CONTENT STRATEGIES
Uncovering programming opportunities worldwide…
Previously known as Schedule Watch, C21’s Content Strategies is a premium strand that provides constantly updated analysis of programming opportunities worldwide. In-depth interviews with commissioners and buyers at channels and platforms provide invaluable information for companies looking for opportunities in every genre.
C21’s Content Strategies offers a deep dive into hundreds of potential partners and allows you to understand the market in the most articulate way.
The world’s most successful producers and distributors use C21’s Content Strategies as a cornerstone of their route to market.
Join them, and make sure you have the unfair advantage. Find out more online at www.c21media.net/contentstrategies
…Your Unfair Advantage
tay in, or go out? That’s the question millions of people will be asking themselves this winter as they look to save money with a potential global recession looming, while the not-so-distant memories of lockdown keeps them craving day trips and nights out.
“Everybody wants to get back out there now without their face masks on and experience things,” says Owain Walbyoff, Banijay’s chief commercial officer, in our look at immersive events based on TV IP, on page 38.
But as Fremantle veteran Rob Clark points out on page 129: “If your gas bill is going through the roof, the first things that are going to go are those trips out with the family.”
These won’t be the only things cut. As pressure mounts on household expenditure, research released in September revealed over a quarter of UK consumers are considering cancelling their
streaming SVoD subscriptions in the next three months to save money.
Twenty-three percent of the 2,003 people from the UK, US and Germany surveyed by consumer research platform Quantilope have already cut media subscriptions from their budgets.
The resulting tightening of streamers’ belts and rising popularity of AVoD amongst consumers are among the recurring themes in these pages, as well as the perils of greenwashing as the climate emergency worsens (page 98) and the need for natural history programming to turn passive viewers into environmental activists grows (page 103).
We’ve also got all you need to know about the content strategies of major streaming players Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon’s Prime Video in key European markets, as well as the lowdown on how local players such as ITV, France Télévisions, ARD and RTBF are
fi
ghting back with their own expanded offerings online.
One unmissable feature, on page 14, is Jordan Pinto’s analysis of the ongoing problems at Warner Bros Discovery, where an apparent commissioning lull in unscripted is drawing the ire of producers.
You’ll also find reportage from recent conferences and markets around the world, including Série Series Festival, Natpe Budapest International, Sunny Side of the Doc, Edinburgh TV Festival, RTS London and C21’s Content Canada. The events circuit has well and truly returned.
The economic gloom has been at odds with the mood at these markets, as delegates have rejoiced at again meeting face-to-face. In many ways, this year’s Mipcom – where C21Media celebrates its 25th birthday – represents a grand reopening (even though The Grand may remain closed) for the TV community after last year’s tentative edition. It’s good to be back. Just don’t look at the bill. Nico Franks
REPORT: Fall 2022
C21’s quarterly outline of the biggest trends in the business looks at the impact of media and entertainment firms reducing costs and headcounts.
The return to UK screens of several bigname franchises has raised concern originality is suffering.
The clash of fantasy epics from HBO and Amazon signals a new phase in the streaming wars.
How Amazon and Apple are making their presence felt in live sports rights and putting pressure on traditional players.
Producers and crew are pushing for more rights and discontent is rife despite the continuing TV production boom.
NEWS ANALYSIS: Warner Bros Discovery
Producers are expressing real concerns about commissioning inactivity at the merged company and lack of clarity about its long-term strategy.
Despite the threat of recession, private equity investors are more bullish than ever about streaming.
The streamer’s UK commissioners hail risk-taking as a way to sustain diversity of content and create surprise hits.
CONTENT STRATEGIES: ITVX
How the forthcoming free streamer is opening up opportunities for the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster.
Live events based on TV IP can provide vital revenue for rights owners keen to put the pandemic behind them.
Ukraine
local producers creating docs,
CONTENT STRATEGIES: Amazon Prime Video Spain
The streamer calls for a wide range of stories to help it stand out from rivals.
NEXT BIG THINGS: 21 on 21
Our selection of the top shows to watch out for and screen at Mipcom.
CONTENT STRATEGIES: Disney+
Disney+ is pursuing a local originals strategy in the UK and France that aims to put quality before quantity.
COUNTRYFILE: The Americas
Spanish companies are zeroing in on the Americas to capitalise on a gold rush around Spanish-language content.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP:Catherine Tait
CBC/Radio-Canada’s chief on retaining the pubcaster’s creative reputation.
CONTENT STRATEGIES: France Télévisions
How the pubcaster takes a more flexible approach to international partnerships.
CONTENT STRATEGIES: ARD Mediathek
MY BIG BREAK: Mariam Naoum
THREE-YEAR PLAN: Halcyon
DEVELOPMENT SLATE: Helium
CONTENT STRATEGIES: Amazon Studios unscripted
C.J. Yu is seeking true crime series and docs with real access for Prime Video.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Michael Palin
The Monty Python star’s latest Channel 5 travelogue takes him to Iraq.
CONTENT STRATEGIES: WaterBear
How the ad- and subs-free natural history streamer is succeeding in the economic slowdown.
AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Natural history
How are filmmakers and broadcasters getting the climate message across without alienating viewers?
DEVELOPMENT SLATE: Yeti Television
AHEAD OF THE CURVE: UK formats
What lies ahead for the UK business amid a gloomy economic forecast and a proliferation of reboots?
The USG exec is scouring publishing, podcasts and even TikTok for IP.
The streamer is set to double down on its investment in local original production.
A new linear channel and a buoyant streamer are offering opportunities.
MY BIG BREAK:Ofelya Tovmasyan
THREE-YEAR PLAN: Marblemedia
DEVELOPMENT SLATE: Fremantle
THREE-YEAR PLAN: Potato
CONTENT STRATEGIES: RTBF
The Belgian pubcaster seeks a wider range of doc copros and acquisitions.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Nha-Uyen Chau
LGI Media’s CEO on why the popularity of AVoD could herald a wave of M&As.
CONTENT STRATEGIES: Qalbox
The VoD service celebrating the diversity of Muslim identities is stocking up.
PRESENT IMPERFECT FUTURE TENSE
Sally Mills at BBC Studios describes ways to avoid the dreaded ‘greenwashing.’
When the two biggest companies in the US start cutting jobs it’s usually a sign of downsizing to come elsewhere, especially with inflation reaching a 40-year high and expectations rising of a recession correspondingly deep.
Walmart trimmed 200 corporate roles in August – a tiny portion of its 1.6 million workforce, but these followed Amazon shedding 100,000 staff, equivalent to 6% of its global base, in June. Along with those of other retail giants like Target and Best Buy, the moves come as consumers feel the pinch of higher prices, with demand dropping back as the outsized Covid boost to online commerce fades.
The story is the same in media and entertainment, with those at the sharper end of tech often first to feel the squeeze in times of economic contraction. Snap, for example, the parent of popular instant messaging service Snapchat, recently abandoned its original content ambitions and laid off some 1,200 workers, amounting to a 20% reduction in personnel. Earlier in the summer, Vox Media –behind digital outfits like Thrillist and PopSugar – shed 40 positions, or 2% of its total. Meanwhile, Patreon, the popular paid-creator network, let go 17% of its employees (80 in total) last month and TikTok owner ByteDance axed hundreds of jobs in China.
In TV, Amazon continues to splash the cash, with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power billed as the most expensive series ever (see page 8) and the acquisition of MGM for US$8.5bn. But even one of the true survivors and thrivers of the dotcom boom and bust has recently begun to streamline teams across its Prime Video and Freevee services.
At the apex of change, however, is Netflix, whose share price plunged in April on news of stalling subscriber growth, with 150 staff let go the following month, another 300 the one after and, most recently, 30 more trimmed from its
The C21 Content Business Trends Report, a quarterly outline of the biggest trends in the business, continues in this issue as economies around the world contract and consumers cut back, while media and entertainment companies do the same – reining in costs and reducing headcounts.
By Jonathan Webdale c c B
animation division. The cuts, which amount to 4% of its workforce, come as the company battles “revenue growth headwinds,” including the dire macro-economic situation and competition from new US studio streamers.
The latter category, of course, includes HBO Max, which is due to be brought together with Discovery+ as part of the US$43bn merger that created Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) earlier this year. The removal of duplicate roles and other cost savings that can be made thanks to economies of scale are an inevitable and intentional outcome of such transactions, but the US$3bn in synergies WBD is seeking are also happening against the backdrop of downward fiscal forces unanticipated at the time of the original deal.
Seventy positions at HBO Max were terminated in mid-August, including senior executives such as exec VP of non-fiction and live-action family originals Jennifer O’Connell, content acquisitions exec VP Michael Quigley and international originals senior VP Jennifer Kim. Another round of 30 layoffs focusing on Europe came the week after, seeing VP of original EMEA programming Johnathan Young, Nordics VP and commissioning editor of originals Christian Wikander and head of unscripted Annelies Sitvast depart. A further 100 jobs across WBD’s ad sales business went in September.
The reduction in headcount was accompanied by the sudden abandonment of a number of highprofile projects, including the nearly completed
Batgirl movie and another based on popular Cartoon Network comedy The Amazing World of Gumball, both coming on the back of a cancellation for J.J. Abrams’ US$200m sci-fi series Demimonde
These are unlikely to be the last, as WBD – along with rivals Disney and Paramount – take a long, hard look at the return on investment their unprecedented content expenditure of the past five years has generated in the bid to keep pace with Netflix and Amazon. Paramount Premium Group chairman and CEO David Nevins warned at the recent Edinburgh Television Festival that the industry was now in corrective mode.
Commercial broadcasters, too, will be exposed to any potential drop in advertising while public service providers like the BBC are already being squeezed as governments – counterintuitively, from a revenue perspective – seek to reduce funding for impartial voices that dare to challenge the establishment narrative. The BBC relieved 1,000 employees of their posts in May while a proposed sale of fellow UK pubcaster Channel 4 is still being debated.
The impact on independent producers will be profound. UK film and TV production company insolvencies leapt 69% in the past year, according to accountancy firm Mazars, with 113 going out of business in the 12 months to the end of June. While much of this was a result of struggles inflicted by pandemic lockdowns, a slowdown in commissions from the major streamers also contributed and is expected to exacerbate the situation.
Today [June 23] we sadly let go of around 300 employees. While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth. We are so grateful for everything they have done for Netflix and are working hard to support them through this difficult transition.
Casey Bloys, chief content officer, HBO and HBO Max Unfortunately, the environment in which we operate is changing rapidly, and it is up to us to continue to refine our model to chart a course for long-term success. As we contemplate the Discovery content offering joining HBO Max for an eventual combined platform, we have had to make the incredibly difficult decision to disband or restructure teams.
Jack Conte, CEO, Patreon I’m more confident than ever that the world needs a better economic system for creative people, and Patreon will keep building that system for creators over the decades ahead.
However, the pandemic introduced volatility to the broader trend, starting with a rapid acceleration during Covid lockdowns. In response, we built an operating plan to support this outsized growth, but as the world began recovering from the pandemic and enduring a broader economic slowdown, that plan is no longer the right path forward for Patreon.
Evan Spiegel, CEO, Snap
The extent of this reduction should substantially reduce the risk of ever having to do this again, while balancing our desire to invest in our longterm future and reaccelerate our revenue growth.
These decisions were made against the backdrop of economic turbulence, in the media and technology industries in particular. Our aim is to get ahead of greater uncertainty by making difficult but important decisions to pare back on initiatives that are lower priority or have lower staffing needs in the current climate.
We are in a correction. We can’t just promise
spectacle and that’s not what TV needs. Costs are going up and we’re in a bad moment now with the costs of supply chain. Everything you’re doing costs more. There’s also a lot of production and that means talent costs keep going up.
When I took this job, I said that we needed to fight for something important: public service content and services, freely available universally, for the good of all. This fight is intensifying, the stakes are high. This is our moment to build a digital-first BBC. Something genuinely new. To do that, we need to evolve faster and embrace the huge shifts in the market.
Many production houses are reliant on work from streaming services. Losing a contract from a streaming service can be a major blow, especially as large production houses will also hire dozens of smaller firms for the project. Many of these will be let go as a knock-on effect of cost-cutting.
There is a sense, perhaps, that an article on the revival of classic TV shows is in itself a rehash of a decades old debate about originality in television – a medium which has thrived in no small part thanks to a string of ingenious hits that have come to be known and remade the world over.
TV reboots by their very nature are nothing new but it is notable that the UK, in particular, seems to be experiencing a rash of these of late. The tendency appears especially pronounced among the nation’s public service broadcasters, with perhaps the most high-profile being ITV’s decision to bring back Big Brother. The move, unveiled in August, will see the seminal reality show return to UK TV screens in 2023 after a five-year hiatus, having previously enjoyed a seven-year run on Channel 5 – that version itself a reboot of the franchise that ran for 18 years prior on Channel 4 (C4) and helped launch the latter’s youthskewing sibling E4. The format – among the Crown Jewels of European production giant Banijay – will seek to fulfil a similar role when it arrives on Love Island outlet ITV2 and new streaming service ITVX, which is gearing up for launch in November.
Meanwhile, Banijay is also owner of Survivor –another among the pantheon of television’s most successful series. Shortly after the news of Big Brother, the BBC announced it was reviving the archetypal adventure competition format, which last aired in Britain on ITV 20 years ago.
This development came swiftly on the back of confirmation muscle-bound MGM-owned physical gameshow Gladiators – having debuted on ITV 30 years ago – is also set for a BBC makeover, both due to land next year. 2023, at least on British mainstream TV, does indeed look like it’s shaping up for a golden age of TV reboots. These are the biggest titles among an array of familiar franchises seemingly set to fill scarce airtime and no doubt others are to come. For some within the creative community, the response has been despair, with C4 chief content officer Ian Katz recently describing such developments as “depressing” – a sentiment echoed by former C4 boss David Abraham at the Edinburgh Television Festival.
But while Katz’s complaint came with the assertion that C4’s mission was to focus on new programming, critics were quick to point out the network has itself been behind a swathe of reboots recently, with home makeover series Changing Rooms, quizshow GamesMaster and medical reality format Embarrassing Bodies among its recommissions. C5, meanwhile, is reviving classic BBC adventure gameshow Challenge Anneka, while Sky has brought back Fantasy Football League (originally on the BBC but last seen on ITV) and comedy music panel show Nevermind the Buzzcocks (another onetime BBC stalwart).
For the aforementioned Abraham – now founder and group CEO of Wonderhood Studios – such moves are a cause of grave concern, signalling a narrowing of opportunity for original ideas and a penchant among channel bosses for playing safe. Worse, he sees the situation as symptomatic of a wider malaise within British TV caused by the growing prevalence of US players and industry-wide consolidation, resulting in reduced risk-taking and the need to please shareholders.
The UK will see a swathe of big-name franchises return to TV screens in 2023, with new versions of Big Brother, Gladiators and Survivor all destined to hit the airwaves – raising concern within the industry that originality is being squeezed.
Not surprisingly, for purveyors of such franchises (especially those whose consolidation and shareholder value rests upon them) their return to TV screens is welcome justification of their worth. Hit formats do not achieve such status unless they have the capacity to bring in large audiences and the challenge for producers is to refresh winning formulae to appeal to younger viewers. For broadcasters, there is the halo of nostalgia, particularly in primetime, bringing families together, while updating tried-and-tested youth-skewing series for a new generation inevitably also appeals at a time of economic uncertainty.
Big Brother is the original and best reality format and one that I have never made before, so it’s a huge privilege to be making an all-new version with ITV2 and ITVX. Survivor is the greatest gameshow on earth for a reason. It has everything – reality, adventure, drama, and the ultimate game. I can’t wait to be boots on the ground to make this epic series for the BBC.
Paul Mortimer, director of reality commissioning & acquisitions and controller of ITV2, ITVBe and CITV, ITV
This refreshed, contemporary new series of Big Brother will contain all the familiar format points that kept viewers engaged and entertained the first time round, but with a brand new look and some additional twists that speak to today’s audience. We’re beyond excited to bring this iconic series to ITV2 and ITVX.
Ian Katz, chief content officer, Channel 4
Big Brother is a wonderful show. It did wonderful things for Channel 4 for a decade, it did a great job for Channel
5 for seven years. I’m sure it will bring an audience to ITV but I do think there is something depressing about this ‘microwave’ issue in TV, with so many old dishes being reheated.
What we’re seeing as the effect of the global digital platforms is the reduction of culture and choice and the amplification of franchises and return to previous franchises. This is profoundly depressing because most of us don’t wake up in the morning with a burning mission to reinvent something from 20, 30, 40 years ago.
Charlotte Moore, chief content officer, BBC
I don’t think it’s easy to bring titles back and make them successful. It would be a problem if it was all we were doing, but if you’re going to have impact with young viewers and get people to come to shows, there’s no doubt reboots create impact.
Kate Phillips, director of unscripted, BBC
We didn’t just say, ‘Yeah, Gladiators, let’s do that’. It took a long time and we worked really hard on what the format
should look like now. Seeing the public reaction when it leaked made me feel we should be doing it. Survivor is a global television hit and to be able to bring one of TV’s most successful formats to audiences in the UK in a uniquely BBC way is a very exciting prospect indeed.
Lucas Green, global head of content operations, Banijay Reboots are a hot topic and for good reason because these are great formats which have had huge success in the past and done a brilliant job for the channels that have commissioned them. It is important to position Big Brother in the context of its new home. This is not a repeat we’re talking about – this is a reboot, so it’s going to come back fresh and authentic. Gladiators will be just the same.
Jane Turton, CEO, All3Media Producers are complicit in this because there’s no way [Banijay UK exec chairman] Patrick Holland is sitting there and saying ‘ITV, please don’t buy Big Brother, it’s a reboot.’ We have to be realistic – we’re running businesses, we’re selling shows, people are buying shows. They will be more risk-averse in a recession – they always have been – but we are still selling new shows.
In an uncertain world, fantasy offers sanctuary from reality. For its creators, it is often a way to say something about the latter in an exaggerated, magical form which, in turn, makes subjects like war more palatable and enthralling for audiences: the struggle between good and evil, the ascendance of heroes, the quest for justice and adventure, the overthrowing of tyranny, the conquering of monsters, hope, power, corruption and love.
Sometimes, of course, it’s just about the sheer joy of a ripping yarn, the willing suspension of disbelief, immersion in alternative universes – ones that introduce the imagination to places and characters previously inconceivable or visited in dreams.
In some cases, it’s also about huge corporations battling to hook subscribers to the video streaming services in which they’ve invested billions. Thus is the lore of House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power – HBO and Amazon’s duelling prequels to Game of Thrones (GoT) and the Lord of the Rings respectively – which landed on TV screens within two weeks of each other towards the end of summer.
GoT, based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire novels, was previously the most expensive series in the history of television, with a perepisode budget rising from US$6m to US$15m over an eight-season run that ended in 2019, at an estimated total of US$1.5bn.
The Rings of Power, by contrast, cost Amazon US$250m before it had even hired writers, production crew or cast, with the online retail giant shelling out the gargantuan sum five years ago to secure TV adaptation rights from J.R.R. Tolkien IP rights holder The Saul Zaentz Company (a business that has since offloaded controlling division Middle-earth Enterprises to Swedish video games outfit Embracer Group). The price tag for the first eight-episode season comes in at a reported
HBO and Amazon have gone to battle with competing fantasy epics House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power, signalling a new phase in the streaming wars.
US$465m – with Amazon having committed to making five. Licensing aside, this means an initial US$58m per episode, dwarfing (pun intended) the US$20m per episode HBO is said to have spent on the first 10-part run of House of the Dragon, whose August 21 premiere became the network’s biggest ever with 10 million US viewers, quickly earning a recommission for showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik (though the latter has since stepped down).
The Rings of Power landed globally on September 1, pulling in 25 million people in 24 hours, according to Amazon – the first time the company has ever released figures for its Prime Video streaming service, which comes as part of an expedited delivery subscription that counts 200 million customers worldwide.
For Amazon, the stakes are indeed high. Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke and her team took a chance on two relatively unknown showrunners in Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne (the latter of whom purportedly impressed Tolkien’s grandson with his command of Elvish) and if nigh on US$60m an episode can’t make a decent TV show then the wrath of Sauron, or at least Jeff Bezos, should rightfully be unleashed. Still, a few billion dollars – while not quite a drop in the ocean – is comparatively small change to a conglomerate which last year reeled in US$470bn in revenue.
The reviews, at least from TV critics, have been broadly positive while the company was forced to pause the functionality for viewers to add their own ratings after itself falling victim to the fakes that blight its website. Bezos’ arch-rival Elon Musk took
to Twitter (still his preferred social media outlet despite a US$44bn takeover debacle) to pan the show but celebrated fantasy author Neil Gaiman – whose own Good Omens and The Sandman have already been adapted for Amazon and Netflix respectively – was among those to hit back.
For HBO parent Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), created earlier this year out of a US$43bn merger and seeking US$3bn in savings via a restructure, the House of the Dragon stakes are arguably higher. CEO David Zaslav now possesses a vast treasure trove of valuable IP spanning the DC Universe (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman), Harry Potter, Friends and many more but the abrupt cancellation of a nearly complete Batgirl movie and US$200m J.J. Abrams sci-fi series Demimonde illustrate that nothing is sacred as the company gears up for the complex task of unifying HBO Max and Discovery+ into a single streamer from 2023.
So far, so good, however. Though House of the Dragon was not among this year’s Emmy contenders, HBO and HBO Max content chief Casey Bloys will be heartened the company still trounced Netflix in September’s awards – perhaps the greatest prize for a Hollywood (and now, too, New York) icon under threat of usurpation from technology titans.
No doubt the houses of WBD and Amazon will do battle at next year’s event, with Netflix, Disney, Paramount and Apple also launched into the fray, and with a GoT Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) sequel now on its way (among a number of other potential spin-offs) the war for one streamer to rule them all is set to be hard and long.
House of the Dragon
David Zaslav, president and CEO, Warner Bros Discovery
One of the strengths of the new Warner Bros Discovery is our unparalleled ability to connect with fans around the world through our exceptional and diverse storytelling. There is no better example of what distinguishes this great company than the extraordinary effort that has gone into HBO’s House of the Dragon. The entire team has shepherded what looks to be the next big cultural moment.
Casey Bloys, chief content officer, HBO and HBO Max House of the Dragon features an incredibly talented cast and crew who poured their heart and soul into the production, and we’re ecstatic with viewers’ positive response. We look forward to sharing with audiences what else George R.R. Martin, Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik have in store for them this season.
The incredible body of work of J.R.R. Tolkien has inspired so many and has been our guiding light
throughout this journey. We’re so honoured to be able to expand on Tolkien’s journey and provide a supportive and passionate realm for this work to continue to inspire audiences all around the world.
We hope the human drama of it will be as engaging and accessible to anyone, as well as the super fans. We don’t think of the show in terms of what genre it’s in and other shows that may be out there. We really think about Tolkien’s life’s work, creating this middle world, the regions beyond Middle-earth. It drowns out what may be happening in another realm somewhere else.
After Amazon got involved in this project, my son came up to me one day, looked me in the eyes very sincerely and said, ‘Dad, please don’t f**k this up.’ He was right. We know that this world is important
to so many people. We know it’s a privilege to work inside this world and we know it’s a big responsibility.
Tolkien is turning in his grave. Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both.
Elon Musk doesn’t come to me for advice on how to fail to buy Twitter, and I don’t go to him for film, TV or literature criticism.
I am truly excited to have The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, one of the world’s most epic fantasy franchises join the Embracer family, opening up more transmedia opportunities. I am thrilled to see what lies in the future for this IP within the group. We also look forward to collaborating with both existing and new external licensees.
In March last year, Amazon agreed to pay the US National Football League (NFL) US$1bn per year for rights to screen weekly Thursday games live via its Prime Video subscription service. The 11-year deal was hailed as a game-changer for the industry, representing the first time the NFL had sold an exclusive package like this to a streamer. Fans could previously watch via Fox or on the NFL’s own platform, and last season when they did, each fixture averaged 12.84 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
But on September 15 this year, when Amazon’s Thursday Night Football (TNF) coverage kicked off, that figure was eclipsed as 13.3 million viewers signed into Prime Video to watch. A substantial portion of these were entirely new customers, subscribing to the e-commerce giant’s expedited
Amazon and Apple are making their presence felt in the competitive world of live sports rights and increasing pressure on traditional media players – just as newer entrants like DAZN up the ante as well.
delivery service in order to see the Los Angeles Chargers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 27 points to 24. During the three-hour ‘broadcast’ the company pulled in more customers than for any comparable time period for one of its popular annual Prime Day, Cyber Monday or Black Friday promotions.
Amazon global head of sports Jay Marine proclaimed TNF “a resounding success” by every measure and while it’s worth keeping the scale of the arrangement in perspective (TNF represents 15 out of a total 273 NFL games each year), the fact the pact shut out traditional TV is clearly worthy of note.
While live sports have remained terrestrial, satellite and cable’s great calling card in an era of cordcutting, streaming and its proponents are rapidly eroding this notion.
Apple earlier this year began offering Friday Night Baseball via its Apple TV+ service, having struck its first live sports rights deal in March with Major League Baseball, paying a purported US$85m per season over seven years. This US$595m package, which left Sunday games on the table for NBCUniversal-owned streamer Peacock, was followed soon after by a US$2.5bn exclusive contract
Jay Marine, VP Prime Video, global head of sports, Amazon
By every measure, Thursday Night Football on Prime Video was a resounding success. Our first exclusive TNF broadcast delivered the most watched night of primetime in the US in the history of Prime Video. This is a massive achievement. During our TNF broadcast, we also saw the biggest three hours for US Prime sign-ups ever in the history of Amazon – including Prime Day, Cyber Monday, and Black Friday.
Eddy Cue, senior VP of services, Apple
For the first time in the history of sports, fans will be able to access everything from a major
professional sports league in one place. It’s a dream come true for MLS fans, soccer fans, and anyone who loves sports. No fragmentation, no frustration — just the flexibility to sign up for one convenient service that gives you everything MLS, anywhere and anytime you want to watch.
Don Garber, commissioner, MLS
Apple is the perfect partner to further accelerate the growth of MLS and deepen the connection between our clubs and their fans. Given Apple’s
ability to create a best-in-class user experience and to reach fans everywhere, it’ll be incredibly easy to enjoy MLS matches anywhere, whether you’re a super fan or casual viewer.
We have a better understanding of ESPN’s potential as a standalone business and another vertical for Disney to reach a global audience to generate ad and subscriber revenues. We look forward to seeing [ESPN chairman] Mr Pitaro execute on the growth and innovation plans, generating considerable synergies as part of The Walt Disney Company.
for all Major League Soccer (MLS) matches over 10 seasons from 2023. Apple billed this agreement as historic, though the approach is somewhat different to Amazon, in that fans won’t need an Apple TV+ subscription to watch, rather an MLS one.
Nevertheless, sport is being used as a barker to draw consumers to Apple products, and at the same time the likes of Disney’s ESPN, Paramount’s CBS, Comcast’s NBC and Fox are finding themselves increasingly squeezed out.
Activist investor Daniel S Loeb of hedge fund Third Point recently penned an open letter to Disney CEO Bob Chapek pushing for a spin-off of ESPN as a separate entity, free to “pursue business initiatives that may be more difficult as part of Disney, such as sports betting,” but backtracked on this suggestion after receiving assurances about ESPN chairman James Pitaro’s future direction.
In August, Paramount agreed to pay a record US$1.5bn – equivalent to US$250m per season over six years – to extend its hold on US Englishlanguage broadcast rights to the UEFA Champions League. The deal cost more than double its previous one and came after NBC last year paid US$2.7bn over six years to retain rights to English Premier League (EPL) matches. While both arrangements, plus that of Apple and MLS, indicate the growing popularity of soccer in the US, they also signify the intensifying scramble around sports rights.
In the UK, where Amazon has increasingly been dabbling in EPL and Association of Tennis Professionals rights, the new Warner Bros Discovery in September closed a US$770m deal to acquire BT Sport (a significant EPL thorn in the side of Comcast’s Sky and UEFA Champions League player), which it will initially bring into a joint venture with its existing Eurosport business before deciding in three years’ time whether to buy completely.
The transaction snuffed out Access Industriesowned sports streamer DAZN’s hopes of taking over BT Sport, with the pair having been close to an agreement earlier in the year. DAZN – chaired by former Disney high-flyer and Candle Media coCEO Kevin Mayer – has leant heavily on billionaire Access founder Len Blavatnik to bankroll successful
Sean McManus, chairman, CBS Sports UEFA has been a key driver for Paramount+ since our launch and we are thrilled to extend this successful partnership showcasing even more world-class soccer through the 2029/30 season. UEFA is a perfect example of our differentiated strategy presenting marquee properties to drive and strengthen both our streaming and traditional linear businesses.
Andrew Georgiou, president and MD, Warner Bros Discovery Sports Europe Combining BT Sport and Eurosport UK together with Warner Bros Discovery’s world-class and
bids for domestic rights to top-flight soccer matches in Italy, Spain and Germany, plus myriad others in markets including the UK, US and Canada as it builds out its portfolio.
The company, which like all in sport was hit hard by the cancellation of events during the pandemic, is back on the front foot, however, having signed, for example, a long-term pact with British pugilist Anthony Joshua and promoter Matchroom Boxing in June.
More recently, DAZN acquired rival Eleven Group and youth-skewing sports network Team Whistle for an undisclosed sum, handing it rights to premier league soccer in Portugal and Spain, plus a strengthened relationship with World Cup organiser FIFA. As the tournament prepares to kick off on November 20, so the contest for global sports dominance is only just getting underway.
growing entertainment offering will result in an exciting new proposition for consumers. We are pleased the transaction has closed and we can now further engage all stakeholders in the process of establishing the joint venture and developing its extensive combined sports offer.
We see DAZN as the future of digital sports broadcasting and the ideal home for Eleven. Sport is global entertainment and joining with DAZN will
Above and far left: 13.3 million viewers signed into Prime Video to watch Thursday Night Football coverage begin in September
be transformative, allowing us to access greater economies of scale and a global platform for our talented team.
This deal marks an acceleration of our strategy to diversify our offerings and leverage our fantastic sports properties and our platform into new markets and business models. Team Whistle is a growing business that has a proven track record in monetising shortform content. It will be hugely valuable to DAZN as we look to generate the maximum value from our enviable rights portfolio.
TV production continues to boom despite the pandemic and a macro-economic environment forcing some to rein in costs. But producers and crew are pushing for better rights and malcontent is rife.
Thepandemic has made many people reappraise their lives. For those in TV –frequently required to work intense periods of extended and unsociable hours – not only did the hiatus deal a blow to finances, it also offered the chance to reflect on relations with a sometimes fraught and frenetic industry.
Disputes between employers and employees are nothing new, but as far as TV is concerned, while the on-demand era has delivered a welcome boom it has also placed greater demands on workers.
In the UK, this tension has manifested itself
in a stalemate between the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union (Bectu), which represents some 40,000 staff within the creative industries, and the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (Pact), which counts around 750 independent production companies in its membership.
Negotiations between the two over the renewal of a five-year-old agreement governing working conditions in TV drama broke down in March, with the row turning increasingly sour as it went public. The pair had been in discussion since the previous
autumn, but each side rejected the other’s demands in areas such as pay, hours and expenses, resulting in a stand-off.
While Bectu expressed the need to address long days and the “wellbeing crisis” affecting its members, Pact pointed out the impact the pandemic has had on producers. The indie body rallied its membership to pen a joint letter arguing many shows would not be financially viable under Bectu’s proposals and urged crew to accept Pact’s or risk “the whole of scripted TV being damaged.”
The situation risks being exacerbated by a skills shortage within the business, highlighted in a broadly welcomed review of high-end TV production from the British Film Institute (BFI) over the summer. The organisation identified a critical crew shortage, in part due to an “urgent need to improve working culture and practices across industry.”
Meanwhile, the Bectu/Pact impasse has yet to be resolved, with the 2017 agreement having lapsed on September 1. However, the two parties agreed to an extension while Bectu considers an updated offer from Pact that goes to ballot October 14-23.
The row is not dissimilar to the dispute last year between the International Association of Theatrical
The UK TV drama industry has reached a critical point, with many crew suffering from burn-out and low morale and unable to sustain a family life and their own wellbeing. At a time when the industry is thriving, we know many talented workers are leaving due to the unsustainable long-hours culture. It’s time to meet these issues head on with an agreement that addresses our members’ concerns and is fit for the future to ensure the industry, and its staff, thrive for years to come.
The last few years have been some of the most challenging our industry has ever had to face. Everybody has played their part in getting productions back on the road – something which we should all be collectively proud of. Increased growth and
Lust
Stage Employees (IATSE), which represents crew in the US and Canada, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents US studios including Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Apple, Amazon and others in labour matters.
IATSE and AMPTP were in deadlock for months over deal terms, leading the former to threaten a strike that would have closed down TV and film sets across North America. With the deadline looming, the strike was narrowly averted and both sides came to terms in October last year.
There is scope for further unrest in the coming months with the Writers Guild of America (WGA), Directors Guild of America, The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and the AMPTP all due to engage in discussions over contract renewals in the first half of 2023.
North of the border, the Directors Guild of
demand have placed huge pressure on all parts of the industry, a situation both Pact and the producers are keenly aware of and sympathetic to.
A workplace reset is long overdue. If we can get this right, as well as investing in our crew and capitalising on the opportunity presented by our industry’s growth, we can accelerate creating a workforce that genuinely reflects our society. As we do that, we must also urgently address negative working practices and cultures, including the long hours routinely expected of crew.
At its best, the film and TV industry is an inspiring and supportive community. But all too often people feel lonely, overly pressured and bullied. Wellbeing, inclusion and mental health have to be top of the UK industry’s agenda now, or the
Canada in British Columbia reached a deal on new film and TV terms with the AMPTP and the Canadian Producers Association back in June after strike action was narrowly averted due to a wrinkle in Canadian labour laws.
Around the globe, the pandemic has given pause for thought and the halt in TV production prompted many to reassess their place within the pecking order and share of profits being made by those at the higher end.
In Denmark – home to some of the most celebrated series of recent years, with The Killing, Borgen and The Bridge having defined Nordic noir –production has this year ground to a halt.
Netflix suspended the development of new series and films in the country in June after the Danish Producers’ Association (DPA) and actors, writers and directors representative Create Denmark forged a new agreement requiring higher payments to artists. According to the US streamer, which
incredible growth and promise we’ve seen in recent years could well falter.
At ITV we are ramping up our own training and recruitment programmes to bring more people into our industry and upskill those already with us. However, many of the structural issues driving skills shortages are industry-wide and we are keen to work with others across the industry in addressing them.
We cannot commission or develop any new Danish films or series until further notice due to the challenges we have been facing in clearing rights with the Danish unions. Unfortunately, the structure simply doesn’t allow us to do so in a financially sustainable way. We fear we will not be alone in reaching that conclusion as the new agreement will
has faced challenges in many territories as talent and producers seek a bigger portion of backend revenues, the deal meant making shows in Denmark was no longer financially sustainable.
The company wasn’t alone. Danish broadcaster TV2 also discontinued development of new fiction for its streaming service, claiming the new twoyear pact made things too costly. Then Viaplay joined the fray and said it, too, was suspending such activities in the country.
The hiatus has been disastrous for producers, with the heads of companies including Lust producer Miso Films, SAM Productions, Apple Tree, Nordisk Film and Oxen producer SF Studios recently penning an open letter calling for compromise. The group warned that after nine months of stalemate, bankruptcies, firings and mass unemployment are all genuine prospects in an industry that faces potential “decimation.”
And winter is only just coming.
likely have negative consequences for the entire Danish creative community.
Until we have achieved a sustainable agreement, we see no other option than to put development of further Danish fiction projects on hold. In the longer term, we hope we can find a viable path so we can once again produce fiction in Denmark, thereby fulfilling our ambitious goal of becoming the leading provider of Danish-produced films and series.
Peter Bose, CEO, Miso Film 2022 has been a disastrous year for the Danish film and TV series business, the worst ever. And 2023 might be even worse. From being one of the most productive and leading countries within development and production of quality series and films to both streaming services and broadcasters, we have now come to a full stop.
S
p a
Six months on from the formation of Warner Bros Discovery, frustration is reaching boiling point, with producers expressing mounting concern about commissioning inactivity and lack of communication about the company’s long-term strategy.
When the US$43bn mega-merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia officially closed in April, it was safe to assume the road ahead would be bumpy. And so it has proved for the newly merged behemoth, Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), led by president and CEO David Zaslav.
A breathless six months has ensued, headlined by high-profile executive departures; axed projects; the swift death of CNN+; a retreat from live-action programming for kids and families; the closure of original commissioning hubs in the Nordics, Central Europe, Netherlands and Turkey; a planned return to third-party licensing; and confirmation that SVoD platforms HBO Max and Discovery+ will be combined.
Given the whopping US$55bn debt pile, industry observers expected the cuts to be deep and painful. They have been, and insiders expect more are on the way.
What appears to have caught the industry off guard, however, is the apparent paralysis when it comes to commissioning, leading to mounting anxiety from producers, creators and talent. The mere mention of the WBD merger elicits strong and often varied responses.
During any given conversation, you will hear the following: Zaslav and his team are ill-equipped to oversee a scripted TV juggernaut; the studios need
By Jordan Pintoto be leaner in this economic climate; the content sector is at the mercy of Wall Street like never before; and Zaslav and his team have been brought in to do a tricky but necessary job. Never has art been so at odds with commerce in Hollywood. The only common theme is that almost no one feels comfortable speaking on the record.
But as the months wear on, anger is beginning to simmer within the production community, which
The head of one US non-scripted production company, who has several projects on hold at brands under WBD, says: “It’s not so much that they’re passing or not passing on projects, it’s that they’re not telling us anything. That’s the issue – that there is no communication. Please, just say something to somebody out of respect for the fact that we’ve all been making your content and making you a lot of money for a very long time.”
“
What’s scary is that they have not bought a single piece of television in months. Yes, there’s announcements coming out, but those are things that were already greenlit.
US non-scripted producer
feels frustrated and insulted that so little has been communicated about the longer-term strategy.
Particularly on the unscripted side – where the combination of WarnerMedia and Discovery means a vast swathe of the biggest factual networks sit under the same umbrella – concern is growing around the lack of commissioning activity. C21 has spoken with multiple producers who say their projects are sitting in development purgatory.
The producer argues: “What’s scary is they have not bought a single piece of television in months. Yes, there’s announcements coming out, but those are things that were already greenlit.”
A lack of long-term visibility, of course, makes life complicated for production companies, which ideally need to plan at least two years ahead. That isn’t possible when “even people at a very senior level, general managers of networks, can’t give you an answer,” says the producer.
“If I don’t know when that market is going to loosen up, I have no idea what kind of resources and time to put into development – not for one network, not for two networks, for 10 networks. That’s a huge chunk of our market.”
Another producer tells C21 they had two pitches being actively shepherded by WBD execs. After not hearing anything for several months, the producer checked in to discover both WBD execs had been laid off, again highlighting the lack of communication cited by many sources.
WBD disputes the notion that there has been a commissioning slowdown on the factual side. In a statement sent to C21, Kathleen Finch, chairman and chief content officer, US Networks Group at WBD, says: “We are very much greenlighting factual content and will share details about several new series pick-ups once agreements are done. We are bullish when it comes to commissioning exceptional content in every category.”
For all the intense anxiety surrounding the merger, many acknowledge the cuts being carried out by Zaslav and his team may be a necessary evil.
“I do think studios generally need to be a bit leaner and meaner in this market. If they’re going to go up against streaming platforms, they need to get their shit together,” says one industry exec, who characterises the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia as “cut-throat, cost-efficient meets fat and bloated.”
Now, the question turns to how long the cuts will continue for, and when the merged business will come out on the other side. “With any overgrown garden, you have to hack back the weeds and then
you can start growing, and so, for me, this is pretty much on a par with where I expected it to be. I don’t think it’s been worse.”
Amid the ongoing streamlining of the business, WBD’s stock has not performed well. Over the past six months, its value has fallen from around US$25 per share to under US$12 at the end of September.
But, of course, what is happening at WBD is not taking place in a vacuum. Stock prices are down across the board as Wall Street turns decidedly chilly on the long-term prospects of the streaming business. Netflix has been among the biggest casualties of 2022’s media stocks crash, slumping from a valuation of around US$700 per share a year ago to US$240 in late September.
WBD management has been tasked with finding US$3bn in savings within two years, and that means making unpopular and cold-hearted decisions. But some of the moves have incensed Hollywood, none more so than the decision to bin the Batgirl movie, even though US$90m had already been spent on it, as a tax write-off.
The move set off alarm bells in Hollywood, with the underlying concern being that WBD brass
doesn’t fundamentally understand how to work with talent – or worse yet, doesn’t respect talent.
Whether that is true or not, one thing is certain: the good will earned during Zaslav’s monthslong “listening tour” of Hollywood has essentially
“ We are very much greenlighting factual content and will share details about several new series pickups once agreements are done. We are bullish when it comes to commissioning exceptional content in every category.
Kathleen Finch WBDevaporated. The situation is likely not beyond repair, but things have not begun on the right foot.
“These guys are coming in and making decisions that experienced talent people wouldn’t make – that only bean-counters would make,” one US-based
talent agent tells C21. “You can’t treat talent that way. They spent a year or more of their lives on a movie – you have to release it and let the public decide, not a couple of executives.”
Butting heads with talent and their agents isn’t specific to the new regime, though. The previous leadership at WarnerMedia was also accused of not being talent-friendly, particularly after former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar’s decision to release the entire Warner Bros movie slate day-and-date via HBO Max in 2021, a move that enraged the talent community due to the loss of back-end revenue from theatrical ticket sales. WarnerMedia paid out hefty sums to reimburse talent for loss of earnings.
The cost-cutting measures – and the apparent lack of empathy involved in the calculations –have certainly unsettled Hollywood’s TV and film community.
Chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels’ assertion that the response to the Batgirl cancellation was “blown out of proportion” likely did nothing to mend any fences.
When asked if talent is actively avoiding taking projects to WBD, the agent says: “I mean, that’s absolutely happening. And it has to happen.
L-R: WBD president and CEO David Zaslav, US Networks Group’s Kathleen Finch and WBD international president Gerhard Zeiler. Top: HBO’s Emmy winner SuccessionWhen you’re selling a show or movie, the world is set up in such a way that each studio is its own ecosystem. When I look at the marketplace, I would prefer to sell elsewhere than Warner Bros Discovery.”
The notion that top talent may want to take their projects to studios other than WBD would certainly be an issue. In the short term, however, the company has enjoyed success, launching a hit with its Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon, and sweeping aside the competition at the Emmys in September.
All told, WBD won 48 awards, including best drama series (HBO’s Succession), best limited series (HBO’s The White Lotus) and outstanding comedy for Ted Lasso, which Warner Bros TV produces for Apple TV+. HBO/HBO Max picked up 38 of the 48 prizes and consistently airs some of the strongest TV out there, including docu-comedy gems such as The Rehearsal and How To with John Wilson
But many in the industry are asking whether this rate of success can be sustained in the years ahead if the commissioning slowdown persists and if talent is wary of working within the WBD ecosystem.
One rumour that has gathered momentum over the past month is that Zaslav and his team might be gearing up to eventually sell the company. The whispers suggest Comcast could potentially be exploring a bid for the business, as part of a move to merge it with NBCUniversal.
While Zaslav shut those rumours down in late September – telling employees during a Zoom town hall that the company is “not for sale” and “we have everything we need to be successful” – speculation is unlikely to die down.
There remain big question marks across other parts of the business, including what will happen to London-based production and distribution giant All3Media, which WBD jointly owns with John Malone’s Liberty Global.
An M&A pundit tells C21 that one likely scenario could see Warner Bros International TV Production combined with All3Media. While there was speculation earlier this year that All3Media might be put up for sale following the official formation of WBD, the pundit says the strategic value of All3Media as a prolific programming supplier, and a profitable business in its own right, would potentially outweigh the benefit of selling it.
There’s also the question of whether Warner Bros/ HBO will continue its lucrative output deals with the likes of Sky in the UK and Bell Media in Canada, which rank among its richest output deals globally.
Speaking about the Sky partnership at the Royal Television Society (RTS) London Convention in late September, WBD international president Gerhard Zeiler said the company would “want to have our own streaming service in the UK outside of Discovery+.” However, with all Zaslav’s talk of maximising revenues, it would not be outside the realm of possibility that those output deals with Sky and Bell Media remain in place once the current agreements elapse.
Outside of North America, question marks hang over the evolution of its international business. At
RTS, Zeiler insisted that local content was a central pillar of WBD’s programming strategy. However, its actions suggest that isn’t quite true, after the company confirmed earlier this year that HBO Max original commissioning will stop altogether in the Nordics, Central Europe, Netherlands and Turkey.
These changes come as the company forges
ground to its biggest competitors, Netflix and The Walt Disney Company.
One of the repeated complaints about WBD is that short-term solutions are being used to keep investors happy, without considering the long-term strategy that will create a thriving media company.
“Right now, it seems like they’re making shortterm decisions to save money, which may not be the best decisions in the long run,” says the talent agent.
For many, revving up the commissioning engines will be the first step to restoring faith in the firm’s desire to take on Netflix and Disney. Sources on the non-scripted side say the US commissioning slowdown began in February or March and, as of press time, shows no signs of improving.
ahead with plans to combine HBO Max and Discovery+ into a single streaming platform, currently scheduled to launch next year. “We want to be a topthree media player and I will be disappointed if it’s a three in front of our name,” said Zeiler at RTS.
However, industry watchers argue that without the requisite level of content investment, it could lose
“I’m not trying to sound overly dramatic here, but the merger has been an unmitigated disaster for producers,” says the US unscripted prodco head, adding that the time for honest communication has arrived – even if the message isn’t a good one.
“Even if you’re going to cut budgets, even if you’re going to say, ‘hey, we’ve got to save a lot of money,’ communicate in a way with the producing community and the creatives that’s respectful. If you don’t do that, it will catch up to you.”
“ These guys are coming in and making decisions that experienced talent people wouldn’t make – that only beancounters would make. You can’t treat talent that way. US talent agentThe White Lotus
Dickinson from Wiip
After a quiet decade, private equity (PE) investment has made a forceful return to the content sector over the past 18 months.
Head-turning deals have included the launch of Peter Chernin’s The North Road Company, which acquired Red Arrow Studios’ US assets with backing from Providence Equity Partners; Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat securing US$100m in investment from Boston-based PE firm Abry Partners; Atwater Capital increasing its stake in Mare of Easttown and Dickinson prodco Wiip; and Apollo purchasing an undisclosed minority stake in US studio Legendary Entertainment for US$760m.
There’s also Blackstone-backed Candle Media, led by Disney alumni Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs, which has been on an acquisition spree since last August, buying up companies including Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, Israeli prodco Faraway Road Productions and CoComelon and Blippi owner Moonbug Entertainment, the latter for an estimated US$2.7bn.
An early indicator that the production business was once again piquing the interest of PE investors came in 2019 when UK-based natural history specialist Plimsoll (Tiny World, Hostile Planet) was taken out to market.
Before 2019, whenever production or distribution assets were put up for sale, the vast majority of bids would typically come from strategic investors, usually companies from the same industry looking for synergies and integration opportunities. PE
Despite a looming recession and belt-tightening across the content sector, private equity investors are more bullish than ever about the financial upside of the streaming revolution.
acr inv fin
By Jordan Pinto
investors, also referred to as financial or trade investors, for the most part, wouldn’t get a look in.
However, something interesting happened when Plimsoll was put on the market in 2019, says Thomas Dey, CEO of London-headquartered ACF Investment Bank, which specialises in buying, selling and fundraising for businesses.
“What was very unusual was that half the buyers were financial, and we wouldn’t normally see that,” says Dey. “Instead, they went up against some of the biggest strategic players in the market and they outbid them. That’s unbelievable.”
The surprising turn of events was complete when LDC, the PE arm of the UK’s Lloyds Banking Group, acquired a minority stake in Plimsoll, led by CEO and founder Grant Mansfield, in a deal valuing the company at £80m (US$96m).
PE firms have remained involved in the global TV business over the past decade, but seeing so many of them in the running served as an eye-opener for ACF, says Dey.
“At ACF, we said, ‘OK, we need to up our financial buyer profile and interaction, because these firms are back.’ They’re here and they’re interested.”
When LDC left its position and
Plimsoll was again taken to the market in late 2021, there was even greater interest from PE firms, says Mansfield.
Of the 17 official bids, a meaningful number were from PE companies, mainly based in London and LA. Even when that list was whittled down to three, one PE firm remained in the mix with a very compelling bid.
Ultimately, ITV Studios acquired a
There is an increasing demand for content, it’s just driven by slightly different players than perhaps it was 24 months ago. PE houses see this as a growth sector.
“
79.5% stake in Plimsoll for £103.5m, valuing the enterprise at £131m, an increase of around £43m from less than three years before. Mansfield says the decision to go with a strategic investor, rather than a financial one, was down to the belief Plimsoll would benefit from additional specialist knowledge in its next phase of growth.
That isn’t to say, however, that PE companies have a rudimentary understanding of the content sector, notes Mansfield. Quite the contrary.
“There are some obvious
Tom Manwaring Helion Partners
specialists in the sector now, and certainly the [PE] company we were in talks with until late in the day didn’t need educating about the sector. They absolutely understood its potential value, and, frankly, its pitfalls – it’s not all champagne and roses. But we certainly had some very sophisticated bidders from PE.”
booming. While many other industries are still reeling, to varying degrees, from the effects of the pandemic, the content sector has rebounded well.
It can be easy to get lost in the negative headlines – and make no mistake, there have been many of those this year.
entertainment in times of economic hardship.
In that context, “paying £8.99 a month for Netflix or another platform of your choice is relatively good value to sit in and binge-watch TV,” says Manwaring.
PE investors also don’t view Netflix as the sole bellwether for the health of the streaming sector. “It’s fair to say that Netflix subs have flattened off in recent months but the overall subscriber rates and the demand for content amongst the other platforms – Apple TV+, Amazon, Disney+, Discovery+, Paramount+ and others – has continued to rise,” he says.
“Overall, there is an increasing demand for content, it’s just driven by slightly different players than perhaps it was 24 months ago. If you look at the TV production company level, the market demand for high-quality content is growing. That, in turn, drives the fact that these PE houses see this as a growth sector.”
“
This is still a period when Korean content is undervalued relative to its performance. Over time, it has to close up. It makes no sense why anything that resonates so much and has so much demand ends up being so much cheaper in terms of its unit economics.
Typically, when a PE firm invests in another company, there is a time horizon of either three-to-five or fiveto-seven years. However, each PE house has different criteria. Some, for example, don’t focus on the time but instead will hold their ownership until they have doubled or tripled their investment.
The initial plan was for LDC to hold its Plimsoll investment for between five and seven years. However, after achieving rapid growth in three, Mansfield instigated the process to find a new buyer. “Once they understood my thinking, they were very supportive. And they made a very good return, so everybody is happy,” he says.
The caricature of PE firms is that they have no empathy for the business they are investing in and only care about the bottom line. That was not the case for Plimsoll, says Mansfield, who calls LDC “hands-off and supportive.” Having LDC execs on its board was also valuable when it came time to find a new buyer.
Given the level of interest Plimsoll saw from PE investors, Mansfield says the demand remains strong despite potential industry headwinds. “For the right assets, there’s a real appetite from private equity,” he claims.
The reason for the demand is simple: the content business is still
Between Netflix’s stalling subscriber growth and the ruthless cuts at newly merged Warner Bros Discovery, to the likes of Snap and YouTube retreating from the original content space, there has been plenty of evidence to suggest that the content bubble has finally burst in the US. Things are no rosier in the UK, where the proposed privatisation of Channel 4 has been one of the dominant storylines of the past 18 months, and the BBC is contending with budget cuts of its own. Comparing the market values of each major US studio today versus a year ago also makes for sobering inspection.
Take a step back, however, and the picture isn’t so glum. According to UKbased research firm Ampere Analysis, spending topped US$220bn in 2021, up US$20bn (14%) from the previous year. This year, global content spend is projected to exceed US$230bn.
Even the threat of a devastating global recession, coupled with record rates of inflation, haven’t dented PE investors’ confidence in the long-term value of the content sector.
Tom Manwaring, partner at Londonbased M&A advisor Helion Partners, says the production sector and streaming platforms are “relatively well insulated from the downturn,” because people tend to cut out-ofhome entertainment (such as going to restaurants) rather than at-home
In the UK, there’s another interesting aspect to the M&A picture: the relative weakness of the British pound is making UK production companies “relatively good value” to US and international acquirers, says Manwaring. Both for PE and strategic investors, this will likely be a trend to watch in the coming months.
On the other side of the Atlantic, LA-based PE firm Atwater Capital is advancing its strategy as a specialist in the media space. With investments in Germany’s Leonine Studios and France’s Mediawan, Atwater has found a sweet spot partnering with European media groups that own and control rights.
The company recently increased its stake in Wiip, becoming the second largest shareholder behind Korean television company Studio LuluLala, (fka JTBC Studios). Atwater Capital is a strong believer in production companies retaining rights, says founder and managing partner Vania Schlogel, especially at a time when global streamers remain eager to gobble up worldwide rights.
“That type of uneven economic relationship continuing into perpetuity is not necessarily sustainable,” says Schlogel. “That’s actually one of the reasons Atwater invested in Wiip, which was set up by Paul Lee to be incredibly talent friendly. So there’s a shifting paradigm in trying to make sure that creators participate in backend economics.”
Aside from the fact it is focused solely on the media sector, Atwater is relatively unusual in that it is more involved than your typical PE firm. While many such companies take a backseat role in their portfolio companies, Schlogel describes Atwater Capital as an “operationally involved shareholder, to the extent that management wants us to be,” adding that “100% of our investments have been by invitation.”
While buying into European and US companies has been its bread and butter, direct investment in Asia could be next for Atwater. However, while the Asian marketplace, particularly South Korea, is evidently booming, Schlogel says the economics around content production don’t necessarily make sense for US-based PE houses looking to invest.
“Right now, Netflix is getting a heck of a deal when it comes to Korean content, because the unit costs are so much cheaper to produce content out of Korea versus the US, for example. But over and over again, Korean content is top-10 content,” she says.
“This is still a period when I believe Korean content is undervalued relative to its performance. Over time, it has to close up. It makes no sense why anything that resonates so much and has so much demand ends up being so much cheaper in terms of its unit economics.
“So that value gap needs to, and will, close up over time, and that will drive additional and renewed interest among American firms in Asian content.”
While the majority of PE firms want to invest in other businesses, some producers are finding innovative ways to structure deals so that they don’t have to sell pieces of their company.
One such outfit is LA- and Londonbased Atlantic Nomad – led by the former president of film at Content Media, Jamie Carmichael, and former Criminal Minds showrunner Simon Mirren – which last year closed a slate financing deal with Finnish venture capital fund manager IPR.VC, giving it access to overhead, development and production financing.
The investment has enabled Atlantic Nomad, which is majority-owned by Carmichael while Mirren has a minority stake, to acquire six pieces of IP (four books, one memoir and one graphic novel series), in addition to developing original projects with various creators internationally. In terms of development, the company currently has two projects in the US, several in the UK, two in Australia and one each in Ireland, Germany and France.
For its initial projects, Carmichael says he will split revenues 50/50 with producing partners, with Atlantic Nomad paying for the acquisition of IP,
development and creation of materials.
“It’s a simple, fair arrangement. Having access to capital allows me to be a helpful and positive partner to these other producers,” he adds.
Carmichael didn’t want to sell a piece of the company, especially so early in its existence, so the arrangement with IPR.VC is his ideal scenario. The deal, he adds, is evidence that PE firms also see the value of investing in other parts of the content chain, aside from simply taking ownership of production companies, while still believing they can make a healthy and meaningful return on their investment.
Carmichael forecasts continued industry growth for at least the next 10 or 12 years, saying that “smart and innovative investors” will reap the benefits of ongoing investment in the TV space.
ACF’s Dey agrees and dismisses the notion that PE investors would be deterred by the prospect of sustained industry belt-tightening.
“It’s one small blip in a market that is very buoyant overall. That is why PE is sitting in the middle of this market going, ‘this is a no-brainer,’” he says.
“LDC hung on to Plimsoll for 24 months and then sold them when they nearly doubled in size and made a huge return. It’s as simple as that. They just sat and held the investment, and then, bang – doubled their money.”
Jamie Carmichael of Atlantic Nomad
UK filmmaker Rowan Deacon and 72 Film, but Taylor also flagged up American Murder: The Family Next Door. While “potentially very American,” it comes from British filmmaker Jenny Popplewell, who was directing her first feature.
“It’s about telling the truest, most authentic story,” Taylor said.
When it comes to unscripted series, Kelly prioritises big, relatable shows able to cut through and resonate around the world. They typically have simple toplines, such as Studio Lambert’s The Circle
“British producers are exceptional at making really broad shows that travel,” Kelly said, highlighting the upcoming doc series about Tyson Fury, At Home With the Furys. Directed by Josh Jacobs and produced by Laura Leigh and Demi Doyle, the series is due to launch in 2023.
“Obviously, Tyson is a super British talent, but he’s a global sports name as well. We think that sort of contrast is really interesting, so we hope it’ll resonate here and then travel around the world,” said Kelly.
Currently in the works is an unscripted take on Netflix’s hit
Korean drama series Squid Game Squid Game: The Challenge is billed as the biggest reality series yet, featuring 456 contestants competing for a US$4.56m prize. The 10-episode show is a coproduction by Studio
person you don’t know,” said Dhand. Exec-produced by Oscar-winning Asif Kapadia (Amy) and directed by Joe Pearlman (Bros), the doc is coexec produced by Dominic CrossleyHolland, who heads RSA Unscripted, the new shingle launched by Ridley Scott Creative Group’s RSA Films.
Coproduction partnerships also remain firmly on the table for Netflix, across scripted and unscripted. Mensah flagged up recent BBC copro Red Rose and upcoming drama Champion, created by Queenie author Candice Carty-Williams as her first TV project. On the unscripted front is the recently greenlit cookery competition series Five Star Chef (6x60’), a Twenty Twenty copro with Channel 4.
Currently topping Kelly’s wishlist is a music talent format. “That’s a required space for us, and we think British producers have a history of making and developing shows that really pop and travel around the world. So we’d love to find that, as well those big, broad reality social experiments.”
Dhand highlights a need for more doc series about contemporary history. Citing successes like Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror, he said: “It’s an area we haven’t done a great deal on. There’s been a number of shows and there’s definitely a lot more to come down the tracks.”
Lambert and ITV Studios–owned The Garden and will be made in the UK.
Meanwhile, new on the UK doc series front is an as-yet-untitled official Robbie Williams series. Tapping 25 years of unseen archive material as well as exclusive access to the singer, the doc promises to show “the story you think you know but the
Mensah advised producers to keep pitching in the same space as existing shows. “There’s not just one YA story to be told, we’re making a tonne of them. There’s not one historical story to be told, not one gameshow or factual story,” she said. “Sometimes I think people over-worry about these things. Just come to us authentically and we’ll give you our authentic opinion back.”
“ There’s no sense we are changing course as a result of a customer crisis. We’re absolutely laser-focused on finding ideas that are going to be big and broad and noisy.
Ben Kelly Netflix
In years gone by, the notion that the programming boss at ITV would say ratings are not the be all and end all for the UK terrestrial broadcaster would be unthinkable. But times change and the imminent arrival of free streamer ITVX means the shackles of the overnights have been loosened a little within the offices of ITV as it pursues a strategy of “digital transformation” under managing director of streaming Rufus Radcliffe.
Who’s beating who on each night of the week remains an obsession for some (Ben Frow, controller of ITV rival Channel 5, is said to receive an alert at 09.37am each day with the overnights). However, at the recent Edinburgh TV Festival, Kevin Lygo, MD of media and entertainment at ITV, made it clear that the broadcaster is entering a new era.
ITVX will replace ITV Hub, the broadcaster’s existing, and clunky, catch-up service, in November. Marking the business’s somewhat belated leap into the world of streaming, ITVX will be a free, ad-supported service filled with around 15,000 hours of programming at launch, including thriller Without Sin
Crucially, ITVX will see the broadcaster commission programming that isn’t necessarily going to bring in millions of viewers at the first time of asking and instead pursue scripted and unscripted shows that skew younger than those who tend to tune in to Emmerdale followed by Coronation Street most weeknights for their soap fix.
But don’t expect ITV to suddenly start airing programmes about Roblox (ask a child) fronted by the latest TikTokker in primetime, though, with Lygo hinting at an evolution, rather than revolution, at the broadcaster, which as a listed company will always retain a commercial imperative.
“It’s not a huge shift. ITV is, and will remain, I’m sure, a mainstream broadcaster,” says Lygo. Nevertheless, ITVX
“
Nana Hughes, ITV
ITVX, the soon-to-launch free streaming service from the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, is opening up previously blocked avenues for ITV, freed from the pressure of overnight ratings.
aven the p ratin
By Nico Franks
will see the broadcaster delve further into genres it has only previously dipped its toe into in the past, such as comedy.
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As well as ‘streaming exclusives, all the drama and comedy ITV commissions will be made available to viewers in one go on ITVX for free, as soon as the first episode has aired on ITV’s linear channels. The same will be true of the majority of reality series.
In the same service, subscription upgrades will give access to a premium tier where all of the free content can be viewed, without the ads, as well as a growing range of partner content. Subscribers will also have access to BritBox, featuring UK series from the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5, as well as exclusives such as classic sci-fi series Doctor Who
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commissions for ITVX that highlight the new strategy, with a host of comedies on the slate, including one based on the Israeli format Significant Other from Yes Studios, about two lonely neighbours who embark on a hesitant, obstacle-filled relationship after drastic life events bring them together.
Katherine Parkinson and Youssef Kerkour will star in the 6x30’ UK version, which is being made by Nicola Shindler’s Quay Street Productions, part of ITV Studios. The series, written by Dana Fainaru and Hamish Wright, started filming in September and will air on ITVX in 2023.
Count Abdulla (6x30’), meanwhile, follows a mid-twenties British-Pakistani Muslim doctor, played by Arian Nik, who is stuck in an identity crisis, caught between his religious mother and his secular, hedonistic friends. But when he is bitten by a vampire, played by Jaime Winstone, he suddenly becomes the outsider’s outsider. A Fudge Park production, the series is written by Kaamil Shah and directed by Asim Abbasi.
ITVX is also working with actress and comedian Jayde Adams (Alma’s Not Normal) on Ruby Speaking, a comedy from Yellow Door Productions written by Abigail Wilson. The Bristol-based series is inspired by the years Adams spent working in a call centre. Nana Hughes, ITV’s head of comedy, says: “The arrival
of ITVX gives us more opportunities to commission a broad range of comedies and a dedicated place for the genre to call home. We want a huge crosssection of contemporary, diverse and inclusive comedy. We want to take risks, but most importantly, we want our audiences to find shows that reflect them and make them laugh.”
Lygo adds the focus on streaming means it no longer has to “worry too much about bringing in millions of viewers” and new comedies can find their feet before potentially migrating to ITV or ITV2.
ITVX is a major investment for the broadcaster, with ITV CEO Carolyn McCall saying earlier this year that the company is set to make a “significant content investment” in the streamer as it looks to differentiate itself from rivals such as Netflix with the amount of British content available on the service.
Its launch will mark ITV entering the second phase of its ‘More Than TV’ strategy as it targets digital revenues of at least £750m (US$914m) by 2026.
A key launch title will be the drama A Spy Among Friends, a limited series based on the New York Times best-selling factual book written by Ben Macintyre that dramatises the story of Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) and Kim Philby (Guy Pearce) – two British spies and lifelong friends, one of whom was betraying the other all along, at the height of the Cold War.
Lygo says the service is planning to drop a new “programming event” on the service once a week “to draw people in, forever or until the money runs out,” he deadpans.
“When they’re there, I honestly believe there are a lot of drams we’ve made in the past few years not watched by everyone that they will love,” Lygo says, pointing to series such as The Thief, His Wife & the Canoe
ITV feels that while it has a sizeable, loyal audience, there are others who come to the broadcaster a few times a year for a major sporting event, a big entertainment show, or a premium drama. ITVX is its plan to keep them coming
“
The content we’ve commissioned is adjacent to the mainstream shows. ITVX can have dramas that can be a little edgier –whatever that means – and maybe tackle subjects that we wouldn’t have before.
Kevin Lygo ITVConfessions of Frannie Langton is based on the historical novel by Sara Collins
back for more, with familiar and unfamiliar programming, blockbuster movies, acquired fare from the US as well as live programming and news.
“The content we’ve commissioned is adjacent to the mainstream shows. ITVX can have dramas that can be a little edgier – whatever that means – and maybe tackle subjects that we wouldn’t have before,” says Lygo.
Polly Hill, ITV’s head of drama, says ITVX will let the broadcaster explore “different tones and genres” with its scripted programming and target specific audiences more, such as young adults, rather than reach the broadest possible audience, with the extra investment allowing it to commission 50% more dramas.
Stranger Things and Killing Eve are two shows that Hill namechecks as not being tenable in ITV’s linear schedule that could live quite happily on ITVX. Dramas that will stream first and for free on ITVX before arriving six to nine months later on ITV’s broadcast channel include Nolly, starring Helena Bonham Carter, Confessions of Frannie Langton, starring Karla-Simone Spence, Lenny Henry’s six-part drama The Little Birds and Litvinenko
The latter is a four-part drama starring David Tennant as Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian Federal Security Services and KGB officer whose death in London from polonium poisoning in November 2006 triggered one of the most complex and dangerous investigations in the history of the city’s Metropolitan Police. The drama also focuses on the story of Marina, played by Margarita Levieva, Litvinenko’s fearless widow who fought tirelessly to persuade the British government to publicly name her husband’s killers and acknowledge the role of the Russian state in his murder.
ITVX will also be home to a wide selection of popular US series and the company has been knocking on the doors of the US studios, doing deals with the likes of WarnerMedia International Television Distribution for programmes including UK premieres of The Sex Lives of College Girls and All American, as well as The OC, One Tree Hill and select seasons of The 100, Supernatural and Veronica Mars
As in comedy and drama, ITVX can also do things a little differently when it comes to factual and has already commissioned a first tranche of documentary box sets and investigative series that it believes will strike a chord with the true crime-hungry audience on streaming.
ITV’s controller of factual, Jo Clinton Davis, explains:
“We’re excited about the opportunity ITVX presents for us and with our commissioning we want to broaden the palette of factual in very different and surprising ways. Documentary box sets with directorial ambition, on a diverse range of subjects, lead our developing slate; alongside series from new factual talent, including Laura Whitmore Investigates. This is just the beginning of a range of new opportunities as the world of factual opens up on ITVX, with much more to come.”
Clinton-Davis wants to build on the recently commissioned The Case Against Cosby Hiding in Plain Sight (working title), produced by All3Media-owned Optomen Television, with more specials that track the downfall of similarly high-profile figures.
“There’s a seam to be mined in carefully chosen biopics that tell stories of our time through the prism of latterday Icaruses, who reached the pinnacle of their field and had an extraordinary fall from grace. We have some of those in development,” Clinton-Davis says.
Three-parter A Murder In the Family from Knickerbockerglory TV, the makers of Netlix’s most watched documentary, American Murder: The Family Next Door, and investigates three
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Above: Damian Lewis in Cold War espionage story A Spy Among Friends. Left: Katherine Parkinson and Youssef Kerkour star in the UK version of Israeli scripted format Significant Other. Below: Youthfocused cookery show Bad Chefs
shocking murders, where the victim and perpetrator were family.
Lygo says the “safe and gentle” commissions in the factual space are no longer enough for the commercial pubcaster as it broadens its scope. “The things that have been the mainstays of mainstream factual programming – docusoaps, cameras in institutions, flashing blue lights – these are things we’re not really looking for, unless you have a new take on them,” he says.
A Year on Planet Earth, meanwhile, marks ITV’s entry into the ambitious blue-chip premium factual genre, as cornered by the BBC and its Natural History Unit. Made by Plimsoll Productions, the wildlife specialist acquired recently by ITV Studios, the series will reveal the incredible ways in which all life is connected and how massive natural events affect the lives of individual animals as the Earth makes its annual journey around the sun.
Filmed in more than 60 different locations, the series will launch on ITVX and features narration from actor, author and comedian Stephen Fry.
Iconic format Big Brother is being rebooted as the broadcaster seeks to add another reality big gun to its arsenal to sit alongside the all-conquering Love Island, which will return with two more seasons in 2023.
Lygo hopes ITV’s version of Big Brother, which he commissioned back in 2000 whilst head of entertainment at Channel 4, will drive audiences to ITVX and lauds the original as one of the most influential TV shows of all time.
The veteran executive, who started his career in TV as a comedy script writer before becoming a general trainee at the BBC in the early 1980s, admits that mistakes have been made in the industry when it comes to reality TV and the duty of care broadcasters and producers have to participants.
“Only a few years ago, the term ‘duty of care’ was hardly used. Now it’s on everybody’s lips all the time and broadcasters across the board are very mindful of it. It’s come on in leaps and bounds in the last few years,” says Lygo, who claims ITV’s current protocols are “rigorous.”
Budget remains for “one more” big-scale event piece when it comes to reality, says Paul Mortimer, director of reality and acquisitions at ITV, who believes ITVX will allow the company to commission “ideas we would have rejected in the past,” adding: “It’s a new service and we want to
engage new viewers, and that sometimes means going a bit more niche.”
Mortimer flags up Bad Chefs on ITV2 as an example of a series that shows how the broadcaster is “broadening its horizons” by moving into previously unchartered territory, such as a cookery show for young people. Meanwhile, genres that do “disproportionately well in the streaming space,” such as constructed reality and observational documentaries, are also in demand, he adds.
Katie Rawcliffe, head of entertainment commissioning at ITV, believes the broadcaster doesn’t get pitched enough shows akin to The Great British Bake Off or The Apprentice and the exec is keen to find some competition hits of the broadcaster’s own.
Meanwhile, the competition amongst the streamers is only set to get more fierce once ITVX makes its longawaited debut.
Having faced near extinction due to Covid-19, live events and immersive experiences based on television IP have bounced back and are set to provide a vital revenue stream for rights owners. By Nico Franks Ha IP
erds, are you ready?” asks a YouTube ad for Stranger Things: The Immersive Experience in London, a £52 (US$58), 45-minute trip into the Upside Down.
Promising to transport fans back to the 80s with a recreation of the Netflix smash hit, it has been put together by the streamer with events company Fever and comes after a Secret Cinema immersive experience based on the show that ran from late 2019 to early 2020.
Of course, live experiences based on well-known IP are nothing new, with Disney’s theme parks around the world having separated parents from large chunks of their annual salaries to appease their children for decades now.
But events such as Stranger Things: The Immersive Experience are part of a growing trend for different demographics – specifically those in their 20s and 30s – to pay for in-person activities, fuelled by a desire to experience things together after so many lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The space is evolving immensely, not just because of technology, but also our responsiveness to what fans really want from an entertainment experience,” explains Jenefer Brown, executive VP and head of global products and experiences at Lionsgate.
Execs with ‘experiences’ in their job titles are becoming more and more common as TV companies look to tap into a growing revenue
stream for live events based on their IP off the back of trends such as competitive socialising and escape rooms.
“There was a void in the marketplace, with so much focused on family entertainment. That is still important to us, but thinking about an adult audience has set us apart. You have people like me, who are adults but haven’t fully grown up. I completely
“ There was a void in the marketplace, with so much focused on family entertainment. That is still important to us, but thinking about an adult audience has set us apart. You have people like me, who are adults but haven’t fully grown up.
Jenefer Brown Lionsgatevalue and appreciate play,” says Brown, who oversees experiences based on Lionsgate IP such as The Hunger Games in markets around the world, with the Middle East a particular growth region.
The live events space was building momentum before the industry went into hibernation during the pandemic. Thankfully, 2022 has seen it bounce back and those behind the live events say business
is booming, while admitting not everyone may yet feel immersive experiences are for them.
“It’s still quite a nascent, young industry and not everyone immediately understands what an immersive attraction is,” says Tom LionettiMaguire, who set up Little Lion Entertainment in 2014.
Lionetti-Maguire says London-based Little Lion is being approached by TV companies, Hollywood studios and games companies eager to create experiences based on the IP in their libraries.
Little Lion produces an escape room-style experience based on The Crystal Maze, the TV show about which anyone who grew up in the UK in the 1990s will have fond memories, for Banijay Brands, the commercial unit of the international production and distribution giant.
The format is the “perfect example” of a piece of IP suited to an immersive experience, says Lionetti-Maguire, as it has a cult following among a generation now in their 30s.
Banijay’s chief commercial officer, Owain Walbyoff, agrees a live experience based on The Crystal Maze was a no-brainer. The mechanics of the show’s format – teams of men and women attempt a range of challenges to earn time required to help them complete one final challenge – are easily applied to an escape room scenario, as popular as a team building exercise among law firms as they are with rowdy hen and stag do’s.
“Obviously, when Covid happened, live events stopped. Some of our categories grew in Covid but this one definitely didn’t; but recently it’s been
The Crystal Maze inspired an escape room-style experience from Little Lion. Right: The forthcoming theme park from Falcon’s Beyond
booming and has rebounded. Everybody wants to get back out there now without their face masks on and experience things,” says Walbyoff
Peaky Blinders, another piece of IP owned by Banijay, has been a popular source of live experiences among audiences, with thousands of fans of the TV show descending on Birmingham in flat caps and flapper dresses at an official themed festival in 2019. That has since been followed up by an immersive live show that came to London this summer, an escape room experience and a dance theatre event that opened in Birmingham in October.
Offering a golden marketing opportunity via Instagram snaps and a potentially lucrative revenue stream, they can also result in unofficial copycats, which companies such as Banijay are keen to clamp down on.
A Peaky Blinders-themed bar in Manchester drew the ire of Banijay’s lawyers, acting on behalf of producers Caryn Mandabach Productions and Tiger Aspect Productions, while men’s hairdressers named ‘Peaky Barbers’ have popped up around the country.
“It is an issue,” says Walbyoff. “You do get, shall we say, entrepreneurial people who start things up and they’re willing to do it for however long it takes for you to close them down.
“We’re very aggressive with our legal teams with unlicensed operators who have created events with our brands and are monetising them. We go after them with cease-and-desist letters because it’s our brand.”
Noah Geelan, senior VP of content at Londonbased Immersive Gamebox (IG), says it has seen huge benefits to working with brands such as Aardman’s Shaun the Sheep and Rovio’s Angry Birds. IG’s Gameboxes are roughly three metre by
three metre square rooms with white walls, on to which interactive games are projected for groups of two to six people to play for 30 to 60 minutes.
IG just launched its first game with Netflix based on its global hit Squid Game and is looking to expand beyond its current footprint in 15 venues around the US and UK.
Geelan explains its Gameboxes combine projection mapping, touch screens, motion tracking, and surround sound technologies to create an entirely new form of digital entertainment. “The worlds of gaming, entertainment, retail and leisure are coalescing into one thing. Film, TV and game studios have all this well-loved and universal IP and they’re looking for ways to capitalise on it,” says Geelan.
As the Squid Game and Stranger Things examples show, Netflix is particularly keen on immersive experiences based on its IP, having also worked with Secret Cinema and Fever on a Bridgerton immersive experience. Walbyoff reveals Black Mirror could be next up to receive the experiential treatment as Banijay-owned House of Tomorrow begins work on new episodes of the UK anthology series for the global streamer.
Other games within the IG library include one titled James Bunny: Casino Tropicale, highlighting
the scope for a bit of cheeky artistic license with certain pieces of IP.
“Our intention was always to have an in-house studio to create original content, sometimes with a knowing nod to or spin on well-known stories. But sometimes it’s completely original. Our most popular game is our first, an 80s-themed retro adventure called Alien Aptitude Test,” explains Geelan.
The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was based on a Disney theme park ride, so an Alien Aptitude Test series on a streaming service isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.
But to what extent do events companies have free rein to create their own stories within the worlds of the IP they have licensed?
As Squid Game’s name suggests, gaming is key to the show, so Geelan says IG was able to develop its experience in a “fairly independent” way. “We’ve not necessarily taken the narrative or characters from season one but the iconic imagery and the games played in the series, which we’ve reinvented,” says Geelan, adding that IG has toned down the blood and gore from the hit show.
C21 understands Netflix is involved in the live experiences based on its IP. The Duffer Brothers, for example, had a hand in the story that
participants go through as they venture through Stranger Things: The Immersive Experience.
Their fledgling prodco, Upside Down Pictures, meanwhile, is working on a new stage play set within the world and mythology of Stranger Things
The worlds of theatre and TV continue to merge, with the likes of Punchdrunk, billed as the world’s leading immersive theatre company, pushing boundaries with its productions. These include the Sky Studios/HBO/Plan B Entertainment event piece The Third Day: Autumn, which starred Jude Law and Naomie Harris.
Lionetti-Maguire explains that on Tomb Raider: The Live Experience, created in partnership with Paramount Pictures, Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix, Little Lion worked with the brand owners to develop a new storyline that fitted into the IP’s existing lore and canon.
Guests take on the role of Lara Croft’s assistant and battle to help avoid catastrophe, with teams of eight ‘joining’ Croft (voiced by Alicia Vikander) on her pursuit to recover a powerful artefact that has fallen into the hands of a dangerous enemy.
“Having said that, because it’s still a live experience, by its nature it’s very fluid. Our actors are absolutely brilliant. Every experience will be different –that’s the magic of it being live immersive theatre,” says Lionetti-Maguire.
Alex Jenkins, who was recently appointed an executive creative director in the immersive department of London- and LA-based animation, film and interactive studio Nexus, says he is often given a degree of creative license from rights holders.
“We take a brief and interpret it. We do need to work with the key writers so that we stay in lore, but unless the writers want to write the piece, there’s room to do our own take,” says Jenkins.
Tech can be a key part of immersive experiences, with the next phase in the industry’s growth potentially seeing people paying for experiences around well-known IP in their own home via the metaverse.
Although sceptical about the current buzz around
the metaverse, Jenkins is eager to see the impact of tech like Epic Games’ gaming engine Unreal, which can produce photo-realistic 3D sets in real time, meaning people can react to an environment they can see, rather than a green screen.
“We do buy into the concept of the metaverse, where you can build a world and it could exist in real time. We’re very interested in what the construction of the metaverse could mean for immersive entertainment,” says Jenkins.
Brown adds Lionsgate is similarly interested in the opportunities Web3 could present for IP owners. “Location-based entertainment
“It’s about using technology to enhance the shared experience. We want to go away from being locked into your phone or head-down buried in tech. Wearing a ludicrous headset, you lose that social interaction. It’s about being present in the moment with your friends, having a joyous experience for a few hours, something, in our overly digital age, that’s becoming lost,” he says.
IG’s Geelan agrees: “What we found with a lot of virtual reality was it is quite an isolating experience. Even when you’re playing a team-based VR game, you’re in your own space. The tech can be quite offputting and inaccessible. The tech in Immersive Gamebox is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible.”
Meanwhile, Banijay – the world’s largest independent content creation and distribution company – is developing new IP with the metaverse in mind, while aiming the likes of Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror at the space, according to Walbyoff
Tom Lionetti-Maguire Little Lion Entertainment
will always be part of the equation, but on the flip side there are things we can build and develop in the virtual world that maybe wouldn’t be possible in the real world,” says Brown.
It’s likely the future will be a hybrid, with the likes of global entertainment development company Falcon’s Beyond preparing a US$350m, cuttingedge theme park, expected to open by late 2022 or early 2023 in the Dominican Republic.
Featuring several patented, never-before-seen ride technologies and interactive storytelling, it will also connect guests with “world-renowned” brands and IP through curated, location-based entertainment venues and experiences.
While no luddite, Little Lion’s Lionetti-Maguire is keen to see in-person experiences continue to go from strength-to-strength, having yet to be convinced by virtual reality (VR).
“Obviously our TV brands will be part of the metaverse. But when you look at the audiences that are part of these communities, we need to think differently, from a creative perspective, about the content that is created, produced and delivered in the metaverse,” he says.
“We need to be thinking about not just taking IP that already exists in the TV world and on streaming, but about new and original content for the metaverse. Banijay is investing in it already.”
Having survived the pandemic, companies such as Little Lion and IG are bullish about the future, despite a looming recession. Indeed, Geelan believes consumer interest in the experience his games provide could throw a lifeline to embattled cinemas desperate for footfall, while cementing a decent revenue stream for IP owners.
“At the moment, we appreciate we’re not going to be a huge revenue stream for someone like Netflix –but [how about] when we’re at 100 sites in a couple of years’ time, with a slate of games released with them around their other IP? As well as being a more significant revenue stream for them, we’re also giving them reach and engagement and the ability to do more with their IP,” he says.
Immersive experiences based on Netflix’s Squid Game (left) and Stranger Things“
Wearing a ludicrous headset, you lose that social interaction. It’s about being present in the moment with your friends, having a joyous experience for a few hours, something, in our overly digital age, that’s becoming lost.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine rightly dominated discussions at MipTV in April this year, when Ukrainian distributors came together in a shared stand at the market in Cannes.
The event saw the launch of the Ukrainian Content Club, a joint initiative between Film.UA, 1+1 Media, Starlight Media, Media Group Ukraine and Suspilne, aimed at sustaining and supporting the country’s content industry during the conflict.
Contributions to the fund are helping finance development and production of a fixed number of quality scripted drama, animation and factual projects, with an independent board allocating the money. Projects developed through the fund will then be available to contributing partners to air on their channels or platforms.
Understandably, local film and TV production in Ukraine has been decimated by the war, which at the time of writing is in its seventh month and, despite valiant Ukrainian resistance, looks set to continue after Vladimir Putin called up 300,000 reservists in September.
Since the war began, a crop of documentaries have emerged as Ukrainians seek to record the horrors inflicted upon them by Russian aggressors, beginning with Against All Odds, which tracked the first month of the war and was directed by Artyom Litvinenko (The Sniffer).
The Organisation of Ukrainian Producers (OUP), a collective of seven experienced producers established in March, has been behind the docs, two of which have been acquired
Documentaries, formats and dramas about Russia’s war on Ukraine, made by those under attack, are emerging from Ukrainian producers as they call for more support from the wider industry.
prod for the B
By Nico Franks
for international distribution by Beta Film via its Munich-based subsidiary Autentic.
Daria Leygonie-Fialko, producer and founder of Space Production, cofounded the OUP alongside producers including Igor Storchak, founder of Gingers Media, and the two, based in Paris and Basel respectively, see international relationships as crucial to building back the Ukrainian audiovisual industry to the same stature it held up until February 24 of this year.
Autentic is distributing Mariupol: Unlost Hope, a film based on the diaries of Mariupol journalist Nadia Sukhorukova, who wrote down everything she saw around her during this first month of the invasion.
Sukhorukova says: “All this should not have happened in the 21st century. I want people to understand the absurdity of the situation and to feel that thousands are dying because of the malice, cruelty and hatred of the Russian occupiers. It’s important for me that every crime of Rashists is recorded, and they will be responsible for everything.”
Volodymyr Borodyansky, also a co-founder of the OUP, adds: “The Russians are trying to erase the very memory of their crimes and create another pseudo-reality. They are trying to destroy all possible references to their crimes in Mariupol. From the very beginning, our film Mariupol: Unlost Hope had the goal of recording everything we can, so as not to give way to distort the reality.”
Autentic is also shopping Nine Lives, which follows the war through the eyes of animals, including those living with their owners in subways and basements, those rescued by volunteers from locked apartments, and those in zoos and shelters that have been bombed.
The two docs, along with Station of Hope and The Lost House, were screened on August 24 in 40 cities around the world to coincide with Ukrainian Independence Day, marking the country’s split from the USSR in 1991.
Providing powerful accounts of resistance and documenting the war through the eyes of Ukrainians, all the screenings were organised by representatives of Ukrainian diaspora in more than 15 countries and the screenings were held in both cinemas and various art spaces.
“We are celebrating independence at a time when a full-scale war by a nuclear country has been launched against our independence, by a country that has been waging this war with us for hundreds of years. Now in this war we are all together with the armed forces. Our contribution is our
lms about Ukrainians, who
Daria Leygonie-Fialko
“ Now, in this terrible war, Ukrainians are again and again surprising the world with their incredible will for freedom. It is important for us to show the world and ourselves how strong our spirit is, how great our thirst for life is.
will definitely win with their strength, will and love,” says Alla Lypovetska, another co-founder of the OUP.
The other documentaries screened were Station of Hope, which tells the stories of Ukrainian refugees and European volunteers, focusing on Berlin’s main train station, Berlin Hauptbahnhof, and The Lost House, which was filmed in spring this year and documents the liberation of the Kyiv region from Russian troops.
“Ukraine’s attainment of independence is a very difficult, centuries-long story of struggle, bravery and indomitability,” says Leygonie-Fialko. “Now, in this terrible war, Ukrainians are again and again surprising the world with their incredible will for freedom. It is important for us to show the world and ourselves how strong our spirit is, how great our thirst for life is.
“Our first four projects are about exactly that – people who persevered in such circumstances, in which it seems impossible to hold on. We hope our films will not only show the war through the eyes of Ukrainians but will also be able to support Ukrainians themselves. Because in the language of cinematography, we seem to have the opportunity to say to everyone in their struggle: ‘Your struggle is not
invisible: the world sees you, the world is proud of you, the world will imprint it and leave it in its heart.’”
World Refugee Day on June 20, meanwhile, was marked with a powerful short film released by UN refugee agency UNHCR. Featuring and made by more than 50 Ukrainian refugees now living in Germany, Uprooted aimed to display a message of unity with all those displaced around the world.
Elsewhere, Suspline TV is working on two documentaries for which it is seeking international partners via the Ukrainian Content Club: The Collapse: How Ukrainians Destroyed the Evil Empire (7x48’) and Bucha 22 (1x45’).
Prior to Russia’s invasion in February, Ukraine was known as a prolific importer and adapter of international television formats. A burgeoning studios and production industry was offering international drama productions and high-spec facilities on a competitive budget, while its adaptations of shiny-floor talent formats were rated among the better versions around the world.
Olga Slisarenko, head of 1+1 Media’s formats department, believes the international TV community would be “surprised” by the number of new shows and ideas being developed by Ukrainian companies, spanning documentaries, reality TV series, comedies, shiny-floor shows and factual entertainment.
“In the past, all the Ukrainian channels were big buyers; I like to say we produced every format that exists on the market. There was intense competition between the huge media groups, with a lot of money being spent on producing content,” she notes. “At the moment, the major channels are locked in a news marathon and we’re only producing documentaries. Eventually, 1+1 will start to broadcast as a normal channel again and not just a 24-hour news marathon.”
Before the war, panel sessions at events like Kyiv Media Week regularly featured debates about if/ when Ukraine would switch from an import to an export market in formats as production standards rose and competition intensified – or at least whether the balance would be redressed somewhat. While one would be forgiven for thinking that ambition has been trashed by the war, Slisarenko says that’s not necessarily the case.
“Being closed, we’ve had a lot of time to develop different things. We’re pitching ideas that we’ll produce
for ourselves first but can’t at the moment because of the war,” she explains. “Some of the formats are fully developed – scripts are in third drafts and they were about to start shooting. We’re travelling to promote ideas that people may like to pick up and produce.”
Incredibly, one of those formats is a show derived directly from the war. Having your country invaded by a neighbour may not immediately scream ‘TV format,’ but Slisarenko says the shock of being a developed, functioning nation one minute and seeing tanks roll down your streets the next – with all the implications that has for basics such as food, water and electricity – is something other populations need to consider. Last Man Standing, currently a paper format that 1+1 pitched at Natpe Budapest over the summer, aims to ask participants how they would cope.
The competition format is designed to be entertaining while also sharing knowledge that could save viewers’ lives, the execs said during the event’s Pitch & Play Live session. This will be done by putting people of different ages and social status into two groups, which must then compete to ‘save’ as many lives as possible during challenges that depict various war situations, with the assistance of military experts.
Slisarenko says the format, which has been developed at 1+1 since Russia’s invasion in February, is part of a new trend for reality shows aimed at Generation Z viewers, whom she believes want realistic series to prepare them for all eventualities, given the precarious global situation.
Slisarenko and Mariia Bielaia, a creative producer at 1+1’s entertainment arm, admit the extreme nature of the show could prove controversial and even offputting to buyers. However, they add that controversial and even to
Amazon Prime Video’s Spanish originals and acquisitions team are seeking a wide range of stories with a difference to serve their subscribers and stand out from the competition. By Irene Jimenez
Amazon’s streaming service, Prime Video, has been available in Spain since December 2016, arriving a year later than Netflix and one month after HBO.
However, it wasn’t until summer 2020 that Amazon Studios appointed its head of Spanish originals, María José Rodríguez, who left her role as commissioner at Movistar Plus to join the streamer.
Since then Prime Video Spain has launched only a few local Amazon original drama series: El Cid (2020), La Templanza (The Vineyard, 2021) and Un Asunto Privado (A Private Affair, 2022). Coming soon is Sin Huellas (8x40’) on a yet-to-be-revealed date.
Rodríguez is keen to emphasise the service prioritises “quality over quantity,” saying: “We are obsessed with entertaining our Prime [Video] subscribers. We want to offer them a unique, wide and diverse range of content, productions that make the fee worth it and that cannot be found anywhere else. That is why we need different stories.”
Prime Video’s entertainment strategy has so far relied on adaptations of international formats, many humourbased. This includes the Japanese format Hitoshi Matsumoto Presents Documental
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Si Te Ríes Pierdes, the Spanish version has run for two seasons and is produced by Banijay Iberia-owned prodco Zeppelin.
Another is a VIP version of locally adapted as Celebrity Bake Off by Boxfish TV. Launching soon is adaptation of Australian format Andy, produced by Warner Bros ITVP España.
In January 2022, Prime Video announced it was entering into feature film production in Spain. Three projects have been unveiled so far, all to be released directly under the home entertainment service. They include sci-fi Mañana Es Hoy; the big-budget superhero movie Awareness with franchise potential and produced by Federation Entertainment Spain; and romantic young-adult (YA) adaptation Culpa Mía, based on a literary trilogy of the same name by Argentinian Mercedes Ron. It is produced by Pokeepsie Films, which recently joined Banijay’s portfolio of Spanish companies.
Amazon’s Spanish
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originals team includes José María Caro, head of scripted series, who joined from Mediapro; Óscar Prol, head of unscripted across entertainment and docs, formerly a development executive at Warner Bros ITVP España and Boxfish TV; and María Contreras, movies development executive and a former Atresmedia Cine executive.
All three Madrid-based execs report to Rodríguez. But following Georgia Brown’s exit as head of European originals on August 31, Rodríguez now reports to James Farrell, head of international original content at Amazon Studios in LA.
“Now we can say that the Spanish team is complete. I feel relieved because we are finally able to give quicker feedback to producers. Thanks to our previous experience as producers ourselves, we know how important it is to answer yes or no and in a reasonable period of time,” says Rodríguez, noting the originals team now comprises 11 creatives.
As well as its growing slate of fully commissioned originals, Prime Video is also a very active coproducer and acquisitions partner for Spanish prodcos. Ricardo Cabornero, head of content for Prime
, Video in Spain since May 2017, was its first Spanish executive. He reports to Koro Castellano, director of Prime Video
Spain. She, in turn, reports to Barry Furlong, VP and general manager of Prime Video Europe.
From romcom Little Coincidences (2018) to thriller Operación Marea Negra (2022), Prime Video has coproduced many Spanish scripted series together with local public and private broadcasters.
The streamer has an exclusive holdback period of at least six months for SVoD rights, with a free-to-air channel partner airing the show after that. In some cases, the production company keeps a share of the IP, which is an unusual occurrence in the Spanish audiovisual industry. The shows coproduced under this model are labelled Amazon Exclusives.
“The whole Spanish industry has understood our ability to be an ally. Prime Video is flexible and creative in terms of business models, we are always looking for partners, even beyond the Spanish borders, with the aim of offering the best content possible to our subscribers,” says Cabornero.
Prime Video recently launched event series Boundless, about the first circumnavigation of the world, with Spanish pubcaster RTVE and German distributor ZDF Studios onboard. “Boundless was the most watched series in Latin America and in the big five European markets during its premiere week. It is the kind of show, with high production values, a history rooted in the country with international appeal, that we want to push.”
Regarding international partners, Cabornero also cites Entertainment One as the distributor for Operación Marea Negra. Up to seven Spanish regional pubcasters, Portuguese RTP and Prime Video Brazil participated in the show, which is already shooting its second season.
Mediaset España is a key Prime Video ally. In February 2020, both companies signed an agreement to coproduce and launch six titles, among them drama series Madres, with four seasons now available. The crown jewel of this partnership is the long-running comedy La Que Se Avecina, Spain’s most popular series since it was first commissioned by Telecinco in 2007. The show was renewed for a further three seasons in one go, so it will shoot its 15th in 2024. This coproduction strategy allows Prime Video to offer a varied catalogue of content: YA mystery series El Internado Las Cumbres, in alliance with Atresmedia and The Mediapro Studio, with a third and final season soon to be launched; horror series Stories to Stay Awake, another project with RTVE and ZDF Studios, and with a second season on its way; and Better Days, a dramedy about a peculiar mourning therapy group, recently launched in North America and Australia via Paramount+ as a VIS production, together with Spanish independent firm Zeta Studios.
Under Rodríguez’s tenure, Amazon Studios has greenlit two new original drama series, with production of both having started last summer.
The first is Reina Roja (Red Queen), an adaptation of the novel by Spanish author Juan Gómez-Jurado, a best-seller for three consecutive years in the country. Mexico- and Madrid-based firm Dopamine is producing the thriller, set in contemporary Madrid. Reina Roja is the first instalment of a trilogy, so it’s likely more seasons will be produced, although Prime Video has not confirmed this yet.
Another recently commissioned Spanish Amazon original is thriller series Los Farad. Set in Marbella in the 1980s, the eight-part series centres on a family dedicated to arms trafficking. The show is produced by independent prodcos MOD (Movistar Plus+’s La Fortuna) and Espotlight. It was co-created by Mariano Barroso and Alejandro Hernández, who already worked together on What the Future Holds for Movistar.
Cuban-born writer Alejandro Hernández, who settled in Spain, has an exclusive agreement to work for Amazon Studios. The company also signed a first-look agreement with Gómez-Jurado, author of Reina Roja. “We are open to new creative agreements like these,” says Rodríguez.
“We look for powerful stories and characters, for different points of view in the storytelling. A great example is Sin Huellas, a Spanish Amazon original about two young cleaning ladies, one Mexican, one gypsy, who become suspects in a murder. It is a sort of Spanish Thelma & Louise,” she says, adding that she is fond of Amazon’s superhero series The Boys and comedy The Office.
Sin Huellas is produced by Spanish independent company Zeta Studios (Netflix’s Elite, HBO Max’s ¡García!, Movistar Plus+’s Reyes de la Noche). Its premiere date remains under wraps.
“Being an SVoD service, we are not so into traditional gameshows or interview programmes recorded in a studio. I assume paying subscribers are not looking for that,” says Prol.
Carbonero cites Vikings as a show from a rival service he would have liked to see on Prime Video. Prol adds: “As a spectator, I liked Wild, Wild Country or Making a Murderer. I wish I had the opportunity to produce them.”
Among Prime Video’s new acquisitions is Zorro, a contemporary take on the legend that revisits the adventures of the famous masked vigilante. It is produced by Secuoya Studios and distributed worldwide by Mediawan Rights. Prime Video will launch the 10-part drama in the US, Lat Am and Spain.
Another newcomer is docuseries Una Historia de Crímenes (6x50’), which is badged as an Amazon Exclusive. The series investigates six different crimes that took place recently in Spain. It is produced by Galician firm Ficción Producciones (3 Caminos, Operación Marea Negra) and has regional pubcasters on board.
Up next in Prime Video’s sports icon biography category is a three-part docuseries about inspiring Spanish footballer Alexia Putellas, star of the women’s national team, produced by You First.
RTVE and ZDF Studios partnered Prime Video on Boundless whch proved a hit in Lat Am and Europe“ The whole Spanish industry has understood our ability to be an ally. Prime Video is flexible and creative in terms of business models, we are always looking for partners, even beyond the Spanish borders.
Ricardo Cabornero Amazon Prime Video
D a f
Producer: Drama Republic
Distributor: All3Media International
They say: “Takes the core themes of identity and revenge to tell a uniquely compelling parable on race, power and love.”
We say: This latest Hugo Blick creation for BBC Two in the UK and Amazon’s Prime Video in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand stars Emily Blunt as an aristocratic Englishwoman and Chaske Spencer as a Pawnee ex-cavalry scout crossing a violent Western landscape in 1890.
e are urns in ional mes a on k K ealand cratic alry ern
Diverse leads, fighting injustice and new twists on true crime are among the big programming highlights as the industry returns in full force to Mipcom. By Nico Franks
Producer: Station 10 Media
Distributor: Vice Distribution
They say: “Get ready for a new kind of food show: this series will take you on a thrill-ride of twists and turns as we track unbelievable stories of how food fuels criminal enterprises.”
We say: A series set at the intersection of true crime and food covers two seemingly evergreen TV genres, with mob beatdowns, family betrayals and murder served alongside pizza, deli meats, ice cream and honey.
Producer: STV Productions
Distributor: Orange Smarty
They say: “Professor Hannah Fry seeks to understand why, despite multiple lockdowns and millions of deaths, so many remain unvaccinated against Covid-19.”
We say: This one-off doc aired on the BBC over the summer and saw its host, mathematician Hannah Fry, praised for the way she unpacks the long-held opinions, beliefs and fears that have prevented so many from getting the vaccine.
Producers: ABC Signature, Entertainment One, Perfectman Pictures
Distributor: Entertainment One
They say: “A band of so-called ‘misfit toys’ break from the Bureau’s rigid tradition to take on unique cases and solve them with unorthodox methods and out-of-the-box thinking.”
We say: This spin-off to ABC police procedural The Rookie, which eOne has sold into more than 180 countries, stars Niecy Nash-Betts as the oldest rookie at the FBI Academy and promises an entertaining blend of comedy, drama and action.
Producer: Euston Films
Distributor: Fremantle
They say: “Distils generational trauma and social commentary into savvy, sharp entertainment, tackling issues at the cutting edge of contemporary culture, from sexual identity and social inequality to the exploitation of unbridled capitalism.”
We say: This BBC Three mystery thriller set amongst a diverse group of disillusioned, nihilistic Gen Z cruise line workers mixes classic cult horror, jet-black comedy and a biting social commentary.
Producer: Helium Pictures
Distributor: Cineflix Rights
They say: “An operatic story of two brothers who organise the street but lose each other in their ascent to power.”
We say: This big-budget, 1980s-set Paramount+ Australia original is inspired by John Ibrahim’s best-selling autobiography charting his rise from a poverty-stricken immigrant with no education, no money and no prospects to Australia’s most infamous nightclub mogul.
Producers: Legendary, Dynamic
Distributor: Legendary
They say: “Family intrigue and wine appreciation collide in the multi-lingual live-action adaptation of the internationally celebrated manga series from Japan that ignited the wine industry.”
We say: Given drinking rosé, followed by recovering from drinking rosé, is such a popular activity in Cannes, it follows that this co-commission from France Télévisions and Hulu Japan may well come of age at Mipcom this year.
Producer: Proximity Films
Distributor: Espresso Media International
They say: “Four champion runners from the Global South
fight back against racism, the policing of women’s bodies in sport and the violation of their human rights.”
We say: This feature doc from Emmy-nominated filmmaker and former athlete Phyllis Ellis and TVO in Canada approaches a complicated topic with humanity, uncovering the rules and regulations female athletes are forced through in the name of ‘fair play’ and how these disproportionately affect women from the global south.
Producers: White Pine Pictures, Beetz Brother Film Productions, PMA Productions
Distributor: Beyond Rights
Producers: Quad Drama, TS Productions
Distributor: APC
They say: “The young detective from the city, haunted by her own brother’s death, finds herself a fish out of water in this small village in the Alps where everyone knows each other.”
We say: Written by Lucie Prost, Aurélia Morali and Isabel Sebastian, this twisty whodunit from France Télévisions is set after a local star athlete is murdered and introduces another iconic detective into the pantheon of TV sleuths in Awa Sissako, played by Mariama Gueye.
They say: “Tells the gripping and dramatic true story of the largest and most elaborate espionage operation ever mounted by one country against an ally.”
We say: A co-commission from ZDF and Arte in Germany and Super Channel in Canada, this series looks at the birth of the ‘deep state’ and the extraordinary story of British Security Coordination, an organisation set up in the US during the war to to sway public opinion.
Producers: OUP Documentary, Star Light Media Group
Distributor: Autentic
They say: “The story of a crime against humanity through the eyes of the victims who managed to survive: witness a war through the eyes of ordinary people.”
We say: Based on the diaries of journalist Nadia Sukhorukova during the first month of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this powerful documentary comes without narration and serves as an important record of a harrowing moment in recent history.
Producers: World Productions, ITV Studios
Distributor: ITV Studios
They say: “Examining the intense physical and mental pressures of professional sport, Fifteen-Love is a gripping and sensitive exploration of trust, power and obsession, and what can be lost when you’ll do anything to win.”
We say: Anyone for tennis? This provocative drama from creator Hania Elkington and the same prodco behind Line of Duty sees Poldark’s Aidan Turner star as a maverick coach guiding an up-and-coming tennis player, played by newcomer Ella Lily Hyland. Set to launch on Amazon’s Prime Video in the UK and Ireland next year.
Producer: Greenacre Films
Distributor: Banijay Rights
They say: “Follows the exploits of the brash, supersuccessful and wealthy Richards family.”
We say: Written and created by Abby Ajayi, this glossy ITV/Amazon Studios copro follows the drama after one of the UK’s most successful black businessmen suffers a sudden medical emergency and his different sets of children collide with an empire at stake.
Producer: BBC Studios ANZ
Distributor: BBC Studios
They say: “A unique social experiment to test if the simple act of creativity can help heal the invisible wounds of poor mental health.”
We say: With over 900 million people worldwide said to be living with mental health issues, and the global pandemic only making things worse, this ambitious format is backed by science and explores whether activities such as performing music, painting and photography can help improve mental wellbeing.
Producer: Maramedia
Distributor: Blue Ant International
They say: “Follow elephant matriarchs leading their families to water while defending their young, baboon troops patrolling the riverbanks, alliances of cheetahs as they hunt ostrich together and elusive black rhinos.”
We say: This epic series for Blue Ant Media-owned Love Nature takes audiences on a journey into one of the most majestic and rarely filmed areas of wilderness in Africa.
Producer: Monkey Kingdom
Distributor: NBCUniversal Formats
They say: “A fun, accessible and light-hearted series that will teach people what is and isn’t normal about our bowels, as well as revolutionising our everyday health habits.”
We say: Fans of toilet humour with added health benefits will enjoy this Channel 4 factual entertainment show in which participants undergo bowel movement tests, with the results setting them on a path to better gut health.
Producer and distributor: Avalon
They say: “No clothes, no food and no help, this series promises to be the ultimate test of courage and resourcefulness with dramatic twists along the way.”
We say: Naked & Afraid meets Hunted, as two teams of amateur survivalists are stripped of everything they own and released into gruelling and challenging terrains in this series for E4 in the UK.
Producer: Estúdios Globo
Distributor: Globo International Distribution
They say: “A young man from Rio de Janeiro travels to the Pantanal to meet the father he never knew.”
We say: Based on the 1990 telenovela of the same name created by Benedito Ruy Barbosa, this 2022 update is written by his grandson, Bruno Luperi, and has had viewers in Brazil riveted by its twists and turns against the sumptuous backdrop of world’s largest tropical wetland area.
Producer: Big Blue Distributor: StudioCanal
They say: “Going up against the mighty forces of the Dutch government and the Israeli secret services, three individuals begin their search to uncover the truth.”
Producers: Boat Rocker, Corus Entertainment
Distributor: Boat Rocker
They say: “A bold and original take on a legendary tale, Robyn Hood follows a fearless young Gen Z-er and her anti-authoritarian masked hip-hop band The Hood as they call out injustices and fight for freedom and equality in the city of New Nottingham.”
We say: Created by prolific Canadian music director, TV director and filmmaker Director X and written by screenwriter Chris Roberts (Orphan Black), this modern action drama is set to premiere on Global in Canada in 2023 and brings the classic Robin Hood story into the age of the 1%.
We say: This political thriller is based on the true events of one of the most controversial disasters and biggest cover-ups in Dutch history, when, in 1992, a Boeing 747 flying to Tel Aviv crashed into two jam-packed residential high-rises in the suburbs of Amsterdam, with devastating consequences.
Producer: Greenstone TV
Distributor: Red Arrow Studios International
They say: “As Lulu digs herself deeper and deeper into a ‘shituation,’ she is forced to face the question she’s been avoiding her entire adult life: how can she do what she wants while also making everyone else happy?”
We say: This coming-of-age Kiwi comedy drama from TVNZ was created by Simone Nathan (Our Flag Means Death), who stars as a young Jewish woman navigating life’s big issues in New Zealand, where more people identify as Jedi than Jewish.
Astriking characteristic of Belgian French-language public broadcaster RTBF is the volume and range of documentary slots available across its three channels, La Une, Tipik and La Trois, plus digital streamer and catch-up service Auvio.
Discussing the pubcaster’s current documentary strategy and requirements at Sunny Side of the Doc this summer, head of docs Joffrey Monnier noted that Francophone Belgian viewers have access to documentaries on a daily basis across its services.
Appointed two years ago, Monnier oversees RTBF’s documentary slate, including coproductions, prebuys and acquisitions.
RTBF’s documentary output, said Monnier, attempts to retain a “sense of reality” and tries not to take itself “too seriously,” but it does try to provide “great seriousness and passion.”
Despite being a small broadcaster in a small country with a French-speaking population of only 4.5 million, regular opportunities for coproductions, presales and acquisitions are significant for the right shows. Monnier’s department coproduces between 60 and 70 documentaries per year and acquires 250 to 300. This excludes material acquired for clips in its factual magazine shows.
A recent development has been the launch of acquired factual content exclusive to digital platform Auvio.
Working alongside Monnier is Isabelle Christiaens, longstanding RTBF executive, filmmaker and editor, and for the past seven years head of
Belgian pubcaster RTBF’s local documentary strategy is opening up to a wider range of copros and acquisitions to attract digital-first younger audiences. By Gün Akyuz
is a a
documentary coproductions at the pubcaster, as well as for Arte Belgium.
Another key exec for documentaries is RTBF’s head of acquisitions Vincent Godfroid, who oversees a team of acquisition execs buying specifically for different channels and slots.
“One of the big changes in the last year is the organisation of the audience through segmentation,” said Monnier.
also includes those who have their first kids, first house, first job and are starting out in their adult lives,” said Monnier.
This is also where RTBF’s rebranded second channel, Tipik, comes into play. The challenge of attracting younger audiences to linear led to a big revamp at RTBF two years ago, when La Deux was relaunched as Tipik, which spans a linear TV channel,
across the board, from writers and directors to producers.
RTBF’s documentary slate is centred on history, investigative current affairs, geopolitics, society and culture, and natural history, spanning a range of subjects, styles, tones and genres to appeal to different target audiences.
“In different slots, we want to talk about our society to connect people with the big questions [they] may have,” said Monnier.
One is La Trois’s Monday strand Regard Sur, airing in the later evening. Focusing on society and social issues with docs of 52, 70 or even 90 minutes, it offers a range of topics and tones across a mix of acquisitions and some productions.
A recent example was Les Mots de La Fin (Closing Words, 1x72’/52′), which aired last fall. The documentary focused on the challenging but topical subject of euthanasia, followed by a studio debate on the issue.
RTBF has clustered its audiences into four broad groups, one of them being family- and community-oriented. Programmes targeting this group are on its first channel, La Une, and aim to connect Belgians to each other. A second is a so-called ‘affinity’ group, characterised by curious audiences seeking more specialised in-depth content, typical of RTBF’s third channel, La Trois.
A third group includes the “very challenging” young-adult 25-29 demo.
“They’re not necessarily in front of the TV, so they’re difficult to catch, but it
radio, website and social media.
The pubcaster plays strongly to its local credentials, in the face of competition from commercial rivals, French channels and global streamers, Monnier said. “We are a small player with big ambitions but not so much money. And we have to play our own cards – and definitely our local roots, our local identities and our local policies are things that we can do.”
Monnier emphasised RTBF’s mission and role as a public broadcaster to support local talent
Over on Tipik, on Tuesdays audiences can tune into a social affairs. This has included acquisitions such BBC docs fronted by Louis Theroux and Stacey Dooley, as well as French reportage fronted by French journalist Martin Weill.
Acknowledging some of the challenges of adapting Englishlanguage fare, Monnier said RTBF’s younger audiences like hosted reportage shows.
While the Weill-fronted shows were successful, the Louis Theroux and Stacey Dooley programmes were “a big failure,” Monnier said.
Conceding that dubbing the shows
“
We are a small player with big ambitions but not so much money. And we have to play our own cards – and definitely our local roots, our local identities and our local policies are things that we can do.
Joffrey Monnier RTBFPaola, côté jardin (Paola: A Queen Confides)
into French for local viewers was probably a mistake, Monnier added: “We wanted it to be very accessible for our audience, but in the end it was not very efficient to dub stuff, and probably lost a bit of the identity of the programme.”
However, extracts made for social media, which were subtitled rather than dubbed, proved very successful.
RTBF has had more success with other English-language acquisitions, such as three-part doc Putin: A Russian Spy Story. Written and directed by Nick Green, and produced by Rogan Productions for Channel 4, it is distributed by BBC Studios.
“You can do any subject for young adults, it’s more about the treatment and the way it’s done, made very accessible and doesn’t take them for fools. We are learning,” Monnier said.
On La Une, Wednesdays offer a big primetime investigative slot, #Investigation, offering a mix of international and local subjects.
A major documentary event in the slot last fall was the coproduced series Innommable (Unspeakable), marking 25 years since the Marc Dutroux case which shocked the nation in 1996 and led to reform of the judicial and law enforcement system. Serial killer
and paedophile Dutroux kidnapped, sexually abused and killed a number of young Belgian women and girls over a prolonged period, which sparked accusations of lax and corrupt law enforcement and legal practices.
Scheduled in double episodes over two weeks on October 20 and 27 at 20.20, the four-part series was produced by Belgian prodcos Les Gens and De Mensen in coproduction with RTBF, VRT and Arte.
Christiaens called it the first coproduction that RTBF and its Flemish counterpart, VRT, both embarked on from the outset. The project, which was completed within a year, combined the archives of both broadcasters and involved the journalists who covered the case at the time.
On Fridays, viewers can tune into biographical history docs on La Une.
A recent example was the feature doc Paola, côté jardin (Paola: A Queen Confides, 1×90’), about Belgium’s former Queen Paola. Airing on February 18 at 20.20, the revelatory documentary from Nicolas Delvaulx and prodco Alizé Production attracted a 34% share of viewing in linear, one of the slot’s biggest results.
The slot also includes acquisitions
such as the 2021 90-minute film Diana from Jemma Chisnall and 72 Films for ITV. Airing locally as Qui était vraiment Lady Diana? (Who Was Lady Diana Really?) on August 26, it served to mark the 25th anniversary of the princess’s death.
A number of history slots are also available on La Trois, typically airing more archive-based docs focusing on very specific periods of history.
Another area that works well for RTBF is crime, with home-grown strands like La Belgique Criminelle on La Une, or Non Élucidé on Tipik on Fridays at 21.40. The pubcaster also buys in a lot of true crime for its weekly primetime slot on the second channel.
“True crime is very important for us because we target the female audience with it,” said Godfroid. “Studies show that a female audience is watching these true crime programmes.”
Tone and style are key, he said, with French or Belgian cases, rather than US true crime, working best. Shows can run from 50 to 90 minutes, depending on the subject.
RTBF offers year-round opportunities for local documentary makers as part of its mission to nurture local creative docs. A key rendez-vous is the Fenêtre sur Doc strand on Le
Trois on Saturdays at 23.00 and on digital platform Auvio.
A recent Fenêtre sur Doc show was Éclaireuses (Girl Scouts), about an alternative school set up by two former primary school teachers to help children of newly arrived refugees and migrants to learn French using nontraditional teaching methods.
Sundays, meanwhile, switch to natural history and animal documentaries, many of them acquired, with the BBC a key source.
RTBF also acquires about five titles per month exclusively for its digital platform. Its very small acquisition budget limits it to older, catalogue fare, which “can still be valid and interesting for us,” said Monnier.
RTBF also seeks a range of styles in its coproductions. “That’s why we are coproducing a lot with our international partners,” said Monnier. Its biggest is Arte GEIE, with which RTBF has an ongoing collaboration that yields eight to 10 coproductions a year.
However, RTBF will also work with German-speaking, Nordic and English-speaking producers. “It depends on the project, the tone, the ambition behind it,” Monnier said. “Ultimately, we’re very open to any kind of project.”
Scotland: Ocean Nation
The merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery to form Warner Bros Discovery may have shocked the industry when it was announced in 2021, but for Nha-Uyen Chau, founder and CEO of LGI Media, the reasons behind the mega deal weren’t a surprise.
“With ballooning budgets for content led by tech companies, who are the ‘darlings’ of Wall Street, legacy media brands have faced stiff competition for eyeballs and money,” says Chau, who questions whether the budgets that have driven such competition in the market are sustainable. As a result, Chau believes the shine on the SVoD model may be beginning to wear off.
“The SVoD model is no longer the disrupter or an enviable model, as macro-economics plays a decisive role in household discretionary spending,” says Chau, who believes the cutting of monthly streaming subs will continue as long as inflation rises.
Formerly known as Looking Glass International, Melbourne-based LGI Media describes itself as a boutique distribution company and specialises in shopping high-end factual and non-scripted programmes, such as Scotland: Ocean Nation (3x60’).
So where does this latest wave of consolidation leave an indie like LGI, and where are the opportunities?
“This iteration will be AVoD and FAST [free, ad-supported streaming TV]. What was once old is now new again, but different. Yes, ad revenues are back in the picture but on a grander scale as media buyers and agencies have so much more to choose from,” says Chau.
Nha-Uyen Chau at Australian factual distributor LGI Media believes the popularity of AVoD demonstrates what was once old is now new again and could herald a new wave of industry consolidation.
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“The big four streamers will now all have an ad tier by 2023. Thrown into this is the seemingly endless supply of FAST channels. Everyone is launching a FAST channel. The competition now is for advertiser bucks, not just subscribers.”
With many of them being based on library content, Chau believes all the new FAST channels will keep up demand for content, although it will be harder to acquire unless those behind the channels are willing to offer a licence fee.
“As the barriers for entry into the FAST sector are relatively low, any company with volume can, technically, launch its own channel. Revenue share deals won’t fly in a lot of cases,” says Chau.
Factual content is one of the best genres to launch a channel on, adds Chau, with sub-genres such as wildlife, travel, documentaries, paranormal and true crime “presenting a great way to find your niche and try to own that niche. But you need volume to sustain and grow any channel.”
The increase in demand will not necessarily lead to more money for productions, warns Chau. “We’ll see a higher concentration of budgets for premium content, especially celebritydriven and content that creates buzz. Raising finance for projects
will continue to be harder and both producers and distributors will need to work harder and expect longer financing cycles and bring on board more partners.”
Nevertheless, Chau is confident 2023 will be the start of the golden age of AVoD and FAST as the world outside the US sees the arrival of more platforms offering many, many channels for free.
“Content, and especially volume, will be the key drivers of success. This growth will see smaller companies being eyed by larger players and a few more acquisitions and mergers are likely as this is the fastest path to growth,” she says.
“On the platform side, AVoD and SVoD will start to look more like cable. Discovery will be a problem; even if you have a lot of content, how will users find it? Bundle packages are already here with AVoD and SVoD tiers, so will it be possible to bundle AVoD Netflix with SVoD Disney+? Or a cheaper AVoD bundle all together? This may be more likely than we’ve ever imagined and perhaps done through a telco.”
Chau points to companies such as Roku, Samsung and TCL as those who might be involved in the next wave of consolidation. “Time will tell,” she says.
“ The SVoD model is no longer the disrupter or an enviable model, as macroeconomics plays a decisive role in household discretionary spending.
LGI Media
If there’s one thing Nik Emir Din, co-CEO at Singapore-based tech company Bitsmedia, wants the international TV community to know about Qalbox, it’s that they are likely to be sitting on programming that could suit the new streaming service.
“They may not even realise it, but they have content that’s very relevant for our audience,” says Emir Din, who points to documentaries about Islamic countries distributed by western producers or distributors, such as Tehran Stories from Paris-based Lucky You.
Shot in 2019, the Arte documentary details the intense moments of joy, sadness, love, devotion and death on the streets of the Iranian capital as it showcases the lived realities of minority groups in Iran.
For Emir Din, who serves as co-CEO at Bitsmedia alongside Fara Abdullah, the documentary highlights the shared values that Qalbox’s audience shares with the world.
Qalbox, which went live in July and continues to add to its library, features content that “celebrates Muslim identities and cultures worldwide, including secular content within and adjacent to the Muslim community to reflect diverse narratives and stories.”
As Emir Din points out: “The whole Muslim global community is not a homogenous bloc. Within that, you’ve got such diversity. The Muslim population in South-east Asia is totally different to Muslims living in Europe or in the US. We’ve definitely tried to make sure that the content we acquire is catering to all these different segments.”
The service includes documentaries, scripted programmes and movies, as well as animated series for children and Quranic recitations and supplications (du’a) as it seeks to entertain, inform and inspire with Muslimfocused content.
Qalbox comes after Bitsmedia’s successful Muslim Pro app, which has amassed more than 130 million downloads globally and includes features that make it easier to practice the daily rituals prescribed in Islam. Having dipped its toe into shortform content, it decided to push into longer-form acquisitions to grow a library of programming for its users whilst pursuing a mission to ultimately improve the visibility of Muslims in film and TV in a positive way.
“The Muslim audience very much behaves like any other audience and they are also very much looking for high-quality video content,” says Emir Din.
Emir Din wants Qalbox, which is available for £12.99 (US$14.99) per month, to provide “comprehensive, curated and diverse Muslim-centric content, but also raise awareness of the lived realities of Muslims across genders and socio-cultural spectrums.”
For example, the documentary A Goal For Freedom: Women’s Football In Kabul, acquired from Autentic Distribution in Germany, highlights the challenges of forming an all-women football team in the highly conservative environment of Afghanistan.
Dingomaro: Iran’s Black South, meanwhile, is a cinematic documentary showcasing an Iranian community with African ancestry who have assimilated into the wider Iranian culture while retaining elements of their African roots.
“Muslim Pro has been around for over 10 years so we have a very healthy user base and we know what our users like and what their background is. They’re between the ages of 18 and 45, they’re working families and young parents. And they’re definitely on the lookout for lifestyle
Streaming service Qalbox, which celebrates the diversity of Muslim identities and cultures, is stocking up on content from international distributors following its launch this summer.
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content, whether it’s travel, food or children’s entertainment,” says Emir Din.
Key content priorities focus on shows “that transcend cultures and backgrounds and celebrates the diversity that makes us who we are. For us, it was crucial that there exists a portrayal of diff types of Muslims across the globe, their journeys, realities and triumphs.
“Qalbox aims to empower Muslims around the world by offering a fresh perspective of contrasting topics in a modern world. We are always seeking the best distribution and production partners to provide compelling content for our subscribers,” says Fara Abdullah, Bitsmedia co-CEO.
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Qalbox also has programmes for families with children and has acquired the Emmy-nominated children’s series Burka Avenger which follows the adventures of a passionate schoolteacher by day who is a burka-clad superhero by night, all in the name of female empowerment, education and more.
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The series is a favourite of the children of Abdullah, who picks out the Canadian series Little Mosque on the Prairie as her favourite acquisition in Qalbox’s lineup. The sitcom originally aired from 2007 to 2012 on CBC in Canada and focuses on the Muslim community in the fictional prairie town of Mercy, Saskatchewan.
“It is a very, very famous show in Canada that is still not widely known outside of
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Canada. So we’re trying to promote it and give it visibility,” says Emir Din, who is on the hunt for similar gems on the international market as well as more children’s series that feature Muslim characters in prominent roles.
Exclusivity is not a deal-breaker, given that Qalbox is prioritising being available in as many countries as possible and so is willing to share rights with other
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Qualbox has several key content needs. “We know for a fact that a proportion of our audience likes travel and food. We know another proportion of our audience, which would be more conservative, would probably be more leaning towards, for example, spiritual content. We also have a certain audience that are probably also looking for entertainment, who like comedy and something more lighthearted,” says Emir Din.
platform for them to showcase their work,” says Emir Din, who hints that these originals will be unscripted to begin with before a potential move into scripted.
Qalbox also applies very clear guidelines to areas of content that won’t be carried on its platform, notably areas that are not permissible to the Muslim faith.
“Nudity or extreme violence, obviously we avoid. But beyond that, that’s the good thing about not being bound by a linear schedule. It’s not about having content that’s going to be widely viewed by as many people at one time. It’s about having enough pockets of content that are going to speak to different segments of the audience,” says Emir Din.
Actors such as Riz Ahmed have spoken of “Muslim misrepresentation” on screen, so could Qalbox help lead the way when it comes to more accurate portrayals of Muslim people on screen?
“What we’re really focusing on now during this launch period is having as much content available as widely as possible,” says Emir Din, listing the US, UK, France, Malaysia and Indonesia as its top five markets.
“We are always on the lookout for more opportunities to partner with international producers and distributors so that we can expand not only our library of content, but also the Muslim representation across different geographic regions.
“The majority of our shows are either in the English language or, at the very least, we have English subtitles. The next phase is to focus on other major languages that our users speak, so this would be French, Bahasa Indonesia, Malaysian and Arabic.
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“Once we have a better understanding of what works, for example, for our Indonesian user base or what our users in the US like, then that’s when it makes more sense for us to have exclusive arrangements or even look at original production selectively.”
Emir Din says Qalbox has “a couple” of originals lined up for production that will spotlight the diverse Muslim community and that its vision is to support global Muslim creativity and filmmakers.
“We are proactively seeking opportunities to not only collaborate, but also give these talents a
“Riz Ahmed is right. Although Muslims comprise almost 25% of the world’s population, they are notoriously overlooked and misrepresented in western media.
According to a USC Annenburg Report, only 1.1% of America’s top 100 grossing films from 2017-2019 included Muslim characters. This number shrinks even further for Muslim women and black Muslims,” says Emir Din.
“And for minorities who take up these roles, there is little recognition. And although there have been valiant efforts to remedy this disparity, issues persist. This is why Riz Ahmed’s Pillars Fund, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and Qalbox are so important.
“We know from countless studies that representation is crucial in breaking stereotypes, healing divisions and countering the harmful rhetoric that can sometimes lead to violence or discrimination. Key to solving this issue is portraying Muslim identity and personhood in the nuanced and authentic way it deserves, and this means building a platform to share their stories.
“Qalbox is designed at its core to be this platform. Not only are we building a home for Muslim creators and voices, but our goal is to allow global Muslims to showcase the realities and intricacies of Muslim life in a groundbreaking and accessible way.”
“ Representation is crucial in breaking stereotypes, healing divisions and countering the harmful rhetoric that can sometimes lead to violence or discrimination. Key to solving this issue is portraying Muslim identity and personhood in the nuanced and authentic way it deserves.
Nik Emir Din Bitsmedia
The TV industry is integral to inspiring, educating and informing audiences. As the UK’s most commissioned producer and the largest distributor of content outside of Hollywood and Bollywood, BBC Studios (BBCS) takes this responsibility seriously. And we know that what we say onscreen must be accompanied by authentic, science-based activity offscreen or else we run the risk – as in so many industries – of greenwashing.
This is why we continue to embed sustainability at the heart of what we do. At COP26 last November, many of the world’s largest media brands, including the BBC and BBCS, committed to the Climate Content Pledge. This recognises the important role that our industry plays to inspire and signpost positive solutions.
During the past year, BBCS has continued to normalise climate-positive behaviour, whether through the EastEnders community fridge, DIY SOS’s use of solar panels or practical advice on how to adopt sustainable behaviours in Cook Clever, Waste Less
We’ve also looked to different types of formats to reach our audiences. Our coproduced immersive augmented reality (AR) experience
The Green Planet AR Experience accompanied the Natural History Unit’s (NHU) series and covered multiple habitats, using interactivity to overcome ‘plant blindness’ and increase awareness and understanding. It reached 10,000 people of all ages and evoked a common emotional response of curiosity as well as joy, awe and wonder. Around 65% of all attendees also intended to embark on onward learning journeys, and, strikingly, 99% of attendees left with high sustainability awareness.
And our industry knows that our messaging must be accompanied by action with integrity. At BBCS, we are committed to reducing our own carbon footprint, considering nature and helping others do the same. The BBC has adopted science-based net zero targets and BBCS is playing its part to support this; an impressive 98% of our UK productions created carbon action plans again this year and their commitment to detail has been brilliant.
The teams at Silent Witness and EastEnders have worked on a pilot with an external partner to analyse their energy use at the most granular level – looking at everything from hairdryers to honeywagons. Understanding our consumption data ensures correct energy specifications and creates a power reduction pathway.
The ‘Watches’ (Autumnwatch, Springwatch and Winterwatch) continue to pioneer the use
Sally Mills, head of operations at BBC Studios, describes the ways the production and distribution powerhouse is making changes, big and small, to avoid the dreaded ‘greenwashing.’
of hydrogen generators, Strictly Come Dancing reduced its fuel emissions by more than 80% and the NHU has recently created a small solar farm to power their camp and filming kit in Africa, working with local people and using indigenous materials. Last year’s Earthshot Prize ceremony, celebrating environmental pioneers from across the globe, came in at under five tonnes of carbon emissions and was found to be an amazing 98% reduction on projections for an event of this kind. The team worked extremely hard to consider every detail of this event, from pre-worn clothing for the guests and locally sourced vegetarian food, to low-energy lighting and even the first pedalpowered performance on TV.
And it is not just about our productions – we’ve also been working closely with our licensees and suppliers, looking at our waste, reviewing our travel budgets and considering our buildings. Earlier this year we moved to a new location in Bristol and the new office has sustainability embedded into its very fabric. Its design meets leading industry standards, including having a Gold SKA award, and it takes nature as its inspiration, incorporating recycled fixtures and fittings, upcycled furniture and reclaimed wood.
The film and TV industry is all about innovation and those working in the sector are embracing the drive towards net zero with their trademark creativity. We don’t yet have all the solutions. But when the BBC gifted the albert carbon calculator tool to BAFTA over 10 years ago, we came together to consider our impact and we did that again last year in signing the Climate Content Pledge at COP26.
It is heartening to see that the drive to improve and work together is not just still present but ever strengthening. This collaboration and creativity is our strength and I continue to be hopeful that, as ambition continues to turn into action, together, we will play more than our part to address the global climate and nature depletion issues facing the world today.
2nd
EDITORIAL
Editorial director Ed Waller ed@c21media.net
Editor of C21Media.net Jonathan Webdale jonathan@c21media.net
Chief sub-editor Gary Smitherman gary@c21media.net
Chief sub-editor, Drama Quarterly John Winfield john@c21media.net
News editor
Clive Whittingham clive@c21media.net
Channel21 International editor Nico Franks nico@c21media.net
DQ editor Michael Pickard michael@c21media.net
Research editor Gün Akyuz gun@c21media.net
C21Kids editor Karolina Kaminska karolina@c21media.net
EVENTS
Event programming director Ruth Palmer ruth@c21media.net
Head of event programming Adam Webb adam.webb@c21media.net
Senior events manager Gemma Burt gemma@c21media.net
Events assistant Francesca Bartlett francesca@c21media.net
Founding partner and commercial director
Odiri Iwuji odiri@c21media.net
Sales director Peter Treacher peter@c21media.net
Business development director Nick Waller nick@c21media.net
Sales Manager Hayley Salt hayley@c21media.net
Senior sales executives Richard Segal richard@c21media.net
Malvina Marque malvina@c21media.net
C21TV
Head of television Jason Olive jason@c21media.net
PRODUCTION
Operations director Lucy Scott lucy@c21media.net
Production manager Eleanore Hayes eleanore@c21media.net
Team assistant Courtney Brewster courtney@c21media.net
Head of finance Susan Dean susan@c21media.net
Finance manager Marina Sedra marina@c21media.net
Finance officer Shuhely Mirza shuhely@c21media.net
North American editor Jordan Pinto jordan@c21media.net
Finance director Ravi Ruparel ravi@c21media.net
Editor-in-chief & managing director David Jenkinson david@c21media.net
Channel21
“Our industry knows that our messaging must be accompanied by action with integrity. At BBCS, we are committed to reducing our own carbon footprint, considering nature and helping others do the same.
