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INTER MEDYA SPECIAL REPORT
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1992 Foundation of Inter Medya as a company distrib- 2011 Ahmet Ziyalar joins Inter Medya as Chief Operating uting American feature films to Turkish TV channels. Officer. Inter Medya signs an agreement with Ay Yapim, 1994 The number of feature films Inter Medya dis- one of Turkey’s leading production houses, for the exclutributes exceeds 1,200. Those titles include block- sive distribution of Red Scarf. Now, the partnership busters such as The Silence of the Lambs, The between the company and Ay Yapim comprises the distribution of the series 20 Minutes, Black Money Love and Terminator, Platoon and RoboCop. Endless Love. 1999 Inter Medya expands its operation beyond Turkey to Central and Eastern European countries, 2015 Inter Medya builds a creative team internally and begins to develop and present game show, reality TV and especially Romania and Bulgaria. adventure formats to the world. 2000 Inter Medya expands into the CIS countries. 2016 Inter Medya produces Fifty Fifty, a format devel2003 Inter Medya’s content reaches over 5,000 hours oped by its own creative team, for ATV, one of Turkey’s in the countries where it operates. leading TV channels. On top of that, the company is 2008 Inter Medya signs worldwide distribution awarded the first and second prizes for earning the two agreements with some of Turkey’s most successful highest international sales revenues in 2015 for Black production houses. The titles that the company Money Love and Black Rose, respectively. For format begins to distribute include Broken Wings, the most sales, the company signs a distribution agreement with expensive TV series at the time, produced by Avsar Secuoya Group, one of Spain’s leading media companies. Film; Star Fish, the most watched daily daytime TV 2017 Inter Medya celebrates its 25th year. The company’s show in Turkey; and One Thousand and One Nights, logo is modernized to symbolize its international idenwhich becomes a television phenomenon not only in Turkey but in all the countries where it is broadcast. tity. In addition, the company creates a set of sub-brands under the larger umbrella of Inter Medya, reflecting its 2009 Inter Medya becomes the exclusive distributor various departments and operations. Due to the expandfor all the content produced by Avsar Film, Focus ing workload and staff, the company moves into new Film and Medyavizyon. offices inside Istanbloom, one of the newest and most 2010 Inter Medya becomes the exclusive worldwide prestigious skyscrapers in Istanbul. The company conrepresentative of Fox TV Turkey and the only distrib- tinues to grow its partnership with Secuoya Group by developing and distributing new projects worldwide. utor of its content. 4/17 WORLD SCREEN 3
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By Mansha Daswani
Founded in Istanbul in 1992 as a domestic distribution outfit, Inter Medya has been riding the dizi Turkish drama wave for the last few years, establishing itself as one of the genre’s most successful distributors around the world. Aligning with leading producers, Inter Medya has created a catalog that includes Black Money Love, sold to more than 100 markets, and Black Rose, licensed to over 70 countries. Can Okan, the founder and CEO of Inter Medya, tells World Screen about the company’s evolution, cracking new markets and expanding into format production and distribution. WS: What kind of company did you want to create when you established Inter Medya? OKAN: Many new private television broadcasters were launching in the early 1990s and I established Inter Medya in 1992 as a content distribution company, mainly supplying content to those channels. We started our business by buying feature films, predominantly from the United States, and selling them to Turkish TV channels. In time, also compelled by the economic conditions within Turkey, we decided to broaden our operational area to Central and Eastern European countries as well as CIS territories, where we became an important content distributor. 4 WORLD SCREEN 4/17
WS: How did you move into representing TV series? OKAN: Towards the end of 2008, due to the recession, in order to minimize our risk, we decided to pull away from our “buyer/reseller” identity and assume a sales agent role. In a period when Turkish TV series were becoming more and more popular around the world, we started to become the sales representative for some of Turkey’s most known producers, whom I also knew personally. At the time, we were undertaking the sales of all of Focus Film’s daily daytime series, Avsar Film’s weekly primetime series as well as all of TMC’s series, which were very successful in Turkey and abroad. WS: How did you start building relationships with Turkey’s top drama producers? OKAN: Before I established Inter Medya, I had advanced to the position of general manager at our family company Fono Film, which is Turkey’s most advanced postproduction facility. Almost all of Turkey’s production houses were using Fono Film’s services and I knew them quite well, so started to work with them again. This time, however, instead of providing them with post-production services and taking their money for it, I was making them earn more money by distributing their TV series and feature films in the international market.
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WS: Tell us about your commitment to providing the best level of service to your broadcaster clients. OKAN: Since I was a buyer for many years, I know very well how important it is for a broadcaster to have wellprepared broadcast and publicity materials. For that reason, we made it a point to send all our broadcaster clients the highest quality broadcast materials and the richest publicity materials in the quickest possible way. At one market, the acquisitions manager of a channel that we had not sold anything to yet said, “I hear a lot of great things about your company’s delivery and materials policy.” That day, I thought to myself, we must be doing a good job. WS: How has the Turkish drama-distribution business evolved over the last few years? OKAN: The increase in sales prices, hand in hand with the economic status of the MENA region where Turkish drama series first gained popularity, have definitely been a trigger in the exportation of Turkish content. The marketing and advertising efforts that we carry out together with other Turkish distribution companies, as well as our expansion into Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, have also tremendously increased the number of territories where Turkish content was sold to. This number is still increasing every day. Of course, in the past couple of years, the opening of the Latin American market to Turkish content and the expansion of Turkish drama series in that region has been an important factor, too. WS: What have been your best markets, and where do you wish to be doing more? OKAN: Even though local productions have increased in this territory, the MENA region is still a major market for us. In addition to that, Latin America also became one of our most important markets in a short amount of time. Although there have been some declines from time to time, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia are still territories where good quality productions always find a buyer. Recently, we started to receive a lot of interest from Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
I believe that we will quickly spread in these newer markets just like we did in all the countries and regions where Turkish content has been broadcast. WS: What led to your move into formats? OKAN: Inter Medya had managed to reach an important position as a series and feature film distributor in the international market and we decided to start a format business in order to increase our product diversity and extend our network of buyers and our sales territories. We started to grow our catalog with formats conceived by our in-house creative team, as well as formats codeveloped with creators from various countries, including Turkey, Israel, France and Italy. At last year’s MIPCOM we also proudly signed an agreement with Secuoya Group, one of Spain’s leading companies in the format business. Secuoya Group trusted us with the sales of many of their formats in a large number of territories. We are currently working on the development of some collective projects with Secuoya, which we intend to present in the international market very soon. WS: Do you intend to enter into the production business as well? OKAN: While we were planning our format business, we also built an in-house production team to undertake future productions. Last year, we produced a ten-episode season of our format Fifty Fifty for ATV, one of Turkey’s biggest broadcasters. We also completed the production of the pilots of two of our own formats, The Box Challenge and Guess Who? I truly believe that you will soon hear Inter Medya’s name as the producer or co-producer of a number of formats in Turkey as well as other countries. WS: What are your goals for Inter Medya’s business over the next one to two years? OKAN: As always, we plan to boost the sales of Turkish drama series and feature films to newer regions and bigger masses. We also wish to become one of the main companies in the industry by taking solid steps into format development and production.
“35 years of friendship and seven years of business partnership have built a strong bond between Can and I. I am happy to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of Inter Medya with my partner in crime!” —Ahmet Ziyalar, COO, Inter Medya 4/17 WORLD SCREEN 5
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