TV Europe MIPCOM 2015

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TVEUROPE

WWW.TVEUROPE.WS

OCTOBER 2015

MIPCOM EDITION

U.K. Tax Incentives / Turkish Content / Focus on France / ZDF’s Thomas Bellut / UKTV’s Darren Childs

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CONTENTS FEATURES

The Right to Chill The news from Europe over the last few months has been grim and grimmer.

Ricardo Seguin Guise Publisher Anna Carugati Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Executive Editor Joanna Padovano Sara Alessi Associate Editors Joel Marino Assistant Editor Victor L. Cuevas Production & Design Director Phyllis Q. Busell Art Director Simon Weaver Online Director Dana Mattison Alberto Rodriguez Sales & Marketing Managers Terry Acunzo Business Affairs Manager

Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development TV Europe © 2015 WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, #1207 New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.tveurope.ws

The conflict in Ukraine and the Greek debt crisis have longterm implications for the entire region. More recently, the images of the flow of desperate Syrian refugees have been heartbreaking, prompting heated debates in parliaments and living rooms about the right course of action. In those same living rooms, European viewers have been able to escape thanks to a rich menu of programming options.

Whether on terrestrial broadcasters, pay-TV channels or overthe-top services, it’s dramas, comedies and entertainment shows galore, homegrown and imported.

In the U.K., a country with a long history of producing cutting-edge television, it is becoming less expensive for producers to make high-end shows thanks to a new tax incentive, which is explained in depth in one of our features.

Another feature looks at the French market, which remains steadfastly loyal to linear television, more so than other countries where online streaming is eroding linear viewing. We also examine the Turkish market and the tremendous success of its dramas, domestically and internationally.

The battle for rights to exhibit shows on as many platforms as possible is heating up in Europe. This is true of broadcasters that have their own catch-up or streaming services. And it is especially true of linear channels competing with the likes of Netflix and Amazon, which are increasingly taking multiterritory and/or first-window rights. Any discussion with any distributor or buyer quickly comes to the words “exclusivity” and “holdbacks.” This may all become much more interesting considering the near parity in the exchange rate between the euro and the dollar, which is making American programming much more expensive than it was a year ago.

We talk with the heads of European television companies that produce excellent homegrown product: ZDF’s Thomas Bellut and UKTV’s Darren Childs. ZDF continues to have strong ratings thanks to a mix of news, documentaries, entertainment and drama, while reaching out to younger viewers online with content tailored to them. UKTV has seen its ratings grow year on year since 2012 thanks to a portfolio of channels that offers something for everyone.

All viewers are citizens and as such have a responsibility to remain informed, no matter how complicated and bleak the news may be. But they also have the right to relax. Europeans are lucky they can chill with so many programming options.

—Anna Carugati

8 GIVE ME A BREAK! Tax incentives for high-end TV are boosting the U.K. production business.

14 FROM TURKEY WITH LOVE Turkey is being celebrated as the Country of Honour this MIPCOM.

22 FRENCH CONNECTION An overview of the movements in the French media market.

22 INTERVIEWS

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ZDF’s Thomas Bellut

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UKTV’s Darren Childs

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Atresmedia Televisión Locked Up / Down Below / The Secret of Old Bridge In the thriller Plastic Sea, a police sergeant must travel to a village after the mayor’s daughter is murdered, unleashing an investigation that will stir up the town’s social differences. The new Atresmedia Televisión drama joins a slate of returning hits that the company will be highlighting. Among them are Locked Up, about a young girl who finds herself in a women’s prison following her lover’s betrayal, and Down Below, a comedy chronicling the culture clashes between the north and south of Spain. The company is also showcasing The Secret of Old Bridge, which has already produced more than 1,000 episodes. “Atresmedia’s series have become a reference point for Spanish fiction and are a safe bet for our clients,” says Diana Borbón, the sales manager at Atresmedia Televisión.

“We are focused on developing strong client relationships and finding the best partners for our new series.”

—Diana Borbón The Secret of Old Bridge

Filmax International I Know Who You Are / Hotel Almirante / Dates At MIPCOM, Spain’s Filmax International is debuting footage from its new production I Know Who You Are. The creative team behind The Red Band Society developed the thriller, which centers on the hunt for a missing girl. The main suspect in the case is the girl’s uncle, who suffers from amnesia and can’t remember what happened before the disappearance. “Everyone fell in love with the idea of the show,” says Ivan Diaz, the head of international sales at Filmax. “This is a compelling series that I’m sure will do as well overseas as it did in Spain.” Filmax also highlights its adaptation of the British format Dates, produced for TV3 (Televisió de Catalunya). Other titles on Filmax’s slate are the series Hotel Almirante and the docu-tainment program So Good.

“I Know Who You Are is a real indicator of the kind of high-quality fiction that is being produced in Europe right now.”

—Ivan Diaz I Know Who You Are

Global Screen A Dangerous Fortune / Arman’s Secret / Hidden Identity The 2x90-minute drama A Dangerous Fortune, part of the Global Screen catalogue, is an adaptation of one of Ken Follett’s best-selling novels. “It is a brand that buyers can rely on, and the production is top-notch, from the splendid locations to the lavish costumes,” says Alexandra Heidrich, the company’s head of TV sales and acquisitions. The fantasy event series Arman’s Secret, meanwhile, is targeted to a family audience. “The mysterious and suspenseful story unfolds more and more depth and character complexity as it develops,” Heidrich notes. She calls the two-part event thriller Hidden Identity “a must-see” for buyers on the lookout for European crime programming.

“The topic is international, and I am sure that the gripping story will appeal to international audiences,” Heidrich says.

“A Dangerous Fortune is an opulent drama about unfulfilled passion, greed, power, and political and amorous intrigues, set in Victorian London.”

—Alexandra Heidrich A Dangerous Fortune 168 World Screen 10/15

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Imagina International Sales Anchors Aweigh / Locked Up / Liaisons Locked Up is a high-concept series represented by Imagina International Sales that chronicles the lives of the inmates and the officials at a maximum-security penitentiary. The title is among several of Imagina’s prime-time programs dealing with universal stories that can be easily broadcast as finished series or adapted, according to Géraldine Gonard, the company’s COO. Another MIPCOM highlight for the distributor is Anchors Aweigh, a modern comedy with a wide range of exaggerated personalities. Gonard says that the company is also focused on distributing non-Spanish content, such as the Czech series The Manor House and the Bulgarian dramedy Liaisons, which follows the affairs and relations within a family.

“We are collaborating more and more with European fiction production companies.”

—Géraldine Gonard Liaisons

RCTV International Wild Skin The new telenovela Wild Skin, an RCTV Producciones title distributed by RCTV International, is launching at MIPCOM for buyers. The novela follows the life of Camila, a plucky young woman abandoned in the streets at a young age. While determined to unveil the mystery surrounding her mother’s disappearance, Camila struggles to avoid falling in love, as she believes romance will distract her from her ultimate goal. “We’re certain that Wild Skin will capture the audience’s attention through its mix of love, drama, comedy and mystery,” says Carlos Lamas, the VP and general manager at RCTV International. “This new product is already generating very positive buzz within the international market.”

“Our productions paved the way for the telenovela genre in the international market…and they have been present on TV screens in various countries since the ’80s.”

—Carlos Lamas Wild Skin

Televisión Española Carlos, King Emperor / Six Sisters / Acacias 38 Dramas are at the forefront of Televisión Española’s (TVE) MIPCOM slate, with the historical series Carlos, King Emperor a particular highlight. The scripted title chronicles the life of Spanish monarch Charles I, who would become one of the most powerful men in history. The drama is also a continuation of TVE’s popular series Isabel, which centers on the titular queen, who was Charles’s grandmother. “Isabel showed that high-quality historical drama is appealing for international markets,” says Rafael Bardem, TVE’s head of program sales. Another period piece is Six Sisters, a new daily drama set in 1913. The series focuses on six siblings who must face the death of their father. The company is also offering the soap opera Acacias 38.

“TVE’s aim is to keep offering a wide range of highquality dramas.”

—Rafael Bardem Six Sisters 170 World Screen 10/15

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ITV Studios’ Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands.

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GIVE ME A

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BREAK!

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Joanna Stephens explores the tax incentives that are reshaping the U.K.’s production landscape.

t just got a whole lot cheaper to make expensive television in the U.K. Under the country’s new high-end TV (HETV) tax-relief system, producers can claim a rebate of up to 25 percent of U.K. expenditure on scripted television projects that cost at least £1 million per hour. This offer cost the U.K. government close to £80 million in the scheme’s first year of operation.

With the possible exception of a couple of Treasury mandarins, nobody’s complaining—unless it’s to grumble that it is not as easy anymore to find first-rate crews, studio space and post facilities. “But that’s a nice problem to have,” suggests John McVay, the chief executive of Pact, the trade association that represents the commercial interests of the U.K.’s indies. “I’d rather have that than layoffs and mass industry unemployment.

The net effect is that the TV credit is helping attract jobs to the U.K., which has to be a good thing for this country’s highly skilled creative workforce.”

McVay’s view that the HETV relief is “great news” for British companies will be shared by the on-the-ground agencies that worked closely with the government to craft a scheme that is simple, user-friendly and tied up with a minimum of red tape.

“Most of the systems on offer around the world require you to jump through hoops or work with local co-producers in order to qualify [for a credit],” McVay says. “By contrast, the U.K. credit is really easy and transparent. The cultural tests are straightforward, the credit is bankable immediately upon receipt, it’s safe, it’s secure and it’s been tested over the years via the film tax-credit system. We don’t hear any complaints.”

As McVay notes, the TV relief emerged from the longer established tax credit for feature films, which was introduced in 2007 in a bid to stop the hemorrhage of productions to countries with lower costs and wages. The HETV credit became available in April 2013, and it was enhanced last April, reducing the required minimum spending in the U.K. from 25 percent to 10 percent of a budget of at least £1 million per broadcast hour. Meanwhile, the gateway to HETV relief for drama, animation and documentary—a points-based cultural test—is in the process of being modernized to make it easier to assess whether a project is sufficiently “cultural” to access the credit.

The impact of the new tax reliefs for premium television and animation content was revealed earlier this year by the BFI, further underlining the scheme’s success in helping boost the U.K. into the production major leagues. In its first full year of operation, a total of 87 HETV programs commenced principal photography in the U.K., of which 22 were foreign, 60 were domestic and 5 were co-productions. The 22 foreign projects—“inward

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investment”—had the largest share of U.K. spend, with £286.7 million of the £615.2 million total. Among the major international dramas that contributed to the 2014 results were Downton Abbey, Outlander, Game of Thrones, Wolf Hall, 24: Live Another Day, Poldark and Grantchester.

Meanwhile, the Treasury doled out £79 million in tax credits to HETV projects. The payback, however, was a massive uptick in production expenditure, which reached more than £395 million—some £225 million of which consisted of inward investment—from an estimated £50 million the year before the new credit was introduced.

The HETV results come amid a very strong year for U.K. production across the board, with film production surging by 35 percent in 2014 to reach a record £1.47 billion.

“The statistics demonstrate just how popular the U.K. is for international film and television productions,” says Adrian Wootton, CEO of the British Film Commission (BFC). “Our tax reliefs, world-class crews, state-of-the-art facilities and awardwinning talent are a formidable package.” And, as McVay observes, the tax credit is also allowing U.K. drama producers to “compete on more equal terms with our friends in the U.S.”

IN THE HIGHLANDS One of those friends in the U.S. is cable network Starz, which has a long history of filming in the U.K., most recently with Sony Pictures Television’s Outlander. The drama, based on a series of novels by Diana Gabaldon, was shot on location in Scotland.

Carmi Zlotnik, the managing director of Starz, points out that the network started shooting another of its hit series—Da Vinci’s Demons—in the U.K. well before the HETV scheme was in place. “The U.K. has always been an attractive place to work, but this scheme has increased its attraction a significant degree,” he says, singling out the country’s “brilliant” pool of creative talent, both in front of and behind the camera. “When you’re shooting in Britain, you realize just how fine the actors are there,” he adds. “It’s not just the leads—you can get great actors in your third and fourth tiers of acting talent.”

Zlotnik’s first experience shooting in the U.K. was with HBO’s seminal miniseries Band of Brothers. But for all his enthusiasm about British production capabilities—which, he notes, are being constantly upgraded due to the amount of work now flowing into the country—he acknowledges that “things work differently” on the U.K. side of the pond. There are differences not only in creative culture (“British directors are used to taking more possession of a show”), but also in the practicalities of how hours, shooting days and budgets are structured.

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A total of 87 programs benefited from the HETV scheme in 2013–14, including the BBC’s lavish historical drama Wolf Hall.

Comparing the U.S. and U.K. paradigms, Melissa Harper, Starz’s senior VP of original programming production, says U.K. TV budgets have historically been smaller than their U.S. counterparts, and have been structured over series rather than episodes. “It’s manageable to track a six-episode limited series with, say, a $6 million budget to be spent over the course of the project,” she adds. “But with the very high-end series of the sort that you’d find on Starz, which could run up to $4 million per episode, the spend is so significant that it can’t be looked at on a series basis, but [must be considered] on an episodic basis.”

Harper calls the lowering of the HETV credit’s qualifying threshold in April a “fantastic move” for U.K. competitiveness, one that will “continue to mark the U.K. as a leading destination for us to generate premium content.”

The next example of that premium content comes in the form of Close to the Enemy, by the award-winning writer and director Stephen Poliakoff. The six-part series for Starz and the BBC is set in bomb-ravaged London at the start of the Cold War. Filming is taking place in and around Liverpool and London for a 2016 broadcast.

TALENT POOL The booming demand for crews, studios and post-production facilities as work floods into the U.K. is certainly “part of the conversation” when considering where to shoot, Harper says.

“Fortunately, the U.K. is one of a handful of places in the world with the depth of talent and the educational resources to support growth.”

Indeed, the British government is investing heavily in training people to develop the skills needed to handle the increase in production generated by the new incentives. Via a series of Skills Investment Funds targeted at film, high-end TV, children’s content, animation, games and VFX, the government pledged in 2013 to invest up to £16 million, matched by industry funding, bringing the total investment to £32 million over two years.

Meanwhile, studio space remains at a premium, with both pop-up and established facilities filled to capacity. The new Pinewood Studios expansion—a £200 million scheme that will add a total of 100,000 square meters of new facilities, includ-

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ing 12 large stages, to the U.K. stock over the next 15 years—will help ease the squeeze when the first phase opens in early 2016.

But, for the time being, “there is simply not enough good studio space, or enough crews, to accommodate demand,” says Tim Halkin, COO of Munich-based TANDEM Productions.

The STUDIOCANAL production company recently shot the drama Spotless in the U.K.—a decision, Halkin says, that was directly influenced by the HETV credit. “The tax scheme really opened up the U.K. as an option where it hadn’t been before.

Given the higher costs associated with shooting in London, the credit has made it affordable and, more importantly on a creative level, has permitted a story set in London to be shot there.

We can now consider going to the U.K. to shoot the U.K., rather than going elsewhere to simulate a British look and feel.”

AIMING HIGH So what’s the take on the HETV credit within the U.K.? Andrew Critchley, the managing director of U.K.-based RED Production Company, speaks for many producers when he says the new incentive will help them achieve “bigger, bolder series.”

With such gems as Last Tango in Halifax, Happy Valley and Queer as Folk in its portfolio, RED is known for its ambitious, daring and engaging dramas—precisely the sort of content that the HETV credit is designed to foster.

“The scheme helps us to realize our creative aspirations,” Critchley adds—a sentiment echoed by Kate Harwood, the managing director of iconic production brand Euston Films. “It’s a real game changer,” Harwood says. “It’s enabling us to pitch higher than we would previously have done. For example, I’m currently pitching on a very big show against a major U.S. studio, and the only reason we’re in the game is because of the tax break. And if we get the project, we can now afford to shoot it here, using British talent to tell a British story.”

The production company behind such classic British series as The Sweeney and Minder, Euston Films was relaunched late last year by FremantleMedia UK after a 15year hiatus. BAFTA-winning Harwood—formerly the BBC’s head of in-house drama—was brought in to run the revived brand, with ex-BBC colleague Noemi Spanos as head of

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Starz has a number of original productions that were shot in the U.K., among them the upcoming movie The Dresser, a co-production with the BBC.

development. Building on Euston’s legacy of producing groundbreaking content, Harwood and Spanos are looking to create high-end, high-profile dramas with global reach.

Harwood makes the point that the HETV credit is good news not only for the U.K. industry, but also for U.K. audiences. “It has to be a blessing for us culturally to see our stories represented in an authentic way, rather than being presented in inauthentic locations, so I think an interesting indirect benefit of the scheme is that it will encourage more larger-scale Britishbased storytelling.”

Another interesting side effect of the scheme, Harwood adds, is that it has provoked several foreign tax funds to be more generous, because they are now competing against the U.K. system for English-language drama.

“All in all, it’s fabulous for production in this country,” Harwood concludes. “Studios are filled, and actors and directors are employed. It has also coincided with a big boom in longform TV drama, so it’s happy days all around.”

NOT THE USUAL SUSPECTS The love is also spreading to various regions of the U.K., as producers look beyond the production heartlands of London and South East England for affordable—and available—facilities and locations. Creative England reports a record year of filming inquiries across the regions, with requests up 54 percent on 2014. “There’s no prejudice these days about producing in the regions,” says Pact’s McVay. “Game of Thrones, for example, was shot in Ulster and Da Vinci’s Demons in a converted car factory outside Cardiff. It’s about the right project at the right place, in the right facility.”

For ITV Studios’ Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, an epic reimagining of the life and times of one of literature’s great heroes, that right place is up in the rugged landscape of northern England. “We are shooting around Northumberland and Durham, as [Beowulf] is set in an 8th-century fantasy world, and the magnificent landscapes and varied locations make it ideal for our needs,” says Katie Newman, who co-created and is executive producing the project with James Dormer and ITV’s Tim Haines.

The series is set in mythical Shieldlands, where fantastical creatures live alongside the heroes and villains. Newman says the HETV credit was a major factor in the decision to produce in the U.K. For a 13-part series of the scale and

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ambition of Beowulf, “it’s unlikely we would have been able to afford to shoot in the U.K. without the new tax-relief scheme,” she adds. “We would have had to look at other countries with tax breaks.”

Francis Hopkinson, creative director of drama at ITV Studios, points out that five years ago dramas set in the U.K. were mostly filmed in Eastern Europe. “It was the only way producers could afford to make them,” he says. “Now, for a drama set in Britain, like Lucan or Jekyll and Hyde, the scheme makes it possible to film it here.”

Other high-end ITV dramas that were filmed in the U.K. regions and that benefited from the HETV incentive include the crime series Shetland, shot in Scotland and, appropriately, on the Shetland Islands themselves, and Jericho, filmed in North Yorkshire.

Gail Kennett, who has worked on a host of ITV Studios’ dramas, praises the HETV credit’s user-friendliness. “We’re now pretty familiar with how it works,” she says. “It’s comparable to other European and international incentives, but the major advantage of the U.K. scheme is that we can use the same currency, so we aren’t subject to exchange-rate fluctuations.”

In the end, however, the decision as to where a drama is filmed should be a creative rather than a commercial one, ITV Studios’ Newman says. In the case of Beowulf, there was no doubt in the minds of the creative team that the U.K. was the best and most authentic place for it to be shot.

The latest BFI figures, released in late July, indicate that the U.K.’s production boom is set to continue in both film and TV. In the first six months of this year, £594 million has been spent on 79 films and £279 million on 30 HETV productions, including the final season of Carnival Films’ Downton Abbey, Daybreak Pictures’ Churchill’s Secret, Starz/BBC’s The Dresser and the third installment of Mammoth Screen’s Endeavour.

“There’s a sort of gold-rush feel at the moment,” says Euston Films’ Harwood. “Until things settle down, there will inevitably be strains on crews and studios, and costs are bound to rise.

But generally, it’s a blessing.”

Pact’s McVay agrees: “It doesn’t take much for the world to change, as we saw with the recession. But at the moment I’m seeing a very buoyant, very confident production industry across the U.K., both indigenously and in terms of inward investment.”

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ITV-Inter Medya’s Black Money Love.

FROM TURKEY

WITH LOVE

Turkey’s content-export business is being celebrated by the global TV community this MIPCOM.

By Mansha Daswani

n the Istanbul neighborhood of Arnavutköy, overlooking wooden homes that are remnants of Turkey’s ancient architecture, you’ll find Yazi Odasi, the country’s first, and only, U.S.-style writers’ rooms.

In a three-story converted house, Yazi Odasi’s founders— the in-demand writing duo of Kerem Deren and Pinar Bulut Deren—are churning out scripts for the current hit Maral and developing new projects with teams of senior and junior writers. The pair, whose portfolio of successes includes Ezel and Suskunlar (Game of Silence), created Yazi Odasi in response to the dramatic shifts that have taken place in the country’s content sector over the last few years.

A ferry ride away, on the other side of town, an abandoned shoe factory has been converted into the sprawling Beykoz Kundura Film Plateau, which houses, among other sets, a replica of a 13th-century palace for Dirilis Ertugrul (Resurrection Ertugrul).

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On the banks of the Bosphorus River, in the upscale district of Üsküdar, a massive mansion serves as home base for the drama series Paramparça (Broken Pieces).

As the capital of Turkey’s content business, this huge city—home to about 14 million people—has very few parts that aren’t being used as backdrops for the hundreds of hours of drama (known locally as Dizi) being produced throughout the year.

The volume of scripted content being made in Turkey, which is the Country of Honour at MIPCOM this year, is pretty staggering. Each of the major eight free-to-air networks has a different scripted title on in prime time every day. These shows run anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes each week. Around 100 new titles launch each season, and 20 to 25 percent of them get the axe within four weeks of premiering.

For those that survive, local success is no longer the only reason to celebrate. Over the last few years, Turkish drama series have been popping up in the Middle East

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Calinos Entertainment arrives at MIPCOM with the new series Relationship Status: It’s Complicated.

(not so unexpectedly, given the cultural similarities between the two regions); in Latin America, where they are taking on entrenched telenovela slots; in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Turkish series are now said to be on the air in about 75 countries, delivering $200 million in licensing revenues to the sector. Izzet Pinto, the CEO of Global Agency—which represents two of Turkey’s biggest international hits, Magnificent Century and 1001 Nights—says that the boom in Turkish scripted exports “came out of nowhere and now has so many regions under its control.”

But it has taken years of hard work for the country’s leading distributors, starting in smaller territories—with negligible licensing fees—and working their way up to major markets.

Calinos Entertainment, for example, sold its first series internationally, Deli Yürek, to Kazakhstan, in 2001, well before the

Turkish distribution sector started to take shape in 2008.

Ozlem Ozsumbul, the head of sales and acquisitions at Kanal D, reflects on her first experience selling Turkish content, back before she had a distribution role at the company.

“For 19 years I was just buying Hollywood movies for my channel to broadcast. One day my boss called me and said, We have a guest from the Middle East, please join me for the meeting. He was from MBC Group; it was Fadi [Ismail, group director of drama production and distribution at the Dubai-based broadcaster]. He told a story about his holiday in Anatolia with his family. At the hotel he had watched some shows on Kanal D. He didn’t know any Turkish, but he had understood what he was watching. He said, We have a channel in the Middle East and we want to show Turkish titles in our territory.

We were shocked! We said, why not? We signed a deal on the table, it was for $500. We said, this is a good thing for the channel, and we made some money from our library! That was an important starting point for Turkish distributors and channels.”

MIDDLE EASTERN APPEAL When Kanal D’s Gumus aired on MBC as Noor in 2008, it was a phenomenon, sparking an increase in demand for Turkish series across the region. With that rising demand, licensing fees have soared.

Can Okan, president and CEO of ITV-Inter Medya, provides an illustration of just how much Middle Eastern broadcasters are willing to pay for high-end Turkish drama.

“The original Desperate Housewives sold in the Middle East for $8,000 per episode. The Turkish remake sold for $40,000. Now, we have reached $225,000 per episode in the Middle East.”

Global Agency’s Suskunlar, first aired on Show TV, is being remade by Sony Pictures Television in the U.S. as Game of Silence for NBC. 180 World Screen 10/15

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One of Turkey’s leading broadcasters, Kanal D boasts a significant slate for the global market, including the series Love.

Global Agency’s Pinto confirms that licensing fees are up dramatically in the Middle East, rising by as much as 100 percent in the last year or two alone. Elsewhere, fees are up by multiples of six or seven, he adds.

Soon after the Middle East showed an affinity for Turkish content, Central and Eastern European markets followed suit.

Global Agency made its first drama deal in the region in Bulgaria, with 1001 Nights. Based on the strong performance of the show, “I was able to license it to all the neighboring countries: Serbia, Croatia; it was like a domino effect,” says Pinto.

Broadcaster ATV followed a similar route, beginning in the Middle East and the ex-Soviet states. “Kazakhstan was one of our main territories,” says Muhammed Ziyad Varol, head of sales at ATV, whose biggest international success has been Sila. “Of course, the Balkans and CEE have been good markets for us. Later on we managed to enter bigger markets like Croatia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.”

TELENOVELA TAKEOVER The biggest news for Turkish distributors over the last year has been the massive success of their series in Latin America, where broadcasters are making room for these shows on their telenovela-heavy schedules.

“The Latin Americans tried not to surrender to the Turkish content for quite some time. They resisted it!” says Mehmet Demirhan, deputy head of the television department, acquisitions, sales and co-productions, at public broadcaster Turkish Radio and Television (TRT). “The soap opera is Latin American. We don’t call our shows soaps, but they’re in the same genre. Now the region is wide open. We have incredible ratings in the Chilean market, and in other countries.”

With the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America all now conquered, Turkish distributors are looking further afield, to Asia, Western Europe and the holy grail for any international content company: the U.S. “If Turkish content is working in such a wide range of cultures and countries, then why not the American industry?” asks TRT’s Demirhan.

A Turkish-language series hasn’t achieved that goal on a mainstream channel (although Spanish-language MundoMax previously aired Magnificent Century), but the door has opened to Turkish scripts. Global Agency’s Suskunlar (Game of Silence) has spawned a U.S. version that is launching on NBC with Carol Mendelsohn as its executive producer.

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Meanwhile, as international broadcasters look to Turkey for inspiration, the country is increasingly looking outside of its borders for ideas to feed its massive content-creation complex.

The wealth of Turkish stories available should not be underestimated; all of the distributors and broadcasters spoken to for this feature are working with production companies on ideas conceived and developed internally that are inspired directly by Turkish culture. There are a number of historical Ottoman-era epics on offer, from Global Agency’s Kösem Sultan—a spin-off of Magnificent Century—to TRT’s Dirilis Ertugrul and Filinta. Many shows speak to the cultural, economic and societal divides in the country, which crosses two continents, Europe and Asia.

Nevertheless, foreign scripted formats are a hot commodity: Jane the Virgin, Pretty Little Liars and Revenge are among the shows being adapted by Turkish broadcasters.

There are a couple of major challenges Turkish writers and producers face as they come up with compelling ideas for viewers—number one being time, or lack of it. “We write for 15 hours a day,” says Yazi Odasi’s Kerem Deren. “We have to. You need to have 120-some pages written in about four days.”

While writers, directors and on-screen talent have all lobbied for shorter episodes, broadcasters are standing firm on their need for shows to fill 90- to 120-minute slots.

There is also an undercurrent of self-censorship being employed by writers who know that broadcasters will often be unwilling to show scenes that could offend Turkey’s religious heartland or the ruling party.

Meanwhile, since the implementation of a new peoplemeter system, broadcasters have become quick to dump any show if early ratings aren’t positive. “Producers and networks prefer stories that are more like soap operas or romantic comedies,” says Yazi Odasi’s Pinar Bulut Deren.

“They don’t want to take risks.”

GLOBAL ASPIRATIONS International companies are looking to bring some of their own creativity to the Turkish market. Among them, Endemol Shine Group “has the advantage of being the only international player with its own [Turkish] production company,” notes Nilüfer Küyel, head of acquisitions and format development at Endemol Shine Turkey. The company’s first scripted show, Paramparça (Broken Pieces), a

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The period drama Filinta has been a strong performer for public broadcaster TRT.

family drama, has been a huge success domestically and has emerged as one of Global Agency’s strongest international sellers recently.

MBC has set up shop in Istanbul with O3 Productions Turkey, which is working on the local version of Pretty Little Liars, among other shows. 21st Century Fox owns the free-toair FOX network in Turkey, and many of its titles are now being taken worldwide by FOX International Channels Content Sales.

Sweden-based Eccho Rights has been active in the market, making deals to represent several Turkish production companies’ shows worldwide, including Ezel.

The years that homegrown independent distributors like Global Agency and ITV-Inter Medya have spent fine-tuning their relationships with production companies should keep them stocked with product for the foreseeable future.

“For the international market, at our own cost, we cut episodes into 42-minute versions,” says ITV-Inter Medya’s Okan. “We do all of the publicity at our own cost. That’s why the producers are happy with our services—and the revenues we’re bringing them.”

“Having the most successful Turkish product internationally gives us a good reputation,” says Global Agency’s Pinto. “This reputation helps us with the producers.”

One of the key issues for Turkish distributors is deciding when to start introducing a show to clients, especially given broadcasters’ high cancellation rates. “It depends on the region,” says Okan. “Sometimes we presell our titles, especially in the Middle East or in some of the bigger territories.”

“The first episode is really important,” says Pinto. “If the ratings are good, then we feel comfortable it will run for a while—at least for one long season. After ten episodes, we feel even more comfortable.”

Given the uncertainty of taking new shows to the international market, it’s not surprising that Turkish distributors continue to plug series that have completed their runs. Kanal D’s Fatmagül, ATV’s Sila, Global Agency’s Magnificent Century and ITV-Inter Medya’s Kara Para Ask (Black Money Love), among others, are still premiering in new markets even though they are no longer on the air in Turkey.

“Black Money Love was a huge success for us,” says Okan.

“It sold in over 40 territories in eight months’ time. The number of territories it has sold in is picking up every day.”

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Ozsumbul points to Kanal D’s library as a major asset. “We have titles from some independent companies and we are also a producer. We’ve sold more than 60 titles abroad since 2006.”

In addition to having large catalogues, distributors benefit from carrying titles with high-profile leads. Halit Ergenç (Magnificent Century), Tuba Büyüküstün (Black Money Love), Erkan Petekkaya (Broken Pieces) and Bergüzar Korel (Karadayi) have become some of Turkey’s most bankable and recognizable stars.

EYE ON DIVERSIFICATION With the Turkish drama-series business as crowded as it is, distributors are also looking to expand their portfolios. Global Agency started its business in unscripted formats, a segment that has remained a huge part of Pinto’s international activities.

Kanal D has had success with its homegrown format My Partner Knows—which the company has sold to eight markets.

ITV-Inter Medya is now entering the format business, bringing a selection of game shows to MIPCOM. And TRT arrives in Cannes with a slate of more than 30 TV movies, after putting out a call for ideas that attracted more than 900 applications from filmmakers. There is also a small, but growing, animation sector, led largely by Dusyeri Animation Studios. The company, which has in-house production and licensing and merchandising divisions, now has its eye on the global market. It is heading to MIPCOM with a slate of kids’ series that have been hits on the Planet Çocuk channel in Turkey.

Scripted formats are also an important growth area for Turkish companies. “From our Latin American clients, we are getting lots of feedback about format rights for productions,” TRT’s Demirhan says.

Those conversations with buyers will undoubtedly be taking place at MIPCOM, where Demirhan, for one, is looking forward to basking in the Turkish spotlight.

“It’s not only about making money. Our business is based on creating a difference. Content is the key. We have the potential to offer this difference to the global industry.”

Background information and translations provided by Professor Arzu Ozturkmen at Bogazici University and Sinem Erdogan, Yeliz Çavus, Sarp Çolgeçen, Yeliz Çelebi and Sevinç Çalhanoglu.

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Zodiak’s Versailles on CANAL+.

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Steve Clarke provides an in-depth look at the latest developments in the French media sector. n an era of smart technology, binge-viewing and ondemand content, TV watching has changed beyond all recognition—except, perhaps, in France.

At 9 p.m. on an average Sunday evening, it’s commonplace for French families to gather in their sitting rooms and watch TV together. Are they enjoying a reality show or an entertainment format, or maybe a hit U.S. drama like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead? No, they are viewing a French movie, and doing so on a traditional terrestrial network.

In 2014, 42.5 percent of all films broadcast on French TV were French, according to CNC (Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée). Meanwhile, Hollywood movies accounted for 37.4 percent of films shown on French TV. The local movies, however, generated the largest audiences.

I

SPEAKING FRENCH “Last year three of the top ten most popular programs on French TV were domestically produced feature films,” says John-Paul O’Sullivan, an analyst for Europe at SNL Kagan.

“There was one American series, The Mentalist, in the top ten and one reality show, a local adaptation of The Voice. Miss France, the beauty competition, was a top-ten program. So was the TF1 flagship cop show Profilage (Profiling). Despite declining audiences for the historic channels like TF1, French movies can achieve a 50-percent share of viewing, as up to 13.5 million people tune in.”

His colleague Mohammed Hamza, TV and video analyst for Europe at SNL Kagan, adds, “The French are very culturally minded. Unlike in the U.K. and Holland, there is less of a shopping culture [in France]. Local content is high quality and there is no shortage of it. STUDIOCANAL produces a lot of high-end content.”

The French remain a nation of TV addicts. Make no mistake, they still love imported drama, especially crime shows, and not only American ones. In 2014 the first season of the British thriller Broadchurch was a big success for France 2.

The levels of TV consumption per person in France are higher than the global average, according to Jonathan Barnard, the head of forecasting at ZenithOptimedia.

The allure of TV may reflect the grim state of the French economy. It grew by just 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2015 following zero growth the previous quarter.

Last year the typical French viewer spent 243 minutes a day watching TV. This was up on 239 minutes in 2010. Worldwide viewing declined, says ZenithOptimedia, from an average of 196 minutes a day in 2010 to 184 minutes in 2014. “Consumption of TV is holding up well in France,” Barnard observes.

Nevertheless, the media agency suggests that French TV viewing peaked in 2013 at 244 minutes a day. This is predicted to decrease to an average of 234 minutes a day by 2017.

To put this into context, even in the online age TV remains the biggest of all French media by a considerable margin. In 2014 French people spent on average 113 minutes a day on the internet—less than half the 243 minutes occupied by TV consumption. “When people have less money, they are likely to stay in and watch TV,” says Barnard.

WINDS OF CHANGE This is not to say the French TV market is immune to the changes—prompted by digital fragmentation, online platforms and the growth of HD channels—that are affecting all mature TV markets. In recent years, competition for eyeballs has mushroomed in France. Alongside this trend, the advertising market broadly continues to flatline.

French TV advertising is doing marginally better than the overall advertising market, which is expected to shrink by 0.1 percent per year between 2014 and 2017, according to ZenithOptimedia.

In 2007, on the eve of the meltdown in Western European economies, the French TV advertising market was worth €3.6 billion. By 2013 it had fallen to €3.2 billion. In 2014 the figure was still €3.2 billion. In the last quarter of 2014, TV advertising picked up. The trend was confirmed in the first three months of 2015. ZenithOptimedia is forecasting growth in French TV advertising of 0.2 percent for the period from 2014 to 2017. Broken down, this represents growth of 0.3 percent this year and 0.2 percent in 2016.

This fall’s Rugby World Cup, which kicked off in September, was expected to give a lift to the market. French elections later this year will help, too; there are votes for regional politicians. Similarly, next year’s Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro are expected to stimulate the ad market. France Télévisions and CANAL+ have the rights.

However, “the underlying French economy is weak, and there is a lack of confidence in the business community,” says ZenithOptimedia’s Barnard. “People don’t expect the recovery to be sustained, and that holds back investment in advertising.”

He adds, “The French advertising market is deflationary. Advertisers can maintain their targets without increasing spending.”

In the TV sector, DTT is where the growth lies. The segment is ahead of the economy as a whole. DTT advertising increased by 2.2 percent in 2014 and is expected to increase by 2.3 percent this year.

This uptick, however, came from a low base. It is a result of the newer channels taking money from legacy analog channels.

Overall, advertising revenues on the traditional analog channels were down by 0.6 percent last year. This compares with a forecast decline of 0.4 percent in 2015. “There’s been a bit of an improvement,” says Barnard.

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Nouvelle Star, the French version of FremantleMedia’s Idols format, airs on M6’s DTT channel D8.

Meanwhile France’s well-established public-service channels, under the umbrella of France Télévisions, are financially challenged—albeit not to the extent of the U.K.’s BBC. DTT arrived relatively late in France. So did Netflix, which launched in September 2014. But, paradoxically, the French VOD market is crowded. The “grandes chaines nationales”—TF1, France 2, 3 and 5, ARTE, CANAL+ and M6—remain dominant, even as their share of viewing continues to slowly decline. In 2007 the heavyweights secured an 83-percent peak-time viewing share. By 2014 this had declined to 64 percent, much of it due to the massive inroads made by the free digital terrestrial channels; these networks increased their share from below 6 percent to 24 percent in the same period.

Since the end of 2012, all the main French TV networks have launched their own DTT spin-offs. The new additions increased the 19-channel Télévision Numérique Terrestre (TNT) offer to 25, covering all of France. Digital switchover was completed in November 2011.

TF1 and M6 each debuted one new channel apiece, devoted to drama and family programming, respectively. DTT operators NRJ and NextRadioTV were given the green light for the female-skewing channel Chérie HD and the documentary service RMC Découverte. Also launched in 2012 was the sports channel L’Equipe HD, originating from the sports daily L’Equipe, and an independent channel promoting diversity, an issue at the top of French media regulator CSA’s agenda. Pay TV is led by CANAL+.

WHAT’S HOT Fiction, including feature films, remains the leading program genre in terms of content and viewing. Audience measurement firm Médiamétrie calculated that the free-to-air national channels, including TF1, France 2, France 3, France 5, M6, ARTE, D8, W9, TMC, NT1, NRJ12, France 4, D17 and Gulli, aired 39,100 hours of drama in 2014.

As indicated previously, American drama is crucial to the mix.

“U.S. series are very popular in France,” says Bertrand Villegas, a co-founder of The WIT. “It’s more than The Mentalist, although Simon Baker is a big star in France. The CSI franchise, Grey’s

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Anatomy, Elementary and Hawaii Five-0 are all strong performers. ABC’s police procedural Castle is a big show for France 2.”

It says a lot about the popularity of American scripted shows that The Mentalist remains one of the most-watched programs on French TV. In the U.K. it is rare to find a single American show in the top 100 network programs.

For years U.S. drama has been a mainstay of the mostwatched French channels. Local producers have found this depressing and demoralizing, especially since France has a generous public support system for TV and film production.

FAVORED FICTION Of late, however, French scripted shows are beginning to challenge their U.S. rivals. “The success of domestic drama is growing on France 2, with shows such as Chefs and Les Témoins,” says Avril Blondelot, international research manager at Médiamétrie. “In 2010 American series like The Mentalist, House and Criminal Minds were leading ratings charts. In 2014 The Mentalist is still there, but in the top three are the French shows Profilage and Nos chers voisins.”

Profilage, the well-travelled TF1 series that launched in 2009, continues to perform well despite intense competition. The program’s audience has grown year on year, peaking last December when the series finale attracted an average of 8.6 million viewers and a 31.2-percent share. When TF1 demoted MasterChef to digital channel NT1 earlier this year, the broadcaster replaced the cooking contest with reruns of Profilage.

Another prime-time hit TV drama is the more recent Chefs, the story of a young offender who leaves prison to work in a Paris restaurant. The series features French actor, screenwriter and director Clovis Cornillac. Chefs, which made its debut in February, has achieved an average audience of 4.4 million (an audience share of 17.1 percent) for France 2.

A further example of the move towards French-made fiction is the success of the noir thriller Les Témoins (Witnesses), starring Thierry Lhermitte, for France 2; its premiere won an audience share of 17.4 percent.

Of the big terrestrials, youth-skewing M6, owned by RTL Group, is the most vulnerable to the myriad viewing options

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Pay-TV outlet CANAL+ has been investing in scripted drama, with an upcoming slate that includes STUDIOCANAL’s Section Zéro.

that emerged in recent years. In 2014, M6 recorded its lowest audience share since 1991. Signs of the broadcaster’s troubles included the decisions to axe Israeli entertainment format Rising Star and relegate high-profile drama Empire to niche station W9.

“M6 needs to find some new hits,” explains The WIT’s Villegas. “The channel has not invested in locally-produced scripted shows. M6 used to do better in the days when French versions of reality shows like Supernanny and Come Dine with Me were very popular.”

OTT ARRIVES It is the lack of a strong library of French fare that appears to be limiting Netflix’s success in the French market. Outside France, Netflix’s marketing is based on the global appeal of high-end U.S. drama. Think of the landmark remake of the BBC’s House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey and the buzzy hit Orange Is the New Black. In France, however, domestic pay box CANAL+ secured House of Cards. “It’s not easy for Netflix in France,” says Médiamétrie’s Blondelot.

“There were a lot of local players already in place when Netflix entered the market.”

With a three-year holdback on digital rights and strong competition from rival VOD platform CANALPLAY, establishing Netflix in France looks unlikely to be easy. SNL Kagan’s Hamza points to the stipulation that features can’t air on VOD services until three years after their pay-TV run.

“There is pressure on French regulators to do something about the situation,” explains Hamza.

Netflix had 500,000 subscribers in France by the end of 2014, compared with 3.3 million in the U.K, according to IHS. The platform has high hopes for the arrival of the Frenchlanguage crime drama Marseille (created by the Parisian novelist Dan Franck, co-writer of the critically acclaimed miniseries Carlos), hyped as a Mediterranean version of House of Cards.

“Netflix’s impact on more traditional TV platforms in France is likely to be slow,” insists Barnard at ZenithOptimedia. “Netflix

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is unlikely to depress overall viewing levels at linear services in the near future.”

This is potentially good news for pubcaster France Télévisions, whose two main channels, France 2 and France 3, achieved audience shares of 14.1 percent and 9.4 percent, respectively, in 2014. In 2010, the networks’ shares were 16.1 percent and 10.7 percent.

“There are huge funding difficulties for France Télévisions,” says Mathieu Béjot, the executive director of the trade association TV France International (TVFI). He notes that the French license fee, of €136, “is one of the lowest in Europe.”

France Télévisions is funded by a mix of license fees (70 percent of income), advertising (banned after 8 p.m. since 2009) and public funding (around 7 percent of income).

On the agenda of the pubcaster’s new president, Delphine Ernotte, who started work in August, are digital expansion and negotiations with the government to alleviate the financial pressure. The strength of French labor unions prevents job cuts—apart from those triggered by voluntary retirement. (Compare this to the BBC, which has announced a round of layoffs to cope with its funding challenges.) As such, Ernotte will have to seek out other ways to tackle her budget shortfall.

In such an economically challenged but culturally proud and insular country as France, the opportunities for co-production are limited. Recently, however, there are signs of new activity that go beyond French collaborations with their French-speaking Belgian neighbors. Many in France hope its prestigious production sector can emulate the Scandinavians and initiate dramas that are big hitters in the global market.

TRAVELING ABROAD Pay-TV outlet CANAL+ is a regular co-production partner with a distinguished track record, thanks to shows like The Tunnel and Borgia. In May an ambitious new project was announced with the working title The Young Pope, starring Jude Law as a fictional pontiff who is Italian American. His co-star is Diane Keaton. CANAL+’s collaborators are HBO and Sky. ARTE, too, is investing in scripted shows, France 2 was a partner on BBC Worldwide’s Death in Paradise and TF1 is on board STUDIOCANAL’s international co-pro Crossing Lines.

Production costs are such that for premium serialized drama, co-funding is essential, but one dilemma for French co-producers is whether to make the shows in French and limit their international appeal or film in English to maximize international traction.

In the past year or so, the biggest co-pros have included CANAL+’s English-language Versailles, budgeted at around €27 million and reputed to be the most expensive French TV series ever; and The Last Panthers, a co-production with Sky that will have its world premiere at MIPCOM. “To avoid the classic Euro-pudding, it is important to have a lead partner, rather than four or five partners,” TVFI’s Béjot says.

This is not a problem for French filmmakers and their captive Sunday night audiences.

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THOMAS BELLUT ZDF

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Since its launch in 1961, ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), the second public broadcaster in Germany, has been offering its audience news, information, sports, entertainment and drama. Over the decades, as the German TV landscape has witnessed the mushrooming of commercial channels and the subsequent fragmentation of the audience, ZDF has set up its own bouquet of digital services: ZDFneo for documentaries, ZDFinfo and ZDFkultur. The main channel, ZDF, continues to attract the lion’s share of German viewers. The program heute remains the newscast of record in Germany. Historical and current-affairs documentaries, cop series and topical TV movies are still extremely popular but, as Director-General Thomas Bellut explains, ZDF has been reaching out to younger viewers on the main channel and online.

TV EUROPE: ZDF had strong ratings in 2014. What contributed to such a good performance, and how have ratings been so far in 2015?

BELLUT: Indeed, ZDF was by far the market leader in the first six months of 2015. With a 12.8-percent audience share, we were one percentage point ahead of ARD. The third strongest broadcaster—RTL—scored 10 percent. We’ve succeeded in compensating for earlier weaknesses in the daytime schedule. Now we’re proud of our positive performance in prime time, too. We’ve committed ourselves seriously to the development of programs. ZDF is currently the broadcaster with the most innovative programming. Even if these innovations aren’t all hits, they strengthen the acceptance and image of the broadcaster. The best example is heute-show, a satirical news magazine that gets good ratings and makes a strong impact on the broadcaster’s image, in particular with younger audiences.

TV EUROPE: Would you give us a sense of how competitive the German TV market has become? Within this environment, what is the role of a public broadcaster?

BELLUT: The German TV market is highly competitive.

With the advance of digitization, the number of commercial broadcasters has multiplied significantly. A large number of smaller, special-interest channels, including some with microscopic ratings, can be added up together to be considerable competition. It is also encouraging that the market share of the public broadcasters’ offerings has held steady at more than 45 percent of total viewership. In Germany, we reach a vast audience with our mix of news, documentaries, fiction, entertainment, culture and sports. What’s very important here is that we generate great trust from the credibility of our news programs. This is why we’re constantly working on expanding the quality of our reporting. Today, because [such a huge volume] of unverified and often interestmotivated news is found online, reliable sources of information are irreplaceable. And here, politically and economically independent public broadcasters guarantee such top-quality reporting.

TV EUROPE: In which parts of ZDF’s schedule would you like to see improvement?

BELLUT: Our schedule functions well. We put great emphasis on the reliability of our programming. Audiences appreciate this. But we do still have a few weak spots in our weekend daytime schedule. A few program transitions don’t function quite right yet. We’re working on this.

TV EUROPE: How are ZDF’s various digital channels serving different audience segments?

BELLUT: Over the past years, we’ve built up our digital channels one by one. Today, ZDF is a family of channels that reaches the younger demographics in particular with varied offerings. I am delighted that ZDFinfo—a purely informative channel—now has a market share of 1 percent and has since built up an audience of younger viewers. ZDFneo targets a family audience that enjoys series, docu-soaps, comedy and factual-entertainment formats. The channel now brings in a 1.6-percent average share.

TV EUROPE: What has ZDF been doing to attract young viewers?

BELLUT: We began by focusing on the 25- to 50-year-olds. This is the core target group of our digital channels, and we also emphasize this demographic in our main channel without neglecting older audiences. Of course, we disseminate our content on the web as well—on personal YouTube channels, for example, but above all via our own video portal.

It is perfectly possible to bring our ZDF brands to people who hardly watch linear television anymore. The heute-show reaches high on-demand figures online. On ZDFneo we have another satire format, Neo Magazin Royale with Jan Böhmermann, which has a huge fan base. There, too, the reach is greater online than on the linear channel. Together with ARD, we are currently preparing content specially produced for young people, exclusively for the internet. This project chiefly addresses the 13-to-29 age group and, as it’s geared solely for the web, it will be targeted in a way that corresponds to the viewing habits of kids and young adults.

TV EUROPE: How are you using social media to engage with viewers, particularly young ones?

BELLUT: Our editorial departments make intensive use of social-media platforms in order to interact with viewers and provide additional services. ZDF has many Twitter channels and Facebook pages. Many journalists and TV hosts tweet about their work and their observations. We repeatedly organize events in which we involve our fans. When we offered a preview of a miniseries online last spring, we [said that if viewers sent out at least 25,000 tweets with a certain hashtag, we would preview the last episode online, and that worked quite well].

TV EUROPE: In how many different ways can viewers enjoy ZDF programming?

BELLUT: Our content can be viewed live or time-delayed on practically all broadcasting devices. We’ve built a highperformance on-demand portal—ZDF Mediathek—through which we can access many live streams. Distribution is optimized for all familiar types of devices.

Yet, in spite of all our euphoric observations on the new possibilities for content, we should not ignore the fact that the classical linear form of television has hardly transformed itself. The average German still watches more than four hours of linear television every day.

TV EUROPE: What have you been learning about how ZDF viewers watch programming? What are they watching on live television, and what are they watching as catch-up, or online or on mobile devices?

BELLUT: In the nonlinear domain, there is a particularly strong demand for our comedy formats. Nonetheless, our series and

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news. We’ve updated our late-night news magazine heute nacht. Under its new name, heute plus, a linear broadcast is still maintained late in the evening. However, the reports are then disseminated on the very day they are finished and discussed on social-media platforms with the audience.

The production of news increasingly follows the new viewing habits. By contrast, the classical news broadcasts serve less and less often as the first contact point for news; they tend to take a more in-depth look at issues, with explanations and analysis.

The German crime drama Blochin: The Living and the Dead is being distributed worldwide by ZDF Enterprises.

TV movies are also registering ever-greater on-demand viewing on Mediathek.

TV EUROPE: The BBC recently announced it will cut 1,000 jobs to make up for the shortfall in its license fee revenue. The shortfall appears to be caused by an increasing number of households that do not watch live TV and do not pay the license fee. What is the situation in Germany? What is the state of ZDF’s financing for the next few years?

BELLUT: Here in Germany we have a completely different situation. The license fee does not depend on actual use or on the ownership of reception devices. The age of the viewers also plays no role. In Germany a fee must be paid for every domicile, which currently comes to €17.50 per month. Companies are also obligated to contribute depending on the size of the enterprise. The financially underprivileged need not pay. The new system has proven itself successful and ensures stable financing.

TV EUROPE: ZDF Enterprises delivers significant revenue to ZDF. What does this say about the quality and relevance of ZDF’s programming for the worldwide market?

BELLUT: ZDF Enterprises is highly active in the distribution of our programs at the international TV markets. The firm can cull from a wealth of high-quality and exclusive ZDF productions.

Moreover, it also functions independently with great success as a license dealer, producer or co-producer, and it has opened up many new fields of business. It is not always easy to work on a global scale from a German-speaking market. ZDF Enterprises regularly positions series, event miniseries, documentaries, children’s programs, TV movies and other ZDF productions with a hit factor in the international market. If ZDF is now admired around the world as a partner and supplier of programs, then that is largely due to ZDF Enterprises.

TV EUROPE: In Germany, is television still the main source of news for most people? ZDF has a very strong history of spreading news and information. How is it providing news and information in the many ways viewers want it?

BELLUT: Nowadays, everybody can get news at any time, anywhere. Fewer and fewer people are waiting until evening to find out on TV the most important news of the day. We’re adjusting our position here. In our news department, we have a special unit that produces short news segments for all means of transmission, and thus it offers a continuous flow of

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TV EUROPE: Given the complexity of so many news stories these days, from ISIS to the crisis in Greece, what kind of analysis can ZDF offer viewers that commercial competitors cannot?

BELLUT: Apart from our decades-long experience, our main advantage is the professional standard of education in our news offices as well as our worldwide network of correspondents. In our main newsroom we have many offices staffed with competent editors and journalists specializing in politics, economics, science, culture, etc. In Germany only the public broadcasters can offer something like this. We prepare complex themes in documentaries and in our political and economics programs. Moreover, the audience finds comprehensive explanations and background information on our news website. News and information make up 40 percent of ZDF’s total schedule. Commercial providers financed by advertising cannot even begin to think about coming close to this level of focus on news.

TV EUROPE: What impact is Netflix having on the German TV market?

BELLUT: From a medium-term perspective, the platforms supplying material on-demand anywhere in the world will no doubt have an effect on media consumption. Until now, the influence of Netflix and other commercial on-demand portals has been considerably small. The reason is that we have a very broad free-TV offering. Moreover, the programs that Netflix puts at the disposal of German audiences are still rather sparse.

Netflix is currently interesting mostly to younger audiences looking for American series and feature films. Unfortunately, it was impossible to set up a national boundary-crossing broadcaster with an on-demand portal. Both the major commercial broadcasters and the pubcasters failed here due to the objection of the anti-trust authorities. This, in turn, considerably facilitates the entrance of international players into the market.

TV EUROPE: Looking ahead, what are the main challenges and opportunities facing ZDF in the next 12 to 24 months?

BELLUT: It’s not our goal to be market leaders. But, I must admit, it’s a great feeling to have your own programming fare so well with the audience! We’ll never get tired of improving our quality. We are working continuously on various innovations, and we’re testing new formats in fiction, entertainment, comedy and, obviously, news. We will continue to develop our online platform consistently, with respect to both technology and content. And we’re planning to do a big relaunch of our online presence. We’re concentrating above all on the expansion of our video offerings.

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DARREN CHILDS UKTV UKTV today is far different from the very first UK Gold channel of 1992.

What started as a service that offered mainly repeats has grown into a bouquet of ten channels—including Dave, Watch, Gold, Alibi, Drama and Good Food—and an accompanying on-demand platform, UKTV Play, all of which have built a reputation for cutting-edge originals, buzz-worthy acquisitions and the best of BBC, ITV and Channel 4 programming. UKTV also benefits from the expertise of its shareholders, BBC Worldwide and Scripps Networks Interactive. As CEO Darren Childs tells TV Europe, UKTV has seen its audience increase for four consecutive years. Today, the group garners almost 10 percent of all viewing in the U.K. commercial TV market.

TV EUROPE: What has been driving UKTV’s growth?

CHILDS: It’s been driven by the audience. One of the things we track and monitor is our share of commercial viewing— comparing ourselves to our commercial counterparts in the free-to-air and multichannel spaces. A lot of our competitors’ shares are flat or down, while UKTV is delivering significant year-on-year growth. It did that in 2014 and 2013, and it also grew in 2012. We started 2015 with another growth spurt, which actually catapulted us to 9.4 percent of all commercial television viewing in the U.K. market, so we have a great growth story. What’s been very rewarding for us as a team is that we have taken a huge amount of creative risk with the content we have commissioned and the shows we have bought. We have been so well rewarded by more and more people spending more and more time with us, and that has increased our viewing share.

TV EUROPE: When viewers tune in to UKTV or watch online, what can they expect?

CHILDS: I think their expectations have changed. It’s interesting that in the U.K. some commentators think of UKTV as a repeat-based business, because that is how it was established years ago. But at the consumer level it’s perceived now as a real, confident originator of great content that has a different tone and feel from some of the programs people normally see on some of the bigger channels. We are constantly trying to surprise our audience.

We’re always trying to look for that piece of content that we think will be well received and that would differentiate us from our competitors. If you look at our current slate of new and returning original content, we’re in a much better place than we ever were in the company’s history.

Shows that are worth mentioning include Hoff the Record, a spoof documentary starring David Hasselhoff on Dave, and the scripted comedy Undercover, also on Dave. We recently announced Marley’s Ghosts for Gold and Singing in the Rainforest for Watch. As for returning series, we’ve got a big hit with our version of Storage Hunters [on Dave]. We acquired the U.S. show, and we made a U.K. version that’s become a big hit for us. We are also working with some of the best on-screen and offscreen talent, people like Dave Gorman, Alan Davies and David Hasselhoff. So lots of things, not just one specific thing, have amounted to huge viewership.

TV EUROPE: How important are recognizable brands in today’s media landscape? I imagine you select shows to fit the brand message of each channel.

CHILDS: UKTV has used the very deliberate strategy of having highly individual brands that stand on their own two feet. The way we branded our channels is very different from any others in the world. We were the first to really take risks with Dave, and we continued that with channels like Watch and Really and others in the portfolio. We’re big believers in having an incredibly strong and evocative brand, but it has to be supported by an incredible content lineup. If you don’t have both working in tandem, then you are never going to deliver the growth that you need.

We’ve also reintroduced the UKTV brand in the digital space because that is even more fragmented than the multichannel space, and it’s much more crowded because the barriers to entry are significantly lower. So we’ve reintroduced the UKTV brand on our VOD service, UKTV Play.

We look at it as our 11th channel. It’s not just about a longtail service; it’s highly editorialized, and it’s a very consumerfocused video-on-demand service that is on most platforms in the U.K. UKTV Play pulls in the best of our channel brands and content from across the portfolio. Because people’s moods and tastes change—nobody wants to watch comedy all night every single night of their lives—it means that as we build our reputation we can make recommendations to viewers and direct them to different parts of the portfolio, so they can discover new content that they wouldn’t normally come to on the UKTV channel service.

UKTV Play is proving to be really, really successful, and we’re seeing huge increases in our video-on-demand streams. In fact, all on-demand views across the network grew by 348 percent last year compared to 2013.

TV EUROPE: Are you seeing any trends in types of shows people are watching on linear versus digital?

CHILDS: From a consumer perspective, this is a fantastic development. In any television business, people have always thought, “I’ll watch this if there’s nothing else on.” I think that mindset, of there being nothing else on, doesn’t exist anymore. If there isn’t anything on the linear channels, then there are still so many options for people—they can find great quality shows on UKTV Play and other video-on-demand services. The general comment I would make is that the introduction of video on demand is increasing the overall quality of the content we, as an industry, have to create, because the second tier and third tier of content are struggling to find an audience. I think they’re going to continue to struggle, and that is why we are investing more money each year in original content of the highest quality, so it works for us on our linear channels and also works on our nonlinear services. We are seeing audiences really select quality content.

TV EUROPE: Are you following a particular strategy with your new commissions, whether comedy or drama?

CHILDS: Unlike many of our free-to-air terrestrial and publicservice competitors, we don’t commission [for a specific] slot.

We will only make content that we feel hugely passionate about, that we feel needs to be made, and that fans of our channels and our brands will love. So we don’t just commission to slot like many broadcasters around the world. We’re always looking for a show that’s slightly different, that pushes the boundaries a little bit and tells stories in a better way, in

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A number of U.S. imports air on Watch, among them NBC’s Grimm.

a different way. We genuinely understand our end consumer, and we commission with them in mind all the time. We do have a good perception of what we think will work. I think that is clear from our hit rate; we have an incredibly high hit rate in terms of how many shows we commission that deliver massive audiences.

TV EUROPE: How do acquired shows fit into the mix?

CHILDS: We’ve had a huge amount of success with a number of acquisitions. We have some great long-running returning shows, including Suits, Rizzoli & Isles, Castle and Grimm. Our audiences really like those shows. We’ve also got Crossing Lines.

We think there is a big audience for Parks and Recreation and think it will do fantastically well on Dave; it’s very much on brand. Acquired shows are key components of our schedule, and they also complement what we get from the BBC and everyone else we acquire U.K. content from. Again, we look at it very much from a consumer perspective backwards, and acquired shows complement the schedule. They are not replicas of things we are making. As I mentioned, we’ve also had big success in acquiring shows and then making U.K. versions; Storage Hunters has been a very successful franchise. We’ve also picked up The Last Man on Earth.

TV EUROPE: UKTV’s advertising revenues have been strong.

Are you working with advertisers to help them find their target audiences or shape their messages in special ways?

CHILDS: We’ve been pioneers in that space. We were one of the first broadcasters to move into ad-funded programming.

We did a number of big shows. We’ve got a phenomenal relationship with Red Bull and make a number of shows with them. We’ve done some really innovative factualentertainment shows with sponsors. When opportunities arise and we think it’s a great piece of content, we will

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continue to develop [ad-funded programming]. What we’re unlikely to do is just make content to order based on trying to sell products. We are a consumer-led business and a brandled business, and we protect that.

What also is worth commenting on is that in the U.K. we are seeing significant, real growth in the overall size of the TV market. If you remember the 2009 global recession, the ad market took a bit of a dip, and it’s since been slowly recovering to its pre-2009 level. But in 2014, and already in 2015, we are seeing for the first time in ten years a real increase in the amount of money advertisers are spending on television—and that is for both linear and nonlinear. There was 5-percent growth last year and about the same amount in 2015, so advertisers in the U.K. are still very confident that linear and nonlinear television is the best and most efficient way to get product out to consumers.

TV EUROPE: What opportunities for growth do you see for UKTV? CHILDS: First, there is still significant growth in the linear market. We are aggressively investing in content in order to expand our share of viewing because we believe that there is still a lot of headroom for us in a market where the ad market is growing. Second, we are actively investing in our digital products suite, UKTV Play, making sure we are at the forefront of the change in consumption patterns. We are investing heavily in our video-ondemand services on the UKTV Play brand. That service is on many of the pay-TV platforms, iOS and Android.

Third, we are investing more in content so that as we see that shift in power from platforms to content owners, we are at the forefront of that. We believe that content drives this business. That’s our area of expertise, and we will continue to invest heavily in order to earn a greater share of that market.

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