Course • The Shores
The Shores
The Power Rangers franchise is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, there’s a new installment available from MarVista Entertainment, Power Rangers Megaforce. “Following the worldwide success of Power Rangers Samurai, this new series has already generated a lot of interest, and we look forward to working with our clients at NATPE to make it one of the highest-rated children’s programs in Latin America and the world,” says Vanessa Shapiro, the company’s executive VP of worldwide sales. Another highlight on the MarVista slate is the actionpacked disaster film Collision Course, which Shapiro mentions is one of MarVista’s best global sellers. Then there is The Shores, an unscripted show that premiered on the TV Guide channel in the U.S. during the fall of 2012. Following the show’s successful performance on the network, MarVista has “received a lot of interest from our clients around the world looking for reality-TV content, and we look forward to continuing those conversations during NATPE,” says Shapiro.
“ We look forward to…bringing The Shores to the world.”
—Vanessa Shapiro
MediaBiz www.mediabiz.com.ar • Killer Women • Left on the Shelf • More than Partners
MediaBiz is eager to begin developing new projects in Latin America, given the talent pool found in all areas of this part of the world, says Alex Lagomarsino, CEO of and partner in the company. MediaBiz has already established relationships with a number of highly acclaimed producers and directors, including Ricardo Rodriguez (Daddy’s Secrets), Leonardo Bechini (Cops and Robbers, Coffee Stories), Oscar Tabernise (Dos Mujeres, Bellezas Indomables) and Ramiro San Honorio (Templarios en America, El Paraiso), as well as Jorge Nisco, who is behind the title Killer Women. Inspired by reallife events, Killer Women details a number of brutal crimes committed by females who were prompted by domestic violence, greed and other motives. Also in the MediaBiz catalogue are Left on the Shelf and More than Partners.“These shows have been successful in prime time, getting high ratings on Argentine TV,” says Lagomarsino, who mentions that these “multiaward-winning programs with extraordinary stories are easily adaptable for different countries.”
“ We have fresh projects to be developed for the international market.
”
—Alex Lagomarsino More than Partners
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Multicom Entertainment Group www.multicom.tv • Lovemakers • Mask Masters Lovemakers
This year in Miami, Multicom Entertainment Group is aiming the majority of its sales efforts at territories in Latin America as well as digital platforms, says Irv Holender, the company’s chairman.There are two titles in particular that the company is looking to drum up sales on: Lovemakers and Mask Masters.The former is a 96-minute romantic comedy about a struggling dating agency in Budapest that is tasked with making a celebrity fall in love with the highmaintenance and depressed younger sister of a shady Russian businessman in order to stay financially afloat.The film stars Daryl Hannah, Billy Zane, Christine Kelly, C. J.Thomason, Evgeniy Stychkin, Attila Arpa, Ferenc Hujber and Gabor Hever. Mask Masters tells the story of four guardians—the Blue Dragon, the lord of the eastern heaven; the White Tiger, the king of the western mountains; the Red Phoenix, the queen of the southern sky; and the Great Tortoise, the ruler of the northern sea—who are called upon to defend the four parts of the planet against an evil creature named Muspel.The 26x24-minute series is available in full high definition and 3D stereoscopic animation.
Novovision-MEG www.novovision.tv • Mad Grandma, Mad Animals, Mad Girls, Mad Kids • Pop Toon • Pop Corn TV
“ We are sure that NATPE will be the place to be in order to acquire new content for our already widely developed catalogue.
”
Affirming its commitment to the Latin American market, Novovision-MEG last year signed a distribution deal with Venevision International that covers Latin American and U.S. Hispanic sales. Meanwhile, in North America, the company is co-producing a Pop Corn TV series that will be commercialized in Canada and the U.S.“This clearly shows our will to develop our business on the North American continent,” says François-Xavier Poirier, the CEO of Novovision. At NATPE, both Novovision and Venevision will be busy talking to buyers about Pop Toon, a new series of candid-camera clips for kids.Also high up on the list of sales priorities is the Mad family of programs, which includes Mad Grandma, Mad Animals, Mad Girls and Mad Kids. “For us and for our distributor Venevision, NATPE will be a unique occasion to meet a maximum number of clients and also find new partners for future co-productions,” says Poirier.“It will be the best way for us to develop our activities in this part of the world, an area with promising potential for our type of programs.”
—François-Xavier Poirier
Pop Corn TV
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Rai Trade www.raitrade.it
“ Rai Trade will focus its attention on the U.S.
• The Day of the Siege • The Family • Young Montalbano
and Latin American markets, with special care for Latin buyers.
”
—Mattia Oddone
As the exclusive distributor for Rai, Italy’s national public broadcasting group, Rai Trade is contributing to the spread of Italian-made content throughout the world. Rai Trade will be at NATPE with an extensive Italian catalogue, which has been strengthened by the recent acquisitions of the film libraries of such companies as Titanus, Cinecittà Luce and IIF. The catalogue also includes the mini-series The Day of the Siege, which is a period drama set in 1683, as well as the contemporary drama series The Family. There are four new episodes of Detective Montalbano, for a total of 26 100-minute installments, along with the new Young Montalbano, which has six 100-minute episodes. The last of these titles has already sold to the BBC, ZDF and HBO Latino. Mattia Oddone, Rai Trade’s head of international sales for cinema and TV, says the goal is to get these titles onto several satellite and pan-regional stations through the company’s presence at NATPE.
Young Montalbano
Red Arrow International www.redarrowinternational.tv • Jo • Restless • The Taste
“ NATPE is the first market of the year, so
everyone is refreshed and there is an overall atmosphere of positivity.
”
Just before NATPE officially gets under way, the new cooking competition The Taste makes its debut on ABC in the U.S.The series, led by celebrity chefs Anthony Bourdain and Nigella Lawson, has already been sold into more than 130 countries, including France, India and Australia. Red Arrow International is looking to add to this at NATPE.“Its combination of thrilling competition and the essence of cooking—the taste—is ideal for online extensions like games or online forums, along with [sponsorships] and brand cooperation,” says Jens Richter, the company’s managing director. One of the other properties being presented by Red Arrow is Jo, an 8x45-minute crime series about a police officer solving murder cases in Paris. Starring Jean Reno, Jill Hennessy and Tom Austen, Jo was created by René Balcer, who spent many years as showrunner on Law & Order. Guest stars will include Sam Waterston and Olivia D’Abo. Restless, inspired by William Boyd’s global bestseller, is a spy thriller led by Hayley Atwell, Rufus Sewell, Michelle Dockery, Michael Gambon and Charlotte Rampling.
—Jens Richter
The Taste
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Starz Worldwide Distribution www.starzglobal.com
“ Broadcasters are already discovering that Starz is a
• Spartacus: War of the Damned • Magic City • Brooklyn’s Finest
company where they can find high-quality dramatic content and get a level of personal attention they cannot find elsewhere.
”
Just before the official kickoff of NATPE, the first episode of Spartacus:War of the Damned, the epic final season of the Spartacus saga, will premiere in the U.S. Starz Worldwide Distribution will be at the market talking to buyers about that show as well as Magic City. “On the TV-series front, we are focusing on premium, high-quality, globally appealing shows, or ‘popcorn’ series,” says Gene George, the executive VP of worldwide distribution for Starz Media. “Starz wants to transport viewers and have them immersed in our programming. If it’s the gladiatorial arena with Spartacus or at the poker table with mobster Ben Diamond in 1950’s Miami with Magic City, we want to create bold and interesting worlds.” On the movie side, Starz is licensing a slate of theatrical movies for U.S. cable and broadcast networks. The offerings include Brooklyn’s Finest, starring Richard Gere and Don Cheadle; Stone, with Robert De Niro and Edward Norton; and The Son of No One, starring Channing Tatum, Katie Holmes and Al Pacino.
—Gene George
Magic City
Talpa Distribution www.talpa.tv • Beat the Best • Body Talk • The Winner Is...
Body Talk
Following the success of The Voice and The Voice Kids,Talpa Distribution is presenting its newest talent competition, Beat the Best, to international buyers at NATPE.“Talent competitions remain popular and are very suitable for the Latin market,” says Gepke Nederlof, the company’s head of sales. Beat the Best, which involves musical, dancing and variety acts,“builds on the same mechanism used in The Voice, showing only the best of the best in the business,” says Nederlof. The show premiered in the Netherlands in the fall.Talpa is also showcasing Body Talk, which debuted at MIPCOM.The game-show format presents interesting health information in an entertaining way. Another title being highlighted is The Winner Is..., which has enjoyed success since its launch, in early 2012. “The singing game show has been commissioned in nearly ten countries—including Argentina in the Latin region—and has to date launched in the Netherlands, Germany, China and Italy,” says Nederlof, who mentions that the series is currently in production for NBC in the U.S.
“ We currently have projects in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Chile and Colombia, but we’re also talking to smaller countries in the region.
”
—Gepke Nederlof
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Vision Films www.visionfilms.net
• Rushlights • JFK Remembered: 50 Years Later • Hendrix on Hendrix
Two delinquent young lovers travel to small-town Texas to falsely claim an inheritance in Rushlights. The actionthriller, which stars Beau Bridges, Josh Henderson, Aidan Quinn and Haley Webb, is one of several features that Vision Films is looking to sell to the global market. The company is also bringing out a slate of documentaries, including JFK Remembered: 50 Years Later. This timely doc spotlights one of the most popular and revered U.S. presidents of all time. “November 22, 2013, is the 50th anniversary of the assassination, and our title will be delivered to the distributors and broadcasters for this historic event,” says Lise Romanoff, the CEO of worldwide distribution at Vision Films. Additionally, on the doc slate is the music feature Hendrix on Hendrix. Romanoff says it is a “wonderful music bio-pic featuring Leon Hendrix, brother of Jimi, and will be available prior to the theatrical release of a feature film on Jimi Hendrix.” There are also several new 3D natural-history docs, including Sharks 3D, Madagascar 3D and Egypt 3D.
Rushlights
“ Vision Films specializes in three
main types of content: features, docs and music.
”
—Lise Romanoff
WWE www.wwe.com • Raw • SmackDown • WWE Main Event
The programming from WWE is broadcast in more than 145 countries and 30 languages and reaches more than 500 million homes. Through its various business lines, the company is able to create and deliver original content 52 weeks a year to a global audience.This includes the flagship show Raw, which is available in one-, two- and three-hour versions internationally. Each episode is also fully interactive, with fans being able to vote and discuss story lines through outlets such as Facebook,Twitter, Shazam and more.WWE recently unveiled a new signature brand to complement the Raw and SmackDown flagship series, with WWE Main Event.This weekly program features in-ring action, offering the big-arena experience set in front of a live audience. Upping its family-friendly entertainment offering,WWE last year entered into a deal with Saban Brands for a weekly morning kids’ program, WWE Saturday Morning Slam, which runs on The CW programming block Vortexx. This marks the first time since 2001 that WWE has released a program aimed specifically at children.
SmackDown
Raw
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spotlight
Winston Churchill coined the phrase “special relationship” in 1946 when describing the close bond between the U.K. and the U.S., which ties the two countries politically, militarily, economically and certainly culturally. This special relationship has extended into television and media. British shows and formats perform extremely well in the U.S. Nowhere is this more evident than in the success of such shows as Dancing with the Stars, which is based on the BBC format of Strictly Come Dancing, or of the BBC series Doctor Who and Top Gear. Herb Scannell, the president of BBC Worldwide America, is responsible for enlarging the BBC brand and the company’s various businesses in the U.S. These include BBC America, which reaches some 77 million viewers; BBC Worldwide Productions, producer of Dancing with the Stars; and BBC.com, as well as sales and distribution activities, consumer products, and the exploitation of BBC Worldwide’s global brands. Scannell talks to World Screen about the success of innovative content and the demand for it in the American market.
WS: BBC America set out to present the best of British
television to an American audience. It has grown into much more than that. SCANNELL: The BBC will always be the British Broadcasting Corporation and represent the good work of the U.K. What our audience really likes is that British drama continually innovates; just the fact that there are so many series that come and go means that they are always coming up with something new and different. BBC America continues to be a place that showcases the best of British programming.We are very proud that over the last two years Doctor Who has become a bigger and bigger force, not just a British show, but a big popular show. Recently it was on the cover of TV Guide as the winner of the magazine’s Fan Favorites cover poll, selected over TheWalking Dead and over The Vampire Diaries. It’s just an example of how we are taking the best of the programming from the U.K. and providing a great celebratory platform for it. Part of our mission statement is to celebrate the cultural divide between the U.K. and the U.S.There is something wonderful about that cultural divide. The language that came out of our promo department is, “British by nature, American by nurture,” which is nice because it really does say that we take television from the U.K. and try to make it more appealing to American audiences. Doctor Who is more of a family show in the U.K., while in America it really plays to the Comic-Con crowd. DoctorWho actors are rock stars at Comic-Con.We’ve created a block on BBC America called Dramaville, which is where all the top, high-quality British dramas are showcased: Luther,The Hour, Whitechapel; that is a destination we have put on the schedule. So we continue to bring the best of British programming to America, we nurture it in a way that is appropriate for the American audience and then we supplement it with original productions. We take the values of the BBC, some of the personalities, and see what we can make here that both fits the channel charge and adds value to the channel. Along those lines we
BBC Worldwide’s
Herb Scannell
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did a show called Copper that had the high-quality pedigree that comes from Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson. I mentioned innovation; Copper told a story nobody had told before on television. All the stories about the 1860s have been about the West. This is about the East and more in common with the European experience. It’s about the birth of cities and how they come of age. It’s about a cop and complex characters and it takes place at a time in American history that is rich with themes and ideas that are relevant today—divided nation, immigration and race. Copper embraces our values of complex drama and innovation. We’ve also done a show called Richard Hammond’s Crash Course.We think Hammond [who also stars in Top Gear] is an incredibly good ambassador in America. Top Gear has a great audience, he is well liked, and in Crash Course he takes on jobs that he would never envision doing. Those are examples of a scripted and an unscripted show that reflect the way we look at the values of the BBC and how we can interpret them for a local market. World Screen
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By Anna Carugati
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spotlight
WS: And your original programming has broken audience records for the channel. SCANNELL: We’re very proud. Our highest-rated month was September, with Copper and Doctor Who. That was a one-two punch that was very much BBC America—television that is challenging, smart and innovative. When I first got here I described what I thought was the heart of the great BBC shows as I3Q: intelligent, innovative, irreverent and always quality. WS: Tell us about BBC America’s audience demographic. SCANNELL: The channel’s demographic is slightly more
male, in part because Top Gear, which airs Monday through Friday, skews male. Doctor Who also has a male following. BBC America’s audience is also upscale and, if not the most educated, it’s one of the most educated and affluent audiences. It’s also a very tech-savvy audience. It over-indexes in
High drama: BBC America has placed a strong emphasis on drama, with series such as (left to right) Luther, Ripper Street, Copper and Whitechapel.
people who use Twitter. When I got here, I very much wanted this to be a culture that doesn’t think about digital as an afterthought but thinks of it as a primary thought, especially with the fan bases of Doctor Who and of Top Gear.We have 22 million followers on Facebook for those properties. It’s very important that we are continually in touch with these fan bases and super-serve them. WS: How are you super-serving fans through online and mobile? SCANNELL: People access us many ways. Doctor Who was the most downloaded show on iTunes in 2011—more than Glee, more than Modern Family, because of the rabid fan base. We had a show from the U.K. called Misfits, and it played on Hulu first. We are continually trying to provide fans with whatever they want about the shows.We brought the cast of Doctor Who to Comic-Con, and one of my favorite bits is that we partnered with BuzzFeed, and had the cast read 36
World Screen
tweets from American celebrities—like the kids on Jersey Shore—in American accents. It’s what fans want; they want to see real people.Wherever we can we super-serve the fans. WS: How do you see on-demand viewing affecting linear channels? SCANNELL: People want their programming when they want it and from many different places.The DVR is clearly more mainstream than it was before.When we aired Copper, our Live+7 viewership (live broadcast plus seven days of DVR viewing) doubled the audience.We are one of the top five most-DVRed channels; 23 percent of our prime-time audience watch on DVR. There is also VOD on cable. Comcast does a good job, but there is still more work to be done in terms of getting programming in front of viewers. So the emerging idea is we need to put together a different matrix. I had a friend who was in the music business
and said that around the year 2000, all the boy bands were automatically making hits and selling 2 million records in the opening weekend. He said that back then it was really easy to be in the record business—you got on MTV, you had radio promotion and you had retail. Now, in order to have any song that sells 50,000 to 100,000 [records] you need multiple outlets.You have to be working YouTube and several digital platforms that didn’t exist before.Thinking about the success of a show or a network is the same: you need the live show, you need DVR viewing, you need iTunes and Netflix and several other outlets. Linear networks will always be there because people like things to be really easy.That friend of mine was saying that 85 percent of music is still listened to on traditional radio because people don’t want to work hard to find songs.Television will always have that value: viewers like it because they can sit back and use their remote control to find lots of different options.
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Gifts from abroad: Doctor Who is one of the iconic British brands that has gained a loyal American following on BBC America, iTunes and Netflix, among other platforms.
WS: How are you increasing the distribution of BBC
programming? SCANNELL: The BBC has four channels in the U.K., so there is more programming available than we are able to put on one strand in the U.S.As a result, we have embraced an ecosystem that allows our library and much of our content to go to where the audience is. BBC America is the showcase for many of the top shows from the U.K. Then there is Dancing with the Stars, which airs on ABC; it’s not a BBC America show. So we run some of our programming on our own channel and also sell our shows to other networks. In the digital space we are on iTunes.We have done big deals with Amazon and Netflix.We have a big library, and that is part of the value that we see in that space. WS: You mentioned Dancing with the Stars. What is the strategy at BBC Worldwide Productions? SCANNELL: The production unit is run by Jane Tranter, who has great credentials; she was head of drama and comedy at the BBC in the U.K. Jane has been here about four years and had three remits: one was to take BBC IP and bring it to the U.S. marketplace; second, to diversify and look at producing original content, both scripted and unscripted; and third, look at a broader base of clients. She has done that. The unit has sold an unscripted show to The CW called Breaking Pointe. And they are doing a scripted show with Starz called Da Vinci’s Demons. There are some 70 cable and broadcast networks commissioning original programming in America, so there is a world of opportunity.This summer there were six or seven of our shows launched on broadcast and cable networks. They’ve made good progress and it’s part of the opportunity we see: produce programming that can then feed the pipeline of BBC Worldwide, sell it around the world, and potentially nest it on some of BBC Worldwide’s emerging channels. 38
World Screen
WS: Building BBC’s global brands is also part of your remit? SCANNELL: We have a group of people that is dedicated
to making the global brands even bigger, mainly Doctor Who and Top Gear. Before I arrived there was an American version of Top Gear that complements the British version.The goal is to see the American version prosper and maintain the presence of the brand on BBC America. Another big global brand is Dancing with the Stars, which continues to have an incredible presence in the U.S. Matt Forde [the executiveVP of sales and co-productions at BBC Worldwide Americas], who runs our group here, has been very active. With so many networks commissioning original series, and so many others looking to acquire programming, there is a great opportunity for us to sell to the American marketplace—including to Hulu, which is not a channel but is looking for programming—and to coproduce. Top of the Lake is being done with Sundance Channel and Jane Campion, who is a very prestigious director, so Matt is also finding there are more co-production opportunities as there are more people getting into the originals game. WS: What growth areas do you see? SCANNELL: We are still in a growth curve in distribut-
ing content digitally. There are new ventures coming up that are going to be interesting, such as Verizon and Redbox’s joint venture. Because we have a library and we have a lot more programming than we have channels, there is an opportunity for us to think about everything from our comedy offerings, which have a legacy in this country dating back to Monty Python, and to think how that plays in an emerging digital world. The production business in L.A. has just started to create some scale, and if we come out with new scripted shows they will open up some new opportunities because, as I said at the beginning, there is a demand for complex characters, period pieces and, mostly, innovation.
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market trends FremantleMedia’s
Thom Beers
Prior to being appointed CEO of FremantleMedia North America (FMNA) last September, Thom Beers was CEO and executive producer of Original Productions, where he oversaw the creation of a string of hits, including Deadliest Catch, Storage Wars and Ice Road Truckers. These series were so successful that FremantleMedia acquired a stake in Original Productions in 2009. Beers is now responsible for FMNA’s overall management, business operations and the development and production of some 600 hours of programming.
WS: What opportunities do you see for FremantleMedia in the North American market? BEERS: Clearly we’ve done well navigating the waters of North American cable television and now network television. We have 16 series on nine networks. So, it’s a really healthy environment for us. I think the key to it is this: great storytelling—it’s the gold standard of every network. If you’re a good storyteller and understand how to cast a show, and understand character arcs and story arcs and dramatic arcs—and you’re good at it—you can work anywhere. And right now it’s the storyteller’s world; it’s our market. WS: One approach that has made your shows so successful is finding iconic figures that the audience can relate to. Do you think that philosophy will apply to any show that FremantleMedia will be producing? BEERS: No, not all.There are shows that are entertainment shows, there are shows that are scripted entertainment, and scripted reality, and then what we call authentic TV.We do a great deal of authentic TV, meaning most of the people, the subjects that we film, would be doing exactly what they were doing whether we had a camera [on] them or not. These crab fishermen are crab fishermen.When we’re not there, they’re still fishermen. And if you’re drilling for oil, if we’re not there, you’re still drilling for oil.You’re still driving trucks.You’re still cutting down trees. In Storage Wars, you’re still out there shopping for a storage container. But there are other worlds—for instance, our America’s Got Talent and American Idol—where people are living in a competitive environment and singing for their supper and trying to win a big prize. It’s not like people do that during their real lives. That’s a competitive environment. So we thrive in both worlds—we thrive in the real world and we also thrive in the competitive-environment world. And there are huge opportunities in scripted. So, there are a number of worlds that we have been very successful in. WS: FremantleMedia North America has set the bar very high with certain shows. When you’re developing a show, can you sense that it’s going to take off that way? 1/13
BEERS: I wish I could
tell you yes! My goodness, if you’re looking at the environment right now and what’s being commissioned, who would have thought that there would be competing celebrity high-diving shows? That’s something so completely out of the realm of what you’d expect, which I like. When we started doing that “tough-man TV,” when I did the car shows, nobody had ever done a car show like Monster Garage. Nobody had ever really done these kinds of “testostero-reality shows.” We’re always right in the front of [the curve]. There are a ton of opportunities out there. All I know is that the easiest, [most] direct route is the route that will win.The more convoluted you make things, the more difficult it gets.The audience now, they really want to be entertained.They want to be challenged.They want their heartstrings to be tugged at and they want [to] laugh, they want to cry. Those are the elements that you’re looking for in a winning show. And obviously, when it really comes down to it, what is it more than anything else? You’re either watching people in the tough-world environment, where they’re taking high risks for high rewards, or you’re watching people in the competitive environment who are living their dream.They’re both good [genres]. WS: A lot of FremantleMedia shows generate substantial
ancillary revenues. Do you see continuing that business? BEERS: Oh my God, yes.The guys in the FremantleMedia
Enterprises group are completely surrounding shows with everything from apps to plush, software to games, clothing to CDs and music.That’s the world I lived in for a long time, too.When I created the series Monster Garage, we ended up with over 70 licenses and they did more than $100 million in revenue, in Monster Garage sunglasses, motor oil,T-shirts, everything. So, you certainly understand the opportunity when a fan really wants to embrace a show.The key to it, though, more than anything else, is that [viewers] have to embrace the show first.You’re not going to make 9,000 licenses for a show you just put on the air. It’s got to be a hit. And then when you’ve got, like we do, the infrastructure that moves really quickly once a show is a hit, that’s when you have a good combination, a wonderful chemistry. World Screen
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By Anna Carugati
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in the news
Honoring
INNOVATION ooking across the dial at some of the leading broad-
L casters around the globe, it is evident that formats
still reign supreme. From talent shows to culinary competitions to fashion face-offs and more, some of the biggest hits on television today are formats, many of which have been on the air for quite some time.This has all contributed to a call for innovation being put out to everyone in the industry, as the quest for the elusive next breakout global format craze continues. The Formats Project competition, by Global Agency in conjunction with World Screen, is looking for exactly that—a fresh and innovative format concept that could become the next big international success. Running from January 21 to March 21, the competition is open to anyone who owns the copyright of his or her format. The winning projects will receive exclusive worldwide representation, excluding the country of origin, from Global Agency, which has proven to be one of the fastestgrowing distributors in the business. “Global Agency has always been interested in finding unique ideas from around the world,” says Izzet Pinto, the company’s CEO. “Unlike other distribution companies, we enjoy giving the opportunity to paper formats or piloted projects created by talented format creators. In order to find these great ideas, we decided to team up with the industry’s leading publishing group, World Screen.” Pinto says that above anything else, the competition is looking for ideas with authenticity. “We want original ideas that don’t have many similarities with existing formats. They should also appeal to international markets. The basic structure of the format should be very 1/13
simple and entertaining. Global Agency’s motto is ‘content that creates buzz,’ therefore we are looking for formats which will create buzz!” From the submissions, the Global Agency acquisitions team will select the top 20 projects, which will then be evaluated by a grand jury. The jury consists of industry experts from companies such as Constantin Entertainment of Germany, Coyote of France, Romania’s Zucchero Media, Spain’s Pausoka Entertainment, SBT of Brazil, MY Tupelo Entertainment of the U.S., Bright I of Lebanon, Nova TV of Bulgaria, Serbia’s Prva and Miditech of India, as well as the World Screen team. This group will determine the top three selections. The first-place winner will receive $25,000 for the development of his or her project, courtesy of Global Agency. The second-place winner will be awarded $15,000 and the third $10,000.The money is intended to go toward the development of pilots, but if there’s already a professional pilot, the winner will receive a cash prize. The deadline for entries is March 21, with the winners to be announced during the second week of April. Rules, regulations and information on how to enter can be found online at theglobalagency.tv/formatsproject. “Global Agency is one of the very few independent distribution companies left in the industry, and we believe that good ideas can come from any country in the world,” says Pinto. “It could be from Pakistan, Azerbaijan or the U.S.A.; formats are created by individuals, so we don’t evaluate the project by the origin of the country. As long as the idea is fresh, we can offer the chance to make it a worldwide hit.” World Screen
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By Kristin Brzoznowski
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Red
Hot! Clear brands, innovative drama series and a close relationship with viewers have been central to the success of America’s top cable networks. By Anna Carugati
ust a few years ago, the notion that an obscure drama based on a graphic novel about a zombie apocalypse could be the highest-rated show of the U.S. fall season in the highly coveted adult 18-to-49 demographic was unthinkable. Well, think again. The Walking Dead beat all entertainment series this fall, including The Voice, Modern Family, The X Factor and Grey’s Anatomy. The Walking Dead is the poster child, so to speak, of everything basic cable has come to represent in the U.S. television landscape: more cost-effective shows that are innovative, unexpected, risk-taking (a main character was recently killed off ), and air on a network, in this case AMC, that has used original programming to brand itself and serve a loyal audience. AMC’s tagline, “Story matters here,” acts as a filter for the types of series the channel selects. “We’ve always said we are looking to do shows that are like the ones on premium cable even though we are on basic cable,” says Charlie Collier, the president and general manager of AMC, “but we use three words to describe them: ‘unexpected,’ ‘unconventional’ and ‘uncompromising’. If you look at Mad Men: a period piece that was pretty unex-
J
pected and unconventional for television—in fact, we had a lot of people who told us a period piece wouldn’t work in series television. Breaking Bad: here’s a show about a lead character who undergoes a complete metamorphosis around some very difficult and often reprehensible choices. The Walking Dead is set in a zombie apocalypse. All of those are unexpected, unconventional and uncompromising.” BREAKOUT HITS
Collier points out that AMC’s original-programming strategy is very different from that of other cable networks. “Once they do one show, they tend to do the next show that looks just like it,” he says. “And we’ve gone the other way, like premium networks do, and in a lot of ways a more difficult way, which is to say once you do something, the next one is almost unexpectedly not like it: Mad Men to Breaking Bad to The Walking Dead to Hell on Wheels. The common theme is that we really want an AMC show to be giving viewers something more than they might get elsewhere on television.” This drive to offer something different has infused AMC’s originalprogramming strategy from the 44
very beginning. “It all came out of a desire to make programming of distinction and of prestige for our cable partners, and obviously, for the marketplaces that we served,” says Collier. “We had the largest, most widely distributed movie network in the country. Our very first [original] show was actually a mini-series, Broken Trail, with Robert Duvall. One of the things we were really good at was serving the passionate fans of westerns, so the theory was to take a movie star, Robert Duvall, and create an original program that really served that audience well. So that month we took some of the best films in the western genre and curated them in a way that I thought was particularly AMC, and then served that audience a like-minded original that really super-served that specific passionate audience. “If you fast-forward to our original scripted programming, which is when I entered the network,” says Collier, “you look at something like a Mad Men or a Breaking Bad, and we used the same strategy, which was to curate a group of movies that really served a passionate audience and then serve them the type of origi-
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nal programming that you would see paired with great movies on the premium networks.” This programming formula worked and was repeated for The Walking Dead. “Fearfest is a multiweek horror-film festival and it’s been on AMC every October for the last 16 years,” continues Collier. “Just as we did with westerns, we served a passionate audience with Fearfest. For years we were looking for an original-programming opportunity that served that audience. When we saw Robert Kirkman’s great work in the graphic novel The Walking Dead, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to do just that. It was the biggest show of the fall season, not just cable but broadcast as well in the 18-to-49 demo. That speaks to the fact that we superserve that core audience and also made the show relatable to broader audiences.” ORIGINAL FLAIR
For all of AMC’s success, it was not the first basic-cable network to get into the original-programming game. USA Network and FX first tested the waters, USA with The Dead Zone and Monk, and FX with The Shield. All three shows premiered in 2002, at
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a time when basic-cable channels were mainly airing reruns of broadcast-network series. The buildup of original programming on USA was, as Jeff Wachtel, a network co-president, explains, a “wonderfully organic process,” and what guided the process was a clearly defined brand. “When Bonnie Hammer [the chairman of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment and Cable Studios] came on board, she felt very strongly about networks having a brand. Chris McCumber [the other co-president of USA Network] and I joined the company at about the same time. We had been making a show and marketing it individually. Bonnie said, ‘We really need an umbrella for this place to give it a handle for our affiliates, for our advertising clients and also for the creative community.’ We were lucky that unlike some other people who need to make up a brand out of thin air, we had already started finding some success with charactercentric, lighter drama, which we had done because the television world had put out endlessly grim pieces. We thought, we don’t have more money, but we have a more unique vision. So how can we tailor that unique vision and bring in a unique audience? The characters brand evolved from that. It’s been feeding the programming strategy and the programming mix. We are lucky that we have a brand that is not like most, an imprint or a label. It is actually something that informs both the way we make shows and the way we market them.”
tion quality or writing or both to broadcast series. I think those three shows in particular really gave the lie to that.” In 2003, the management of TNT and its parent company, Time Warner, OKed the move into original programming. “We looked at our schedule—and this is Programming 101,” says Wright. “If you are trying to introduce something new, the best idea is usually to look at who is already coming to the network, taking that audience and trying to lead them into a new program. In 2003, Law & Order was huge on TNT. It’s hard to imagine it today, nine years later, but it was doing a 3 or 4 household rating and easily 2 million in the target demo. TNT was running Law & Order 10 to 12 hours a week in prime; it was a third of the primetime lineup. “So we went around to the showrunners and studios and said, ‘Monday night at 10 p.m. we are going to put an original series behind Law & Order. We’d
ON TREND
At TNT, as Michael Wright, the president and head of programming for TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies (TCM), explains, “The need for originals came about as a reaction to industry trends. If you go back to 2003—and a tip of the hat to both USA and FX, who started early with Monk and The Shield, respectively, and Nip/Tuck after The Shield— there had been this assumption that cable originals were somehow inferior either in produc-
AMC’s Mad Men.
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Like a prayer: FX has ordered a third installment of Ryan Murphy’s critically acclaimed anthology series American Horror Story following strong ratings for the starstudded second season, American Horror Story: Asylum.
like to do something in the procedural space that fans of Law & Order will recognize and give a shot at because they obviously like that kind of storytelling. At the same time we’ll bring our own voice to it. It will have a cable sensibility, simply meaning maybe a bit quirkier, less traditional, with a voice behind it.’ We developed about ten scripts, shot three pilots and [we chose] The Closer. It was one of those experiences that you are so lucky to have if you are in my business. From the initial meetings with Jim Duff and Mike Robin to the casting of Kyra Sedgwick and that marvelous cast around her, to Warner Bros. being a great partner, it was one of those shows that worked from the beginning to the last episode.What a joy.” The lessons learned by USA, TNT and FX were picked up by other networks, as they started diverting their programming investments from acquisitions to their own original shows. “A few years ago, the common wisdom was to produce closedended episodes, more traditional
crime and justice procedurals,” says Bob DeBitetto, the president and general manager of A&E Network and BIO. “But in the last few years I’ve noticed that the kinds of shows that audiences really want, particularly from cable networks, are more challenging. And what we don’t talk enough about but really should is that at the end of the day, everything we do is dependent upon the audience reaction to our programming. So in the last few years everything we have been doing has had a serialized element, everything is a little more complex, everything is a deeper dive or an exploration of flawed characters.” DOLLARS AND SENSE
If edgier storytelling and quirkier, more complex characters have become the hallmark of basic-cable dramas, every writer, showrunner and network programming executive will agree that it’s far easier to maintain a certain level of innovation when producing 10 or 13 episodes, which is the standard cable model, than when churning 46
out 22 episodes per season, which is the broadcast-network model. The main advantage of the shorter 10- or 13-episode order of cable shows is that it gives showrunners a chance to think, as David Madden, the president of Fox Television Studios, ex plains. “One of the laments that most showrunners have in broadcast is that you’ve finished shooting your season and you are out of breath from this marathon you’ve been running for getting 22 episodes on the air.You have a five-minute break and then you are right back into planning the next season, assuming the show gets picked up. Whereas in cable you really have months to think about what worked, what didn’t work, what could work better.You have time to really recharge and get some perspective on your show and twist it or pull it in a different direction. It’s not that cable showrunners are any smarter or more creative than broadcast showrunners, they just simply have more time to reflect and get objectivity on the material that they are producing.”
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Another advantage of shorter episode orders is that they keep costs down. QUALITY, ON A BUDGET
Cable dramas are known for costing less than broadcast-network dramas, and cable executives take pride in the fact that they can deliver substantial quality on screen for a lower price per hour. On average, a one-hour drama on cable costs two-thirds of what a onehour on broadcast networks costs. “Our shows probably cost 30 to 35 percent less than similar shows on broadcast and maybe 50 percent less than a show on pay cable,” says USA’s Wachtel. “It’s not easy to sustain, especially given our success, but it’s also really important in the cable world that you keep the economics of each show manageable so that you can allow your showrunners the creative freedom that we promised them.” That creative freedom is apparent in recent and upcoming shows on the leading cable networks. Now that they have loyal audience bases, the pressure is on
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to keep them satisfied and continue to deliver on their brand promises of complex characters and unexpected subject matter. “In the last year or two we have turned a corner with our original scripted drama at A&E; we are taking more risks than we have in the past,” says DeBitetto. “We are very focused on character portraits. That is certainly the case in Longmire”—a contemporary crime thriller about a dedicated sheriff trying to rebuild his life. “It’s the first example of a show that has taken a different turn because it’s a little darker. It’s a little more atmospheric. There is a phenomenally compelling but flawed lead at the center played by this amazing Australian actor, Robert Taylor.” The audience has responded to Longmire. “It finished its first run in a very strong place, with
almost 5 million viewers, one of the top shows last year,” continues DeBitetto. “In production now is Bates Motel, a present-day prequel of sorts to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. We acquired the rights from Universal and have partnered with Universal Television.We brought on Carlton Cuse, the famed showrunner of Lost, and Kerry Ehrin, the lead writer from Friday Night Lights.” THE QUIRKY FACTOR
USA continues to build on its “Characters welcome” theme, with shows like Suits, White Collar, Covert Affairs and Royal Pains, that have exemplified the brand’s characterdriven and “blue skies” attributes— shows that are not only shot in beautiful locations, but that give a positive view of life. “We’re doing a show called Graceland, from the creator of White Col-
lar, Jeff Eastin,” says Wachtel. “While it has a gorgeous Southern California setting, it goes to a deeper and darker theme than we have previously done. Graceland is based on a true story.The DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] busted a drug lord and one of his principal assets was this beautiful house in Redondo Beach.They took it over and instead of putting it on the market, they made it a safe house for DEA, FBI and U.S. Customs agents. It’s a beautiful show and Jeff is about as fun, smart and witty a writer as there is.” TNT has branded itself simply with one word: “Drama.” The network has expanded beyond procedurals and is offering its viewers a portfolio of drama shows, from science fiction to soap opera. “The really fun thing now about TNT is that you have this consistency of storytelling, whether we
are doing science-fiction dramas like Falling Skies or a soap like Dallas, a great procedural like Rizzoli & Isles or Major Crimes, they all have that overlay of, it’s fun! The storytelling is very sophisticated, the character work is complex and respects your intelligence, but these shows are designed to entertain you and deliver that smart escapism experience.” One upcoming drama in 2013 will be Monday Mornings, a medical drama from David E. Kelley, the creator of such hits as Chicago Hope, Ally McBeal and Boston Legal. MIX AND MATCH
FX has also been offering viewers a mix of unconventional programming, from the dramas Justified, Sons of Anarchy and American Horror Story to the comedies Anger Management and The League.This month FX will premiere The Americans, a 1980s
Family ties: A&E has taken a darker turn with its newest original, Bates Motel, a drama from former Lost executive producer and showrunner Carlton Cuse that is inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. 48
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Suited for cable: White Collar returned this month on USA Network, which was among the first basic-cable channels to enter into original programming, with six new episodes to wrap up the series’ fourth season.
Cold War drama starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as undercover Soviet spies living in the U.S. What is remarkable about the recent crop of basic-cable dramas is that it has attracted impressive talent, in front of and behind the camera. We’ve seen Glenn Close on Damages, Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer, Jessica Lange on American Horror Story. Renowned showrunners like David E. Kelley, Dick Wolf and Carlton Cuse are flocking to cable. “Talent is looking at cable across the board and...seeing opportunities that don’t really exist anywhere else,” says Fox TV Studios’ Madden. “I was in the feature business for 20 years. Back in the ’80s and ’90s there were a whole range of genres that the studios made that I would refer to as mid-range movies, which were the sophisticated adult drama and the adult psychological thriller and the adult character comedy. Those mid-range movies in the feature business disappeared. Everything became either gigantic, high-end big-budget spectacle or lower-budget broad comedy or horror, and with the rare exception, mid-range
movies were gone. Where did that adult drama go? It went to cable.” CHALLENGES AHEAD
So what’s on the horizon for cable? Will networks be able to maintain their level of innovation? One thing is sure, originals remain essential to strengthening brands and connecting with the audience; not all originals, however, will be scripted dramas. USA Network, for one, is moving into original comedy. “We have a couple of comedy pilots we are looking at right now,” Wachtel says. “One of them stars Annie Potts, from Designing Women, as the mother of two young doctors, and it’s a fun piece that we think might be a great companion to Modern Family,” which launches on the channel this year. “The other one is...a little edgier. Denis Leary and Bob Fisher are producing it. Bob wrote Wedding Crashers. “We love that we are playing in the comedy world now, and the other big thing is reality. It’s a genre that we feel we really need to join the party, and we have two shows we are launching in the spring. 50
One is called The Moment and the other is The Choir. They are both upbeat and somewhat aspirational, but we also think they are very entertaining life journeys.” “TNT is on an exciting path,” says Wright. “We started with that one series in 2005, The Closer, [and] got to some 115 hours of programming in 2012 across 10 or 11 series, and we are expanding. One of the biggest areas we are going to grow into is unscripted programming. A network that is branded as a drama network needs to be in that space. A lot of viewers today, especially younger viewers, are getting their episodic dramatic experience as much from unscripted storytelling as they are from scripted.There is room for both.We might grow our scripted footprint on TNT a little bit, but we are going to dramatically increase our unscripted storytelling because it’s what the audience wants, it’s appropriate to our brand and I can argue it’s vital to our long-term success.” Will the push to produce more originals lead cable channels to take fewer risks, to play it safe, and make more copy-cat programming?
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“It’s a possibility,” says Kevin Beggs, the president of Lionsgate’s TV group. “It’s such a fine line. On one hand, cable has an advantage in that it doesn’t have to put on that many originals to maintain an entire schedule.They have so many movies and acquisitions and 23 hours a week that they have nothing original on. And one show, literally, can change a network’s profile, not only creatively but financially, overnight. Think about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy for Bravo, or think about Mad Men or Breaking Bad on AMC, or think about Sons of Anarchy now with FX, which is blowing the doors off network shows consistently, week after week. It’s the age-old maxim, ‘All it takes is a hit,’ but a hit in cable can actually go a lot further, because they don’t have to program originals seven nights a week. When they do get to a place where they are putting on that many, there is certainly the risk—can you be interesting and different and out of the box that many times? But there is a bit of a divide between the general-entertainment chan-
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nels, the USAs and the TNTs that have a lot of originals, and others who don’t have to be the be-all and end-all for everybody. They can have a couple of unique gamechanging shows on and actually be perfectly fine with that.” TNT’s Wright agrees. “There are cable networks that play it safe and there are cable networks that take huge risks, and I would argue that that is appropriate. There are certain networks that one would look at and say, ‘Boy, that network sure is playing it safe,’ but I would counter and say, ‘No they’re not, they’ve identified the audience that likes that kind of programming.’ A network that has cultivated a certain kind of brand and knows its audience and delivers to that audience and does it with programming that someone might objectively look at and say, ‘Gosh, that’s pretty down-the-middle programming,’ isn’t necessarily risk-averse. They might be running a very smart business because they’ve identified an audience, branded themselves for that audience and are programming to it.” On the other hand, Wright continues, “There are other networks
that have branded themselves as sort of risk-taking, darker, more provocative networks, and good for them, because I personally believe, as an ambassador for cable, the great thing about cable is that there is something for everybody.” Regardless of the show, it is imperative that cable networks maintain their relationship with their viewers. LONG-TERM VIEW
“Here is an interesting fact I’d like to share that not a lot of people talk about,” says USA’s Wachtel. “As we do our ongoing research looking at our relationship with the audience, which is one of the things that is most important about USA, we don’t really view it as a show-byshow experience. We are creating a long-term relationship with an audience. That’s why we don’t pull the plug on shows; we bring them to a conclusion, like Monk or In Plain Sight. When it’s time for the sun to set on Burn Notice, we will let the audience know and we will figure out a really smart way to bring [it] to a close.” Wachtel points to one finding of the network’s research. “If you
watch a show on USA you are more likely to watch another show on our network than any other network; 85 percent of people who watch a USA show will watch another USA show.The way we are approaching [our schedule] is we are building a community. I believe long term, as linear networks change what they are and what they do, the idea of having this kind of back-and-forth relationship with our audience is going to be even more important.” BUYING TIME
Another challenge for cable networks is to narrow the gap between what a 30-second spot commands on a cable drama and what it commands on a broadcast drama series. For years, cable shows have brought in fewer advertising dollars. “The CPM [cost per thousand] differential makes no sense to me; I don’t get it,” says TNT’s Wright. “The same 1,000 viewers on a TNT show should generate the same CPM as 1,000 viewers on a broadcast show, because the level of quality of storytelling and production is equal. So, as somebody here put it, it’s a legacy tax; why are we getting less?”
But thanks to some of the mega hits on cable, and here we come back to The Walking Dead, the advertising gap between cable and broadcast is narrowing. Advertising packages for The Walking Dead are reportedly selling for as much as $375,000, which is at the same level as broadcast network shows like Modern Family and American Idol. While AMC’s Collier will not comment on his network’s ad prices, he did say, “We’ve done very well with advertisers. They like not just the size of our audience but also the quality of it, and not just the unique stories we are telling but also the way we are telling them, and that is reflected in the pricing and in the volume that we are seeing.” There is no question, the focus for innovative cable networks continues to be programming. “Our challenge right now is pushing ourselves out of any sense of complacency, and we’ve already done it and succeeded,” says USA’s Wachtel. “We need to remind ourselves to take risks and push out and to still have that start-up mentality that made us successful.”
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one on one or Herbert Kloiber, the chairman and shareholder in Tele München Group (TMG), what started as a passion for classical music and a desire to bring concerts to a broader audience by recording them for television grew into a production-and-distribution expertise that has made Tele München a leading media company in Europe. At the beginning of his career, Kloiber was able to indulge his love for symphonies and opera while working for Leo Kirch’s Beta/Taurus. Kloiber acquired Tele München in 1977, developed its production operation and over the years diversified its businesses to include distribution, investments in television stations, an on-demand platform, and post-production facilities. Today, the sale of feature film, television and merchandising rights in Germany and around the world are handled
by TMG’s subsidiaries TM Distribution, TM International, Concorde Filmverleih, Concorde Home Entertainment and CTM Concept-TV & Merchandising. The production business is divided among several entities: Clasart Film and Clasart Television produce feature films, TV movies, mini-series and series for the international market; Clasart Classic focuses on operas and concerts; Prisma Entertainment & Concorde Production produces formats and light-entertainment programs; and Odeon Film produces series and TV movies for German-speaking territories. TMG is a shareholder in four commercial TV stations: RTL II and Tele 5 in Germany and ATV 1 and ATV 2 in Austria. Other holdings include CineMedia Film, the largest audio-and-video post-production facility in Germany; Odeon Film, a leading film-and-television-production house in Germany; and On Demand Deutschland, a video-on-demand and pay-per-view service in Germanspeaking countries in Europe. Kloiber has negotiated deals with a who’s who of media figures, from Rupert Murdoch, Leslie Moonves, Jon Feltheimer and Ron Lauder to CEOs of major media and publishing concerns across Europe. Along with the requisite skills of a successful entrepreneur—a well-honed business acumen, the willingness to take risks, the foresight to spot what’s coming next and the readiness to change course when necessary—Kloiber has a few more that make him somewhat unique in the international television business. He has a knack for languages, a laser-sharp, irreverent sense of humor and an unparalleled gift for storytelling. Many claim he is one of the finest raconteurs in the business. Many others can tell a fun story or two of their own about their longtime business relationships and friendships with Kloiber, who is fiercely loyal to friends and family. And of course, while running TMG, he has maintained that passion for classical music. He is an advisory director of The Metropolitan Opera in New York, chairman of the European Advisory Board of the Cleveland Orchestra and a member of the board of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Musikverein) in Vienna. Kloiber is being honored with a Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award at NATPE this year. He talks to World Screen about his company—past, present and future—and the value he places on relationships.
Herbert Kloiber Tele München Group
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one on one WS: Are you looking to expand TMG’s distribution catalogue? KLOIBER: Yes, we have several segments to it. One is the featurefilm catalogue. It consists mainly of features for which we have worldwide distribution, such as Tomb Raider, Wonder Boys or The Jackal. Then we have a slate of documentaries and television drama and all our classic music productions. We will continue to participate in projects like Flashpoint, and buy international distribution rights or split rights with partners that could retain parts of the world whilst we do the rest. We definitely want to keep growing this fairly new part of our business. WS: Tele München has been pro-
ducing a number of high-quality TV movies and mini-series.
Steering the ship: With its budget of $25.5 million, the epic event mini-series adaptation of the literary classic Moby Dick is among the most expensive productions in the history of TMG. KLOIBER: We have been active in that field for 35 years. Recently we’ve done Moby Dick.We are about to launch a big Richard the Lionheart two-part mini-series.We have done quite a few in co-finance mode: Neverland and Treasure Island with RHI Entertainment, which [has rebranded] as Sonar. We’ve also cofinanced Flood and Ice, big U.K.based mini-series.We have generated two or three of those a year and we
Learning the ropes: The mini-series Sea Wolf, adapted from a Jack London novel, was co-produced by TMG-owned Clasart Television with Germany's ZDF. 56
try to place them in the international market, which is where NATPE comes in, because there you can communicate with a big number of participants in the global market at a very good time of the year. WS: Where does your passion for
classical music come from? Did your parents put you at the piano when you were a child? KLOIBER: My parents never tried to put me at the piano but they stuck me in an opera box at the age of 7 and I was quickly removed for being too noisy for the following ten years! But nevertheless I had a conductor as my godfather, Herbert von Karajan, who was for many years one of the big promoters of putting classic music on film. When I was 22, my first job with Leo Kirch involved the partnership he had with von Karajan making these films, and later I worked hard in my own company, Clasart, to produce with Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein and Mstislav Rostropovich. My first five years in business were nearly all to do with producing these concerts on film. My proudest moment was in September of 1978, when we did the live broadcast of Vladimir Horowitz for NBC, which was broadcast to Europe. Horowitz only played on Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m., which allowed the BBC, ZDF, RAI and the French network Antenne 2 to air the concert at 10 p.m. In those days people were really proud of having a stereo signal live from New York and it was an extraordinary moment, for which we were rewarded with five Emmys.
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That was what I did initially, until 1977, when I bought Tele München. Then on came the [expansion into fiction], because Tele München controlled the copyright of the Jack London estate and we produced quite a few of the Jack London novels, until that drifted into the public domain. We continued with family entertainment, action-adventure series like Kidnapped, from Robert Louis Stevenson, and in the early ’80s I started our theatrical distribution company, called Concorde. In November, we released our 500th feature film in cinemas, which was The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 2. WS: As digital media are changing
viewing habits and business models, what are the priorities for an independent company like TMG? KLOIBER: To have very, very well organized departments in legal and contractual, in delivery and accounting, because it’s lots and lots of volume for very modest individual monetary return. In other words, if you license 2,000 features to a VOD platform, you’ve got to do the metadata and the delivery and the contracts and the accounting for each title for cents and pennies, sometimes with guarantees, sometimes without. But you’ve got 50 of these contracts flying around to do $200 million of volume, whereas in the old days you’d conclude four contracts [with] four broadcasters and you were done. To have the capacity to refuel and replenish the library with all rights deals that comprise all these forms of exploitation, you’ve also got to be able to be very, very clearly ahead of the game—
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one on one otherwise you could make a deal now and get very hurt a little later. WS: What have been your and your company’s major contributions to the television industry in Germany and in Europe? KLOIBER: In the early days of Tele München we were really the first big promoters of the five- or six-country co-financed drama series. We were also fairly ahead of the game in selling these big mini-series, like Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter or Stendhal’s La Chartreuse de Parme, shot in English, to the U.S., particularly to PBS, which in those days had both Mobil and Exxon as lead underwriters—one did Masterpiece Theatre, the other had Great Performances. As a small, independent Munich-based drama production company we were able to get RAI and ORTF and ORF and ZDF and Channel 4 and maybe a Spanish net-
Farm fresh: The cop comedy Hubert and Staller, which features two police officers working in the high country of Bavaria, is a production for ARD.
work and sell to the U.S., which is a little bit what Jan Mojto [the managing director of EOS] does now, but in the ’70s it was pioneering. It was pre cell phones and faxes.You were sending telexes to get an answer. In fact, I believe you got faster answers then than you do now. We were also very, very early in the home-video distribution busi-
ness. In 1980, when I bought the German subsidiary of Vestron, which was a U.S.-based company that had produced Dirty Dancing, we had more than 40 people servicing the video stores of the day. We were also the first ones to collapse the sales force of our rental division and go fairly full-tilt into sell-through. We were also the ones who brought
Affairs of the heart: A German-U.K. co-production, The Other Wife is a two-part romantic drama that is part of the Rosamunde Pilcher franchise sold by TM International. 58
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out the first DVD in Germany, virtually the number one, Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, which we co-produced with Chuck Roven of The Dark Knight Rises and many more blockbusters. We’ve always been ahead in some of the new developments.We were one of the first companies that invested in a corporate structure to develop video on demand, which up until October my son was working for. On Demand Deutschland, of which we own a 50-percent stake, was the first to do library and first-run deals with KDG, KBW and Telekom Austria. We pioneered a lot of that and also learned a lot from it. We learned all the lessons that you need to know, including that some businesses won’t really make it. We have a big lab in Germany that still employs 400 people.We are currently [transitioning it] from the old world into the digital post-production world, which is a formidable task for a company that made $80 million of celluloid release prints. So we are coming up with new ideas for a completely new business plan. Finally,Tele München was literally, as an independent content company, the pioneer of commercial television. Certainly in Austria to this day, we are the number one commercial broadcaster with two channels, ATV 1 and ATV 2. We were also, at the end of 1985, a major shareholder in Sat.1, which was the first German commercial network— in those days, RTL was still beam-
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one on one ing its signal from Luxembourg and the CLT offspring was considered a non-German entity. But along with eight other publishers in Germany, we were shareholders in Sat.1 from January 1, 1986.When the first signal was broadcast, it was one of our programs that aired. Later we left that consortium and built Tele 5, the joint venture with Berlusconi. We kept our hand very, very early in the development of these commercial networks, including RTL II, tm3 and the “new” Tele 5. In 1987, I sold half of Tele München to Cap Cities/ABC and after that followed the ten years, what I call the golden period of my corporate life. One, because [I was] at the age when everything is easy and fun, and two, we had this wonderful group of people in New York—Tom Murphy, Dan Burke, Herb Granath, Mike Mallardi and Ron Doerfler—who invited me every year to come to
pany and Formula 1 and all sorts of other crazy things, and clearly made it necessary for me to buy my shares back before things became a little too rough. Ever since then,“corporately” I have [had no partnerships nor any shareholders].
Meeting the maestro: Dr. Kloiber (left) has worked with such classical music legends as Herbert von Karajan (center, with producer Horant Hohlfeld at right).
Phoenix to their annual corporate retreat. That was from 1987 to 1996. Ninety-six was the year Michael Eisner bought Cap Cities/ABC, which was the end of what I call my golden decade. WS: And since then?
KLOIBER: Since then I’ve had what I call my second marriages, not personally. With EM.TV there was a nice day in late 1999 when that $500-million handshake took place, but EM.TV was unable to stay the course that they had mapped out. They bought The Jim Henson Com-
WS: Besides having top-quality content, which is essential in this business, what does an indie need to succeed these days? KLOIBER: I am still old school and parochial about the quality of management, and a lot of it depends on long-established contacts in and outside the company. I have been in business with Harry Sloan and Jon Feltheimer and Leslie Moonves for long enough. I’ve served on Ronald Lauder’s CME board and the SBS board. One day Harry gets to be the CEO of MGM, and the next thing you know, we’ve made a very substantial deal with MGM, and we now, many years later, have
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one on one the TV rights for The Hobbit and Skyfall in Germany.These top executives reoccur in your life in many and new facets. I recently read that Harry Sloan and Jeff Sagansky have bought one of the big in-flight entertainment businesses—a company that delivers feature films and content to airlines. I sent them a Hail Mary and they sent back, “We’re coming to NATPE,” and we will sit down with them. For more than 25 years we have been the representatives of CBS in Germany. The deal goes back to the days of Larry Tisch’s control and to the days when Rainer Siek was there. We’ve renewed the arrangement more than 14 times, and even though Armando [Nuñez, the president and CEO of CBS Global Distribution Group] now has a big operation in Germany, we still work on a very day-to-day basis with CBS product in our market. That is something that is important to know: as much screaming
All in the family: Herbert L. Kloiber (left), Dr. Kloiber’s son, recently took over as the managing director of TMG.
and yelling that goes on in this business, it’s always nice to know you’ve got people around the globe that see things a little bit like you do, and that you can pick up the phone and say, What do you think of this idea? WS: Does the new generation value
relationships as much as you did? KLOIBER: I think they will learn
to do that as they become older
and mature and less obsessed with answering 2,000 e-mails every day, like Mr. Petraeus! A big obstacle has become this: “I’ve got to be everywhere at the same time and answer every e-mail every second.” I still don’t do e-mail. [It’s not that I don’t work much,] but I do know when it’s 6:30 p.m. and I’m ready to go.Then I’ll make a call or two late at night to California to see what’s going on. I am not
obsessed with this communicating with everyone all the time and having to get the answer in 22 seconds.That gives you a little more time—not to sit and strategize and listen to opinions of 250 people—because if you want to succeed you have to have a fair amount of self-assurance in making a decision.You’ve got to say, Let’s roll, let’s do it. When we backed Charlie Sheen’s comeback in Anger Management, the deal was, we’re going
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one on one to do 10 episodes and if they work we’re doing another 90. That’s formidable. That’s $20 million or more and all you can say is, I believe in it and in him. I think it’s going to work. Do we know? No. Many people would tell you, “Don’t touch it; he’s dead.”And other people will say, “No, no, no, you’ve got to do it.” At the end of the day, you’re all alone and you’ve got to say,We’re going to do it. Otherwise someone else will do it [instead of] you. WS: So the good old gut element
still counts? KLOIBER: It’s very important. You’ve got to step up to the plate and say,Yes.What’s even harder is to say no. WS: Many people are claiming that
linear channels may lose their relevance, as more viewers watch programming on demand. Do you think free TV is still a good business? KLOIBER: Yes. We are confident [of] that, at least in those markets
Musical connections: Dr. Kloiber leads the European Advisory Board for the Cleveland Orchestra, which is under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst.
where we are currently invested, mainly in the German-speaking world, where advertising revenue, since the 2008 recession, has not eroded or in any way collapsed as it did in Central and Eastern Europe. I remember when we were at CME I heard nothing but, “This is a 70-percent perannum growth market and it’s the only place we are going to invest in.” Now it’s a minus-70-percent market and Germany is still up 4 percent per annum, which may be boring, but given the demographic development in this part of the world—there are 100 million
Germans who soon will all be over 65, and birth rates are terribly low—advertisers still invest in free TV and there is still reasonable growth. If I were a public company’s manager having to deliver 15 percent ROI, I’d probably get out of it. [In my position,] I’m very comfortable knowing the mechanics of what I’m playing with. I know how to turn the cold and hot water on, depending on what the market, quarter by quarter, is telling me. WS: You are receiving the Brandon
Tartikoff Legacy Award. What does that mean to you?
KLOIBER: It’s a big, big deal for me because I owe a huge part of my career and certainly most of the fun of my corporate life to the United States’ television industry. I remember meeting Brandon on one occasion at NATPE when he was giving a good talk. And for our industry to recognize someone out there and give him a very, very prestigious award, I am totally thrilled. When Rod Perth [NATPE’s president and CEO] said they had selected me as the second European to receive such an award, I said, I’ll be there two weeks ahead of time!
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milestones
10 By Kristin Brzoznowski
Years of
There is not a single territory in the world where MythBusters is not on the schedule somewhere, whether it’s terrestrial, cable or satellite TV. Created and produced by Beyond Productions, it is one of the longest-running and most popular shows airing on commissioning broadcaster Discovery Channel in the U.S. In each episode, the MythBusters team—comprised of Jamie Hyneman, Adam Savage and cohosts Grant Imahara, Kari Byron and Tory Belleci—works to separate fact from fiction in popular myths and misconceptions. With its blend of science and entertainment, the show has been a success for ten years, and counting.
WS: To what do you attribute the show’s enduring appeal? IMAHARA: The basic concept is something that appeals
to all kinds of people. Not only that, it’s the type of show that is not the same thing every week; the myths change. There’s such a variety that eventually someone will see a myth that they have always wondered about. So, you have that identification. BELLECI: A lot of people are constantly coming up and saying, “I can’t tell you how many bar bets that you’ve helped me win! My friend thought it was one thing, I had seen it on the show so I knew the truth.” In general, people are interested in urban legends and myths, and it’s just part of our human nature that we’re genuinely curious and want to find out if these stories are true or false. That makes for a really good show.
Grant Imahara, Kari Byron and Tory Belleci 66
World Screen
BYRON: Also, we’re not actors, so people relate pretty easily
to us.We’re all just regular people. I would be the girl next door and everybody knows a guy like Tory and everybody has a friend like Grant, and audiences can relate to us. WS: How do you keep the series fresh? BELLECI: As long as people believe in ridiculous sto-
ries and the Internet is there to perpetuate those ridiculous stories, we’re in business. IMAHARA: We’ve got a full-time staff that is just looking for new myths. They comb the Internet. Our fans are a tremendous source of myths as well. On the Discovery Channel website there’s a very active forum that people can go to and share their ideas. WS: What’s the process that goes into selecting the myths? BYRON: Besides the website, we have a ton of myths
that have been prevalent for so long that [we can’t help but test them out]. For example, dropping a penny off the Empire State Building, will it crack the sidewalk? We’ve all heard that one as a kid. We have a really long list, and it all comes down to what resources we have at our fingertips at the time. If somebody comes to us and says, “We have a 747 that you guys can utilize,” we’ll look for the myth that we need that for. BELLECI: We also have to look at, is it going to make for a good story? Is there enough science involved? Is it going to be enough to sustain a one-hour program? Sometimes we have myths that aren’t a full story, so we put a whole bunch together and that’s where we come up with our mini-myth shows. WS: Are shows like MythBusters important in encouraging young people’s interest in math and science? BYRON: Quite honestly, I think that the best role model is going to be the parents. If they watch MythBusters and participate with their kids to show how science can be fun, the kids are going to be interested as well.We’d love to say that we encourage math and science, but when it comes down to it, it’s really Mom and Dad that are going to do that. IMAHARA: The interesting thing about our show is that it’s not primarily about education.We’re an entertainment show, but we use science in a very integral way to tell our story.The result is that the people who watch the show— and especially the kids who watch the show—learn about science without realizing that they are learning about science because we wrap it with explosions and car crashes and all kinds of fascinating things. In the end they’re like, “Oh, that was really cool, maybe science is neat.”
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advertisers’ index A+E Networks 11, 123 ABC Content Sales 75 Alphanim 83 Andina Link 249 Applicaster 260 Argentina Audiovisual 237 Armoza Formats 243 Artear 147 Audiovisual From Spain 183 Avail-TVN & OnDemand 62 Azteca 111, 212, 213 Bandeirantes Communication Group 29 Banijay International 241 BBC Worldwide Americas 107 Bejuba Entertainment 79 Bender Media Services 235 Beyond Distribution 19 Canal 13 Chile 127 Canitec 245 Caracol Television 165 CBS Studios International 55, 211, 223 CCAM 221 CDC United Network 96, 97 Cineflix Rights 119 Construir TV 227 Content Television 57 Cyber Group Studios 199 DHX Media 201 Digital Rights Group 103 DIRECTV 141 Discovery Networks Latin America 133 Disney Media Distribution 139, 185, 186, 204, 229 Dori Media 1 Dreamworks Classics 68, 69 Echo Bridge Entertainment 137 Edebé Audiovisual 191 Endemol Group 226 Entertainment One 65 Estrella TV 175 FOX Telecolombia 209 FremantleMedia Latin America 117, 217, 225 Fun World Media 25, 52 Gaumont International TV 125 Global Agency 4, 5, 37 HBO Europe 39 HBO Latin America 131 Hot Docs 40 Imira Entertainment 197 International Academy of TV Arts & Sciences 49, 85 ITV Studios Global Entertainment 9, 115 Keshet International 17 KLCCIM 233 1/13
Latin Media Corporation Ledafilms Lionsgate Mannam Media MarVista Entertainment Media Partners Asia The Metropolitan Opera MGM Studios Multicom Entertainment MundoFox NAB Show NCTA – Cable Show NEON Nerd Corps Novovision-MEG Passion Distribution Polar Star Pol-Ka Portfolio Entertainment Power Punta Show Rai Trade RCN Televisión Record TV Network Red Arrow International Reed MIDEM RioContentMarket Rose Entertainment RTVE Saban Brands Shine International SKY Deutschland SOMOS Distribution SNAP TV Starz Media Swen Group Talpa Distribution Tele 5 Tele München International Telefe International Telefilms Telemundo Internacional Televisa Internacional Toon Goggles ToonBox Entertainment Turner Broadcasting TV Chile Univision Communications Venevision International Vision Films Warner Bros. International Television WWE World Screen
255
177 113 59, 90, 91 207 2, 3, 70, 71 42 64 63 259 151 47 34 171 86 33 93 104, 105 21 73 51, 95 251 13 145 153 15 247 239 193 179 189 99, 101 53 135, 154 173 60 219 27 61 7 143, 157 109, 215 88, 89, 167 121, 168 67, 203 81 77 231 149 253 31 254 23, 129
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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 go to space with Kate Winslet and Richard Branson? Every day, papers and magazines worldwide print horoscopes—projections for people born in a specific month, based on the positions of the stars and planets. While many people rely on these daily, weekly or monthly messages for guidance in their lives, some readers skip over them entirely. The editors of WS recognize that
Kate Winslet
Anne Hathaway
Jessica Simpson
Kate Winslet
Jessica Simpson
Global distinction: English actress. Sign: Libra (b. October 5, 1975) Significant date: December 27, 2012 Noteworthy activity: After keeping it a secret for
Global distinction: Pop culture mainstay. Sign: Cancer (b. July 10, 1980) Significant date: December 25, 2012 Noteworthy activity: Nearly eight months after deliver-
nearly a month,Winslet reveals that she has married for the third time.The man is Ned Rocknroll, the nephew of Virgin billionaire Richard Branson. She receives a $200,000 ticket to space on a Virgin Galactic flight as a wedding gift. Horoscope: “You may be feeling the need to keep secrets for your own self-protection today, which could have you feeling guarded. You may want to examine from what or whom you are protecting yourself and why.” (dailyom.com)
ing her first child, the singer turned fashion mogul confirms that she is pregnant with baby number two. Simpson had previously signed a $4-million deal to be the new face of Weight Watchers, a contract that is now being put on hold.The company confirms that the star “will not be following the program during her pregnancy.” Horoscope: “Hard work is expected ahead but you need to maintain balances too. Use your intuition and try to focus on work in order to keep your promises.” (oranum.com)
Katie Holmes
these little pearls of random fore-
Psy
sight occasionally prove prophetic.
Global distinction: South Korean singer. Sign: Capricorn (b. December 31, 1977) Significant date: December 9, 2012 Noteworthy activity: After his video for “Gangnam
But rather than poring over charts of the zodiac to predict world events, our staff prefers to use past horoscopes in an attempt to legitimate the science. As you can see here, had some of these media figures remembered to consult their horoscopes on significant days, they could have avoided a few surprises.
Gwyneth Paltrow
Style” goes viral, Psy becomes a bona fide American superstar. His time in the spotlight is interrupted when it is revealed that he previously sang anti-American lyrics to a rock song, including “Kill those f---ing Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives” and “Kill them all slowly and painfully.” Horoscope: “Mistakes from the past could come back to haunt you, and you may be momentarily overcome by the fear that you’ll make similar errors again. Force yourself to be objective before you drive yourself crazy.” (mydailymoment.com)
Anne Hathaway Global distinction: Hollywood good girl. Sign: Scorpio (b. November 12, 1982) Significant date: December 10, 2012 Noteworthy activity: The brunette beauty attends the
New York premiere of her new movie Les Misérables. Hathaway is climbing out of an SUV onto the red carpet when her privates are accidentally exposed. Photographers quickly snap pictures of the underwear-free actress. Horoscope: “Use your good energy to be an example for others.You never know who is watching and looking up to you.” (freeastrologyhoroscopes.blogspot.com) 258
World Screen
Global distinction: Former Mrs. Tom Cruise. Sign: Sagittarius (b. December 18, 1978) Significant date: December 28, 2012 Noteworthy activity: Holmes, who reached a high-
profile divorce settlement last summer, channels her energy into Broadway, starring in the stage play Dead Accounts. Her return to the Great White Way is cut short when producers close the show nearly two months early. Media reports say it wasn’t earning its box-office potential. Horoscope: “Dreams of a new career, particularly one that pays well, could fill your mind today, perhaps because of too many stresses in your current one. Maybe now is a good time to explore a new path.” (mydailymoment.com)
Gwyneth Paltrow Global distinction: Actress turned lifestyle blogger. Sign: Libra (b. September 27, 1972) Significant date: December 14, 2012 Noteworthy activity: The stick-thin blonde claims that
she “can eat any man under the table.” The Goop blogger is put to the test in an episode of Jamie & Jimmy’s Food Fight Club, in which she is challenged to a game of Chubby Bunny. The mom of two manages to stuff three marshmallows into her mouth and holds them there, saying “chubby bunny” after each. Horoscope: “You may talk a good game, but just be prepared to prove yourself at some point. If you can do this, you will gain the respect of those you have been trying to impress.” (horoscope999.com)
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