World Screen NATPE Budapest 2017

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NATPE Budapest Edition

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THE MAGAZINE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA • JUNE/JULY 2017

European Drama / Trends in Formats / Red Arrow’s Henrik Pabst Atrium TV’s Howard Stringer & Jeremy Fox / FremantleMedia’s Rob Clark / Armoza Formats’ Avi Armoza

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CONTENTS contents contents

JUNE-JULY 2017/NATPE BUDAPEST EDITION DEPARTMENTS WORLD VIEW

By Anna Carugati.

Publisher Ricardo Seguin Guise

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UPFRONTS New content on the market.

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MARKET TRENDS Red Arrow International’s Henrik Pabst.

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IN THE NEWS Atrium TV’s Howard Stringer & Jeremy Fox.

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SPOTLIGHT FremantleMedia’s Rob Clark.

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FOCUS ON Armoza Formats’ Avi Armoza.

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ANALYSIS Key trends in American drama.

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WORLD’S END In the stars.

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Group Editorial Director Anna Carugati Editor Mansha Daswani Executive Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Managing Editor Joanna Padovano Tong Associate Editor Sara Alessi Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Elizabeth Bowen-Tombari Associate Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Rafael Blanco Contributing Editor Elizabeth Guider

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

Production & Design Director Victor L. Cuevas

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Online Director Simon Weaver Art Director Phyllis Q. Busell

SPECIAL REPORTS

16 IT TAKES TWO The European drama business is booming, creating a host of new opportunities for companies from within the region and around the world.

—Mansha Daswani

Sales & Marketing Assistant Nathalia Lopez

40 SHOWTIME!

Contributing Writers Steve Clarke Andy Fry Jane Marlow Joanna Stephens Jay Stuart David Wood

Leading distributors discuss the kinds of formats that are in high demand across Western and Eastern Europe.

—Kristin Brzoznowski FACTUAL TRENDS SPANISH CONNECTION DOC CO-PROS

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Senior Sales & Marketing Manager Dana Mattison

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Business Affairs Manager Andrea Moreno

Copy Editor Amy Canonico

Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development

L&M STRATEGIES EONE FAMILY’S OLIVIER DUMONT

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WORLD VIEW

BY ANNA CARUGATI

Food and Storytelling We humans have a long tradition of eating while enjoying storytelling. Yes, our relationship with food and stories goes way, way back.

From the time when humans first tamed fire and learned how to cook meat, the mere fact of gathering together to share a meal encouraged the development of language.

Language quickly turned into stories, and not only in the form of “How was your day, dear?” which back then had a lot of, “I avoided being trampled by the woolly mammoth.” Eventually, more advanced spoken words led to stories explaining natural phenomena, like lightning or rain, or incorporating morals and gave way to myths and legends. At first, they were shared and passed on from generation to generation through the spoken word, and later in written form. I’ve learned this from watching the captivating National Geographic series Origins: The Journey of Humankind, hosted by the inimitable Jason Silva, and by reading the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari. (Yes, I’m a total nerd.) Did you know how much cooking meat did to advance the development of our ancestors, Homo sapiens?

It used to take hours, yes, hours, to chew raw meat. Cooking not only shortened the chewing process, leaving more time to pursue other activities, like telling stories or sharing gossip, but it also killed germs and parasites, and enabled the development of smaller teeth and the absorption of more nutrients, which led to healthier babies with bigger brains. Fascinating, isn’t it? (I almost feel bad that I don’t like meat.) Bigger brains meant greater cognitive reasoning and better survival rates.

But beyond better nutrition, shared meals fostered social cooperation, which was essential for reproduction and survival, and for better storytelling. And the precursor of storytelling was gossip. That word has a negative connotation today, but it was precisely gossip within tribes, as Harari explains—who hates whom, who is entangled with whom, who is honest and who is not—that laid the foundations of civilization. Through the centuries, themes like power, greed and integrity, not to mention the more banal drama of who is sleeping with whom, have fueled storytelling from the Greek myths to Shakespeare, to the classics of literature to features films and today’s golden age of television.

We remain beholden to universal themes from the beginning of time, updating them for each generation’s reality. But our consumption of stories has consistently been accompanied by the ingestion of food. Think about it: from our earliest years, stories were told around the family table, whether it was a parent telling their children how to behave, siblings tattling on one another, or gossip about relatives, even heated arguments. These are all tales told and listened to while eating. For anxious

Our need for

stories is as primal as our need for food.

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souls like me, discussions fraught with conflict lead to ulcers. Others will sweeten difficult-to-hear stories with alcohol, or celebrate good stories with alcohol. It should be noted that since humans mastered the fermentation process, alcohol—from primitive forms of beer or wine to today’s fancier vintages and labels—has been present at dinner tables.

And don’t we munch on popcorn when we go to the movies? Don’t families gather around the TV with pizza, or whatever favorite food, to watch films or the Academy Awards? I’m not going to be stuck in the kitchen cooking during the arrival of stars on the red carpet! And fess up, when you are binge-viewing your favorite show, are snacks or more substantial fare ever far away? I don’t think so.

So it was a reflex for me to reach for a can of mixed nuts (I’m trying to keep my snacking healthy) while I was reading about the new shows that will premiere on the U.S. broadcast networks in the fall. There are some interesting themes running through the upcoming series. Nostalgia is one, with Will & Grace and Roseanne coming back, and a remake of Dynasty announced. Military shows are another—whether or not these are inspired by the Age of Trump, I don’t know, but there are several: S.W.A.T., SEAL Team and Valor. A-list showrunners, including Ryan Murphy, Dick Wolf, Shonda Rhimes and Greg Berlanti, all have new shows premiering next season.

As we have learned, good stories can come from anywhere, and the interviews we have in this issue clearly support that adage. Sir Howard Stringer, former chairman and CEO of Sony, and Jeremy Fox, the CEO of DRG, have teamed up to form Atrium TV, a “commissioning club” that will help regional OTTs and telcos access premium television drama.

FremantleMedia’s Rob Clark not only talks about new formats on his slate but also about the key ingredients a show needs to become a global hit. Red Arrow International’s Henrik Pabst highlights some of the company’s successful social-experiment formats, as well as other shows—scripted and unscripted—that are traveling, as does Armoza Formats’ Avi Armoza.

It’s no secret that European drama is in high demand and quality TV drama is expensive. Our first feature looks at European co-productions and the emerging opportunities for companies in the region and around the world. Our second feature talks to leading distributors about the types of formats that are selling across Western and Eastern Europe.

Our need for stories is as primal as our need for food.

While food fills our stomachs, stories feed our minds and souls. Both are essential for civilization’s survival, and given the buoyant production of thought-provoking and often juicy TV series, the future of storytelling is more than safe.

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UPFRONTS

A+E Networks

“We’re looking to build our presence in Russia.”

—Robyn Hurd

American Pickers / Knightfall / TV movies Among the factual highlights from A+E Networks at NATPE Budapest is the long-running reality series American Pickers. “We know that transactional, character-led franchises work really well internationally,” says Robyn Hurd, the company’s VP of content sales for EMEA. “American Pickers wasn’t commissioned as a family show, but it works well cross-generationally. The episodes are closedended, so it repeats incredibly well in the schedule.” Also on offer from A+E is the new scripted launch Knightfall, which follows the adventures of the Knights Templar. The show is executive produced by Jeremy Renner and stars Tom Cullen (Downton Abbey). “It’s a European story, so we feel it will resonate well with the CEE audience,” says Hurd. “It’s shot in Europe, it’s a European cast [and] it’s got fantastic amounts of action.” In addition, the company is showcasing its catalog of television movies, including Cocaine Godmother, which stars Catherine Zeta-Jones; Menendez: Blood Brothers, featuring Courtney Love; Beaches, a remake of the classic film; and Michael Jackson: Searching for Neverland, about the late King of Pop. “Our TV movies perform really well, not only in the U.S. but in the U.K., France and Spain,” says Hurd. “And they are affordable; they’re more affordable than features and they perform just as well.”

Michael Jackson: Searching for Neverland

Armoza Formats

“Armoza Formats has been attending NATPE Budapest from its first edition and continues to do so since CEE is a key region for us.”

—Anat Lewinsky

The Final Four / Sex Tape / Play Date The new prime-time singing competition The Final Four has already been sold into seven territories, including France and Norway. Armoza Formats is presenting the show at NATPE Budapest alongside Sex Tape, a provocative social experiment. “Sex Tape follows different couples each week trying to fix their relationships through filming their love life—including the intimacy—with the aim of solving their issues by viewing their tapes in a group session led by a top sexologist,” says Anat Lewinsky, the company’s sales executive for European and CIS territories. Another highlight is Play Date, a docu-reality series that sees different families search for the perfect play date. “Play Date is a very relevant and relatable format as parenting is such a universal topic, but with so many different perspectives that drama is inevitable,” says Lewinsky. “This is also a cost-effective show that is perfect for family viewing, thereby suiting the needs of many broadcasters.” Armoza also hopes to drum up interest for a number of scripted ready-mades, including Israel’s Hostages, police drama Street Justice and psychological thriller The Killer Inside, as well as such nonscripted fare as NBC’s I Can Do That!, Still Standing episodes from Spain and Italy, and Germany’s Curvy Supermodel, to name a few.

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ATV Orphan Flowers / Love and Hate / Wedlock This year marks ATV’s second consecutive time attending NATPE Budapest. “It’s an important period of the year in order to find space in the fall season programming schedules,” says Müge Akar, content sales deputy manager. At the market, ATV is offering up Orphan Flowers, which airs in Croatia, Romania, Macedonia and Greece, and has been renewed for a third season. The company is also promoting Love and Hate, which was sold into Romania, with other territories expected to follow. “Our lineup always reflects the major elements of a Turkish drama,” says Akar. “Orphan Flowers and Love and Hate are high-rated series with strong storylines. Love and Hate also stars one of Turkey’s most popular singers as a lead actor.” Another highlight is Wedlock, a drama series dealing with family violence.

“Our first goal is to meet with both existing and new clients and promote our lineup in new territories.”

—Müge Akar

Love and Hate The Gobbler Race

CJ E&M Golden Tambourine / The Gobbler Race / Crazy Market At NATPE Budapest, CJ E&M is slated to showcase the music entertainment series Golden Tambourine, the food competition The Gobbler Race and the game show Crazy Market. “There is always an appetite for studio entertainment formats; we are receiving many inquiries [about] studiobased prime-time shows,” says Jangho Seo, the company’s general manager of the global content business division.

“We have noticed a growing demand for Korean scripts for local adaptations in Central Europe, so we are in talks with various production [companies] and networks. We are seeing the growing importance of Eastern Europe as the market is opening up for foreign content. We hope to really get the momentum going and continue to enter new markets with various business models and flexibility.”

“CJ E&M is hoping to extend its content sales scope.”

—Jangho Seo

Phi

Eccho Rights Brave and Beautiful / Insider / Phi Brave and Beautiful and Insider, on offer from Eccho Rights at NATPE Budapest, have become top-rating shows in Turkey during the past six months and also secured various international sales. “Brave and Beautiful has caused a stir around the world ever since it was first announced because of its amazing cast, with Kivanç Tatlituğ and Tuba Büyüküstün—two of the biggest stars in television—[having] so many hit series behind them,” says Fredrik af Malmborg, the company’s managing director. “Insider has become a nationwide obsession in Turkey, with amazing viewing figures each week, and is already the most-watched Turkish drama of all time online.” Eccho Rights is also promoting Phi, the first original production for the OTT platform Puhu TV, and New Bride, which is made by Süreç Film.

“We are looking forward to meeting our CEE clients and sharing a hugely successful lineup with them once more.”

—Fredrik af Malmborg 6/17 WORLD SCREEN 11

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Super Fan Builds

GRB Entertainment Super Fan Builds / On the Case / Arabia Motors GRB Entertainment will be at NATPE Budapest presenting the series Super Fan Builds for buyers. The 11x30-minute series follows Hollywood’s top prop makers as they build one-of-akind items for fans of comic books, video games, TV shows, movies and more. “Whether you’re a fan of classic films like Back to the Future or TV shows like Game of Thrones or a Minecraft-obsessed gamer, you’ll be blown away by these creations,” says Melanie Torres, the company’s director of international sales. GRB will also be offering up On the Case, which “explores intriguing murder mysteries through in-depth interviews with witnesses and suspects and examines the forensic evidence that helped unravel these mysteries,” Torres explains.

She describes Arabia Motors as a series where “Arabian riches and over-the-top lavish lifestyles meet car fanatics.”

“Super Fan Builds is ideal for buyers because it’s a fun and creative building show.”

—Melanie Torres

Lionsgate Entertainment Ten Days in the Valley / Swedish Dicks / Dirty Dancing Part of ABC’s fall lineup, Ten Days in the Valley is one of the lead offerings from Lionsgate Entertainment for NATPE Budapest. Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) stars in this “tense and dynamic thriller series, which will have international audiences gripped from the very start,” says Peter Iacono, the company’s president of international television and digital distribution. “This is certainly going to be a drama to watch.”

From Viaplay and Lionsgate, Swedish Dicks is a comedy about a pair of private investigators. Meanwhile, Dirty Dancing has been given a modern adaptation in a new three-hour TV event.

“Dirty Dancing has been a hit for 30 years, and our aim has been to build upon the original and introduce the story to a whole new audience around the world as well as appeal to those who know and love the theatrical movie so well.”

“Lionsgate is known for making platformdefining programming that stands out in the marketplace.”

—Peter Iacono

Dirty Dancing

Record TV Moses and the Ten Commandments / The Promised Land / The Slave Isaura Covering more than 100 years of history, Moses and the Ten Commandments is a retelling of one of the most famous events of the Bible: the story of Moses. The soap opera, a highlight of the Record TV catalog, depicts Moses’s life from the time of his birth to the arrival of his people in the Promised Land, through to the Red Sea crossing and the encounter with God on Mount Sinai. The story in Record TV’s The Promised Land picks up after Moses’s death when Joshua is the new leader of the Hebrews. The soap opera is filled with conflict, intrigue, romance, adventure, power struggle, betrayal, forbidden passion and impossible love.

The company also has on offer The Slave Isaura, which has 167 episodes. Record TV has already notched up sales around the world for the series.

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Red Arrow International Look Me in the Eye / Cleverman / Empire Builders Red Arrow International has in its catalog for NATPE Budapest the format Look Me in the Eye, a social experiment that puts the power of eye contact to the test by attempting to reunite divided friends and families. The company is also presenting season two of the genre drama Cleverman. Henrik Pabst, Red Arrow International’s managing director, says the second season is “more action-packed and ambitious than ever before.”

The show—which stars, among others, Iain Glen (Game of Thrones)—has been a hit on ABC in Australia and SundanceTV in the U.S. There’s also the doc series Empire Builders, which brings to life ten great empires, with each episode visiting the ten most significant sites that defined their achievements and legacy. “The show features CGI, dramatic reconstructions and history experts to reveal the stories of extraordinary empires that are still shaping the way we live our lives today,” says Pabst. The stories and sites examined range from the mystery of Tutankhamun’s tomb to the majesty of the Taj Mahal to the wonders of Machu Picchu and the architecture of Sagrada Família. “Our slate this NATPE Budapest highlights our commitment to working with some of the world’s best creative talent across all genres,” says Pabst. “From our ambitious international scripted series such as Cleverman to unique formats such as Look Me in the Eye, Red Arrow is synonymous with high-quality international content.”

“Red Arrow International has grown over the last few years to become the home for ambitious international drama, factual shows and formats.”

—Henrik Pabst

Empire Builders

ZDF Enterprises

“Our topics work internationally, whether a modern Mafia tale, an atypical Nordic noir crime series, a feature film for young adults based on a worldwide blockbuster series or a groundbreaking factual show.”

Maltese / Before We Die / Big Pacific

— Alexander Coridass A man takes on the Mafia in Maltese, a crime series that is part of ZDF Enterprises’ drama offering. In the show, Commissario Maltese is a detective who risks his own life, colliding with assassins sent to kill him. Alexander Coridass, the president and CEO of ZDF Enterprises, says of Maltese, “We are very proud to be in charge of the international distribution of this series.” ZDF Enterprises is also home to the Stockholm-set Nordic noir series Before We Die. The show “tells a unique and unpredictable story set in a familiar crime genre,” says Coridass.

“The frantic tempo, the plot twists and the jaw-dropping revelations take the viewers on an emotional journey at the edges of their seats.” He adds that the “raw visual feel of Before We Die grabs the viewer’s attention and never lets go.” In the factual arena, the company is presenting the international co-production Big Pacific. The blue-chip documentary series “presents the ocean and its denizens in a way never before seen on television, exploring the monstrous to the minute, the alien to the intimate,” Coridass says. There is also the feature film Dance Academy: The Comeback, based on the teen drama series Dance Academy that has aired in more than 160 countries. Shooting on the feature film included locations in Sydney and New York.

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The European drama business is booming, creating a host of new opportunities for companies from within the region and around the world. By Mansha Daswani STUDIOCANAL’s Midnight Sun.

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uropudding: A television program or a film produced by and starring people from several different European nations, and hence often considered to be lacking in coherence, individuality, or authenticity. So defines Oxford about those infamous productions that came of age in the ’80s and have haunted the European co-pro landscape ever since. The good news for those in the business of scripted today is that Europuddings have been supplanted by high-end, fresh, creative stories involving multiple partners from the region that not only rate well in their home markets but sell broadly too.

Take, for example, the highconcept thriller Midnight Sun, from Scandi hitmakers Mårlind & Stein, which was produced by Nice Drama and Atlantique Productions for Canal+ in France and SVT in Sweden and landed slots, courtesy of STUDIOCANAL, on ZDF in Germany, DR in Denmark, SBS in Australia and M-Net in Africa, among others. The dialog is in English, French, Swedish and Sami.

“Audiences are becoming much more comfortable with multiple languages, especially if it makes the narrative more authentic,” reports Rola Bauer, the managing director of STUDIOCANAL TV. “Midnight Sun has transcended boundaries and been sold to more than 90 territories.”

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While there have been several shows over the last few years that have employed multiple languages, many in the industry see Narcos, the Netflix drama about Pablo Escobar and the DEA agents tasked with bringing him down, as a significant turning point in the international drama business. A good portion of the show is in Spanish.

THE NARCOS EFFECT “Before Narcos, people thought that international audiences would not tune into something that is not relevant to their country or their language,” observes Atar Dekel, the head of global co-productions at Keshet International (KI), which has been ramping up its scripted activities in Europe. “Language is less of a challenge now.”

Dekel’s colleague Anke Stoll, the company’s London-based director of co-productions and acquisitions, cites as an example a show KI has in development in Belgium about a Jewish family involved in the diamond trade in Antwerp. “We are thinking it will be made mainly in Flemish, but maybe the Orthodox Jewish family speaks Yiddish from time to time. We don’t want to force languages on an idea. The most important thing is the idea.”

For Vanessa Shapiro, the president of worldwide distribution, acquisitions and co-productions at Gaumont, producer of the

aforementioned Narcos, “organic” is the key word when determining what language an international copro should be made in. “The projects we have are mostly in English.

It’s a little bit like the Narcos model, where organically people speak in their own language. But we’ll have series, like Spy City, which can be in multiple languages.”

Spy City is Gaumont’s new period piece, penned by William Boyd and set in 1960s Berlin, focusing on British, German and French spies. “The series is still 80 percent in English, but if a German spy speaks to the German government, they’ll do it in German,” Shapiro notes. “The common language among themselves is going to be English.”

Banijay Rights also has in its portfolio a drama made in multiple languages: Occupied. The first season of the suspense thriller had the backing of TV2 Norway and ARTE, both have committed to a second season alongside a new partner, Viaplay. “Some of it is in English, some in Norwegian, some in Russian,” notes Caroline Torrance, the company’s head of scripted.

“Occupied lent itself well to a coproduction. It’s one of those stories that, by being set in the very near future, you can see how it has so much relevance for different countries. Different places can all look at it and say, I can see that happening here.”

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Finding a storyline that is going to resonate with viewers in multiple markets is no easy feat, and there’s no simple formula to follow. “The most important elements for a successful drama to have are an emotional storyline and compelling characters that viewers will want to spend time with and engage with,” observes STUDIOCANAL’s Bauer on the qualities she looks for. “A narrative that is enlightening, entertaining and hopefully educational will always captivate global audiences. Of course, certain themes and books will transcend better, but ultimately it is the emotional heart that is key—whether it is within a local story setting or a more international one.”

BRING THE NOISE KI’s Dekel, on hunting for concepts that can be co-produced between Israel and other markets and then distributed across the globe, says that shows “need to be loud” to cut through in a competitive landscape.

The team at KI believe they have found that kind of compelling concept in The Steins, the finalist of a joint call for projects the company initiated with France’s Newen. “It revisits the myth of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which was inspired by the Jewish mythology of the Golem,” Dekel says. “We found it very interesting to deal with a myth that has such deep roots. It

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KI has stepped up its scripted activities across Europe, particularly in the U.K., where BBC One is heading into season two of a local version of the Israeli project The A Word. brings a modern take on this mysticism. We’re currently in discussions with French broadcasters and global OTT platforms.”

Having a strong, instantly recognizable brand as a hook also helps, says Banijay’s Torrance, citing the French-Canadian co-pro Versailles.

“You’ve got to be relevant for every audience and for the people that are co-producing,” Torrance continues. “A period drama is often coproduced. They have huge budgets, and you can find something there that speaks to everybody. Sometimes a contemporary series is hard to co-produce because people will look at it and say, Well, it doesn’t look like something that is relevant to my audience. Ironically, once you set something in the past, people perhaps forget about the location, and it seems to speak to everybody rather than just to a particular country.”

“The multicultural spy story resonates everywhere!” says Gaumont’s Shapiro of the upcoming Spy City. “We try to have different nationalities of people [in international co-pros]. The one thing that would not work is a series where you only have one nationality because then it’s not a European co-pro anymore, it’s a local show. And we also do those.

But for the projects we’re developing for the European market, in the English language, we try to have at least two different nationalities so it can resonate in at least two different countries.”

The opportunities to build creative exchanges across borders among writers, producers and stars of different backgrounds has many in the business excited about the face of drama in the future. On KI’s previously mentioned diamonds series, for example, Belgian producer Jan Theys, from De Mensen, is working with Israeli writer Rotem Shamir.

“We’re so happy that we have the ability to help all those very talented and internationally appealing Israeli writers develop stories outside of Israel,” Dekel reports.

However the creative auspices take shape, STUDIOCANAL’s Bauer stresses that for a co-pro to work, the project must be “driven by the narrative. Our STUDIOCANAL production companies develop their projects to ensure that the content they deliver suits the platform and broadcaster it is destined for. Our goal is to match this story with a coproducing partner who connects with the same creative vision and allows our production company to protect this narrative and the engaging characters.”

FUNDING PATCHWORK Of course, the funding model also has to work for all parties involved. And it is indeed the challenge of financing high-end drama that has helped lead to the boom in international co-pros.

“Co-production and financing across multiple partners make series affordable without a drop in

creative standards,” Bauer adds.

“Broadcasters are therefore keen to participate as long as the narrative and the creative vision appeal to them and, ultimately, to their audiences.”

“At the moment, there is a huge appetite for high-quality premium drama,” Banijay’s Torrance says.

“On one level you have the financial demands. People want to put more dramas on-screen, and the way to do that is to collaborate with somebody so you’re not paying the full cost of production. The other side is there’s a real desire to take influences from different countries and environments and creatively work together.”

And that is being borne out everywhere, be it between the U.S. and the U.K., within Europe and beyond.

COUNTING TO TEN Historically, U.S.-European coventures have had to deal with the huge hurdle of episode counts. “It used to be a nightmare working with the U.S. as a U.K. company,” Torrance says. “You’d go to them and say, We’ve got this great series and it’s six episodes, and they’d say, Six? We want 22!”

These days, however, U.S. networks and platforms have become more comfortable with ten-episode seasons. Six- to eight-parters are the preferred model in many parts of Europe. “Eight episodes as a first season works well,” Torrance continues. “Sometimes people will say

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ten episodes is a big risk and we want to know that it will work for our audience. So if it’s a returnable series, the six to eight episodes [in season one] works well and then the second season you can go to ten.”

“We’re completely open, especially on the European model, to do only six to eight episodes,” says Shapiro at Gaumont, adding that ten is usually the “magic number” if an American partner is involved. Making a six- or eightepisode season “limits the risk of the broadcasters—they can go through it pretty quickly if it doesn’t work.”

Negotiating episode counts, tax breaks, complex co-pro deals and the myriad issues with windowing and stacking rights has made the drama business far more complicated than it has ever been. At the same time, though, drama distributors are upbeat about the opportunities that still lay ahead.

“The great thing is that there’s so much demand for high-quality scripted,” says Torrance. “There’s demand for big period series, for thrillers—it’s almost like you can find a home for any series you have because there are so many broadcasters who have an appetite [for drama]. It’s a great time to have a good portfolio of projects because there’s always somebody who you can talk to and say, This would work for your audience.”

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Trends in Factual / Spanish Connection / Doc Co-Pros

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TV EUROPE

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CONTENTS

Good News, Bad News

FEATURES 8 REAL APPEAL Docuseries, reality shows and one-off documentaries are finding slots across Europe.

8

I’m starting to feel like “no news” is my preferred state.

Terrorist attacks, unhinged politicians, high crimes and misdemeanors—is there an end in sight? No. But I’m taking solace in my TV set as I whizz past the news channels to any other option available.

Ricardo Seguin Guise Publisher Anna Carugati Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Executive Editor Joanna Padovano Tong Managing Editor Sara Alessi Associate Editor Victor L. Cuevas Production & Design Director Phyllis Q. Busell Art Director Simon Weaver Online Director Dana Mattison Senior Sales & Marketing Manager Nathalia Lopez Sales & Marketing Assistant Andrea Moreno Business Affairs Manager

Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development TV Europe © 2017 WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, #1207 New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.tveurope.ws

I’m on a doc binge right now, working my way through Netflix’s The Keepers, which involves nuns, the Catholic Church, sexual abuse, murder and a decades-long cover-up.

Not much uplift there, but it’s true-crime storytelling at its finest. Armed with my new 4K set, I’m excited to dive into some Ultra HD wildlife, like the BBC’s upcoming Blue Planet II. Having a front-row seat to the wonders of the ocean could be just the thing I need to conquer my real-world blues. Another blue-chip underwater doc that has the factual market buzzing is Big Pacific. Ahead of its premiere at MIPDoc, executives from the show’s producer, NHNZ; distributor, ZDF Enterprises; and co-production partners took part in an insightful conversation with World Screen’s Anna Carugati about the ins and outs of doc co-productions. You’ll find a recap of that session in this edition. This issue also looks at the kind of factual content that is selling well across Europe, a subject that executives will be mulling over as both Sunny Side of the Doc and NATPE Budapest get under way.

The theme at Sunny Side this year is Historic, as history docs take center stage. In this age of confusion and disruption, it does feel like we are all trying to cling to some ideas from the past for a sense of stability, security and commiseration. My current doc binge was preceded by a severe perioddrama marathon as I devoured ITV’s Victoria and Netflix’s luscious The Crown. Not that there was anything easy about Victorian or post-World War II England, but traveling back to the past does give me a brief respite from the seemingly incessant insanity around us today. Of course, it’s internet platforms and smart TVs that allow me these TV-delivered flights of fancy. In Europe, much like the rest of the world, OTT has rapidly transformed the media ecosystem. Netflix recently announced a massive investment in the region, while Amazon Channels in the U.K. and Germany is creating new opportunities for content owners. Regulators are trying to keep up with all this change, with the European Parliament recently voting to approve contentportability rules that allow citizens to access streaming content on paid services when traveling across member states.

Good news: consumers are hungry for content and want to devour it everywhere. Bad news: copyright and geoblocking just got way more complicated.

—Mansha Daswani

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12 SPANISH CONNECTION Fostering collaboration between LatAm and Spain is one of the key goals of this year’s inaugural Conecta FICTION.

14 FACTUAL TITANS Executives from ZDF Enterprises, NHNZ, PBS, CCTV9, ARTE France and ZDF weighed in on co-pros in a superpanel moderated by World Screen’s Anna Carugati.

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Caracol Internacional The Goddess/Night School, Dreams Never Sleep / Dynasty Patricia Teherán, a woman who used her singing to conquer a chauvinistic world filled with jealousy, is at the center of The Goddess. Another highlight on Caracol Internacional’s NATPE Budapest slate is Night School, Dreams Never Sleep, which follows a group of adults who attend a night class to get ahead in their careers. “These eight characters will encounter a number of obstacles, both personal and professional, that will test their ability to succeed,” says Paloma García, Caracol Internacional’s sales executive for Europe and Africa. In the telenovela Dynasty, singer Kaleth Morales dies in a car accident. Kaleth’s father decides to honor his memory by beginning his own music career. The company is also presenting El Bronx, set in a dangerous neighborhood where failure and disappointment are interspersed with love and faith.

“We have successful stories with creative characters, great production values and local plots that appeal to universal tastes.”

—Paloma García

The Goddess

Intellecta Strange Love / Farewell to the Bride / Love Gamblers Intellecta has been working on the syndication of Indian drama series and movies in Europe for the last six years, “so the European market feels both like home with a lot of success stories and at the same time holds a lot of potential for Indian content,” says Christina Vlahova, the company’s general manager. Intellecta, which is a partner of Star India, will be at NATPE Budapest showcasing Strange Love. The first Indian series to be shown in Turkey, the show “quadrupled the ratings and share of its slot,” says Vlahova. “Farewell to the Bride is another series that has opened a number of European markets and has achieved 85 percent shares for European broadcasters.” Love Gamblers, meanwhile, comes from the producers of Strange Love “with the same highquality production and glamor,” Vlahova says.

“We bring the best Indian drama series and Bollywood movies to Europe.”

—Christina Vlahova

Strange Love

Kanal D International Wounded Love / Family Secrets / Flames of Desire Real-life couple Halit Ergenç and Bergüzar Korel co-star once again in Wounded Love, a drama that Kanal D International is highlighting for buyers at NATPE Budapest. There is also Family Secrets, about a man who lives an enviable life in Istanbul with his wife and children, until it is revealed that he has another family in Adana. The drama is about “family ties and how far parents can go for their children,” says Ezgi Ural, the director of business development and content sales for Europe, MENA and Asia. The slate also features Flames of Desire, which tells a story that “anyone and everyone can relate to. They can put themselves in the characters’ shoes,” says Ural. It stars “young and successful actors such as Burcu Biricik, the unforgettable actress from Matter of Respect,” she adds.

“Restructured as Kanal D International, we are not only distributors but also a global company looking for global collaborations.”

—Ezgi Ural

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Mediaset Distribution For Love Alone: Crossed Destinies / Donnavventura Challenge / The Phone Secrets At NATPE Budapest, Mediaset Distribution is touting a new drama series, For Love Alone: Crossed Destinies. The company also has a lineup of unscripted shows, including Donnavventura Challenge. “We’ve already had interest from Greece both for the series and the format,” says Manuela Caputi, the head of international sales at Mediaset Distribution. Another market highlight is the format The Phone Secrets, which watches as couples take part in a game to try to win a dream trip, but they must first share messages from their mobiles. Scripted formats continue to be a priority for Mediaset Distribution in CEE as well, according to Caputi. “We have a very large catalog of series with great stories and the knowledge and expertise to localize our best dramas outside of Italy.”

“We would like to be known not just for drama, but we’d also like to open a new business with unscripted formats.”

—Manuela Caputi

Donnavventura Challenge

Terra Mater Factual Studios Supersapiens: The Rise of the Mind / Ant Mountain / All About the Moon The latest developments in AI and other technologies that aim to merge man and machine are highlighted in Supersapiens: The Rise of the Mind, which Terra Mater Factual Studios is presenting at Sunny Side of the Doc. The program raises the question of whether we are witnessing the birth of a new species and leaving Homo sapiens behind through the development of such technologies. Another highlight is Ant Mountain, narrated by David Attenborough. The 4K documentary examines wood ants in the Swiss mountains. There is also the documentary All About the Moon. Sabine Holzer, the company’s head of TV, says, “Each of these films focuses on either a very current, widely discussed issue; fascinating behavior as it has never been shown before by using completely new camera techniques; or reveals the latest scientific discoveries.”

“The programs represent Terra Mater Factual Studios’ relentless commitment to continuously produce high-quality documentaries across genres.”

—Sabine Holzer

Ant Mountain

TV Azteca International Nothing Personal / Missing Bride / Iron Lady Alongside telenovelas, the TV Azteca International catalog has a number of series on offer. Among them, Nothing Personal comes from writer Alberto Barrera and executive producers Elisa Salinas and Joshua Mintz. It tells the story of Mariana Aragón, who witnesses the murder of two young journalists and becomes embroiled with a criminal organization. She finds herself taking on the powers that be in a battle for her life. Mintz is also an executive producer on Missing Bride, which is written by Sebastián Arrau. The mystery follows a son’s investigation into his mother’s disappearance. Iron Lady, which also counts Mintz as an EP, combines drama and action to tell the story of a female prosecutor on a mission to bring down a drug lord who is also responsible for the murder of her father.

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Terra Mater’s Wild Sri Lanka.

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Docuseries, reality shows and one-off documentaries are hot commodities for broadcasters looking to fill factual slots across Europe.

By Sara Alessi rexit, the refugee crisis, fears of the European Union coming apart and political instability have many in the region feeling on edge these days. And in these times of uncertainty, factual content that educates and entertains is, perhaps, more important than ever.

“In times of political uncertainty, which these are, audiences look for comfort viewing and familiarity,” says Robyn Hurd, the VP of content sales for EMEA at A+E Networks.

According to Hurd, this is one reason reality programs like the male-skewing transactional series Pawn Stars and American Pickers do so well across CEE and Europe as a whole. “Audiences know what they’re getting with Pawn and Pickers.”

Hurd adds, “With a specific focus on CEE, these longrunning franchises have continued to sell incredibly well across the region in second and third windows.” She says the success of these shows is also due to the fact that “they’re

B

utility players that can be stacked and peppered all over the schedule. They repeat incredibly well, and they deliver ratings, so they add real value.”

Long-running, key brands are a big trend throughout Europe and in CEE in particular, echoes Marine Ksadzhikyan, the senior VP of distribution and development at Rive Gauche Television. “In an environment that is a little uncertain, a lot of broadcasters want to attach themselves to brands that have been working for years and series that have multiple seasons,” she explains. For that reason, Rive Gauche has seen “a lot of action with some of our key brands such as Cesar Millan’s Dog Whisperer, My Strange Addiction, My Crazy Obsession and Fix It & Finish It with Antonio Sabato Jr.” The company has also found regional success with its crime titles, including Homicide Hunter, which has been a hit for Investigation Discovery, and Ice Cold Killers.

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Another long-running franchise with a recognizable face is the female-skewing Dance Moms, which A+E’s Hurd says continues to perform well in the region. The show offers a “great co-viewing experience for moms and their daughters and is one of our strongest digitally performing franchises too, so it works well for our broadcasters.”

Programs that provide opportunities for family viewing are finding success in CEE. Melanie Torres, the director of international content sales at GRB Entertainment, says the fan-favorite Auction Kings and one of its newest launches, Super Fan Builds, work well because “both are general, easyviewing type shows that the entire family can sit around and watch.” She has found that programs with volume always do better in terms of sales, especially in “regions like CEE, where they might not pay as high license fees as Western Europe.” Thus, the company has had success with the longrunning crime series On the Case and the docuseries Untold Stories of the ER. A+E’s Hurd says history is another genre that continues to prove popular in Europe. A+E touts a host of short-run event series like Hunting Hitler, The World Wars and Barbarians Rising, and Hurd has even found that “in CEE in particular, which is unlike other territories, history programming doesn’t have to be tied to an anniversary.”

GONE WILD

as Nat Geo WILD or Discovery Channel,” Holzer adds. “Oneoffs work for larger TV stations that have a fixed wildlife slot.”

Popular programs include those that “take the audience to exotic countries such as Wild Uganda, or dream destinations, as Wild Sri Lanka does,” she says.

When it comes to documentary series, Rive Gauche’s Ksadzhikyan reports that the preference is for shows without talking heads, though she notes that it depends on the country.

PRESENTED BY “There is no general rule in regard to presenters,” explains Terra Mater’s Holzer. “Although the better known the host is—and the better they fit the program and thus are credible—the more appeal a hosted show has, but it heavily depends on the slots of the broadcaster and whether they already have an established host.” It’s key for a program to be “truly captivating to engage the audience,” she adds, and it also needs to be able to draw in viewers who might tune in after the show has begun.

According to GRB’s Torres, it’s important to have factual titles that are not too American-centric and that appeal to a general audience. She points to Arabia Motors, a new addition to the company’s catalog that follows the partners behind an automotive magazine in the Middle East, as a show that has broad appeal.

Sometimes broadcasters prefer to make local formats of factual shows. Torres notes that she receives requests to format shows in GRB’s catalog, especially when it comes to cooking series like Recipe Rehab. She says buyers find that culinary programs work better when they are localized because “every

There is also an appetite for wildlife and nature programming.

“True best-sellers are our award-winning, blue-chip and highquality wildlife and nature programs from our renowned brand ORF Universum,” says Marion CamusOberdorfer, the head of international content sales at ORF-Enterprise. “Our recent Ultra HD 4K lineup, including our three latest ORF Universum highlights, the three-parter Wild Caribbean: Rhythms of Life, Giants of the Atlantic: Azores and The Canary Islands,” has caught buyers’ attention, she notes.

Science programming also lights a spark with European audiences, and in that category, ORF-Enterprise is offering the weekly series Newton, which covers recent scientific findings in an accessible way. Camus-Oberdorfer says high-end nature and wildlife and science programs are always in demand due to “their costefficient and comparably easy localization for different markets and languages.”

Sabine Holzer, the head of TV at Terra Mater Factual Studios, notes that her company’s science-focused programming does particularly well in Poland.

She says science-themed shows can be enriched with “widely known presenters who have built up their expertise in science and nature,” like Sir David Attenborough, or famous faces like Richard Hammond, the ex-Top Gear star who hosts Terra Mater’s Wild Weather with Richard Hammond.

“Three-part miniseries appear to be most suitable for multi-territorial networks such A+E Networks has found success in Europe with its long-running Pawn Stars series, both as a finished show and as a format.

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GRB recently added to its factual catalog Arabia Motors, a docuseries with broad audience appeal. region has different seasonings, different ingredients, and so a cooking show from the U.S. might not speak to an audience in Hungary.”

Rive Gauche’s Ksadzhikyan says she has noticed a trend toward making localized episodes of shows. For instance, broadcasters might suggest filming episodes of a series like Dog Whisperer in Poland or Hungary to give them an international flavor.

While there have been local versions of A+E’s hit franchises like Pawn Stars and American Pickers, when U.S. shows bring in ratings and there is so much tape to draw from, there is less of a need to produce local adaptations. “We sell so many third windows of our big franchises,” Hurd says. “It’s cost-effective programming” that European broadcasters can tap into.

Meanwhile, ORF-Enterprise’s Camus-Oberdorfer emphasizes that “culturally transferable and localizable programs” are in high demand due to the competitive nature of the market and the importance of economizing budgets efficiently. She adds that the biggest buyers of ORF-Enterprise’s factual programming have been Hungary, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Poland.

POLISH POWER “Poland by far in CEE is a big revenue generator for us,” says A+E’s Hurd. “It’s got the largest number of broadcasters, and last year saw a plethora of DTT channels open up, so there is a real competition in the region, and we’ve enjoyed a great deal of success.”

She adds that A+E has seen an uptick in sales to Hungary, with Russia shaping up to be a focus over the next 12 months.

In addition to activity in Russia, Poland and Hungary, Rive Gauche’s Ksadzhikyan has seen interest from Romania. “We have great contacts there, and they’ve done some big packages with us,” she says. Ksadzhikyan notes that the new documentary series Egg Factor, which follows the journey of intended parents who need the help of egg donors in order to have a baby, drummed up interest in these territories when it was introduced at MIPTV. Factual distributors are also eyeing the digital space. “Interesting new European players focusing especially on factual content are emerging,” says ORF-Enterprise’s Camus-Oberdorfer.

Terra Mater’s Holzer is enthusiastic about the fact that there are “opportunities regarding 4K on digital/OTT and SVOD platforms, especially in Russia and Poland, where we see an increasing demand.”

Rive Gauche’s Ksadzhikyan also points to Russia as a rising star in the SVOD space. She says that as new players emerge, they need content, and “this is really good for us distributors because most of them need volume. It’s going to open up some more doors for us.”

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Cidade da Cultura

Fostering collaboration between Latin America and Spain is one of the key goals of this year’s inaugural Conecta FICTION. By Mansha Daswani

T

his June, in the picturesque northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela, content executives from Latin America, the U.S. Hispanic market and Europe will convene to facilitate a new age of collaboration.

“I had an idea to create an event, a moment, where we can put together the two continents and cultures—the European and Latin flavors,” says Géraldine Gonard, the director of Conecta FICTION. “I had received calls like, I’m looking for a Chilean director, I’m looking for an Argentine actress; could you recommend someone? Or a call from Mexico saying, We are looking for a huge co-production between Spain, Mexico and the U.S. I was like, Wow, let’s find a place and a moment to have these people meet and find common projects.”

Backed by Axencia Galega das Industrias Culturais (AGADIC) of Xunta de Galicia, ICEX España Exportación e Inversiones and Fundación SGAE, Conecta FICTION comes in response to the changing dynamics in the Spanish-language content landscape. After seeing its scripted sector contract in the years since the 2009 downturn, Spain is witnessing new life—and money—coming into the drama business. And Latin American content producers are responding to changing consumer trends as viewers demand more than long-running soapy telenovelas.

An example of a new breed of Spain-LatAm collaboration is IOSI, the Repentant Spy, based on the novel by Miriam Lewin and Horacio Lutzky, which hails from Oficina Burman in Argentina and is being developed with Spain’s MEDIAPRO. The two companies are also collaborating on Stroke, penned by Daniel Burman, and Edha, which is the first Argentine original

for Netflix. MEDIAPRO’s U.S. base in Miami, Imagina US, meanwhile, is working with Argos on Habeas Corpus and The Lord of Money.

“LatAm is a strategic territory for MEDIAPRO Group, and we have offices in Miami, Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico and Cuba,” says Javier Méndez, the company’s head of content. “We are working with the best talent and developing amazing content for key players, including platforms, broadcasters and production companies in the region. Latin America is a natural market for Spain—we share the language and part of the history. For us it’s a key territory to determine new trends. LatAm and Spain are open to taking risks in content production and broadcasting, both becoming innovative territories inside the audiovisual market.”

“South America is doing more and more short formats, not just long soap operas or telenovelas,” Gonard observes. “There are Europeans who are more experienced in co-producing, who have been doing it for a long time and are also looking for new talent, new ideas, new creatives. Everybody is looking to South America as a new source of innovative creations.”

Gonard stresses that Conecta FICTION is a networking event rather than a market. “We are going to focus on talent and business topics. We are going to speak about the work of directors, scriptwriters, producers. Conecta FICTION wants to connect both worlds: the talent world with the industry.”

Among the conference highlights, ten international TV co-production projects selected by an editorial committee and six Spanish TV projects selected from the SGAE laboratories will be presented during pitching sessions.

Movistar+, which has emerged as a significant new player in Spanish fiction, will offer a development contract to one of the projects.

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By Mansha Daswani

From left: ARTE France’s Hélène Ganichaud, CCTV9’s Yuan Tian, NHNZ’s Kyle Murdoch, ZDF’s Jens Monath, PBS’s Pamela Aguilar, ZDF Enterprises’ Ralf Rückauer and World Screen’s Anna Carugati. xecutives from ZDF Enterprises, NHNZ, PBS, CCTV9, ARTE France and ZDF weighed in on co-productions in a MIPDoc keynote superpanel moderated by World Screen’s Anna Carugati ahead of the premiere of the blue-chip series Big Pacific.

Kyle Murdoch, managing director of NHNZ, said that co-production makes up about 60 percent of the company’s activities. Big Pacific is a good example of the kinds of co-pros NHNZ is involved with, Murdoch noted.

“It’s probably a very extreme example of a co-production too, because we have so many partners,” among them PBS, CCTV9, ZDF Enterprises, ZDF and ARTE. “Co-production is important for us because it brings together financing, but it also brings together platforms from different parts of the world,” Murdoch said. “That’s essential for us to be able to create something as big as Big Pacific because it’s an expensive underwater bluechip series to make.”

Jens Monath is the commissioning editor of Terra X, ZDF’s Sunday night doc slot. Recent examples of co-pros for Terra X include The Celts, a three-parter with the BBC. “We did all the reenactments, BBC sent us documentary shots, so that was a very good co-production. We did First Flight with ABC Australia and a production company from Perth. We’re in all kinds of models, with broadcasters and with production companies.”

Pamela Aguilar, senior director of programming and development at PBS, oversees science, culture, natural history and history at the American public broadcaster. Co-productions are extremely important to PBS, she said.

“We’re able to access local productions, local producers from around the world, and make our dollars stretch.”

When asked if co-productions help producers and broadcasters access sources and locations they wouldn’t be able to on their own, NHNZ’s Murdoch said, “Absolutely. Big Pacific [involves] such a massive geographical area. A lot of the co-producing partners have some sort of link with the Pacific. For example, we can access parts of China that we wouldn’t be able to access without CCTV, access parts of the U.S. or French Polynesia.”

Hélène Ganichaud, the deputy head at ARTE France overseeing the specialist factual department, commissioning science, history, nature and natural-history docs, referenced a current docudrama project with NHK. “It’s definitely access, experts, location, down to Samurai costumes. They are literally managing the production locally, so it’s incredibly beneficial.

Between the French and Japanese production, it’s very intertwined.”

On the subject of what kinds of projects work best as co-pros, PBS’s Aguilar mentioned science and natural history. “History is a little tougher for us at times because it really needs to relate to an American audience.”

E

Ralf Rückauer, VP of ZDFE.factual, said that ZDF Enterprises is involved in many history co-pros. “There is space for history,” he said, but agreed it can be challenging as “sometimes we don’t share the same history. Science and natural history are more global from the start.”

Monath said that Terra X is looking for partners for historical docs. “If you look at the market right now, we don’t find many big documentaries about history. To make big projects happen, like The Celts, you need partners. The audience expects a cinematic look.”

CCTV9, the factual channel operated by the Chinese state broadcaster, is always looking to “bring the highest production values and the best storytelling” to its audiences, said Yuan Tian, head of international acquisitions and co-production. The focus is on “traditional or classic factual programs. We launched the channel in 2011 and since then have worked with international colleagues. We’ve learned from our partners.”

Wildlife, science and history are the key areas of focus for ZDFE.factual, Rückauer said. The company does come on board to gap finance projects from producers from around the world. “We invest in programs we think other commissioning editors would like to show their audience.” Over the last few years, Rückauer said, ZDFE.factual has turned to another model. “We start a new and fresh idea together with a producer, like Jasper James in the U.K. We encouraged him to create a sizzle on the topic of ‘size matters’ and he did and now we have a co-production [Why Size Matters]. We want to be a little bit more involved in the creative process and be financing from the start.”

Carugati then moved the discussion to Big Pacific, which originated at NHNZ. “We developed the concept in-house. From my office I can see the Pacific Ocean, it’s our backyard. NHNZ has been making television documentaries for 40 years. To do something ambitious about the Pacific is almost a culmination of that 40 years of experience in producing. We want to take natural-history stories and turn them on their head. We didn’t want to give people exactly what they expected. We want unexpected stories around the Pacific.”

ZDFE.factual’s Rückauer said that NHNZ’s sizzle for the project gave him goosebumps. “It gave you a ‘never seen before’ feeling. I get 1,000 proposals a year. Sometimes you get a little bored. The sizzle really was outstanding.”

Ahead of production, NHNZ held a summit with the key partners. “We discussed the topics, what people liked and didn’t like,” Murdoch said. “I enjoy working collaboratively with our partners. It means that people have skin in the game and they feel they are involved.”

To offer up a new perspective on the Pacific, each episode of the series “is driven by a narrative arc of a particular emotion,” Murdoch said. “We have ‘Violent Pacific,’ ‘Passionate Pacific,’ ‘Voracious Pacific.’ It’s a snapshot of life in the Pacific.”

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develop over the course of six weeks through a series of tests and exercises. When I saw the idea for the first time, I was personally very touched, and have been delighted to get the opportunity to distribute it. The market is responding so well to the show. People come to see the clip and they love it. To me, it’s genuinely real TV: a warm-hearted, emotional, real reality social experiment, and it definitely fits the zeitgeist.

In every country—especially in the West—there are old people suffering from social isolation; it is a huge problem. We have to treat the elderly with respect. This kind of groundbreaking experiment, which actually raises an important social issue, is something to celebrate, and I can’t wait to see it travel. I don’t think it’s the next mega format, but it’s great television, and I can see it coming to many channels very soon.

WS: And it gives the channels an opportunity to do some good, and that will gain them goodwill and prestige.

PABST: Definitely. I’m passionate about the project. It touches something within me and seems to with a lot of people.

WS: You’ve also had success with other social-experiment formats.

PABST: This year’s The WIT session at MIPTV opened by highlighting that what Red Arrow started four years ago with Married at First Sight kicked off a whole new era of TV in

By Anna Carugati

Part of the Red Arrow Entertainment Group, Red Arrow International is a global distributor of scripted, unscripted and factual programming.

It taps into shows from the group’s 19 production companies and also works with third-party producers and digital content partners. Among its recent top-selling series are the scripted drama Bosch and the unscripted format Married at First Sight. Red Arrow International has, in fact, opened the market up to a whole new genre of formats: social experiments. A recent addition is the heartwarming The Old People’s Home for Four Year Olds, which sees children spending time with retirement-home residents to the great benefit of the elderly.

As Henrik Pabst, Red Arrow International’s managing director, tells World Screen, he is especially proud of this show, as well as the company’s diverse programming slate.

terms of real reality and social experiments. And they are right because today Married at First Sight has 27 local versions, so we are marrying people in 27 countries. Wherever the show goes on air, it’s recommissioned and always wins its slot.

We’ve also recently done something great in Australia with the series. Our production partner Endemol Shine Australia and broadcaster Nine Network have stripped the show over the course of nine weeks, featuring 10 couples over 29 episodes. And it has been a massive success, winning its slots and being the talk of the continent. You can’t go to a gym, get on a bus or be in a supermarket without hearing people talk about the show. This is something that makes us really proud at Red Arrow; we’re very happy about it.

WS: Tell us about the format The Old People’s Home for Four Year Olds (working title).

PABST: The Old People’s Home for Four Year Olds is an idea that came from our company CPL Productions in London.

Murray Boland and Danielle Lux [the company’s creative director and managing director, respectively] found an experiment that has been going on in the U.S., where you connect kids with elderly people to see if there is an upside for both of them. The children and the elderly people spend time with each other in retirement homes, and the physical and emotional well-being of the elderly people seems to improve dramatically. We test the old people’s physical and psychological state at the beginning, and then we see how they

WS: What other unscripted shows do you have in your slate?

PABST: Look Me in the Eye is an idea that also comes from CPL Productions. We launched it late last year, and it is currently in production in a number of territories, including Germany, France and Australia. It is also a kind of social experiment, based on the premise that if two people who have become estranged spend two minutes looking into each other’s eyes without speaking, it can help them reconcile their relationship where all other efforts have failed.

It is a surprisingly emotional and powerful show, which I think will naturally travel to many territories.

Kiss Bang Love—our loud, noisy, edgy dating format— continues to do really well. We are now in 11 territories with

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The drama Bosch, part of Red Arrow International’s scripted slate, was greenlit for a fourth season

by Amazon.

that one, which is good. We have a fantastic show on ProSieben, Global Gladiators, an epic reality format. We have a great show from Ami Glam, a well-respected format creator whose Studio Glam U.S. operation has now partnered with our Red Arrow family. He has The Decision, which did well in Israel recently. It takes people on a 48-hour journey to help them make a life-changing decision. Our formats lineup is particularly strong at the moment, and the response from the market has been very positive.

WS: And it sounds like you have something for every budget.

A lot of these shows are scalable, right?

PABST: Yes, it’s important to offer a breadth of scale. I think my colleagues have put together a fantastic slate this time, and our production companies continue to be enormously creative.

WS: What shows do you have on the scripted side?

PABST: On the scripted side, Cleverman is returning with season two, which is great given how well it did last year for SundanceTV [in the U.S.] and ABC in Australia. I’m happy about that, because there’s so much drama out there, and you only make a difference when your series is returning, the audience is loyal and is waiting for more. Also, funnily, the Germans are getting better at doing shows that travel and are prime for remaking. We have a show called Einstein that aired on Sat.1 and got an immediate recommission.

It’s a crime procedural with a good portion of humor in it.

We are discussing various remake offers at the moment,

alongside a number of international sales. It would be great if it became as successful as our other German drama format The Last Cop, which was born in Germany and has now been remade in more than five territories, including a recent theatrical release in Japan. And not to forget Bosch.

We launched season three at MIPTV, with season four greenlit. It’s great to see a show just get stronger and stronger with each season.

Scripted takes a little bit more time. For impatient people like me, it’s not easy, but we have a lot of exciting stuff coming along, and at the next market, we already have the next big thing.

WS: Factual is also now an important part of your catalog and offering, correct?

PABST: Yes, factual has always been with us, but maybe not in the volume that we have now. Over the last 12 months, we have built a robust slate that fulfills the accessprime needs of many of our clients, with shows such as Weather or Not and Motive to Murder. We also have a number of prime-time solutions, with shows like The Greatest Crimes of All Time for kabel eins in Germany and Empire Builders, a fantastic PBS show. I’m very happy that our nonscripted team and my head of sales and factual expert, Bo Stehmeier, have put together such a strong slate.

The combination of keeping our slate broad with a good mix between English and European content, working with quality indies, and the strength of our Red Arrow group of production companies means I am in a good mood!

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Endemol Shine’s Your Face Sounds Almost Familiar.

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Kristin Brzoznowski surveys leading distributors about the kinds of formats that are in high demand across Western and Eastern Europe. hile the U.K. has long represented the crown jewel for format sales in Europe, distributors are finding some valuable gems elsewhere in the region. The proliferation of niche channels has created new opportunities for localized content in a number of countries in Western Europe. And across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), budgets are getting better and buyers are beginning to evaluate remakes for slots outside of prime time.

On both sides of the continent, though, mega formats continue to reign supreme. Channel surfing in any major European market will no doubt bring to the screen one (or all) of the uber-successful, long-running talent competitions.

Among them, Dancing with the Stars has seen resounding success across the whole of Europe, having been licensed everywhere from Poland, Croatia and Bulgaria to Germany, Italy and France.

“Family-entertainment shows like Dancing with the Stars are high on broadcasters’ wish lists,” says Suzanne Kendrick, the head of global format sales at BBC Worldwide.

She believes that audiences in Europe are currently looking for “feel-good, warm entertainment,” and says that a format like You’re

W

Back in the Room, which is a game show with a comedic twist that families can watch together, is particularly appealing. Kendrick also has high hopes for the recently launched, music-infused trio of Let It Shine, Let’s Sing and Dance and Pitch Battle in the region.

Another family-friendly proposition performing well for BBC Worldwide is The Great Bake Off, a factual-entertainment format positioned for weekday prime time. “There are a lot of opportunities for those kinds of fact-ent shows at the moment across Europe,” says Kendrick. “Bake Off is now in 25 countries, everywhere from the Nordics to Romania.”

There’s also a spin-off, Bake Off: Crème de la Crème, which recently launched in France as Bake Off: The Professionals.

THAT’S A FACT “Western Europe has a real appetite for factual entertainment, and I’m seeing this opening up more and more in CEE as well,” says Lucy Roberts, the sales manager for EMEA North at all3media International. “New territories are still picking up Gogglebox—most recently, CTC in Russia—and another local version will soon be announced. We recently launched 10 Years Younger on Markíza in Slovakia. This has subsequently been licensed by TV Nova in the

Czech Republic, and I will soon be able to announce another new format with Nova as well.”

In CEE, all3media International has found “a huge appetite” for constructed reality, including Day and Night. “This format, which is a juggernaut in its home territory of Germany, is going from strength to strength in Ukraine on Novy and in Hungary on RTL, which has commissioned over 1,400 episodes so far.”

Natalie Bushaeva, a sales executive for formats in CEE at Endemol Shine International, says that so-called “super brands”—the likes of Big Brother, MasterChef, The Biggest Loser, Your Face Sounds Familiar and Deal or No Deal—continue to deliver in the region. “The spinoffs of these titles work really well too,” she adds, highlighting sales for MasterChef Junior in Poland and Ukraine, Your Face Sounds Familiar Kids in Hungary, and VIP Brother and Big Brother All Stars in Bulgaria.

“In Central and Eastern Europe, entertainment is still one of the most popular genres, and big, shiny, prime-time shows work extremely well across the region,” Bushaeva says. “Your Face Sounds Familiar continues to be a flagship show for us; it’s sold to 39 markets overall and 16 are in CEE. Romania was one of the first countries to

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pick up the show following its success in Spain, and we just finished an 11th season there.”

There’s also The Brain, which started as a one-off special in Germany and has now been commissioned as a series in Russia, Poland, Serbia and Croatia.

HERE TO ENTERTAIN “Another entertainment format we see potential in the region for is I Can See Your Voice, which is a Korean show that we successfully adapted in Bulgaria and have deals in the pipeline for in other CEE markets,” notes Bushaeva.

The Bulgarian treatment of I Can See Your Voice has left CJ E&M, which is behind the music-based series, enthused that Korean formats can, indeed, work in this part of the world.

“There is always an appetite for studio entertainment formats like game shows or music competition shows,” says Albert Park, the company’s sales manager, citing a growing number of inquiries for studio-based prime-time series.

“Also, given the success of our original travel reality format Grandpas Over Flowers as Better Late Than Never in the U.S., this format has been traveling well across Europe.

We are very excited about its commissions in Italy and Turkey.”

In Western Europe, CJ E&M has been co-developing shows with

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CJ E&M, which is behind the Korean singing show I Can See Your Voice, is looking to ramp up its format business outside of Asia. partners in a bid to create IP that can be exploited across the European market.

“We have noticed increasing demand for Korean scripts for local adaptation in Central Europe,” Park says. “We are seeing the growing importance of Eastern Europe, as the market is opening up for foreign content.”

Mediaset Distribution has done solid business in Europe with selling some of its big Italian dramas, including A Matter of Respect, as scripted formats. This has mainly been in Western Europe, according to Manuela Caputi, the company’s head of international sales, since budgets can be a significant factor when it comes to scripted remakes.

push now in CEE for both its scripted series such as Tuscan Passion and Antimafia Squad as well as its new slate of entertainment formats.

“In the last year, a lot of buyers in Central and Eastern European countries have started to ask for script rights for our drama series,” notes Şenay Taş, sales director for CEE at Global Agency.

She says that the company’s sales for its finished dramas have always

been strong in this region, but more opportunities are presenting themselves for local adaptations nowadays, even for comedy. “It’s actually very hard to sell finished Turkish comedies, but if [buyers] like the idea of a show, they have their own writers adapt it.”

Global Agency has also been making moves in Europe with its catalog of unscripted formats, including the game show Lucky Room, the cooking series My Wife

Rules and the singing talent competition Bring Your Fame Back.

Taş cites a number of option deals in Western Europe. “There are a lot more players there—a lot more broadcasters, more producers, more production companies.

Compared to Central and Eastern Europe, [buyers in Western Europe] are optioning more and are looking into all different kinds of shows. Whereas in Central and Eastern Europe, they are looking more at cost-effective formats, the daily stripped ones.”

She says that there are fewer channels in CEE on the whole— and also fewer that can afford to produce formats locally. “When we sell a format there, usually it’s a direct license; we license it directly to the channel and they, in turn, find the production company to work with. Whereas in Western Europe, it can go to a production company and they then pitch it to broadcasters. The markets work quite differently in that sense.”

Taş does not, however, see too many differences in the format genres that are in demand in these two territories. “What sells well in Western Europe usually sells well in Eastern—and vice versa,” she says. “The difference is

SCRIPTING SUCCESS “We sold one of our scripted formats to TF1 in France, and it was definitely very costly to produce, in order to maintain the look, feel and quality of the program,” she says. “It is true that the Western territories that have higher budgets can guarantee the best outcome for certain types of formats.

This is especially important nowadays because viewers are used to seeing very beautifully produced scripted series coming from all over the world. The quality standard has gotten very high!”

Caputi says that Mediaset Distribution is making a concerted

BBC Worldwide has sold Dancing with the Stars, which originated in the U.K. as Strictly Come Dancing, into a slew of European markets.

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that in Western Europe they take more risks; buyers are open to a wider variety of genres. That’s also because they are consuming TV in a different way. There are more niche channels, so it’s a broader audience. Western Europe can also dare to look into big factual reality whereas Eastern Europe goes for cooking shows, game shows and ones that are more cost effective.”

She mentions that prime time in Central and Eastern Europe is dominated by the format behemoths that come with solid track records. “Central and Eastern European buyers are a bit scared of paper formats; this is not the case in Western Europe—if they really believe in an idea, they would go for a paper format.

They have the know-how and the money, and they take more risks.”

RISKY BUSINESS all3media’s Roberts echoes that sentiment. “The main difference I see between Western and Eastern Europe is simply in who will go for a format first. Western Europe will tend to pick up a new format quickly; Eastern Europe will spot the really good formats and watch their progress and come to the

Gogglebox has been a hit on Channel 4 in the U.K., and all3media International has licensed the format across Europe as well. commissioning decision once there is a little more of an international track record.”

But, once a show has proven to work successfully in one CEE country, others in the region come on board quite quickly.

“These countries see each other as a very good reference—if a show is successful in Serbia, for example, they are pretty sure it will be successful in Croatia and so on,” says Taş.

Not too long ago, many countries in Central and Eastern

Global Agency has landed a deal in Romania on its reality format I Wanna Marry You.

Europe were bogged down by economic recession, leaving program buyers in the region with a tight grip on their checkbooks.

However, the television market has been steadily rebounding.

Broadcasters in CEE are now beginning to look at a wider range of genres for varied slots.

“Until recently, I would have said that Central and Eastern Europe was still really just focused on big prime-time shows and not very much else, while in Western Europe there was much more opportunity for factual entertainment and daily access slots,” says BBC Worldwide’s Kendrick. “We have seen that change in the last couple of years.

There is more opportunity for factual entertainment in Central and Eastern Europe than there used to be. Bake Off is traveling across the region now. We’ve had some success with Honey We’re Killing the Kids—we’ve done that in Ukraine and Poland—and a second season of Junior Doctors is on TVP2 [in Poland].

“We’re seeing some good opportunities for scripted too,” Kendrick continues. “We just closed a deal on Mistresses with Markíza in Slovakia. We recently had a Czech version of Life on Mars on ČT1, and it won its slot.

There is more opportunity than there used to be in Central and Eastern Europe across the entire genre set.”

BBC Worldwide is in business with broadcasters all across

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Europe, but Kendrick points to Poland as being something of a hotspot at the moment. “They’ve got a great TV market there, with more linear and nonlinear players that are creating new opportunities across the catalog, especially in light entertainment and factual entertainment,” she says. “That potentially will help drive the rest of the region. The Czech Republic and Slovakia are both doing really great things in scripted and factual. Russia is coming back into the game a little bit more, especially for scripted and light entertainment.”

GLOBETROTTING Endemol Shine’s Bushaeva says that Greece is becoming quite an active market for format sales.

“It’s interesting to see the mix of new and old shows on Greek television and the movement of the formats from channel to channel.

Deal or No Deal originally aired on Antenna, and then last year it was commissioned by Alpha and drew in excellent numbers. Meanwhile, MasterChef initially aired on Mega and recently relaunched on Star.”

Global Agency’s Taş is also keeping an eye on the Greek TV market. “Greece has opened up a lot for us; that’s big because previously we were not able to sell formats there really,” she says. “We are also becoming very successful in the Balkans with our formats.

Those are quite small territories

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Mediaset Distribution has found success in Europe selling scripts of shows from its drama catalog, which includes Antimafia Squad, and is now exploring unscripted formats. and there are not too many channels, so it’s tough to get in and have a format produced there.

“In Western Europe, we believe that we will break through to both Spain and Italy,” Taş adds. “We have done sales there before for formats, but now it looks like we’ll be able to sell a bit more; I see a big potential there.”

Poland is listed by all3media’s Roberts as a country to watch. “We have established brands continuing to work well there—Gogglebox, Kitchen Nightmares, Families at the Crossroads, Cases of Doubt.

Many broadcasters there are buying formats for secondary channels, and I’ve even had several discussions recently about formats for online channels.”

CHANNELING SALES Roberts says that across CEE, formats are still primarily being commissioned by the main freeto-air networks. “I am having more conversations now with broadcasters who are saying that they are going to be looking for formats for their secondary channels in the near future though,” she adds.

Roberts is also feeling optimistic about licensing formats into different dayparts. “More slots are opening up in CEE outside of those usual weekend prime-time slots reserved for the big shiny-floor formats,” she says.

“There is much more [demand] for access-prime-time shows to

strip across the week, plus factual entertainment is becoming more and more of a need. One area I’m very excited about is scripted.

We’re enjoying a lot of success at the moment with our South Pacific Pictures catalog, with two local adaptations of our light, romantic drama Step Dave.” One is a version for the CIS produced by the Ukrainian production company FILM.UA, and TV2 in Hungary will be airing a Hungarian version.

Nevertheless, prime time remains the home for the lion’s share of format commissioning in this part of the world. But if what has been working well in those slots is still working well, where are the opportunities to roll out new entertainment shows?

“Slot availability can be a challenge,” says BBC Worldwide’s Kendrick. “Everybody wants big prime-time weekend shows, but they’ve also got a lot of juggernauts in those slots—one of those is Dancing with the Stars. It does mean that sometimes if you’ve got great new content, you might have to wait for a slot to open up.

Some broadcasters are experimenting with trying more costeffective entertainment shows mid-week.”

Another challenge comes down to costs. “In Central and Eastern Europe, budgets are still something that’s predominant in how they approach shows,” Kendrick says. “The commercial broadcasters are looking for formats that

have the opportunity for some kind of branded commercialization around the show. They need to find those revenues to put toward the production budgets.”

LEARNING TO SHARE Given CEE buyers’ predilection for buzzy prime-time shows, and the costs that come with them, shared production hubs are one of the ways that producers in the region are working around budget concerns. “In the past, we have created hubs for Wipeout, Fear Factor and The Money Drop, and we’ve also facilitated very successful pan-Balkan versions of Big Brother and The Brain,” says Endemol Shine’s Bushaeva. “We are considering several locations for The Wall at the moment.”

The issue of budgets is one of the reasons that Mediaset Distribution is betting on its new slate of unscripted formats to drum up interest with CEE buyers at NATPE Budapest. “In our catalog, we have some less costly formats that are still very original ideas, like The Phone Secrets,” says Caputi. “The show can be done with a very low budget and the outcome can still be brilliant. Of course, when you talk about prime time you need so many elements that do raise the cost of the production, but if you can also look at other slots or work with a unique idea, magic can be done even with not such a big budget.”

Global Agency’s Taş says that while budgets are always a

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challenge, the company is diligent about working with its partners in the region to make format deals feasible for both sides. “We do our best to come to a license fee that they feel is OK for them because they then have to produce the show, which costs a lot.

“I see the biggest challenge as making them believe in an idea and take the risk rather than the license fees that are being discussed,” she says. “It’s rare that a sale would be dropped because a client feels that the formatlicense fee is too high. For them, the risk of licensing something that might not work is a bit scary.”

CJ E&M’s Park agrees that the majority of format buyers in Europe remain risk-averse, suggesting that “it usually requires patience as well as an impressive track record” to crack a market. The company is, nonetheless, bullish about making further inroads in the region.

“Even though the European market, in general, is saturated with existing and new formats from around the world, I still believe Europe is a pivotal market to enter into, especially for players like us who were latecomers to the format industry,” says Park.

“There are so many opportunities to work with various partners, and the sheer number of distributors, production companies, networks, platforms and diversity of ethnic groups make the European market very attractive.”

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IN THE NEWS

Jeremy Fox

By Anna Carugati

Howard Stringer

Atrium TV, a “commissioning club” set up to create premium drama content for regional OTT services and telcos, was conceived by Jeremy Fox, the CEO of DRG; Sir Howard Stringer, former chairman and CEO of Sony Corporation and former president of CBS; and Jakob Mejlhede Andersen, the executive VP and head of programming and content development at MTG. Atrium TV’s goal is to help platforms access high-end content with budgets in the $5-million-per-hour range that will drive subscriptions. Drawing on their unique experiences and perspectives of the media business, Stringer and Fox, who have known each other for years, discuss how Atrium TV is set up and the first three projects it will roll out.

WS: Tell us about Atrium TV. How did it come about?

FOX: It started life in an office in the mid-winter in Stockholm, when we were talking to the regional OTT player Viaplay about its issue of how to get hold of good content. You can buy from the studios, you can create local stuff, but how do you get those big-ticket items? And I basically drew a map of the world and said, Well, what about if we find all the little regional Viaplays around the world, put them together, call it a commissioning club, and then we’ll all commission stuff together?

And that was how it began.

WS: Sir Howard, your involvement came at what point?

STRINGER: We’ve known each other a long time, and he came to me and said, Look, I’ve got this club, I’ve got this

different way of delivering content and a different way of accessing it for regional players—would you like to be involved? And I said, Well, I’m going to go backward in time because I’m more interested in being involved in content.

I’ve done enough management for one lifetime! So he hit me at exactly the right time. I said yes even though I didn’t really know what he was talking about, because he does exude confidence as the ultimate salesman! [Laughs] And I thought, Well, why not? I’ll go back to the future. And that’s what we’re doing.

WS: Are these regional OTT services feeling the pressure from Netflix and Amazon or just because of the generally crowded environment?

FOX: Well, they’re new to the business. They have the pipe to deliver [content], they’ve learned their lessons from other people, but they’ve never been in the drama business before. The first thing they would normally do is be overwhelmed by a Hollywood studio coming in—not Sony, of course, but other Hollywood studios—saying, Take all our stuff, take all our stuff! And the OTTs are saying, Well, we want just the big-ticket items. So we can tailor [content] for them. Some of these organizations, for example, are just doing sport now, and sport is easy to market; you take a soccer match, and you put it on and you know the audience you’re going to get and you know people will pay for it.

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Marketing drama is different, so we think we can help them in that way, too.

WS: How will the club work—someone brings you a project and then how do you approach the club members?

FOX: We noodle amongst ourselves about what’s a good project. He sends me a book, I send him a book; I send him a script, he sends me a script. Atrium is a very lean and mean operation. It’s the two of us, and we’ve just hired Quinn Taylor in L.A., who’s come from NBC [where he headed up long-form programming]. That’s the team. So we can very quickly make decisions on properties; there’s no greenlight committee.

Should we do this one? Yes. Who should we get to write it?

So I rely on Howard for two things: one, the creative ideas, and two, who we should partner with. Because he knows that Hollywood community much better than I do.

WS: Club members will broadcast the dramas in their countries, and then DRG retains the rights to sell the projects into other markets?

FOX: Let’s go right from the beginning: we will buy the book, we will fund the script, we will put the package together. So by the time we get to the OTT or telco, they’re not doing development work. We’re saying, This is what [the project] looks like, so they know exactly what they’re buying. We negotiate a price and they can do one of two things: they can buy it for their service in their region for a period of time, or they can buy all the rights in the region and either keep it exclusively if they want to, or sell it on to their own pay- or free-TV services, which is what Viaplay will do. And the second thing they can do is they can invest in the property as well. Because we’re not selling the entire world, like Netflix and Amazon, there are all these other territories left to sell, which is where we think we’ll make a profit, and that’s the business that DRG will do.

the single biggest success we had that year. It drove the network forward and got us out of third place, which is where we had been for quite a long time. The business is full of that; just when you think you’ve got it all worked out, you’ve got to turn around and swiftly change tactics and trends. And that’s what we hopefully will do. Can we do it better than somebody else? Who knows, but we’re sure going to give it a shot. And [Jeremy Fox] has another advantage; he has a financial advantage.

FOX: The financial advantage is the fact that we can do everything ourselves until the point that we bring everyone else in.

So there’s no slowing down of the process. We’ve been funded for three years to get this thing off the ground in the development sense, and then when we take it out to our partners, the partners just have to say yes or no. If they say no, we don’t make it. So people will cherry-pick the things that work for them. And the other great thing we can do as a club is share the data because no one knows who is watching stuff on these streaming services; they do know internally, but they’re not sharing that data. We’re going to share [ours]. We’re going to find out which type of program seems to work. Are we in the right demo? What is working? Is it returning series? Is it specials? Is it big events? We’ll find out that information, and we’ll learn from being in partnership with other people.

STRINGER: We’re going to have a different relationship with the producers; this is a club for the right reasons—it’s a collaboration in which we are more open to sharing the process with others, as opposed to being dictatorial.

FOX: Because we’re selling to multiple territories, there actually will be an end game, and there will be something to share with the producer. And ultimately, the producer will end up owning his copyright, and that’s important; he’s got something to put on his shelf, where he says, That’s my library for the future. I’m not work-for-hire.

WS: Do you already have projects you can announce?

FOX: Yes, we’ve got three fully developed. The first one is Saigon, [based on] a book by a British author, Anthony Grey.

Anthony is famous for being a prisoner of the Chinese in what was then Peking. He was a Reuters correspondent and wrote this fantastic book that tells the story of 50 years of Vietnam. It’s not a story about the war; it’s a story about how we got from French colonial Vietnam to the last helicopter off the roof [in Saigon]. The second project is The Eagle Has Landed. In 2019 it’ll be 50 years from when men landed on the moon. We’ve hired Stephen Kronish, who wrote 24 and The Kennedys, and he’s [working on] a great plot line because there are some very interesting characters behind the scenes. The third project we’ve got is Fandorin, and it’s based on a series of books by a Russian author called Boris Akunin.

WS: Has the proliferation of channels changed the nature of the content you want to produce and that viewers want to see?

STRINGER: The amazing thing about content is that trends change, and you’ve got to move fast and anticipate a trend.

At some point, superhero movies will run out of gas—they’re starting to—and you’ll have to find something else. The biggest success I had when I became president of CBS was a movie [based on] a book. It came to us—and it was a Western— as a miniseries at exactly the time when miniseries had gone out of fashion. Everybody said, No more miniseries, certainly no Westerns, and so up comes Lonesome Dove, and it was probably 6/17 WORLD SCREEN 47

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, the new drama The Eagle Has Landed is being planned for 2019.

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SPOTLIGHT

be watching it on their iPads, you’re playing along on your mobile phone in real-time. It’s a good, solid, fun game show that uses the most amazing technology. It’s CGI like you’ve never seen before on a television show. Now, I know people have said that before, maybe even I’ve said that before, but this time, it’s real; it doesn’t look like anything you’ve seen before, not on a television screen, not in a game show, not in an entertainment show. The technology and the application that goes along with it is really the future in many ways—I suppose that’s why our partner’s called The Future Group! [Laughs] A show that came relatively quickly to fruition is The Next TV Chef. This is from Blue Circle in Holland, working alongside RTL Nederland. It’s a talent show looking for the next TV chef. Are you the next Jamie Oliver? Are you the next Nigella [Lawson]? The basis for [the idea] is that when we make Idols, unlike some shows, it’s not just about the voice, it’s not just about singing, it’s everything that goes along with singing. They need charisma, they need their own style, they need to be ambitious, they need personality; they need everything, right? If you think about a great TV chef, they need the same things. It’s not about cooking; it’s whether you are charismatic in the studio, whether you can talk to the camera and cook at the same time. It’s whether you’re ambitious enough to drive through that career, and whether you’ve got the

By Anna Carugati

FremantleMedia has given the world of television three of the most successful global hit shows: Idols, Got Talent and The X Factor. Rob Clark, the company’s director of global entertainment, continues to mine the creative minds in FremantleMedia’s network of production companies and among third-party producers for innovative concepts.

He also oversees the worldwide rollout of formats. In an increasingly crowded and competitive market, Clark, whose extensive production experience is matched by his keen wit, believes successful shows nowadays must incorporate innovation and have a feel-good effect.

He is also confident that the age of big hit formats is far from over and outlines the fundamental qualities a show must have to become an international success.

WS: Tell us about the new shows on your slate.

CLARK: We’re very excited by several new projects that we’ve been working on, some that came to fruition relatively quickly and one that took a number of years, and when you see it, you’ll understand why. It really is an amazing example of a television company working with a technology company that’s got great skill and ambition. Between Fremantle and The Future Group, we’ve come up with Lost in Time. We’re calling it the future of family entertainment. It’s a complete screen-agers television format. You can watch it on any screen, so I’d be watching it on the television, the kids would

skills—both in a presenting way and in a cooking way—to actually do it. This [show] melds those two together. We’ve had lots of interest in that. The food space is quite crowded, but this is something different. It’s bringing much more entertainment and our brand of talent—that’s what we’re good at, and I think people are recognizing that.

From Australia, we’ve got The Chefs’ Line. It’s from Eureka, which is a company that Fremantle has invested in. The Chefs’ Line is a format that is really clever. It uses the hierarchy of the chefs’ line within a restaurant as the vehicle that drives the game show over the week. It’s got a fantastic tone, a competitive nature and digs really deep into rich, cultural food. We’re distributing that as tape and as a format, and it’s doing very well.

WS: You mentioned innovation and a feel-good factor. Are those two themes that you see in your formats?

CLARK: When you live in a world that is uncertain, one of the things that television can give you is a feel-good effect. So our formats, to be honest, nearly always have been feel-good. If you look at Idols, Got Talent or The X Factor or any of the game shows, they are about feel-good television. My belief is that television is one of the few vehicles that can bring a nation together and a family together of every generation. So yes, I

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really do believe that feel-good is a theme, but I don’t think it’s a new theme. As long as I’m here doing this, it will always be quite a prevalent theme, because it’s something that really drives me. It’s why I came into big, broad entertainment, and I didn’t go off and become some niche producer that’s driven by whatever that niche is. I’m driven by wanting to be broad and wanting to entertain lots of people rather than small groups.

So in that sense, yes, feel-good is important.

In the technology aspect, television has to, again, reflect what’s happening in the world. The technological advances of the last ten years have been immense. I think sometimes television drags its feet on that and doesn’t embrace it quickly enough. That’s partly because it’s expensive, and partly because sometimes it’s slow to adapt into a television format. But increasingly, it’s rare that we would produce an entertainment show now that didn’t have some play-along app. When you talk about technology, it’s something that speaks to a younger generation. The world has changed, and as television producers, we have to accept it’s changed, because if we don’t, we will never speak to that generation. We will lose them the same way that radio lost a generation until it adapted and learned how to speak to that generation again.

WS: When you hear a show idea, is there some single element that makes you think, This could be a global hit, or are there many factors involved?

CLARK: There are so many factors involved. I think one of the big things in making television is you need a bit of luck, and often it’s the bit of luck that makes the television show a big success. But there are some fundamentals that you need to look out for. If you’re talking about a global hit, it needs to be transferrable; it needs to be something that isn’t culturally specific. It needs to work in [several countries]. The budget needs to be big, and it needs to be small, and it needs to be able to be scalable—that’s one thing that’s really important.

And it needs to be returnable. You get people who spend years working on a show that’s fantastic, but once it’s gone out, it can never come back. For a company like Fremantle, that doesn’t make sense. I’m not saying you should never do shows like that, because sometimes they’re great to watch. But when you’re looking for big global hits, they have to be able to return.

So [a global hit] has to be transferrable, scalable, returnable, and the thing that’s really important now in a multichannel world is that a show has to be promotable.

It has to be instantly recognizable on your EPG when you’re flicking through it. That wasn’t a big issue when I first started [in the business], but now it’s really important.

So, if you’ve got all four of those, then you’ve got a chance.

Then you want a show that is based on an idea that either inspires you or makes you laugh—it has to entertain you. And if it doesn’t, then it’s never going to work. You’ve got to be passionate about it. A show like Idols or The Voice, every big show that there’s ever been, was driven by the passion of every producer that ever made it. It can be a good

idea, but if it doesn’t inspire that guy who’s sitting in the office six months before it’s going on air, it’s not going to work. It has to have that special something, and that’s what’s so difficult to identify and why we make hundreds of shows that never go anywhere, but then one all of a sudden is a hit. People say, Oh, well the age of the transferrable big rollouts has gone—that’s rubbish. That is not the case; there will be many more to come. But they’re probably not going to come like buses like they did in the early part of the 2000s and the late 1990s, but they will come. There will be more new hits, and I’m sure we’ll have them.

WS: Any concern about OTT platforms getting into unscripted shows?

CLARK: OTT and SVOD services say they’re moving into unscripted, and you can see signs that they are. I think this is great news, it’s another customer; but for a company like Fremantle, our business model at present is rolling out around the territories, so we’re looking for this idea of not being culturally specific. You make the show in their language for that country with their contestants, with their stories—that’s what we do. With OTT at the moment, they’re wanting global shows, so there are two things that we need to look at: the business deal, which is a big issue— but not insurmountable, I’m sure—and then, what does a global show look like? What is that show that will work across many territories? We’re spending quite a lot of time on that, and as we know already, not every format we make is made to travel all over the world. And that’s not necessarily because it’s not a good show, it’s just that it doesn’t travel, for many reasons, sometimes budget. So I think it’s exciting. I don’t think OTTs and SVODs are a threat to the business as a whole. It’s a new market. It will require new skills and a new thought process to get there, but it’s going to be a big part of everybody’s future.

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The Next TV Chef, a new addition to the company’s slate, follows the search for the next big television food talent.

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FOCUS ON

audience to consider this as the standard, and if they think that they are as good or better, we invite them to come and challenge the original singers. With The Final Four, we have found a smart way to keep the auditions going throughout the season.

WS: Social experiments have been another hot genre. What makes Sex Tape stand out?

ARMOZA: We feel that there is a strong need for social experiments. Often on television viewers are seeing more of the same. Social experiments give you the ability to push the boundaries, to tell different stories—perhaps even edgier ones.

This is what led us to develop Sex Tape. Although it’s an edgy title, dealing with something that’s spicy, it still has a very strong human element. It’s very relatable because even though it deals with issues that are not always talked about, it shows that other people are experiencing the same things.

WS: Do you think the timing is right for a feel-good format like OVO to find an audience in the global marketplace?

ARMOZA: Within all the turmoil that’s happening in countries around the world, OVO gives people a space in which they can say what’s on their mind and in their heart and find people willing to listen. Conceptually, it gauges the mood of the country— what are people concerned about, what brings people together?

By spreading the OVO listening pods around the country, you can get those perspectives in a format that tells a very strong story.

From a broadcaster’s perspective, it gives them event TV that revolves around broad, thematic episodes and engages the whole country with the topics they care about such as love and relationships, food or kids. It’s a show that also has a lot of flexibility with its scheduling—you can do it once a week with a longer episode, daily with shorter episodes, in access prime time, prime time or even later in the evening.

By Kristin Brzoznowski

One of the formats that had MIPTV buzzing this year was The Final Four, a music competition from Armoza Formats that begins where most talent shows end: with the selection of the superstar finalists. The series, which quickly notched up deals in markets such as France and Norway, is emblematic of the company’s approach to keeping pace with what’s on trend in the fast-changing media industry—and then giving it a fresh twist. Avi Armoza, the founder and CEO of Armoza Formats, talks about delivering broadcasters the type of event TV that they need to attract audiences.

WS: The Final Four has taken a new approach to singing competitions. What was the genesis of that show?

ARMOZA: It came from the notion that singing is still the genre that is able to create the most drama, stir up the most emotions and attract the most attention. The existing shows [in this genre] have been around anywhere from 8 years to 15 or 20 years, and they are losing steam. This means that while it seems like a saturated market, there is a real need for new storytelling in music competitions.

We had done some research into what the audiences were enjoying in singing competitions, and we found out that they like the live auditions; they love to hear the stories and the fresh voices.

Also, the linear structure of reality TV shows is, again, losing steam. Most shows start with 30, 40, 50 contestants, and within this, there are people who really don’t qualify to be on the show, but they are needed for the game. We tried to address this with The Final Four by starting our show where all other shows are ending. Our judges select four [singers] who have the star quality to be in the final of any other singing show. Then we ask the

WS: What do you consider to be the biggest issues facing the format industry today, and how is Armoza Formats ready to address these?

ARMOZA: The biggest challenge to our business lies within the drastic changes in consumers’ viewing habits. These new habits have brought about challenges for the industry to contend with, but we look at these as opportunities that will help us to grow our business. For example, recently the international online platforms—including Netflix, Amazon and YouTube Red—have been moving toward non-scripted [content]. This opens up a new world for non-scripted formats and localized adaptations that didn’t exist before and is definitely a key influencer in the way we view our business. Also, the introduction of new technologies such as AR and VR to the world of content consumption opens up a wide range of possibilities. We have set up a collaboration with FILM.UA Group, one of the largest Eastern European media groups in advanced technology for virtual and augmented reality, to explore how we can bring these technologies to life for the industry.

Having said that, traditional broadcasters are still the main providers of watchable content, and therefore we continue to focus on addressing the key challenges that they currently face, such as cord-cutting and binge-watching, and to work closely with them to find new ways of bringing viewers to their screens.

These issues demand increasingly compelling content and musthave experiences to engage audiences. One way of doing this is through event TV programming, such as with our live prime-time show that engages the nation, The People’s Choice, or with shows in which each moment is unmissable like The Final Four.

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MAY /JUNE 2017

LICENSING EXPO & NATPE BUDAPEST EDITION

L&M Trends / eOne Family’s Olivier Dumont

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4 TV KIDS

CONTENTS

Character Connections

FEATURE 8 BUZZY BRANDS An investigation into L&M trends and strategies in today’s competitive marketplace.

The play-filled days of summer break will all too quickly give way to that magical (and expensive!) time of year when kids head back to school— adorned with new backpacks, pencil boxes, stationery and the like that proudly display characters from their favorite TV shows and movies.

Ricardo Seguin Guise Publisher Anna Carugati Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Executive Editor Joanna Padovano Tong Managing Editor Sara Alessi Associate Editor Victor L. Cuevas Production & Design Director Phyllis Q. Busell Art Director Simon Weaver Online Director Dana Mattison Senior Sales & Marketing Manager Nathalia Lopez Sales & Marketing Assistant Andrea Moreno Business Affairs Manager

Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development TV Kids © 2017 WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, #1207 New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.tvkids.ws

The lines for school buses and tables in lunchrooms are filled with kids donning T-shirts and other gear with the faces of animated pals they watch on television and want to show their fandom for. Often, children make connections with their classmates this way: “Hey, you have a Ben 10 lunchbox too!”

The back-to-school category is, indeed, one of the most important in the licensing and merchandising (L&M) arena.

Apparel also ranks high on the must-have list when building a successful L&M program around a property. Licensees and brand owners rarely understate the value of offering physical toys tied to TV properties as well. Companion apps, e-books and mobile games are all becoming increasingly important extensions for properties to consider, too. These digital developments add even more revenue potential for the brand’s licensor and give kids yet another way to engage with characters and stay immersed in the fantastical worlds they enjoy so much on-screen.

In this issue, we hear from rights owners about their strategies for navigating today’s L&M business and keeping kids connected with properties. TV Kids also speaks with Olivier Dumont, the managing director of Entertainment One (eOne) Family and eOne Licensing, about the company’s stable of successful brands and how they have been rolled out globally across multiple categories.

At the end of the day, the heart of the L&M business rests in these connections. Once a child becomes attached to a property, they look for ways to continue that relationship through multiple touchpoints—be it by physically playing with a plush toy, action figure, doll or video game, or simply by sporting a character on their pj’s as they head off for bedtime.

Most parents can easily recall the TV shows they went gaga over when they were little and begged their moms and dads to buy them toys and T-shirts of. Some may have even kept a few of those pieces for nostalgia’s sake, as the attachments formed in childhood with certain characters and series can stick with you. For content creators and brand owners, having a property that inspires this type of lasting connection is invaluable. —Kristin Brzoznowski

INTERVIEW

12 eOne Family’s Olivier Dumont The managing director of eOne Family and eOne Licensing discusses the company’s strategic approach for maximizing discoverability with its slate of brands and for creating multiple L&M touchpoints.

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“Throughout Licensing Expo, we hope to find new partnership opportunities and strengthen the bonds with existing partners.”

CJ E&M

—Dongsig Shin

Robot Trains / Rainbow Ruby / Pucca Courage and adventure are key elements of the animated series Robot Trains. Production is being managed

by CJ E&M and the company is “looking for more agents and licensees,” says Dongsig Shin, the head of the animation division. He adds that the action-adventure show aimed at kids between the ages of 4 and 7 will “attract fans who love trains and action, as this ‘pre-cool’ animation has dynamic characters who can shift from trains to robots!” Meanwhile, Ruby’s toys come alive in the magical world of Rainbow Village in the original animated series Rainbow Ruby, for which CJ E&M is handling licensing in Asia (excluding China) and Latin America. Shin explains: “CPLG is our agent for the remaining countries.” CJ E&M’s slate also features Pucca. “We’re going to reboot the brand,” he says. “CJ E&M is a fully integrated, broad-based entertainment company in Korea and a global rookie in the creation, production, distribution, licensing and marketing of quality animations,” adds Shin. “In order to be renowned as ‘the most influential animation partner from Asia,’ our division will maintain an ongoing commitment to expand and build the power of our brands’ recognition in the international marketplace through strong and creative production, distribution and licensing programs.”

Rainbow Ruby

Cyber Group Studios

“A lot of licensees are looking for preschool properties.”

—Alexandra Algard-Mikanowski

Zou / Zorro the Chronicles / Gigantosaurus The established animated properties Zou and Zorro the Chronicles are among the brands that are being promoted by Cyber Group Studios at Licensing Expo. The former, which is geared toward young viewers between the ages of 3 and 6, is an edutainment show that follows the daily adventures of a curious and lovable 5-year-old zebra and his extended family; the latter, meant for kids aged 6 to 12, is an action comedy series centered on a teenage Don Diego as he fights for justice alongside his twin sister against a variety of opponents. The company will also be presenting the brand-new animated property Gigantosaurus, which tells the story of four young dinosaurs living in a prehistoric world with the mysterious Gigantosaurus, the biggest, fiercest dinosaur ever seen. France Télévisions and Germany’s Super RTL are on board to air the book-based show, which has also been snapped up by Disney Junior to begin rolling out around the globe—excluding in India and Taiwan—in 2019. “I think for kids’ and preschool properties, the most important category of product is obviously toys, and [then] publishing,” says Alexandra AlgardMikanowski, who serves as the international licensing and marketing director at Cyber Group Studios. “After that, it’s some of the complementary categories.”

Zou

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Mondo TV Heidi, Bienvenida a Casa / YooHoo & Friends / Invention Story Based on the book penned by Johanna Spyri during the late 1800s, Heidi, Bienvenida a Casa sees the titular character move away from her rural home in order to have new adventures in the big city. Mondo TV is showcasing the live-action property, which incorporates comedic and musical elements, in Las Vegas. Another highlight from the company is YooHoo & Friends, an animated co-production from Mondo TV and Aurora World that centers on the inhabitants of a small but vibrant tropical island, where the fruit is starting to rot. “YooHoo & Friends is already a world-class brand that has been on the market for ten years and [is based on] a plush toy that has sold worldwide since 2007,” says Valentina La Macchia, Mondo TV’s director of consumer products.

“With this new 3D series and with the new plush line, there will be a real revival of the brand worldwide.”

There is also Invention Story, a new property for which Mondo TV is seeking master toy and publishing partners.

The animated show is about a freethinking and intelligent rabbit who travels to a low-tech community, where he invents a machine that can turn carrots into a fuel called Carrotsene. “Invention Story is appealing internationally because its genre, slapstick comedy, is of great [interest],” says La Macchia.

“One of our goals is the international development of Heidi, Bienvenida a Casa’s L&M program, starting with Latin America.”

—Valentina La Macchia

Heidi, Bienvenida a Casa

ZDF Enterprises Inui / Scream Street / King Laurin Fun, friendship, imagination and snow take center stage in Inui, an animated show that is part of ZDF Enterprises’ (ZDFE) kids’ content catalog. “Inui, a little Inuit girl, lives somewhere in the Arctic Circle,” says Peter Lang, the VP of ZDFE.junior. “This is a series about a child’s world, and its stories reflect a child’s imagination of the polar region and the sort of fun you might have there. The emphasis is on visual gags and, at the same time, the main characters have very distinct and warm personalities.” The company’s portfolio also includes Scream Street, a stop-motion animated comedy that Lang describes as “a fast-paced, stylish, comedy/horror extravaganza—based on the hit book series—following the adventures of Luke Watson, who turns into a werewolf when he gets angry.” The show takes place in a wacky, monster-filled neighborhood, where being a freak is considered perfectly normal. Then there is King Laurin, the first-ever feature film inspired by the famous legend of the eponymous dwarf king. “It is shot in the authentic Middle Age world of the beautiful mountains in South Tyrol, Italy,” says Lang. He adds: “We have a particular expertise in live action and thus are very proud of our German/Dutch co-pro Mister Twister, suitable for children aged 6-plus and family viewing.”

“ZDFE.junior is always looking for partners in the production, co-production, distribution and L&M of big brands, long-running series in animation and live action, for preschoolers and children aged 6-plus.”

—Peter Lang

Inui

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Studio 100’s Maya the Bee.

Ahead of Licensing Expo, Joanna Padovano Tong investigates L&M trends and strategies in today’s competitive marketplace. oy sales in the U.S. bumped up 5 percent last year, to $20.4 billion, according to The NPD Group. Among the growth drivers for the industry were collectibles—which was a top contributor— followed by outdoor and sports toys and the games/puzzles category. A number of brands helped strengthen the segment, with Pokémon being the number one growth property of 2016 in toys, coinciding with the release of the explosively popular Pokémon GO augmented-reality game that saw players wandering the streets trying to “catch ’em all.”

Yoohoo & Friends, The fact that Pokémon, which has been around for two distribuida por Mondo TV. decades, was the year’s leading growth property in toys is

T

representative of the ongoing trend that retailers oftentimes still prefer to stock their shelves with established brands.

“It’s very hard, sometimes, to launch new brands and original ideas, because [retailers] are looking for sustainable business with many well-known key brands,” says Hans Ulrich Stoef, who heads up m4e and Studio 100 Media. “But luckily enough, after Studio 100 bought the majority of m4e, we also have classic [properties] in our portfolio, like Maya the Bee or Vic the Viking, for example, which makes it a little easier because the products already have shelf space.” Newer key properties for licensing and merchandising (L&M) in the combined m4e/Studio 100 portfolio include Mia and me and Wissper, as well as the indevelopment The Beatrix Girls, which will be more of a focus next year.

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According to Alexandra Algard-Mikanowski, the international licensing and marketing director at Cyber Group Studios, retailers “want to take the least risk possible and to secure a level of turnover, so it’s very difficult to reach their expectations. And you need to have very good TV programming with good channels and come with a whole category of product in order to be successful.”

The company’s L&M highlights include such established brands as Zou and Zorro the Chronicles, as well as the upcoming Gigantosaurus, an animated show slated for broadcast on France Télévisions, Germany’s Super RTL and Disney Junior channels around the globe.

“Retailers are looking for brands and products that resonate with consumers both through brand recognition and also—more than ever, especially as it relates to kids—the message the brand delivers to its audience,” says Frederic Soulié, the executive VP of global distribution and consumer products at Saban Brands. “Power Rangers’ core messages of teamwork, diversity and fun are a great example of this, which has helped the brand stand the test of time and continue to be a staple among retailers for nearly 25 years.”

Mondo TV is taking advantage of retailers’ desire for known brands with its first live-action series, Heidi, Bienvenida a Casa, which was inspired by Johanna Spyri’s classic children’s novel from the late 1800s. “It’s going to be a long-term project based on a total of 180x45-minute episodes,” says Valentina La Macchia, the company’s director of consumer products.

“This is very important because we are able to secure a longlasting program based on the merchandising.” Mondo TV’s L&M slate also includes the animated properties YooHoo & Friends, Invention Story and Robot Trains, the latter of which is a collaboration with CJ E&M.

ANIME MANIA 4K Media, a subsidiary of Konami Digital Entertainment, has been enjoying success with the long-running Japanese property Yu-Gi-Oh!, for which it manages the licensing and marketing outside of Asia. According to Jennifer Coleman, the company’s VP of licensing and marketing, Yu-Gi-Oh! has been a hit in the L&M arena due to “the timeless appeal of anime and boys’ action/hero adventure.” 4K Media also represents the girl-skewing brand Rebecca Bonbon.

Another company with anime is Toei Animation, whose L&M catalog includes Sailor Moon, the Digimon franchise, One Piece and Dragon Ball. “These properties are well known by many anime fans and most of our properties were first broadcast in the late ’90s and early 2000s in the U.S.,” says Jennifer Yang, Toei’s senior licensing manager. “Kids who grew up watching this anime are now young adults, and they are the main target for Japanese anime in L&M nowadays.”

The Dragon Ball franchise celebrated its 30th anniversary last year in Japan. “Our Dragon Ball Z merchandising efforts are still very strong among teens and young adults after so many years, but we are hoping to gain more interest in children’s categories for Dragon Ball Super,” notes Lisa Yamatoya, Toei’s senior manager of film and merchandising.

There is also anime and manga specialist VIZ Media, which is owned by Shueisha and Shogakukan. At this year’s Licensing Expo, the company’s central focus is the older-skewing Death Note, with additional highlights including One-Punch Man, Naruto, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Bleach. “Our audience is what I like to consider the next generation of fanboys,” says Brad Woods, the chief marketing officer at VIZ Media. “You’ve got guys like myself, who grew up with the world of DC and Marvel and what have you—still very valid and amazing properties— but then you’ve got this whole new generation and this groundswell of kids that started out between 8 and 12 a few years back, who have grown up into the teen and young-adult space and are all about anime. And so anime has kind of taken over that next generation of fandom.”

PERFECT TIMING There is really no definitive answer as to when is the best time for companies to begin thinking about licensing and merchandising. Some like to start right away, while others wait until a brand has reached a certain level of maturity in the marketplace.

“It depends on the property,” says Cyber Group’s AlgardMikanowski. “When you have a good broadcasting [reach] with huge TV channels, it’s better to start directly—that’s the case with Gigantosaurus. And for some other properties, it would be best to wait a little bit because if you have [a smaller] channel, it is better to have some ratings on television before launching a licensing program.”

“Whenever we produce a new show, of course the content comes first,” says m4e and Studio 100’s Stoef. “The entertainment values of a concept come first. So we are not really in the arena of just producing a commercial for the toy only.”

Collectible coins are among the many products on offer for the 4K Mediarepped brand Yu-Gi-Oh!

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10 TV KIDS

Mondo TV handles the licensing rights for Robot Trains in a number of territories across Europe and the Middle East.

Soulié notes that Saban Brands approaches every property “with a 360-degree lens and a vision of both what the show and L&M possibilities can be.” The company is executing this strategy with the new animated Netflix series Cirque du Soleil Junior—Luna Petunia.

“We usually start thinking about licensing and merchandising right away because we are a production studio, so we are always involved in the co-production of the TV show,” adds Mondo TV’s La Macchia. “We don’t wait until the property has reached a certain level in the market because then it will be too late for us to develop a long-term licensing program. We always start at least a year and a half before the time to market, especially when we have to place the master toy deal. We know that the licensee needs the right time to develop the products.”

FIERCE COMPETITION As in any business, the ability to keep up with competitors in the L&M industry is crucial in order for a brand to stay alive. Survival of the fittest is a phrase that applies to more than just the natural world.

Regarding challenges that are currently facing the segment, 4K Media’s Coleman says, “Well, one of them starts with a D and ends with a Y. So there’s that factor. And then there’s still that retail consolidation.”

“I think the most important [challenge] is the number of properties already on the market and launched by big companies, like Disney for example,” says Cyber Group’s Algard-Mikanowski. “It’s always very difficult to compete with this kind of a big company. You need to spend a lot of money on marketing and [put in] a lot of effort with retailers.”

m4e and Studio 100’s Stoef agrees that it is very hard for independents to compete with the majors these days, although it does help raise the bar on quality. “Creativity does come from the one who is having to pick his pocket; that encourages us to come up with new content and deliver more creativity. The biggest challenge is, how can you produce a sustainable business when you have to invest millions and millions of euros into a new production?

And how can you make sure that you reach enough kids, and what can you do to convince retailers to put your product on shelves? It requires really big funds to do so. And not all companies are able to deliver that.”

Saban’s Soulié adds: “Innovation is key in an extremely competitive market, and retailers are evolving to speak to the current consumer, which means brands need to continue to innovate and evolve as well.”

Much like piracy is a major headache for the television, film and music industries, bootlegging is among the issues that L&M players continue to contend with. “We are facing a lot of bootleg items and/or ridiculously cheap parallel items imported unofficially to our territories,” says Toei’s Yang. “These affect a lot of our official products. I’m sure this is a problem for everybody in this industry.”

4K Media is trying to reduce the amount of unlicensed Yu-Gi-Oh! consumer goods on the market by launching an online shop that sells official branded merchandise. “We’re hopeful that with that happening, with our ability to provide this product for our customers, they won’t necessarily be making their own T-shirts and putting them up on [an online marketplace like] Redbubble,” says Coleman. “Obviously that’s going to benefit us because we’ll be getting the royalty payment, but it’s also going to hopefully strengthen

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[our licensees’] resolve in the brand and help show them that it still has legs and is still a money-maker.”

A challenge for VIZ Media is “weighing the appropriate size of the opportunity, and making sure that we’re working with our retailers to create clean programs,” says Woods. “Often you find our licensing and retail partners trying to create too big of a program, or create a bigger statement than it really merits or than the market will support. That, to me, is how you kill a trend. It’s one of these things where our content’s certainly on fire, but it’s still very niche in its appeal. And so I want to make sure that we’re meeting the customer demand, but also leaving those retailers with a clean shelf at the end of the day so that they come back and do it again.”

One way that 4K Media stays relevant in today’s extremely competitive L&M environment is with experiential offerings. “We’re trying to take more advantage of some experiential marketing to really touch and feel our consumers and help engage them in the brand,” says Coleman. “And we’re looking to expand that even more with some of the live events that we do.”

KEYS TO SUCCESS Over at Cyber Group, Algard-Mikanowski says the strategy is to use “a global approach” for some products, while it is better “to deal territory by territory,” with others. “As we are a licensor, it’s possible to mix between global and local.”

La Macchia notes that Mondo TV always aims to work on a long-term basis. “Long-term is a must nowadays to compete in the market. It’s very important to grant to the licensees at least 52x26-minutes of a TV show because a license agreement is usually based on a two-year-term period, so we cannot work with very short TV series. We have to be able to assure from the beginning that we will help our licensees to grow their business and together increase the awareness of the property in the market.”

For Saban, maintaining the “core brand DNA” in both series content and L&M is key.

“For example with Power Rangers, knowing its wide, global audience spanning kids to adults, we look to provide experiences that directly speak to them,” says Soulié.

As the world becomes more and more computerized, digital opportunities are increasingly important in the L&M arena.

“We are investing a lot to grow our digital business,” says Mondo TV’s La Macchia. “We are now working to develop a new application based on our characters. So we have big plans to grow the digital business here. And we do believe it’s really the main segment emerging so far.” m4e and Studio 100’s Stoef notes that digital is a good way

to test out new properties with small budgets on viral platforms. “You can pre-approve certain concepts via the internet, social media and AVOD platforms, and then spend money later on in a deeper way.”

“I think the opportunities lie in how you can disperse the brand appeal and the information in a more concise, bite-sized way,” says VIZ Media’s Woods. “Brands are coming out of the woodwork having been built on nothing but that. You look at the AwesomenessTVs of the world and a lot of the web-space influencers—these are people who built their entire awareness on 10-minute, 5-minute shorts. So for us, if we don’t stay abreast of that and shift our marketing in that direction, [we could] get lost and left behind pretty easily.”

Adapting to change has always been an essential business mantra, and as the way children consume content continues to evolve, it is one that companies should keep top of mind to stay ahead in the L&M game.

11

VIZ Media has seen L&M success with the anime/manga hit One-Punch Man.

Cyber Group Studios’ Zorro the Chronicles benefits from built-in brand recognition.

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That being said, what we have found is that the power of digital is growing tremendously. It is much harder to get a brand discovered solely on digital, but digital acts as a catch-up system, or a brand can be discovered purely on digital if you have a friend or someone else who draws your attention to it. Nowadays, if you’ve heard about, let’s say PJ Masks, through a parent or friend, you can get a taste of the brand very easily by going on a tablet or mobile phone.

The brand is, in essence, in everyone’s pocket. But you still need that spark [for discoverability], and this is why broadcast exposure is still very important for preschool brands.

TV KIDS: What are some of the lessons learned from the successful rollout of Peppa Pig that you’ve applied to other eOne Family brands?

DUMONT: What we learned on Peppa Pig is that the show becomes way more successful when you get a broadcaster to schedule a few episodes back-to-back—anywhere between three to four episodes is when we see the brand pick up very quickly in terms of desirability. When we open up a new market on Peppa Pig, it normally takes up to one year of exposure before the brand really takes off in licensing—before kids and parents start looking it up online or wanting the products.

We applied that formula somewhat on PJ Masks. The show is very aspirational, and as a result [the response] was way more immediate. We saw demand grow almost instantly after the show came out on Disney Junior in the U.S. It went on air in September 2015, and by October 2015, for Halloween, there were already lots of parents making

OLIVIER DUMONT

ENTERTAINMENT ONE FAMILY

By Kristin Brzoznowski

The adventures of a cheeky little piggy named Peppa have captivated young viewers (and parents alike) the world over. Indeed, the Peppa Pig brand has become a bona fide phenomenon in the preschool space, with its global success translating into big business for Entertainment One (eOne) Family and eOne Licensing. The company’s portfolio also boasts the action-infused PJ Masks and co-viewing hit Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom, among other properties, which kids are connecting with on-screen and through a myriad of L&M touchpoints, including in the digital arena. Olivier Dumont, the managing director of eOne Family and eOne Licensing, tells TV Kids about some of the strategies for successfully rolling out brands.

TV KIDS: What is your strategic approach for maximizing discoverability with the eOne Family brands?

DUMONT: For preschool properties, broadcast is still the spark that gets the brand going. Ratings have fallen a lot more for older-skewing networks than they have for preschool channels because parents still need a safe place that they can expose their preschoolers to. Also, preschoolers are happier than older kids to allow mom and dad to decide what they should be watching. As a result, the power of preschool networks and blocks is still pretty high as compared to those for an older demo.

their own PJ Masks costumes and posting about them on social media. That was something we hadn’t seen happen for Peppa in terms of how fast the program developed. That speaks to the fact that PJ Masks is a cross between a traditional preschool brand and an action-adventure show.

So, we haven’t really been able to apply that many of the [lessons] from one to the other. If anything, it shows that you need to treat each brand individually as opposed to applying the same recipe systematically. The overall strategy, though, is to build your brand exposure and make sure that kids and parents can find it, maybe even on a digital service, so that they can engage with it in as many ways as possible. As part of this, we’ve created a lot of [digital] experiences, with free apps and games online to make sure that kids and parents can connect with the show instantly, either when it’s not on the air or when they want more than just a purely linear experience. That’s something that we learned on Peppa that we applied to PJ Masks.

TV KIDS: At this point, are digital extensions more about the added brand connection and exposure than the potential for additional revenues?

DUMONT: We are trying to accomplish both. The app market for preschoolers is a challenging one. For older kids, while

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eOne Family’s Peppa Pig has been a hit on TV around the world and the brand has a slew of consumerproduct extensions.

the paid-for market has gone down for apps in general given the amount of content available for free, the ad-supported system is working decently. You can’t advertise to preschoolers, so it’s much more challenging to monetize. With our hits like Peppa and PJ Masks, we still have a decent amount of sales on our apps, but it’s not as lucrative as it once was. You want to make sure that kids and parents have the possibility to engage with your brand via gaming and apps regardless of revenues, so you do need a certain number of free experiences to provide the audience. It’s about striking the right balance in terms of the number of brands that are available for free for exposure, and extensions and paid-for experiences that are a bit more sophisticated.

On Peppa Pig we have started exploring a subscriptionbased model. We created Peppa Pig World, which allows you to watch linear content, play games, read e-books, all in the same environment. We’ve done a soft launch of the app in two markets so far, and we are taking in the [lessons] from that and will probably do a global rollout later this year. That’s going to be an interesting new model. So far we’ve done straightforward sales or free apps, but this would be subscription-based, allowing kids and parents to have a much deeper experience with the brand as a result, with content that is refreshed every month.

TV KIDS: What’s currently on the development slate?

DUMONT: We have been looking for new shows to develop in different areas, and for a while, we didn’t find anything that we truly loved. Over the past six months, we have picked up at least four shows. Two of them are in a slightly older [age demographic], 6 to 9, and more girlskewed but boy-inclusive. There are also two new properties in the preschool space, one of which is slightly more boy-skewed and the other more girl-skewed. Both are targeted for upper-preschool, more than the younger side of preschool, which we’re not as interested in exploring—we already have Peppa, which is uber-successful in that space.

TV KIDS: What are the core L&M propositions on a brand like Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom? And why has the liveevent space, in particular, been a successful one to explore with this property?

DUMONT: The brand is extremely popular as a linear proposition for kids and parents, and the humor in the show is key. There’s a love of the brand in all the markets where it has launched, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into all of the licensing categories. Definitely, though, a live experience that both parents and kids can enjoy together is very much in keeping with the ethos of the brand. It is a family show; the presence of adults is an important part of the series. The amount of co-viewing on Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom is very high. There are a few preschool shows that kids really love but their parents not so much; parents might recognize that it’s a great show for their kids, perhaps it’s even educational, but they don’t feel particularly compelled to watch it with them. Parents enjoy watching Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom because of the humor in the show; therefore, the entire family going to the stage show together is an appealing proposition.

TV KIDS: What are your priorities for eOne Family and eOne Licensing in the year ahead?

DUMONT: A priority is to expand PJ Masks everywhere in the world. With regard to Peppa Pig, we’d love to be able to launch the brand in Japan. We’re doing our best to try to find good exposure for the brand there; we’re taking lots of trips to that market and meeting with a lot of potential partners. We’re also launching a new preschool brand next year; we are just entering production on that one. It will be slightly more boy-skewing. It will go on the air in spring 2019 probably, but the first episodes will be available in spring 2018. The team is currently working on the key visuals and the look and feel of that brand.

We’re also in production right now on a series called Cupcake and Dinosaur. It is a co-production with a Brazilian company, Birdo Studio. It is the first time we are doing a coproduction between Canada and Brazil. The series is created

by Pedro Eboli, who has been noticed by quite a few broadcasters and the industry. We’re doing his first international show and are very excited about that.

TV KIDS: Is there anything you’re looking for in particular to add to the catalog?

DUMONT: We’re pretty set in preschool, and we’re now [targeting] older girls, but we’d love something in the action-adventure genre for boys—something that can compete in that space with a Ben 10 or a Ninja Turtles. It’s very, very hard to do; it’s uber-competitive! We have given a lot of thought about what can work and how, but we really need to find the right [property]. We’re open to pitches in that space.

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NBCU’s Reverie.

Mansha Daswani looks at some of the key trends that emerged from the U.S. broadcast network upfront announcements. ertical integration is stronger than ever, and despite the era of peak TV, the number of pilot orders by the U.S. networks was considerably smaller than usual.

Those were among the major themes of last month’s upfront announcements, as the U.S. networks unveiled their grids for the fall.

Some of last year’s major trends—super producers and reboots—were still evident this year, the former perhaps more dominant than the latter. Greg Berlanti appears to be everywhere. Housed at Warner Bros., the prolific producer has new offerings Deception on ABC and Black Lightning on The CW, in addition to his portfolio of returning dramas. Shondaland’s three flagships are back on Thursday nights on ABC—Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal (for its final season) and How to Get Away with Murder—with the legal drama For the People set for midseason alongside a Grey’s Anatomy spin-off focusing on firefighters. (The Catch, however, was canned after two seasons.) Ryan Murphy is back on broadcast TV with a midseason procedural for FOX about first responders called 911. At NBC, Dick Wolf lost one Chicago-branded show (Justice) but still has three on the grid, plus a new Law & Order extension, a limited series focused on the infamous Menendez murder case. In other franchise extension news, The Blacklist: Redemption didn’t make the cut on NBC, while CBS opted for Young Sheldon, centering on a young Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. Also dropped from the schedule was CBS’s Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders.

In terms of revivals, there are two classic sitcoms making a comeback: Will & Grace on NBC and Roseanne on ABC. The CW, meanwhile, has rebooted the campy ’80s prime-time soap Dynasty for its young adult audience.

There’s also a second limited season for The X-Files on FOX and, on CBS, S.W.A.T., inspired by the TV series and feature film of the same name.

V

Shemar Moore, of Criminal Minds fame, leads S.W.A.T. and is one of many familiar TV faces fronting new shows this fall. David Boreanaz, known for his long stints on Bones, Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, toplines CBS’s military drama SEAL Team. Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) fronts ABC’s Ten Days in the Valley. Mark Feuerstein (Royal Pains) headlines a new CBS comedy called 9JKL. Jeremy Piven (Entourage) leads the cast of CBS’s Wisdom of the Crowd. Seth MacFarlane stars in FOX’s space dramedy The Orville. And two The Good Wife alums have new shows: Matt Czuchry in FOX’s The Resident and Alan Cumming in CBS’s Instinct.

In an age of Trump, leaks and political intrigue, themes of surveillance, instability and military might can be seen through the grids, from the aforementioned Wisdom of the Crowd and SEAL Team to The CW’s Valor and NBC’s The Brave (co-produced with Keshet Studios). And on the heels of the success of This Is Us, some of the networks have peppered the schedule with feel-good dramas, among them The Gospel of Kevin on ABC, Rise on NBC and By the Book on CBS. In terms of fantasy and superheroes, in addition to The CW’s new Black Lightning, ABC has Marvel’s Inhumans and FOX has The Gifted. NBC has slated the sci-fi drama Reverie for midseason.

The fall grid also has a few scripted formats in the mix, among them ABC’s The Good Doctor and Splitting Up Together. The latter is among several shows on ABC that don’t hail from corporate sibling ABC Studios. At the rest of the networks, however, it is clear that, as CBS chief Leslie Moonves declared at his upfront in May, “The back end is now worth more than the front end.” For the studios mining their wares on the global market, the increase in procedurals on the network lineups is undoubtedly good news, given that European broadcasters, in particular, have been bemoaning the abundance of serialized fare over closed-ended episodic storytelling for several years now.

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TV DRAMA / TV KIDS / TV FORMATS / TV REAL TV EUROPE / TV ASIA / TV LATINA / TV MEA / TV LISTINGS TV KIDS GUIDE / TV DRAMA GUIDE

Fo

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AT MIPCOM

Space Reservations / September 19 Ad Materials / September 21 For more information, please contact Ricardo Guise (rguise@worldscreen.com)

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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 injure myself while watching Veep?

Every day, papers, magazines and websites worldwide print horoscopes— projections for people born in a specific month, based on the positions of the stars and planets. While many people rely on these daily, weekly or monthly mes-

Steve Harvey

Ryan Seacrest

GRAHAM PERRETT

Global distinction: TV personality.

Sign: Capricorn (b. January 17, 1957) Significant date: May 10, 2017 Noteworthy activity: The television host sends a memo

Global distinction: Australian MP. Sign: Capricorn (b. January 5, 1966) Significant date: May 3, 2017 Noteworthy activity: The Australian Labor MP is eating

to the staff of the Steve Harvey talk show about respecting his privacy, and the email gets leaked. “Do not come to my dressing room unless invited,” the note reads. “Do not open my dressing room door. IF YOU OPEN MY DOOR, EXPECT TO BE REMOVED.” While Harvey refuses to apologize for the memo’s overall message, he admits, “In hindsight, I probably should’ve handled it a little bit differently.”

Horoscope: “Your privacy is likely precious to you today; you may feel that it is vital that you be allowed to spend some time on your own, apart from others.” (dailyom.com)

sushi at home while watching an episode of the HBO political satire Veep, which causes him to laugh so hard that he chokes on a bit of rice, falls over and incurs a black eye that requires three stitches. Perrett tells Australia’s ABC that despite the resulting hospital visit, he was thrilled to get a personal message from Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Twitter. “If Elaine from Seinfeld can say hello...that almost made the pain worthwhile,” Perrett says.

Horoscope: “Your physical energy might shift back and forth throughout the day. Stay steady, balanced and let those around you lift you up!” (horoscope-for.com)

ELLEN DEGENERES RYAN SEACREST

lives, some readers skip

Global distinction: TV/radio host.

Sign: Capricorn (b. December 24, 1974) Significant date: May 16, 2017 Noteworthy activity: In his new gig as Kelly Ripa’s co-

The editors of WS recognize that these little pearls of random foresight occasionally prove pro phetic.

But rather than poring over charts of the zodiac to pre-

host, Seacrest tells guest Jeffrey Tambor (Transparent) that he enjoyed his performance as “the scary guy on the subway” in the 1990 hit film Ghost, to which the 72year-old actor responds: “Oh, this is horrible. You’re going to be embarrassed. That’s not me.... He’s dead.” The role was actually played by the late Vincent Schiavelli.

Horoscope: “Get your facts straight before you offer an opinion. Being conservative is practical.” (bgdailynews.com)

dict world events, our staff prefers to use past horoscopes in an attempt to legitimize the science.

As you can see here, had some of these media figures remembered to consult their horoscopes on significant dates, they could have avoided a few surprises.

Justin Theroux

STEVE HARVEY

sages for guidance in their over them entirely.

Ellen DeGeneres

Global distinction: Lovable funny lady.

Sign: Aquarius (b. January 26, 1958) Significant date: May 16, 2017 Noteworthy activity: While interviewing Katy Perry on her talk show, DeGeneres becomes confused after the singer jokes about not wanting a second marriage. “You were not married,” she tells Perry, who says, “Yeah…it’s been a long time.” Still perplexed, DeGeneres awkwardly pressures her visibly uncomfortable guest into reminding the comedienne—who coincidentally voiced the forgetful fish Dory in the Finding Nemo franchise—that her ex-husband is Russell Brand.

Horoscope: “Be cautious.... Emotional problems will surface if you make assumptions or fail to get your facts straight.” (newsok.com)

DAVE CHAPPELLE Global distinction: Stand-up comedian.

Sign: Virgo (b. August 24, 1973) Significant date: May 16, 2017 Noteworthy activity: During his Saturday Night Live monologue, the funnyman pleaded with the country to ease up on the then newly elected U.S. president, Donald Trump, but following subsequent scandals and controversies he changes his mind. Chappelle tells the crowd at a celebrity-filled charity event, “I was the first guy on TV to say ‘Give Trump a chance.’ I f***ed up. Sorry!”

Horoscope: “Admit when you’re wrong. It’s a lot less painful and time consuming than going point by point over what you meant to say.” (washingtonpost.com) 70 WORLD SCREEN 6/17

JUSTIN THEROUX Global distinction: The Leftovers alum.

Sign: Leo (b. August 10, 1971) Significant date: May 16, 2017 Noteworthy activity: Comedian Jimmy Kimmel teams up with Jennifer Aniston—Theroux’s wife—to prank the actor by turning his car into a moving billboard campaigning for an Emmy nomination for his role in The Leftovers. The message “For Your Theroux Consideration” is scrawled on the passenger side.

Horoscope: “Be careful who you trust with your affairs…there are clever confidence tricksters out there.” (express.co.uk)

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