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THE MAGAZINE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA • SEPTEMBER 2013
www.worldscreen.com
Pre-MIPCOM Edition
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contents
SEPTEMBER 2013/PRE-MIPCOM EDITION
DEPARTMENTS WORLD VIEW
Publisher Ricardo Seguin Guise
8
A note from the editor. UPFRONT
Editor Anna Carugati
10
New shows on the market. SPOTLIGHT
20
TANDEM’s Rola Bauer. MARKET TRENDS
20
34
Managing Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Contributing Editor Elizabeth Guider
in the news 24
Starz’s Carmi Zlotnik. WORLD’S END
10
Executive Editor Mansha Daswani
38
In the stars.
16 DAVID SUCHET For more than 20 years, the veteran British actor has brought Agatha Christie’s popular Belgian detective Hercule Poirot to life in Agatha Christie’s Poirot. —Mansha Daswani
special report
Special Projects Editors Jay Stuart Bob Jenkins Associate Editor Joanna Padovano Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Elizabeth Bowen-Tombari Associate Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Jessica Rodríguez
26 DRAMATIC ENTRANCE An increasing number of broadcasters, producers and distributors are using co-production models to develop high-end drama for the global market. —Mansha Daswani
one-on-one
34 SHINE AMERICA’S RICH ROSS The CEO of Shine America discusses the importance of spotting hit ideas, executing them at the highest level of quality and marketing them diligently. —Anna Carugati
Online Director Simon Weaver Production & Design Director Victor L. Cuevas Art Director Phyllis Q. Busell Sales & Marketing Director Cesar Suero Sales & Marketing Manager Vanessa Brand Business Affairs Manager Terry Acunzo Senior Editor Kate Norris Copy Editor Maddy Kloss
Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP & Group Editorial Director WORLD SCREEN is published nine times per year: January, March, April, May, June/July, September, October, November and December. Annual subscription price: Inside the U.S.: $70.00 Outside the U.S.: $120.00 Send checks, company information and address corrections to: WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, Suite 1207 New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. For a free subscription to our newsletters, please visit www.worldscreen.com.
Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development WORLD SCREEN is a registered trademark of WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, Suite 1207 New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.worldscreen.com
26 THE LEADING ONLINE DAILY NEWS SERVICE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA INDUSTRY. For a free subscription, visit www.worldscreen.com/pages/newsletter
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©2013 WSN INC. Printed by Fry Communications No part of this publication can be used, reprinted, copied or stored in any medium without the publisher’s authorization.
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world milestones view BY ANNA CARUGATI
Change and More Change Do you remember Rosie, the robot maid in The Jetsons? As a child I marveled at the possibilities of having someone at my beck and call to make my bed, cover the household chores I was assigned, and bring me snacks, all with her signature, “Never fear—beep, beep—while Rosie’s here. Beep, beep.” Rosie was a wonder! I’m sure there is a prototype of Rosie right now in some laboratory. But until she becomes affordable to the likes of me, there are plenty of personal assistants, of the more portable kind. Take Google Now. While the iPhone’s Siri answers questions and prompts, Google Now offers up a wide assortment of information with no prompt from the user. Say you have to go to a meeting. Google Now can tap into your emails or calendar, see what time the meeting is and then check traffic and offer you the best route to get there by car, taxi or public transportation. If you need to take a flight, it will check your flight’s status and offer the least trafficburdened route to the airport. It can remind you of theater or concert tickets you’ve purchased, or track the shipment of goods you’ve ordered online. If you exercise, it will keep track of the miles you have walked, run or cycled over a given period of time. Some overly busy people will find this hugely helpful; others EXECUTIVES may consider it slightly creepy. The fact is, technology has taken off at an unstoppable pace to KNOW THAT WHAT keep offering more and more services. Think of what a WILL CUT THROUGH “phone” can do today; it’s not a phone, it’s a computer that puts the world in the palm of your THE CLUTTER hand. For a kid like me who grew up marveling at The this is all pretty mindIS QUALITY. Jetsons, boggling.When I was young, we got really excited when the phone changed from rotary to touchtone. Having a princess phone in your own bedroom was every girl’s dream. That was the only way we talked to friends—no texts, no emails, no Facebook. I sometimes get nostalgic about all the devices that have changed beyond recognition or no longer exist. Let’s start with the TV set. It used to be large and bulky, and you would actually have to get up out of your chair or sofa to change channels or adjust the volume. And how did we listen to music? Records, LPs and 45s on turntables. The radio was our sole source of the latest hit songs. When we went out with friends, 8 World Screen 9/13
we always needed a small stash of coins to make calls from pay phones. Most children under the age of 5 have never seen a pay phone. While it took decades from the time Alexander Graham Bell made the first call to when phones were widely available in homes; or from the time Vladimir Zworykin came up with the cathode ray tube, which was the precursor to the television set, to the time TVs were widespread in homes, consider this: the first iPhone was introduced in June 2007. Think of how the iPhone (and competing Android models) have completely transformed the function of the phone. For decades, the phone was an instrument used for talking. Now the smartphone is a computer, a camera, a TV, a stereo, a book, a magazine, a newspaper, a provider of games, and on and on. And think about this: the first iPad was released in January 2010. That was only three years ago! How much have tablets revolutionized the way we search, communicate and consume content of all sorts? I did a little research. In May, CNNMoney ranked the 25 top iPad apps of all time. It was interesting to see how many were tied to content—the vast majority. With the exception of the so-called tool apps, such as Calculator, Google Earth, eBay and Dropbox; and then what I’ll call the “communicating” apps, Skype, which ranked number 1, Facebook (6) and Twitter (20); all the other apps were content-related, including Weather Channel (2), Netflix (3), Angry Birds (4), Pandora Radio (7), ABC Player (12), YouTube (15), CNN (17) and Hulu Plus (24). With so much content out there, in an environment where technology keeps offering up more devices and screens, executives like Rich Ross, the CEO of Shine America and subject of our One-on-One interview, know that what will cut through the clutter is quality. On the television side, in order to reach the high-end production values viewers have come to expect, producers face an increasing need to join creative forces and financial resources, as our feature points out. Producers also have to keep an eye on younger generations: what they are watching and how, as they are the consumers of tomorrow. The times they sure are a-changin’. I think I’ll pick up my iPad and watch another episode of The Jetsons.
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upfronts
ALL3MEDIA International • Hinterland • Fresh Meat • Secret State Set in the picturesque Welsh countryside, Hinterland is a detective drama series with an edge. “We’re seeing edgy crime dramas really taking off in the digital space, and we’re really excited by the digital opportunities and different scheduling models we can bring with Hinterland,” says Paul Corney, the VP of digital distribution at ALL3MEDIA International. Also on the company’s slate heading into this year’s MIPCOM is the third season of Fresh Meat, currently airing on Hulu in the U.S. Then there is Secret State, which Corney refers to as a “sharp, challenging political thriller,” led by such A-list talent as Gabriel Byrne and Charles Dance. “The big names and intelligent plot will make it perfect for the leading digital platforms,” he adds.
“We’re looking to work with more of the leading local VOD platforms across all markets.” —Paul Corney Secret State
BBC Worldwide • Atlantis • Deadly Pole to Pole • Hidden Kingdoms
From the creators of Merlin, the 13-part drama Atlantis is being presented by BBC Worldwide with a special event in Cannes. “With high production values, it is going to bring the lost city of Atlantis to life in a way that has never been done before— combining a dramatic story line with action, humor, romance, mythology, spectacle and surprise,” says Paul Dempsey, the president of global markets at BBC Worldwide. Other titles to be showcased include Deadly Pole to Pole, centered on the search for dangerous animals in the Arctic and Antarctic, and Hidden Kingdoms, which spotlights some of the planet’s smallest creatures. “Both programs bring nature to life and introduce areas of wildlife that have not always received the attention they deserve,” says Dempsey.
“There is huge appetite for bold and original dramas internationally, and the same can be said for natural-history programming.” —Paul Dempsey Atlantis
Beyond Distribution • A Stranger in My Home • Addicted to the Life • Pipsqueaks From CMJ Productions II, A Stranger in My Home tells the tales of crimes committed by individuals who were invited into their victims’ houses. “The stories are quite chilling and told in CMJ’s signature style, which includes interviews with those who were involved at the time,” says Yvonne Body, Beyond Distribution’s head of acquisitions. Beyond is also presenting Addicted to the Life, a Story House Productions collaboration that details how greed can lead to crime. “The show is very stylized, reflecting the glamorous lifestyles that seduced the perpetrators,” says Body. Beyond will also be offering Pipsqueaks, a preschool series from Beyond Screen Production that has already been renewed by Australia’s Seven Network. Body notes that the company’s preschool programming tends to perform especially well in Asia.
“This lively preschool series will delight children with its cuddly characters who consult with real-life youngsters whenever they come across new concepts.” —Yvonne Body Pipsqueaks 10 World Screen 9/13
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Endemol Worldwide Distribution • The Ark • Death Comes to Pemberley • The Incredible Spice Men The stories told in The Ark, from BBC Drama Production, are those of World War I’s front-line medics.The high-concept drama will premiere in spring 2014 on BBC One, and Endemol Worldwide Distribution is launching it for buyers at MIPCOM. The company is also starting sales on Death Comes to Pemberley, adapted from P.D. James’s internationally bestselling novel.The series marks the 200th-anniversary year of the first publication of Pride and Prejudice. “British drama is performing well around the world,” says Cathy Payne, the CEO of Endemol Worldwide Distribution. “While The Ark commemorates the events and unsung heroes of World War I, Death Comes to Pemberley will satisfy the fans of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and revisits our fascination with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.” The Incredible Spice Men is another lead title.
“The slate demonstrates our commitment to both in-house and external product, which is an important message for us.” —Cathy Payne The Incredible Spice Men
Forum des images • Series Mania Festival • Co-Production Forum
Since its creation in 1988, the Forum des images has held a special place in the heart of Paris’s audiovisual landscape. Its original mission was to compile a living memory bank of the audiovisual collection of Paris. It now hosts yearly programming screenings, events and discussions focused on celebrating the moving picture in all its forms. Coming up, Forum des images will host the fifth edition of its Series Mania Festival, taking place April 22 to 30, 2014. The purpose of the festival is to reflect the quality, diversity and creativity of TV series from all over the world. It is also hosting a second annual Co-Production Forum, from April 23 to 25, 2014. “This Co-Production Forum was launched with great success last year,” says Laurence Herszberg, the general director of the Forum des images.
“Last year more than 15,000 spectators attended the festival and more than 700 professionals were accredited.” —Laurence Herszberg Series Mania Festival 2013
Gaumont International Television • Hannibal • Hemlock Grove • Barbarella Following a successful debut on NBC, Hannibal has been renewed for a second season. Gaumont International Television (GIT) is offering the series, which stars Mads Mikkelsen as the infamous cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, for global buyers.Also getting a second season is GIT’s Hemlock Grove, a horror/thriller from Eli Roth that debuted on Netflix. There’s also a new Barbarella series being presented. Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who co-wrote the James Bond blockbuster Skyfall, have teamed up with Nicolas Refn for the show, which is based on the 1960s sci-fi icon Barbarella. Katie O’Connell, the CEO of GIT, believes these shows will appeal to the global market because they have “brilliant creative auspices executing strong branded content that resonates both emotionally and stylistically across the globe.”
“Each of these series explore stories of the human condition in unique and compelling ways.” —Katie O'Connell Hemlock Grove 12 World Screen 9/13
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Global Agency • Calikusu • I Still Have Hope • Rivals-in-Law Starring Burak Özçivit and Fahriye Evcen, Calikusu is a new drama series presented by Global Agency that has “great international appeal,” according to Senay Tas, the company’s sales manager for Central and Eastern Europe. Described by Tas as “a wonderful Cinderella story,” I Still Have Hope incorporates such themes as romance, love, drama, friendship and loyalty. There is also Rivals-in-Law, which watches as a mother and her son’s wife compete against each other in an intense cooking contest. “The nice twist here is the tension that will arise between the two women,” says Tas. “What the audience will love to watch is the interaction between the two women—they will get to hear what they think and feel about each other.”
“The success of Turkish series is growing bigger each year and so is the demand.” —Senay Tas I Still Have Hope
ITV Studios Global Entertainment • Breathless • Stepping Out • Tricked
The new period drama Breathless, from the team behind Mr Selfridge, is set in 1961.The series, starring Jack Davenport (Pirates of the Caribbean), centers on a group of medical professionals working at a London hospital. “It’s set during a fascinating period, just before the sexual revolution, and features strong characters and gripping story lines,” says Tobi de Graaff, the director of global television distribution for ITV Studios Global Entertainment. “Breathless is a stylish, touching and beautifully shot period character drama, and I think it will resonate with viewers around the world.” The company will also be bringing to market Stepping Out, a prime-time dance competition featuring celebrities, and Tricked, which looks on as a magician deceives unsuspecting individuals on hidden camera.
“We’ll be hosting the first-ever international screening of Breathless for buyers at MIPCOM.” —Tobi de Graaff Breathless
Starz Worldwide Distribution • Black Sails • The White Queen • Hit the Floor The main focus for Starz at this year’s MIPCOM will be on Black Sails, a pirate adventure due to debut in January 2014. “We will be holding a world-premiere screening of the completed first episode to buyers during MIPCOM,” says Gene George, the executive VP for Starz Worldwide Distribution. “With a seasontwo renewal already confirmed, demand from global buyers for Michael Bay’s first-ever TV series should be the greatest we have ever had for a new original series.” Also on the roster is The White Queen, a period drama, and Hit the Floor, an acquisition from Viacom-owned VH1 that has been greenlit for a second season. “While there is growing competition in the dramatic series space, few shows have more quality in production values, writing and appeal than our series,” adds George.
“With worldclass talent and ultra-premium production values, these Starz original series have a high level of global appeal.” —Gene George Black Sails 14 World Screen 9/13
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in the news
WS: ITV Studios Global Entertainment has sold the series across the globe. Why do you think it’s resonated with audiences in so many territories? SUCHET: I’ve been told that Poirot has been sold in every single country in the world, which I find quite extraordinary. What is it about him? Is it the fact that he can get on with everybody? Is it the fact that he’s a foreigner in England and therefore can mix with all strata of English society? He can show his dislike for the aristocracy. He can be very nice to people lower down on the scale, like servants— he’s very good with “below stairs” people. He’s very charming, he’s very polite. He can be very angry. But I think perhaps what makes him very enduring and endearing for people is that he’s a great moral compass. People feel very safe with him. He’s not going to do anything that’s going to upset you by any aggression or anything immoral. You know that he’s right in his world and that he’s got his world sorted. He’s also lonely, and I think that’s quite attractive to people, to see a man like that, obviously without any love life. I get people writing to me saying, “I wish he was married” and things like that— they get very involved with him! That and his eccentricities, his charm, his love of people, his interest in people. The other thing is, he’s a wonderful listener.You know that when you’re with someone who really listens well to you, it’s a very, very attractive quality. Their attention is right on you. Very often Agatha Christie actually describes the way Poirot listens—what she says is that when you’re with Poirot, you are aware of him listening to you very hard. He’s not only listening to you and what you say, he’s hearing what you mean. In other words, his eyes are right on you, looking for anything that will give him some indication of what is
Poirot’s David Suchet By Mansha Daswani
For more than 20 years, veteran British actor David Suchet has brought Agatha Christie’s perennially popular Belgian detective Hercule Poirot to life on ITV. Agatha Christie’s Poirot premiered in the U.K. in 1989 and has since traveled across the globe, securing slots on PBS in the U.S., ABC in Australia, France Télévisions, Mediaset in Italy, NHK in Japan and Globosat in Brazil, among many others. Represented by ITV Studios Global Entertainment, Agatha Christie’s Poirot comes to a close this year with its 13th season. With the final installment, “Curtain,” there will be a total of 71 episodes in the franchise. Suchet, whose long career has included theater, television and film, shares with World Screen his views on Poirot’s enduring appeal.
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behind what you’re saying. He’s totally focused on you, even in a crowded room. That makes him a very nice person to be with. WS: Hercule Poirot has a very distinctive accent. Can you tell me
how you perfected it? SUCHET: My accent took quite a long time to perfect. When I was
studying the role, I was taken in by the fact that most people think that Poirot is French—it becomes a running gag that he says, “No, I’m Belgian.” I had to say to myself, why do they think he’s French? He’s a French-speaking Belgian, but if you listen to French-speaking Belgians, they’re quite guttural, and you wouldn’t automatically say, are you French? So my accent had to be more French than Belgian and…parts of it were a little more guttural than ordinary French accents. Also, the placing of where he speaks [from] is very important. Everybody speaks from a different place in their body. Either you have a head voice or a chest voice, etc. My voice, naturally, is quite low, and his voice isn’t—his voice is up in his head because he’s a walking brain! The actual accent took a very, very long time. In the end I was listening to English radio, Belgian radio, Wallonie radio— that is, the French-speaking Belgian radio. I also listened to the English-speaking Belgian and I listened to the French. Where do I place him in France? It can’t be Paris, because Paris has a very distinctive accent. I chose the countryside of France, more around Cannes and the mountains and the hills. It was a combination of country French, Belgian and city Belgian. So people could say, “You’re French,” and he could say, “No, I’m Belgian.” WS: With the conclusion of the series, every Poirot novel has been
adapted for television. Do you think some stories were harder to bring to the screen than others? SUCHET: It’s inevitable, when one is adapting so many stories— over 70—there will be [some] that are more difficult to adapt for television, for film, than others. It’s true that some of the die-hard readers have said, “Why have you taken the story so outside the book?” That is because if we just did the book it wouldn’t be interesting on film. Whatever the adapters—and we have wonderful writers—have done is base their stories on the Agatha Christie stories. You can’t say it’s the story pure and simple, because a lot of them wouldn’t make good television. WS: You’ve done a lot of period drama—what is it about the genre that appeals to you? SUCHET: Period drama takes you out of yourself and into another world. When I was doing The Way We Live Now [a 2001 mini-series for the BBC] and going into the Victorian world, even on stage with Shakespeare when I was with the Royal Shakespeare Company, it’s great to do period drama. It’s also very interesting from an actor’s point of view, because you have to learn about that world. But you don’t have to just learn what your world is; you have to learn how you fit into the whole of that world. You have to learn about their manners, you have to learn about their art, you have to learn about their music, you have to learn about their politics and attitudes toward the opposite sex. You have to go back in time and you have to enter that world. It’s a great pleasure for an actor to be given a period role for that purpose; it’s lovely.
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spotlight
TANDEM’s Rola Bauer By Mansha Daswani
Last year, French film giant STUDIOCANAL made its first major move into television, picking up a majority stake in Munich-based event-programming specialists TANDEM Communications. Run by co-founders Rola Bauer and Tim Halkin, together with Jonas Bauer, the company has built a reputation for delivering big-budget event mini-series like the Ken Follett adaptations The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. TANDEM, known for pioneering the international co-production model for big-budget minis, has expanded into the drama-series business with Crossing Lines, a procedural that features NBC, TF1, Sat.1, RAI and AXN among its broadcast partners. Bauer, the president of TANDEM, shares with World Screen her insight into making international drama co-productions work.
WS: How has the international co-production land-
scape evolved since you started doing them? BAUER: As a Canadian, co-production was key to finding
and putting a production together. So, it has been a part of my professional career since 1985. It has certainly become more crowded. A lot of people think co-production is very easy and just jump on the bandwagon, not understanding how incredibly complicated it is. In some ways that hurts this business. The broadcasters take risks when they step away from their very secure way of acquiring a program or producing domestic shows in their own language. When these broadcasters say, “In my schedule I’d like some color of international programming, where I’m not paying for the full freight of it but I have some voice in it,” and then [the co-production] isn’t done well, that hurts all of us. There has been this explosion of, “Let’s all do international co-productions!”The reason is clear—there is an economic drive for it.There’s an economic benefit for the broadcasters. Their programming pot of money has not gotten bigger, they just have to handle it differently. I worked at ProSieben for three years in programming. It was important for us to be able to figure out how to get clever with this pot of money, to try to get as many hours and as many different programs and try to protect the highlights. So the need is there. People are looking at co-production as an alternative programming source. WS: There does seem to be a movable definition of
what a co-production is. BAUER: A lot of people are going into it with a different
approach. I ran Alliance International Television for a number of years. Being a Canadian company, we had to do coproductions. We looked after our broadcasters’ needs. We weren’t just coming in and saying, here are the elements, just buy it! That’s a pre-buy. We’re saying, let’s develop this idea together, and let’s look at how we make it work for your network. That’s been TANDEM’s mandate. If you look at the majority of the shows TANDEM has done, they’ve each been primarily produced with a key programming partner. We produce for them. We are developing ideas, developing scripts. We work with them on the casting, we work with them during the production, we work with them in post and the editing, and we’re there to help them with the launch.That’s been our USP [unique selling point] because we’re literally here, in Munich, going to Paris, going to London. We’re always here to know what partners are looking for and what they want to develop. WS: How’s the experience been for you when working with North American talent who are not as familiar with TANDEM’s role in the international market? BAUER: We first worked with Ridley Scott via Sony on The Company. Whenever we’ve done press conferences, [Ridley has] said, at first, that TANDEM was 20 World Screen 9/13
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One for the ages: TANDEM has been successful with a number of book-to-TV adaptations, among them the event series Labyrinth, based on a novel by Kate Mosse.
just deficit financing this mini-series with Sony, and then they had a voice with some talent they were bringing in. He realized we are producers. We do distribute and finance, but we are producers who give that input, which is very important and needs to be organic to what we want the production to be. It’s a trust you have to build. Ed [Bernero, creator of Crossing Lines] also had to see that we knew what we were doing, that our voice was something that made sense to him. We have an enormous amount of respect for him. We could watch his shows. We have not produced 300 hours of television programming like he has between Third Watch and Criminal Minds. But we’ve produced our own limited series and he was a big fan of The Pillars of the Earth and Ring of the Nibelungs. And then we started to communicate and walk him through how we work. Whether he’s pitching to an ABC or a TF1, for Ed they are network executives. Obviously we have a better knowledge of what [European broadcasters’] needs are than he does. He also would have direct communications with the networks and he also knows that Criminal Minds does very well [in Europe]. So it’s not as if he had to stray off into whole new territory. WS: The U.S. networks are doing more mini-series and
WS: How do you identify projects that will become appointment-viewing events? BAUER: A lot of our choices are driven by the characters and the space or the world the characters live in. If you go back to Pillars—you’ve got great characters in the Middle Ages, striving to survive, and yet everybody does everything to build this bloody building! And it came from a great book. Crossing Lines is an original idea, touching on things that are happening [in Europe] today that happened to Americans many years ago, which is how criminals cross borders in such a fast manner that you can’t figure out what they’re doing until after the crime has been committed and they’ve skipped the country. You have the same thing that you had before Hoover set up the FBI—you had criminals who would come into the state of Nevada and then skip over to California and nobody could follow them over, nobody had information-sharing to be able to track them and catch them. Crossing Lines came from a social awareness, expressed in a populist, entertaining fashion. Ed is a criminal history buff and has seen what was happening over here. So when we talked to him about this problem, he immediately not only responded to it, he said, I’ve been wanting to do something similar, and I also have the context of how to put it into place. Sometimes it’s about subjects that are in the air.
limited-run series. Does that bode well for TANDEM? BAUER: My response [to that trend] is one word:Yippee!
[Laughs.] And then, What took them so long? Part of it is that the economics of the networks are driving these decisions. They started off as being very focused on onehour series. That has always been the backbone of schedules. The minis provide a very nice complement. They’re not going to replace the one-hour series, but they are complementary and they are good event highlights. 22 World Screen 9/13
WS: Crossing Lines marked TANDEM’s first one-hour
series. What led to this move? BAUER: We were always doing limited series until
STUDIOCANAL invested in our company at the beginning of last year. With their support we could do Crossing Lines independently. It would have been difficult to put it together if we hadn’t had that big brother support behind us.
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market milestones trends
Starz’s Carmi Zlotnik By Mansha Daswani
Over the last few years, Starz has become an increasingly important player in the global co-production landscape. The company has been signing on as U.S. broadcast partner on a number of high-profile international drama projects, including The White Queen, Da Vinci’s Demons and Fortitude, a co-production with Sky Atlantic in the U.K. Carmi Zlotnik, Starz’s managing director, tells World Screen about the premium channel operator’s strategy towards international partnerships as it seeks out topquality programming for its subscribers.
WS: What are the keys to good co-production partnerships? ZLOTNIK: Creative alignment has to be there in
order for a co-production to work effectively. When I say creative alignment, I mean that everybody is trying to make the same type of show in the same way. When you have that, you avoid the tugs of war that you hear about as the horror stories of coproduction. One thing that makes co-productions happen more fluidly is if you have somebody at the center of it that can be a cultural interpreter. In the case of [Da Vinci’s Demons, with BBC Worldwide] Jane Tranter at Adjacent sits in the middle and translates U.S. needs and European sensibilities. With The White Queen and Fortitude, [executive producer] Colin Callender sits in the middle of those two shows. On White Queen he deals with the BBC and Company Pictures and on For titude he deals with Sky, Tiger Aspect and Fifty Fathoms, Patrick Spence’s company. WS: Are you looking
for international partners on projects that Starz is developing internally? ZLOTNIK: It always comes down to philosophical alignment. There have been projects like Black Sails where we’ve been open to international partners, but unless we find the right situation, we’re happy to produce the show and then have examples of finished episodes to show and sell it to territories on that basis. 24 World Screen 9/13
WS: What have been the major changes you’ve witnessed in the co-production landscape? ZLOTNIK: There are so many broadcasters trying to do high-end drama. In order to finance it there’s going to be a continual process of partnerships, where people put together their resources and make something bigger than either of the partners could afford on their own. It spreads around the risk. It also capitalizes on unique capabilities. When we tap into Adjacent Productions or Tiger Aspect or Company Pictures, we’re tapping a creative and production capability that allows us to work in territories at a higher level of competence than we would otherwise. These are people who have grown up in the territory—they know all the people, they know all the actors. It’s quite a benefit to be partnered up with people who know the territory that well. WS: Have there been lessons learned from the days of the so-called Euro puddings? ZLOTNIK: The Euro puddings are what I consider the tugs of war. People became wary of the American attempt to maintain the creative center. What we’ve found is that by working with the right people and by being willing to give up what feels like control, you have a smoother production. Once you get the philosophical alignment, you don’t need that much micromanagement. WS: When you first joined the company after your
years at IMG and HBO, how did you get the message out to the international community about the kinds of projects Starz wanted to be involved in? ZLOTNIK: The image I have in mind is that we’re all walking around with a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. We’re trying to match it up to other people’s pieces to see which pieces fit together. That’s what we do at MIPTV and MIPCOM and through general meetings. We’ve found a group of people, at the BBC, at Sky, at BBC Worldwide, that we think are natural partners. We’re looking to increase that list of companies and broadcasters that we feel are natural partners. Once you’ve got that sense of partnership, then it’s a matter of finding the projects that work well for both of your channels. It’s still a daunting process, but it’s made a lot easier if you’ve got common ground with another broadcaster from the beginning. WS: You work with so many different models. How
do you determine which is the best one for each project? ZLOTNIK: It’s a bit like having a cupboard full of different ingredients and trying to bake a cake. You have to figure out what ingredients to mix in the bowl. And experience helps! There are a few recipes for how things have been put together successfully—we try to follow those.
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ITVS GE’s Breathless.
DRAMATIC An increasing number of broadcasters, producers and distributors are using co-production
T
alk of international c o - p ro d u c t i o n s tends to bring up an awful lot of food analogies.You can’t have too many cooks in the kitchen. You need the perfect recipe to make a show work. You absolutely do not want a Euro pudding, those much-maligned dramas that assembled a hodgepodge of European talent, on screen and off, to meet the needs of each commis-
sioning broadcaster and often ended up being creative duds. Indeed, while there may still be the occasional instance where, as Ben Donald, BBC Worldwide’s executive producer of international drama, notes, “you can smell the co-production,” the drama copro business today is, more often than not, resulting in high-quality, well-reviewed shows that do as well on international screens as they do in their home markets.
DOLLARS AND SENSE
It’s no surprise that broadcasters, producers and distributors are combining their resources to make shows. Co-productions have become a smart way to get a good series on the grid without having to pay the entire cost. “There is an economic drive for it,” says Rola Bauer, the president of TANDEM Communications, whose long list of big-budget copros includes the Ken Follett adap-
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tations The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. “The television stations that are under economic stress and constraint still have an appetite to see the bigger programs,” says Herbert Kloiber, the chairman of Germany’s Tele München Group, who has been involved in co-producing and co-financing productions for more than three decades. “This space was originally predominantly occupied by the big
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upcoming event series Alexander, penned by Michael Hirst and produced with Gruppe 5 and Beta Film. “In recent years, we’ve been extending our successful activities in co-production and acquisition from Scandinavia to the Englishspeaking territories and other territories such as the Benelux and Spain. This is not as daring as it used to be, and it brings its own set of problems with it, like [competing with] strong national film and television industries. But on the whole, we feel that the co-production idea is opening up many more distribution venues than our more parochial programming of the past.” ZDF Enterprises’ new slate in development reflects its broadening partnership base, with projects in the works with partners in Scandinavia, the U.K. and Canada. It also has a Welsh series on the books with Talking to the Dead, for Sky Living, and a development deal in place with Sweden’s Tre Vänner. “Over the last few years, the industry has become more and more global, both in the way we all work and through audiences’ tastes,” adds Ruth Clarke, the director of acquisitions and co-productions at ITV Studios Global Entertainment (ITVS GE). “Producers and broadcasters are much more willing to partner across geographical borders, and this is driven by an appetite for larger, bigger-budget productions;
is being co-produced with WGBH in the U.S. WHAT’S IN A NAME?
While it’s clear that the global demand for drama co-pros has reached new heights, the definition of what a co-production is seems to be up for interpretation. Shows that are labeled as international co-productions are often just presales, says Cathy Payne, the CEO of Endemol Worldwide Distribution, which is bringing the Endemol Studios and AMC Studios series Low Winter Sun to MIPCOM. “A lot of co-productions are put together where if you spend a certain amount of money in Canada and a certain amount of money in Europe, you can essentially achieve a rebate and therefore a contribution to your budget—I would call that a structural co-production, rather than an editorial one,” says BBC Worldwide’s Donald, who has put together partnerships on shows like Death in Paradise and Parade’s End. “In Italy, a broadcaster normally owns the rights to a show forever. So if they’re investing in a production made by a British producer and they get the rights for only a limited period of time, then we will call their investment a co-production investment, but they may call it a presale because they’re not having their usual set of rights,” Donald continues. “If it’s a small
ENTRANCE models to develop high-end drama for the global market. public television networks, particularly on this side of the Atlantic,” says Kloiber. “Most [productions] were backed by PBS or one of the other local stations, WNET or WGBH, and underwritten by the big oil companies: Mobil Masterpiece Theater, Great Performances with Exxon, and then [in Europe] ARD or, in its early days, Channel 4. They were big backers of putting money into a project that a producer promoted and all agreed to somewhat
defer the artistic decision-making to the producer.” These days, co-productions are being done by a much wider pool of broadcasters, producers and distributors. “Broadcasters are more open to co-productions than [they were] ten years ago,” observes Fred Burcksen, the executive VP and COO of ZDF Enterprises, whose lineup of co-productions includes the BBC Two Gillian Anderson vehicle The Fall and the
plus, we know that audiences are very comfortable watching shows about cultures different from their own. The opportunities are getting wider as the industry and audiences have become more and more open to international content.” At MIPCOM, ITVS GE will be talking to prospective clients about “a large-scale event mini telling the story of an extraordinary moment in British history,” Clarke says, as well as Breathless, a new period drama that
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By Mansha Daswani
amount of money for the broadcaster but a hugely important part of the financing piece, then we’ll call it a co-production. But if [the investment] comes in late because a lot of the creative decisions have been made, then it’s really a presale.” But even the nature of the prebuy is changing, asserts Carrie Stein, the executive VP of global production at Entertainment One Television, a partner on the upcoming CBC and BET show The Book
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Royal flush: Starz signed up as a co-production partner for Company Pictures’ The White Queen, which premiered in the U.S. this summer, and took on most of the global distribution rights to the show.
of Negroes. “Five years ago, when I made presales on mini-series, that was just somebody coming in early to claim the property and get it from their competitors. I’m sure that is still done.Then there’s another kind of presale, where somebody comes in early, it’s not an official co-production, it’s not an official quota or content production, but they want to have input on all creative elements.”
While the definitions are murky, there is a fair amount of consensus on the elements required to make for happy co-production partnerships that will result in shows that people want to watch.The top priority is having everyone agree,
ahead of time, on what the vision of the show is. “There needs to be one creative vision that is shared by the partners,” says Richter. “There needs to be one creative lead. It cannot be a situation of a co-production pud-
ding where everybody has their own vision, everybody wants to drag the property into a different direction, everybody wants to have his own cast in there, and everybody wants to have their own location. Those are the kinds of struggles that happened all the time ten years ago. Sometimes the outcome was awful. In order to have a well-functioning, really successful story, you must follow the creative lead that the original showrunner, author, director or producer came up with. And then when it comes to creative input, there should be a healthy dialogue of giving responses on scripts, on cast ideas, and then working with producers and creatives who really embrace [the feedback].” Carmi Zlotnik, the managing director of Starz, a co-producer on The White Queen, Da Vinci’s Demons and the upcoming Fortitude, echoes Richter’s sentiments. “A creative alignment has to be there in order for a co-production to work effectively.When you have that, you avoid the tugs of war that you hear about as the horror stories of co-production....The Euro puddings are what I consider the tugs of war.What we’ve found is that by working with the right people and by being willing to give up what
BALANCING THE SCALE
“It’s a sliding scale of financial arrangements and creative arrangements,” states Jens Richter, the managing director of Red Arrow International, which is involved in a range of different drama projects across Europe and North America, including Lilyhammer with Rubicon, NRK and Netflix; Jo with TF1 and FOX International Channels; Restless, a BBC One commission with Sundance Channel and Sat.1 on board; and The Escape Artist, from Endor Productions for BBC One. For Tele München’s Kloiber, the marking of a true co-production is if “you have writers and directors and creative people listening to more than just one originating source.”
Artist at work: BBC Worldwide has a number of partners on Da Vinci’s Demons, created by David. S. Goyer, including Germany’s Tele München Group, Starz in the U.S. and FOX International Channels. 28 World Screen 9/13
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feels like control, you have a smoother operating production. Once you get the philosophical alignment, you don’t need that much micromanagement.” BBC Worldwide’s Donald has learned that “it pays to be brutally honest. You have to make sure in the early stages that you’ve laid out the markers for what the show is and what it can’t become, so it doesn’t get pulled out of shape.” Endemol’s Payne adds that it also helps to limit the number of partners on board who have editorial input. “You know the old saying, too many cooks spoil the broth. [It’s important to know] who ulti-
productions is actually psychological. It’s always much better to feel you’ve had a chance to express your say, even if somebody has convinced you of their opinion.” LEARNING CURVE
In his time at BBC Worldwide, Donald has also found that sometimes you learn as you go. “When I co-produced Spies of Warsaw with TVP, that was the first time that Polish television had ever co-produced anything. So you’re making the rules up as you go along in terms of what the contractual expectations are, what their way of working is. Different countries have
everyone just shows up! It was amazing to watch how quickly they change sets and move the entire crew and immediately continue shooting. They’re more flexible because they have to be.” For Burcksen at ZDF Enterprises, beyond there being a “mutual understanding” among partners, companies involved in co-production need to learn that “globalization demands compromises from everyone. But what’s particularly important to us is a shared vision of a project that leaves the nitty-gritty of dealmaking behind in favor of realizing original, one-of-a-kind dramas that will hold their own in a hotly
Shine Group companies and from third parties. “As a distributor, we’re not here to have a creative seat at the table. That’s not what we do. We’ll invest in productions that we believe have the right qualities to enable them to sell around the world. We’re not here to dilute a producer’s editorial integrity or editorial vision. We have to buy into their vision in order to support the project in the first place.” PARTNER POTENTIAL
There are some shows that naturally lend themselves to co-production, such as historical epics, adaptations
Dinner time?: AXN and NBC are co-production partners with Gaumont International Television on Hannibal, the recently renewed drama that stars Mads Mikkelsen as one of the world’s most iconic film villains, Hannibal Lecter.
mately is going to control the editorial direction.” It also helps to have partners who have similar styles and target demos. “There are broadcasters with certain profiles that fit together very well,” Donald notes. “And when you try to fit together broadcasters with different profiles and different core audiences, you have to be very vigilant and possibly even allow for quite different versions to come out in the end.” Donald also notes that debate among partners can be very healthy for the co-pro process. “You must have arguments; a huge part of co-
different definitions of what the heads of department do. Does the art director control the art budget or does the production designer control the art budget? It’s different in Austria than it is in the U.K.” At eOne, whose roster also includes Rogue, a Canadian-U.K. co-pro commissioned by DIRECTV in the U.S., Stein has discovered that partners need to be “open to real collaboration” and be willing to take advantage of different experiences. She points to the company’s partnership with TV4 for the series Welcome to Sweden. “They don’t have make-up trailers and a transportation crew;
contested market. Our Scandinavian co-productions are a good example of this: we gladly keep a low profile in the development of these series in order to strengthen the ‘Scandinavian mystery’ brand,” he says. Clarke at ITVS GE backs Burcksen’s perspective: “The creative must always lead and we never force a production to make the commercial arrangement work.” “Realistically, there’s only room for so many people around a table,” says Nadine Nohr, the CEO of Shine International, which deficit-finances a number of drama productions, both from
30 World Screen 9/13
of classic novels, biographies about iconic personalities or specials tied to anniversaries of major world events. At Gaumont International Television, enlisting an international partner on its Hannibal series, featuring the universally known fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter, was a no-brainer. “When we opened our doors, we wanted a model whereby we would look at interesting IP that could translate in a global marketplace,” says Katie O’Connell, the CEO of Gaumont International Television, the U.S.-based arm of the veteran French studio. “We’re always think-
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Meeting of minds: Rogue from Entertainment One Television, a Canada-U.K. co-production starring Thandie Newton, was the first original series commission for DIRECTV in the U.S.
ing not just about the U.S. market or the European market—we’re looking at how this idea can move through the world all at once.” BEYOND BORDERS
Hannibal has NBC and Sony’s AXN global channels as co-producers. The show has been greenlit for a second season. “Everyone having a seat at the table has been really helpful in designing a show that we feel— and I think the networks feel— speaks not just to the U.S. audience but to the global marketplace as well,” O’Connell says. Shows from well-known screenwriters or showrunners are also
perfect vehicles for co-production, observes ITVS GE’s Clarke. WRITER’S ROOM
“We are looking for good, relatable drama with broad appeal. It’s important to have a very wellrespected writer and a strong, recognizable cast. You can see this in our brand-new drama Breathless, co-created and written by Paul Unwin, the creator of Casualty, the world’s longest-running medical drama, and starring Jack Davenport, who is known to audiences all over the world from both his TV and film work.” BBC Worldwide’s Donald is currently piecing together partnerships
on War and Peace, an adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy epic by Andrew Davies, the king of British period drama, for the BBC in 2015. Donald previously worked on Parade’s End, the World War I-era drama from Tom Stoppard. Other notable BBC Worldwide co-pros include Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake, which landed Sundance Channel in the U.S. as a co-production partner; and Da Vinci’s Demons, from David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel), which features Starz, FOX International Channels and Tele München Group, among others, as partners. Sometimes, Donald adds, it is the story itself that naturally lends itself
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to co-production. The example he lists is Death in Paradise, which premiered on France 2 this summer. “That was a first-time writer for the BBC, Robert Thorogood, albeit mentored by Tony Jordan, who is a huge talent. Onscreen, Ben Miller is known [in the U.K.] as a comedian and sometimes drama actor. He’s certainly not hugely recognized around the world.We organically developed it into a French co-production because it takes place on an island that has French and English history. His sidekick is a French character played by a relatively unknown French actress, Sara Martins. That’s a good example of a show that doesn’t necessar-
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ily have to have that heavyweight piece of talent behind it.” Nohr at Shine refers to the Shine America and FX show The Bridge as a “true co-production in every sense—a financial co-production, an editorial co-production, and it just happened to focus on subject matter that genuinely lent itself to co-production.” The show focuses on the discovery of a body on the U.S.-Mexico border. “The narrative naturally featured a coming together of cultures without this being artificially engineered for financing purposes.” SETTING THE SCENE
Ultimately, Donald says, you must “never put the co-production first,” which includes not letting generous tax subsidies in a given market sway your creative. As an example, Red Arrow’s Richter mentions the upcoming Bosch series, adapted from the popular Harry Bosch crime novels. “This is an iconic character. He gets in his car and drives off into the Hollywood Hills. You have 55 million book readers who know that—this production has to be shot in L.A. There is an L.A.-based subsidy system, but it’s a lottery and you’d better not base your financing on that.Yes, you need to look at those opportunities, but you cannot build your package and your franchise around them. At the end of the day, you need to have a great production and the location of production or post-production needs to fit the creative [vision].” “The challenge that we all have today, and I don’t think we are yet doing our best at it, is to make the creative first and foremost,” observes eOne’s Stein. “There’s still a business model that is often driving these projects. And when the business drives rather than the creative, you produce something that is not as good.” Tax incentives for content makers worldwide are certainly opening up opportunities for many companies involved in drama coproduction. Canada has long been known for its incentives, which have helped eOne expand its drama activities worldwide. Red Arrow’s U.K. production companies are looking to take advantage of the new incentives in that mar-
ket, and Tele München is shooting a new series there. Also proving to be a boon to content makers is broadcasters’ willingness to be open to different models when it comes to the number of episodes ordered for a series. The U.S. broadcast networks have been breaking with their long-running tradition of 22-episode seasons. Gaumont’s Hannibal, for example, ran for 13 episodes in its first season on NBC. “On Hannibal we’re working with actors that are also movie stars,” says O’Connell, referring to a cast that includes Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy. “It’s really helpful to design a show for them that has 13 episodes. That allows them to continue their movie careers. And then [showrunner] Bryan Fuller has designed a narrative that really lent itself to 13 episodes.We let the narrative and the creators and the actors determine the best number of episodes per season.” “Series now come in a variety of episode numbers and running times, and we’re able to shop around for partners willing to try out new pro-
gramming ideas,” says ZDF Enterprises’ Burcksen. “We know that viewers don’t always want a ‘sure thing,’ but are willing to try out something new.” NEW FORMATS
For Shine’s Nohr, a significant new opportunity in the global drama co-production business is scripted adaptations, such as the SwedishDanish series Bron becoming The Bridge for FX and The Tunnel for Sky Atlantic and Canal+. “It’s a very different model from an [unscripted] entertainment format being rolled out around the world, which is all about creating multiple versions,” says Nohr. “That isn’t the issue when it comes to scripted. The funding model is very different, and that’s something you have to be a little more careful with. There are some markets, like the U.S. and the U.K., that are still deficit models, and they are reliant on investment and support from a distributor to be able to complete the funding. The level of budget required to
make these dramas enhances the uniqueness of certain properties and therefore in success makes them highly exportable.” Another trend in the co-production business is that the American outlets—free, pay and over-the-top—are increasingly willing to come on board international projects. “Hundreds of millions of dollars flow to the U.S. from [Europe] in terms of broadcast budgets,” says Tele München’s Kloiber. “There is a definite need for the U.S. as a market to reciprocate some of the big, big deals the Europeans are willing to make as commitments to buy U.S. shows.” Whatever the platform, outlets worldwide are anxious to find compelling productions that will allow them to cut through the clutter. “We are living in a landscape that is fragmenting day by day,” Red Arrow’s Richter says. “Lead broadcasters lose market share. New digital broadcasters pop up every week. There are more and more outlets for programs and there is much harder competition. Clients need programs that stand out.”
Good cop, bad cop: Low Winter Sun is an AMC Studios and Endemol Studios co-production sold worldwide by Endemol Worldwide Distribution, which scored a global deal on the show with FOX International Channels. 9/13 World Screen 33
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on the one-on-one record
ith so many channels and so much programming on offer, TV companies need to do more than create great shows—they must build brands that can live on several platforms and generate multiple revenue streams. Rich Ross, the CEO of Shine America, has had a long, successful career building exactly these types of multitasking brands. He learned the production and programming side of the business at Nickelodeon and FX. Then, as president of Disney Channels Worldwide, he oversaw such hit series as Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody as well as the popular Disney Channel Original Movie franchise that paved the way for the hugely successful High School Musical movies. These were among the first global properties to thrive on numerous platforms and devices. While at the helm of Disney Channels, Ross also gained insight into the workings of international television markets. From October 2009 to April 2012, Ross served as chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, where he focused on branded content and oversaw the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Cars 2 and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, among other feature films.
In 2012, Elisabeth Murdoch, the chairman of the Shine Group, called upon her former colleague—they had both worked at FX years earlier—and asked him to head up the Shine operations in the U.S. Ross accepted, impressed by the quality that characterized the shows produced by the various Shine companies, from the scripted series Spooks, Broadchurch and Bron, to the unscripted shows Got to Dance, Minute to Win It and the global hit MasterChef, which is currently airing in 150 territories. Today at Shine America, Ross oversees a company that is producing shows in a variety of genres, including The Biggest Loser, a ratings juggernaut for NBC and a format that has been produced in 25 countries worldwide; MasterChef and the upcoming MasterChef Junior for FOX; Minute to Win It for NBC and the Spanish-language version, Minuto Para Ganar, for MundoFOX; The Face for Oxygen; The Bridge, the U.S. adaptation of Bron, which airs on FX; and the recently announced American version of the hit U.K. series Broadchurch for FOX. Ross talks to World Screen about the importance of spotting hit ideas, executing them at the highest possible level of quality and marketing them diligently.
WS: When you joined Shine America, what did you identify as its strengths and what priorities did you set for the company? ROSS: I knew the company was a winner at doing competition reality shows, as clearly shown by The Biggest Loser and MasterChef, given their continued strengths year in and year out. I had already seen The Face and I knew that it was really promising and that the team had deep skills and relationships in that arena. I knew that that was a great base to build off, and what we had to do was create more opportunities for both broadcast and cable and add an incursion into the very prolific world of docusoaps and factual television. That is what we have done, and we have had a very strong-selling season of development and piloting.
On the flip side, I knew that the company had a very strong interest in broadening into scripted programming here in the States. I was very lucky to have seen the original version of The Bridge, Bron [which was produced by a Shine Group subsidiary in Sweden, Filmlance International] and had watched those ten hours voraciously. So the goal was to work really hard to make sure that the U.S. adaptation, The Bridge, was the very best, and could stand up to all these other great dramas on cable, and then augment that with other scripted product which we have been aggressively developing and selling as well. So the bedrock was a really strong group of people who understood scripted and unscripted. The opportunity was to expand into other genres on the unscripted side and to broaden the purview on the scripted side.
RICH ROSS
Shine America
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WS: Tell us about Ardaban and Shine Latino, which
serve distinct target audiences. ROSS: The additions of Ardaban and Shine Latino were
actually orchestrated prior to my coming, but I can easily describe why. There is a tremendous appetite in the game world and Ardaban is really at the forefront of games—not what was traditionally known as panel game shows, but they were able to look at the lifestyle genre and come up with something like Chopped, which is a game show in the food world. Chachi Senior [the CEO of Ardaban] and his team have developed properties, have sold five shows and did a pilot, Secrets & Lies, for E! It’s a very lucrative, creative area
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and a needed area. So we were very excited to add Chachi and his team. In the U.S., the Hispanic community is one that needs to be served and should be served. Latinos watch a ton of Spanishlanguage television and it was a great opportunity to take a leader like Cristina Palacio, who was one of the queens of Colombian television and one of the greatest producers of Spanish-language television in the world, and bring her aboard to focus on establishing herself in Colombia but also develop and produce for the Spanish-language broadcasters. While she has been here, Minuto Para Ganar, the Spanish-language version of our very successful Minute to Win It, recently had its second season on MundoFOX. Cristina and her team are working with the U.S. players like Telemundo, Univision and MundoFOX, as well as the local broadcasters in Colombia. That is a real opportunity for us to take the formats we have that can work in Spanish-language television, as well as come up with original concepts that can go the other way. Lastly, we struck a deal for a joint venture with Nigel Lythgoe, the legend in competition reality, whether it’s his years on American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance, and we thought it was a perfect time for him to look at his next properties and to do them in tandem with us.
Working overtime: Adapted from the original Danish/Swedish series Bron, The Bridge debuted on FX in the U.S. in July to 3.04 million viewers and also set a time-shifted viewing record for the network.
network or broadcast network partner who can and will support it with both on-air and off-air marketing. We are very lucky, whether it’s Minute to Win It that we just did with GSN, or The Face with Oxygen, or FX and The Bridge. Those networks have not only spent to make the programming but also doubled down so that the viewer knew that these shows were on. Today the great challenge in programming is similar to, “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” WS: You are no stranger to the
WS: What opportunities and chal-
lenges do you see in the U.S market, which is so large and complex? ROSS: The good news is that there are so many buyers of scripted and unscripted programming in today’s market. In the scripted world alone there are now 29 buyers of highend programming. The great news is that there are a lot of people buying.The dark side of that is that there is so much content on air that it’s a cacophony of content. So you need to not only make a great program, but you also need a cable
international market. How do you encourage Shine America to stay in touch with the other Shine companies and exchange ideas and concepts? ROSS: There was always a routing between all the different markets of getting material seen, and there was a very thorough way of doing it—very focused and creative. The thing that I changed and that I felt very strongly about was I needed someone on our team on the unscripted side, which was a lion’s share of what we were importing
and exporting, to come aboard. We hired an incredible executive named Kate Shepherd, who came to us from 19 Entertainment. She is [VP of development] and for lack of a better word, the format whisperer. She is the one who speaks to our partners around the world and because she is a producer, she isn’t just someone scouring the world and saying, “What do you have? Let me make a list.” This is someone who is a peer who can talk to everyone. She not only looks at concepts and properties but also has an eye that can envision what they can become. That has dramatically affected our ability to move things more quickly from a communications standpoint, and from a trust standpoint. She happens to be British, which to me was not incidental because I like the idea that the voice is not, “We are Americans and we know better,” but, “We are television people and we want to do the best job.” WS: You mentioned The Bridge. How did it come to the U.S., and what had to be done to adapt it to the American audience?
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ROSS: There is a fascinating part of the original show, Bron: the Swedes were trying to figure out how to expand into other markets, including Denmark. A writer came up with the incredible idea of staging a murder on the bridge between the two countries, setting up the whole drama. Bron had done really well and there was tremendous interest in the format because Scandinavian drama had drawn a lot of interest due to the success of The Killing and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. A number of networks in the U.S. began to be very interested in an American version. FX was one of those networks but was less intrigued by the original idea, which was to set it on the U.S. and Canadian border.Then Meredith Stiehm came aboard, who had been a writer on Homeland. She was also intrigued by the show, but not intrigued by that border. Both she and Elwood Reid [previously an executive producer on Cold Case and Hawaii Five-0] said it seemed the bigger story was about the border between the U.S. and Mexico. With the combination of Meredith and Elwood being the experts they were and the excite-
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ment about using the U.S.-Mexican border as the setting, FX signed up, Meredith and Elwood signed up and we were off to the races. Of course, what is unforeseen in maybe the most dramatic sense is that at the same time, the immigration issue would move to the forefront of the policy conversation here in the U.S. So as we debuted the show, everybody had their own viewpoint: the Senate votes in their viewpoint, the House rebukes it, the President [wants a bill to get passed] and news programs, including those on Univision and Telemundo, are talking about it. A show that [originally displayed] the differences between first world countries like Sweden and Denmark is now a ripped-from-theheadlines crime drama in the U.S. You cannot plan this! WS: Tell me about some of Shine
America’s unscripted projects. ROSS: What is exciting for me is
that the partners we are working with are cable networks that now compete in a hand-to-hand com-
bat with the broadcast networks. An example is, we announced a deal for a property called The Big Deal for TNT. Does the consumer know the difference between TNT and CBS today? I can’t tell you they do. TNT has full distribution and a very aggressive appetite for high-quality, well-viewed commercial properties.That is the place we wanted to go and I have always been a fan of Michael Wright [the president and head of programming for TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies (TCM)]. We had a property that had been developed in Australia that had never been produced, and TNT essentially bought it in the room [during the pitch]. We hope it goes to pilot. There is also a property that we are working on with Spike TV. It’s a pilot called Covert Kitchens. Graham Elliot is one of the judges from MasterChef who loved the project, and he was perfect for it. He loved the idea of pop-up kitchens [onenight-only culinary events] and had worked on some. Here was a more
extreme pop-up idea and we just delivered the pilot to Spike. These are big networks that have a great appetite for unscripted and are working with us to really understand the competitive reality world. We are looking forward to seeing how these shows come together. WS: With the extensive experience
you have creating brands that can exist on different platforms, how have you applied the multiplatform concept to the scripted and unscripted shows that you have at Shine America? ROSS: What I have been able to do working very closely with Vivi Zigler, who came in to run what we call Shine 360° & Digital, is really look at the totality of our programming with a holistic approach. We look at properties that have succeeded on television for a long time like The Biggest Loser and MasterChef and see how we can expand them. We just brought in a mar-
The competition continues: The MasterChef franchise continues to take the U.S. by storm, with a new series iteration, MasterChef Junior, launching this month on FOX. 36 World Screen 9/13
keting executive working for Vivi to look at these properties and have them work not only on a multiplatform basis but also on a multidimensional basis. We are able to expand the opportunities on MasterChef by launching on FOX in prime time this fall MasterChef Junior. That is a great example of showing how expansion can work. You always have to start with a very strong concept, which leads to a strong show and strong ratings. And if you get that, then you can expand in these 360-degree ways, but it all has to start with that. No one is more thrilled that MasterChef is the number one show on television on Wednesday nights on FOX, and NBC has The Biggest Loser, which is the number one show on their air in the spring. It has to start with great shows, very well viewed, and then you have opportunities that flow from that. WS: Are you using digital plat-
forms and social media to help reach viewers when launching a new show or to strengthen the bond between viewers and a brand? ROSS: Yes, we are very lucky that we are working with networks that are very aggressive in how they market shows and reach the viewer. We have a small team that partners with the networks and represents us because we have the content. But what Oxygen did with The Face and what FX has done on social media with The Bridge are really exceptional examples. It’s been immeasurably important because you see it when they trend on Twitter, or the opportunities when we do things like Google Hangouts and how people respond.That’s why it’s a partnership. It’s never been more important to work with networks who are modern in their approach to getting the viewer, but who are dogged in making sure there are eyeballs for the show and not just after an ephemeral success that lasts a week.
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on the world’s end record 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 get knocked up by Simon Cowell? Every day, papers and magazines worldwide print horoscopes—projections for people born in a specific month, based on the positions of the stars and planets. While many people rely on these daily, weekly or monthly messages for guidance in their lives, some readers skip over them entirely. The editors of WS recognize that
Simon Cowell
Lindsay Lohan
Mila Kunis
Britney Spears
Simon Cowell
Bruce Willis
Global distinction: Outspoken TV personality. Sign: Libra (b. October 7, 1959) Significant date: August 1, 2013 Noteworthy activity: The cynical X Factor judge
Global distinction: Veteran action star. Sign: Pisces (b. March 19, 1955) Significant date: August 7, 2013 Noteworthy activity: When news breaks that Harrison
impregnates his friend’s estranged wife, with whom he has been secretly fornicating for a few years.The firsttime father allegedly offers to give his baby’s mama a $10-million mansion in Beverly Hills for the purpose of raising his illegitimate spawn, which is due in February. Horoscope: “There will be a sudden change or surprise involving a partner, rep, client, opponent or other key relationship in the mix, so roll with the punches.” (thecosmicpath.com)
Ford will replace Bruce Willis in the upcoming Expendables 3 movie, co-star Sylvester Stallone takes to Twitter to express his opinion on the matter. Sly calls Willis “greedy and lazy” in a tweet for backing out of the film.Willis hits back at the comment by saying he finds action films boring. Horoscope: “Those Pisces who have built solid foundations and solid structures and exercised maturity, hard work and patience in these areas will gain the greatest rewards.” (addictedtoastrology.com)
Lindsay Lohan
Britney Spears
Global distinction: Rehabbed party girl. Sign: Cancer (b. July 2, 1986) Significant date: August 18, 2013 Noteworthy activity: Fresh off her sixth stint in rehab,
Global distinction: Fallen pop princess. Sign: Sagittarius (b. December 2, 1981) Significant date: August 12, 2013 Noteworthy activity: The one-time X Factor panelist
the troubled starlet tells Oprah Winfrey on Oprah’s Next Chapter that she feels like she’s finally hit rock bottom and will stay sober.Though Lohan previously said she had only tried cocaine three or four times, the actress admits to Oprah that it was actually “more than 10 to 15 times.” Horoscope: “Although you may be feeling isolated today, your current situation ultimately serves you well if you simply learn your lesson. Admit that you can make mistakes and then proceed with caution the next time around.” (swagggirlicious.com)
reportedly drops a large chunk of her $17 million conservatorship on fast food and discount clothing. Documents show she spent a total of $6.8 million, including $63.74 at a 99 Cents Plus, $11.92 at Pay 99 Cents or Less and various receipts from a range of fast-food eateries, among them Domino’s, El Pollo Loco and McDonalds.There are a few extravagances in the expenses, such as a $500 manicure. Horoscope: “There’s tons of change coming to the money sector of your life for the next few years. Consider how you want to live five or ten years in the future, and work to yield great dividends by the time you need the cash.” (astrology.horoscope.com)
these little pearls of random foresight occasionally prove prophetic. But rather than poring over charts of the zodiac to predict world events, our staff prefers to use past horoscopes in an attempt to legitimate the science. As you can see here, had some of these media figures remembered to consult their horoscopes on significant days, they could have avoided a few surprises.
Mila Kunis Global distinction: Petite actress. Sign: Leo (b. August 14, 1983) Significant date: August 1, 2013 Noteworthy activity: While filming a fight sequence
with Channing Tatum on the set of their new film Jupiter Ascending, the brunette beauty reportedly misses her mark and receives a knuckle sandwich from the six-foottall stud. After being knocked out for several seconds, the That ’70s Show star refuses medical attention and insists on finishing the scene like a champ. Horoscope: “You might get an injury so be careful what you do. Nothing serious, but something annoying.Try to be less impulsive.” (psychic.com.au) 38 World Screen 9/13
Toni Braxton Global distinction: Voluptuous diva. Sign: Libra (b. October 7, 1967) Significant date: August 14, 2013 Noteworthy activity: While performing at a concert in
New Jersey, the back of the Braxton’s dress falls down, exposing her rear end to the crowd. The singer isn’t even aware of the wardrobe malfunction until a man gives her his suit jacket to cover up. Horoscope: “The triggering of your Uranus transit can lead to unexpected happenings, but also higher selfawareness and enlightenment.” (astrologyking.com)
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