TV Europe MIPTV 2012

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The Super Indies Eurowood Spotlighting Spain Thomas Valentin on M6’s 25th Anniversary ProSiebenSat.1’s Thomas Ebeling Dogan TV’s Irfan Sahin www.tveurope.ws

MIPTV EDITION THE MAGAZINE OF EUROPEAN TELEVISION

APRIL 2012

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Antena 3 TV www.antena3.com/ventas-internacionales • Toledo • With Your Pants Down • A Normal Family

“ MIPTV is an excellent opportunity

Period dramas have been a bright spot for Antena 3 TV, which has titles such as Grand Hotel, Toledo and new seasons of Bandolera and The Old Bridge’s Secret now available. “Toledo contains adventures, romance and palace intrigues, while a fragile peace between the religions could be broken at any time,” explains José Antonio Salso, the head of acquisitions and sales at Antena 3 TV. “The action takes place in the ancient city of Toledo at the end of the 13th century, where three religions live together: Christians, Muslims and Jews.”

The comedy With Your Pants Down watches as the economic crisis forces different families to move to a campsite. “We trust this new comedy will follow the success of previous comedy hits of our channel such as I Hate This Place,” Salso says. A Normal Family is back in its third season, which focuses on the origin of how the whole story began. “Key facts about how the members of the family acquired their superpowers will be revealed in this new season,” Salso says.

for Antena 3 to show the market the high-quality production of our series.

”

—José Antonio Salso

A Normal Family

IN THIS ISSUE The Super Indies The rise of European mini-majors

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Eurowood European producers are delivering Englishlanguage dramas worldwide 22 Made in Spain Spotlighting Spanish content creators Interviews ProSiebenSat.1’s Thomas Ebeling M6’s Thomas Valentin Dogan TV’s Irfan Sahin Parthenon’s Carl Hall Shine International’s Camilla Hammer Profile Panini Media

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Audiovisual from Spain www.audiovisualfromspain.com

The Audiovisual from Spain banner encompasses all the TV and film projects coming out of the country. The brand is backed by the Instituto Español de Comercio Exterior (ICEX) and the Federación de Asociaciones de Productores Audiovisuales de España (FAPAE), as well as other regional and national institutions. “Our companies are already working in the content business—that isn’t just about TV, but also Internet and mobile video,” says Isabel Espuelas Peñalva, the head of the content industries department at ICEX. She adds, “We also want to highlight how good ratings performances in Spain are confirmed by fast international sales and agreements, which means that our executives are working hard and are export-oriented. Our companies are selling, for example, leading animation or prime-time drama formats that reached top ratings not only in Spain but in Italy (RAI), Portugal (RTP), France (M6), the U.S. (Telemundo) and many other territories.Audiovisual from Spain’s mission is to support the companies but also to promote their success in order to grow their reputation abroad.”

“On an everyday

basis Spanish content is performing more than ever before and we are very pleased to share it with all the professionals attending MIPTV.

”

—Isabel Espuelas Peñalva

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Global Screen www.globalscreen.de • Alarm for Cobra 11 • Storm of Love • The Hunt for the Amber Room

Ricardo Seguin Guise

Publisher

Anna Carugati

Editor

Mansha Daswani

Executive Editor Kristin Brzoznowski

Managing Editor

Marissa Graziadio

Editorial Assistant Simon Weaver

Online Director Meredith Miller Lauren Uda

Global Screen, the newly merged worldwide sales unit of Bavaria Media and Telepool, has a combined 100 years of experience and 15,000 titles.“Our goal is to establish ourselves as a company where broadcasters can find the prime-time content they need in order to be successful in their respective territories,” says Sonia Mehandjiyska, the head of theatrical and TV sales at Global Screen.

“Although our team is very experienced and well known to our partners in the business, this will be our first MIPTV as Global Screen, so we expect to solidify our position in the marketplace as one of the strongest European distribution companies.”

For 17 years, the action series Alarm for Cobra 11 has been a global hit. Global Screen has a 17th season completed for MIPTV. The novela Storm of Love is in its seventh season. In production is the action-adventure movie The Hunt for the Amber Room.

“Our slogan is: Our program—your success!”

—Sonia Mehandjiyska

Storm of Love

Production & Design Directors Phyllis Q. Busell

Art Director Cesar Suero

Sales & Marketing Director Terry Acunzo

Business Affairs Manager Vanessa Brand

Sales & Marketing Assistant

Ricardo Seguin Guise

President

Anna Carugati

Executive VP & Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani

VP of Strategic Development

TV Europe © 2012 WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, #1207 New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website:

www.tveurope.ws

Marc Dorcel www.dorcel.com Marc Dorcel 3D

• Libertime • Showgirls • Pornstar

It’s been the Marc Dorcel mission to develop a superior experience with its adult-oriented VOD content and services. “It goes from the aggregation of the best international adult content to the development of specific platforms, including transactional VOD, subscription VOD and others,” says Gregory Dorcel, the company’s CEO. “In addition, Marc Dorcel has decided to follow the mainstream industry and invest in the development of a catalogue in 3D.” Titles on offer include Libertime, which covers sexy themes with the instruction of a sexologist, helping to shed light on how sex has become an integral part of our society. Showgirls spotlights 12 “girls next door” who have become showgirls. The series, a total immersion into their day-to-day lives, explores why and how things have changed for them. Pornstar is also among the highlights.

“For the last couple of years, Marc Dorcel has

focused on new technologies and the best way to bring adult content to the largest audience.

Get daily news on European television

”

—Gregory Dorcel

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Novavision-MEG www.novavision.fr • Pop Corn TV • The Prize of Surprise • Pop Camera

The flagship series Pop Corn TV has been totally updated by Novavision-MEG for 2012. FrançoisXavier Poirier, the company’s CEO, says, “Our premier family show is now totally revised and in HD/16:9 with exciting and energetic new graphics, depicting a variety of favorite gags from ZéZé Hidden Camera, Mad Boys, Junior Hidden Camera and Extreme Sport Bloopers, among others.” The show contains 400 halfhour segments.

Poirier also points to The Prize of Surprise, a candidcamera game show.Three contestants play a game in front of a live studio audience, led by a well-known local host and disrupted by the mad Joker. The same gags will have been shot in three different countries and participants must guess how the different people will react. “Prize of Surprise is a hilarious mix of studio fun and cross-cultural gags targeted at a family audience,” Poirier says. Rounding out the slate is Pop Camera, which marks Novavision’s launch into programming with dialogue.

Pop Corn TV

“All our programs are family oriented, trans-generational and transcultural.”

—François-Xavier Poirier

TV5MONDE www.tv5.org

The second-most distributed channel in the world, TV5MONDE reaches 136 million homes in Europe alone. With its active subtitling policy, the channel delivers more than 1,000 hours per year in German, Dutch, Romania, Russian, Polish and English, with Spanish to come later this year. Marie-Christine Saragosse, the directorgeneral of TV5MONDE, says the plan is to begin subtitling new genres of programming, lifestyle in particular.This effort has already been initiated with Épicerie Fine, which takes viewers on a trip around France to discover quality products, presented by the Michelin-star-winning chef Guy Martin.

“Europe is TV5MONDE’s oldest and largest distribution field,” says Saragosse. “We have a very strong penetration in these countries, where there is a high demand for French-speaking programs and Francophile culture.”The linear channel is complemented by the TV5MONDE+ catch-up and VOD service as well as the tv5monde.com website, which gets more than 7 million visits per month, and the mobile site at m.tv5monde.com. For the younger ones, TV5MONDE has also developed an educational part of its WebTV for Kids offering, TiVi5MONDE+.

“TV5MONDE has a

built-in advantage in that its programming is unique and universal at the same time.

”

—Marie-Christine Saragosse

Épicerie Fine on TV5MONDE

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European mini-majors are grouping together independents across multiple genres.

The

Super Indies

By Jay Stuart Consolidation is the way of the media sector just as in any other business. Indeed, new technologies aside, perhaps the most obvious trend in television since deregulation really took hold in the 1990s has been big fish swallowing little ones, driven by the logic of vertical integration, cost reduction and the usual motives outlined in business-school textbooks.

The European independent production sector has more recently joined this trend with parallel streaks of mergers and acquisitions creating huge groups—such as Zodiak Media, ALL3MEDIA, Banijay and FremantleMedia—that combine companies from multiple genres, many with big hits to their credit.These new conglomerations have come to dominate the program-sales market in hitherto unheard-of fashion. But the logic driving the trend is different from the norm, and so is the nature of the consolidation. These new “super indies” tend to operate less as vertically integrated groups and more like aggregators of creativity. And their business is not only television programs but the more broadly defined area of intellectual property.

Super indies are all about harnessing creative energy, but they do not all have the same view of how to best achieve that end.

ALL3MEDIA operates what Jane Turton, the company’s COO, calls “a federal model,” offering strategic guidance from the top and group business-affairs support, but allowing creative autonomy to member companies. Founded by Steve Morrison, David Liddiment, Jules Burns and John Pfeil, ALL3MEDIA 152

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includes a wide range of companies producing drama, such as Bentley Productions and Company Pictures; factual producers like Maverick and Lion Television and even a sports producer in North One. ALL3MEDIA International represents about 60 producers from both inside and outside the group.

“It’s a curious structure,” Turton says. “We are all part of an integrated value chain. ALL3MEDIA asks [questions] like, What’s coming up? Do you need to cover a deficit? What’s the potential for the project? But we don’t avoid overlap. It is a policy not to share information among the companies.

They do compete with each other. A certain amount of competitive tension is good as long as it’s not destructive.”

At Zodiak, which is about 71-percent owned by the diversified Italian publishing group De Agostini, there is also a “very strong belief in creative autonomy.” CEO David Frank describes the structure as “a collection of creatively autonomous units operating within a strategic framework.” He adds, “We had four groups loosely together. A lot of work has been done to develop a real group structure.” The big U.K. operation is primarily nonfiction, while the Paris-based wing is focused on fiction. The group now includes 45 companies with revenues in excess of €600 million.

“What we can do is make our business more valuable,” adds Frank. “But it’s not a centralized creative effort, which has been Endemol’s approach.”

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Brothers in arms: ALL3MEDIA’s portfolio of production companies includes New Zealand’s South Pacific Pictures, the outfit behind the dramedy The Almighty Johnsons.

FremantleMedia’s organization tends to be a bit less devolved. There are four creative hubs—in the U.K., North America, Asia Pacific and Europe—and they are all charged with providing programs that could become international formats.

“We don’t want overlap,” says Rob Clark, the director of global entertainment development at FremantleMedia and a group board member. “We are very collaborative in the way we work. It is a competitive environment, and we encourage that, but we monitor what’s going on. It’s like a web.”

FremantleMedia is owned by RTL Group, Europe’s biggest commercial broadcasting group, and includes such independents as Blu, Blue Circle and Original Productions, as well as Germany’s famous UFA and FremantleMediabranded subsidiaries in the U.K., Australia, North America, Italy and Spain.

Being present in multiple genres makes the business less risky to a certain extent, and it means a wider range of poten-

tial brands for a producer to partner with. But above all, it makes the chances greater for coming up with a hit. Being a super indie is like managing an investment portfolio. The more diversified the portfolio, the less risky it is, and the bigger the chance that there will be winners.

“Creative capacity in lots of different genres gives us a greater capacity to create hits,” Zodiak’s Frank says. “In our casino we have tables marked ‘kids,’ ‘fiction’ and ‘entertainment,’ and so on. Playing on lots of tables at once means you have more chance of winning.”

FAMILY VALUES

Banijay has worked to hone its genre specializations. “We don’t want to be a patchwork, but instead a family with coherent values,” says François de Brugada, the executive VP of the Banijay Group, which was created in January 2008 by Stéphane Courbit with the deep-pocketed backing of the Agnelli family (of Fiat), the De Agostini family, Jean-Paul Bize (of AMS Industries) and Bernard Arnault (of LVMH).

“It takes some time to achieve that and it’s been one of our key priorities in the last year.”

“We consider non-scripted to be our core business, and that covers the whole range of genres within the non-scripted category—game shows, entertainment, reality, factual, talk shows, everything,” de Brugada says. “Our goal is not to be a specialist in any one of these genres but an overall specialist in non-scripted. Therefore, we have been careful to assemble companies that are particularly strong in one or two of them, in order to complement the overall company strength. For example, Bunim/Murray is an undeniable leader in reality, Air Productions is one of France’s top producers of game shows, Brainpool is a specialist in big studio entertainment and comedy, Cuarzo’s strength is in talk shows. The Nordisk companies have a wider spread and that’s the model of the group, to have a broad range of aptitudes across the nonscripted genres.”

TIPPING THE SCALE

Some of the typical advantages of scale apply to super indies just like other groups. “We have central procurement,” says ALL3MEDIA’s Turton. “We can get better bargains, whether it’s for stationery or insurance or cars or post-production. But the real benefit is the value-added upside as opposed to lower cost.”

“It’s not absolutely necessary to become the biggest player,” Banijay’s de Brugada says. “What is necessary is to be present in the key territories with the right partners and to ensure that we have access to strong creative content and to expand our creative capabilities. Those are the goals we have in mind when we expand. Ours is a consolidating market, where the key resource is exploitable creativity—content, in a word. So we need to ensure that we are getting our hands on the best content creators out there. At the same time, you need to ensure when you create IP that it too is being exploited, and that you get the revenue from your 154

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own IP. So it’s crucially important that, as well as being at the top of their game creatively, our producers are also capable of securing commissions in their territories. Of course these benefits go both ways. For an independent producer, there is less and less good IP available outside of large groups, so being part of a group allows you access to more creativity.”

Greg Phillips, the president of Content Television and Digital, agrees that scale brings benefits. “As a medium-sized company I think you get the opportunity to get involved in projects that smaller companies don’t,” he says. “But you have to be very, very careful about it. Scale brings you benefits, just keep your growth goals reasonable and execute your plan carefully and prudently. So don’t fall over before you get there. But there is certainly a need to grow. If you don’t move forward, you have to move backward.”

TURN UP THE VOLUME

Content Television is part of the U.K.’s Content Media Corporation, which owns a 25-percent stake in Phase 4 Films, a 50-percent stake in the U.S.based producer Collins Avenue and a 55-percent stake in Spirit Digital Media, a digital production company. The group is listed on the AIM market.

“The obvious advantage we have is a massive (over 3,200 hours), evergreen catalogue with reliable, longrunning, well-known shows that are the cash cows and help to underpin the growth of the business,” Phillips says.

“Scale gives us the opportunity to buy more, become involved in more and better projects and not to be reliant upon the vagaries of single events. It allows you to think medium and long term. It allows us to look 18 to 24 months forward. For example, it allowed us to invest in the digital-programming business as we did about six years ago, with [the idea of], Let’s see how this is going in two or three years’ time and see if there really is a business there.

That has paid off immensely for us. So scale allows you to have perspective because your business is underpinned. A smaller company doesn’t have backup resources, doesn’t have the capital.”

OPPORTUNISTIC EXPANSION

Zodiak’s geographical and genre spread came about by accident in a way, Frank admits: “We didn’t set out to have a presence in Russia, for example, but we do.” Looking at the directions of future growth, Germany is an area where Zodiak is “light,” he says. “There is a hole in nonfiction in that market. There is a very good chance that we will address that soon. We are also looking at expanding our activity in China and Japan, even within the next 12 months, though not necessarily setting up local production companies.

“There are a few really important areas where you need to have a disproportionate scale,” Frank continues. “Those are the countries where the conditions are right to own and exploit IP. The U.K. is the most interesting. Also France, Holland and Belgium and the Nordic countries. But not, for example, Italy.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to invest in development in Italy.

We want to direct the resources to areas where new formats are welcome and the chance of owning the rights are high.”

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All made up: FremantleMedia Enterprises represents content produced by its sister production companies, as well as thirdparty titles like Lifetime’s Project Accessory.

Banijay sees the future in two kinds of growth, external and organic. “External growth could be new company acquisitions or partnering with the best creatives, as we’ve done several times, to create something from scratch,” de Brugada says. “Banijay Group is not in the game of planting flags everywhere. Our strategy is to be leaders in the terri4/12

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those new distribution platforms. We have people dedicated to digital in each of our companies as well as in the central team, and that’s what they are working on now.”

Turton puts the U.S. as the top priority for ALL3MEDIA. “Our business is to create a lot of ideas and IP and to exploit it,” she says.

“This IP is currently coming out of the U.K. Looking at America, we don’t want it to go to a third party, we want to own it ourselves.”

The aim is essentially to replicate the group’s British strength in the U.S., “keeping the good stuff and stripping out cost,” Turton explains.

And it’s a faster way to enter the market.

INTERNATIONAL REACH

On the prowl: With its acquisition of RDF Media, Zodiak secured a strong foothold in the U.K. and access to hit dramas like Being Human.

tories where we operate. Having said that, there are one or two regions where we do not currently have any groupowned presence that we think it is important to enter into in the near future. So, we have plans to expand a bit in terms of territory spread, and to increase our size in the areas where we already are.”

DIGITAL DIMENSIONS

Organic growth will be about expanding digital opportunities. “Our core business, linear television, has provided us with great ideas and we are now working closely with digital platforms to supply them with content,” de Brugada says. “We also make sure that each of our traditional TV brands is fully exploited on digital platforms. In our view, a show is not a show anymore. It’s a brand that people expect to experience on multiple platforms. At the same time, new players are constantly developing new ways to deliver content, and they are hungry for material.There is a great niche there for us to provide exciting original content developed specifically for 158

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Geographically, FremantleMedia is already well down the road to global production. It has three top-rated shows in China, is producing in Indonesia and India, has a company in Brazil and a preferred partner in Russia. “We are very focused on making sure that any format is replicated exactly from market to market,” Clark says. “We are very 360-degree, very joined up, from early development right through the production and distribution. The cultural challenge in a new territory does not impact the formats themselves. The format is not changed, the content is changed. For example, ITV’s version of Take Me Out is quite racy. In Indonesia, the dating young people go out with their parents.The business model is not changed.”

Clark does not dismiss the possibility of adding new production outfits. “Would it be good to have even more companies in our group? Possibly,” says Clark. “Having lots of teams around the world would give us more bites of the cherry—as long as there is a central body that filters and coordinates.”

Another company that has been looking for growth opportunities is DRG (Digital Rights Group). It came about not from combining a group of production companies, but rather from finding opportunities in international distribution. “When the new Pact [the U.K. trade organization for content producers] agreement came into effect allowing producers to own their rights, production companies became attractive as investment opportunities, and the irony is that many of them are owned by foreign groups,” explains Jeremy Fox, the CEO of DRG. “At the same time, about five years ago, when production was still a cottage industry, distribution was much the same. Our idea went in parallel with the consolidation in production. As it’s turned out, the newly formed production groups have formed their own distribution businesses. We have found that many producers did not want to go to companies that were essentially rivals in order to be distributed. We decided we would be primarily British and we would only sell programs, not produce them. We put together a group of like-minded distributors. We needed companies that had enough volume of product and we wanted to cover a range of genres. We sell 4/12

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Frank, who has been down that route before, is cautious about going to the stock market. He took RDF public in 2005 on the AIM market in London with a market capitalization of about £50 million (€60 million) and after what he describes as a “roller-coaster ride,” took it private again in 2009. The financing for that transaction came from the Dutch venture-capital group Cyrte, and its stake was rolled over into its current minority holding in Zodiak.

GOING PUBLIC

“I would never go to IPO with a market cap of less than €500 million,” Frank says. “Zodiak would be over that threshold, but lots of things need to be resolved to make it work. Institutions need a better understanding of the nature of the business, particularly that it depends on the capacity to come up with hits.”

But he could see it happening. “We are not in a state for an IPO. But I certainly can envision a time when it could happen.” It depends largely on whether De Agostini wants it. Almost invariably the Italian group has gone the IPO route with its ventures. “It is a viable exit but not likely in the short term,” Frank says, However, an “exit” is only for investors, not for the firm that continues to exist, and being on the stock market brings its own challenges that are tied up with the expanding size of companies that has characterized the business of late, according to Content Television’s Phillips. “For shareholders, for employees, for your personal and professional ambitions, you obviously want to expand. But you have to live with the flip side as well, and not succumb to pressure from [the stock market] or investors just to do so on the basis of turnover alone.

The key is to expand sensibly. It depends on your ambition and your level of self-confidence and it certainly depends on access to capital and the ability to increase your business through achievement. It should be based on creativity, sound business acumen, hard work. And that is why you need to get bigger, not just for the sake of making announcements, and that applies from a small to medium phase and then from a medium to a larger phase.”

AMERICAN GORILLAS

Forbidden fruit: Banijay Group’s acquisition of Nordisk Film TV—the producer of the new format Tempted—in 2009, was a key building block in its expansion efforts.

to everybody, including Endemol, Shine and FremantleMedia.

We say we will find the best partner for your show.The downside is that there is no guaranteed flow of production.We think it’s a risk worth taking. If you buy a creative business, if you can’t keep the creative people happy, they go. Essentially you have to buy the business again.We don’t have that issue.”

Like the other super indies, DRG is looking at international expansion. “We are in an acquisitions mode,” says Fox. “Not in the U.K. We are looking in the U.S. all the time. We want to be in America. We do a lot of business in America, representing American producers, in many cases because we had the original format rights. For example, we had the British show The Inbetweeners from Channel 4. It was sold to MTV for an American version, and now we have the international rights to the American version.”

In April 2011, ALL3MEDIA appointed UBS to conduct a strategic review of its business with an eye to a possible sale.

Last autumn, Morrison had said a flotation is possible instead.

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Many in the industry believe further consolidation is inevitable. But that does not necessarily mean the current crop of super indies will simply continue to expand.

“More consolidation is absolutely on the cards,” says DRG’s Fox. “Look at Downton Abbey,” which is produced by the British firm Carnival, owned by NBCUniversal.

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Consolidation will be led by the U.S. studios and U.S. private equity.

They will buy companies in the U.K. Meanwhile, European studios and private equity will buy companies in the U.S. But this does not mean everybody will belong to a big group. There will also be new generations of independent producers, and the people who have left the bigger groups, de-consolidating themselves.”

“There is likely to be more consolidation,” agrees Zodiak’s Frank. “The market is still very fragmented. The regulatory environment is also very diverse, which makes it easier. But our main preoccupation is not any sort of merger but hits. One or two global hits and we’ll make a lot of money.”

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Continental European producers are delivering English-language With its massive budgets, humongous domestic TV market and its talent for telling good stories, Hollywood has controlled the business of event-TV dramas, in English, of course, watched everywhere else in the world. A new trend, however, indicates that independent production studios in multilingual, multicultural Europe are now cranking up the number of English-language blockbusters they are selling to international broadcasters. Individually, these European studios might not be able to afford the $3 million to $4 million per hour the U.S. spends on its major drama series (by contrast, production in a country like France costs an average of $800,000 per hour). By melding creative financing with the best talent available, however, they are satisfying demands of networks hungry for high-end entertainment at more economical prices.

Welcome to Eurowood, a land where the less affluent European producers, the French and Germans in particular, resort to cross-border alliances and innovative creativity to stake their claim in the international prime-time event-TV games long associated only with Hollywood.

SAVOIR FAIRE

“The business has been dominated by the major U.S. studios,” says Katie O’Connell, the CEO of the Los Angeles-based Gaumont International Television (GIT), the production-anddistribution outfit established by the iconic French film group Gaumont. “But what we’ve seen in the past five years is the emergence of many European independent studios, who previously found it difficult because of the big barrier to entry.”

First off the GIT production line will be Hannibal, a onehour drama series based on the bloodthirsty psychiatrist villain Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who was made famous by Anthony Hopkins in the 1991 thriller feature The Silence of the Lambs. Bryan Fuller, who created Pushing Daisies, is Hannibal’s writer and executive producer, while Martha De Laurentiis, who worked on the Hannibal Lecter movies Hannibal and Red Dragon, is another executive producer. NBC has ordered the show to series.

GIT has also nabbed Michael Hirst, the scriptwriter of the long-running mini-series The Tudors and the Hollywood movie Elizabeth:The Golden Age, to write Madame Tussaud.

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Over in Germany, Tandem Communications has a track record of producing several of the most recent prime-time English-language mega-series, including the $40 million The Pillars of the Earth, which premiered in 2010 in Canada and the U.S. The France-based StudioCanal, a leading European movie studio and distributor, took a majority stake in Tandem in January to diversify into Europe’s growing industry of TV mini- and event series.

Rola Bauer, Tandem’s president and co-founder, and her business partners have used their combined experiences in the U.S., Canada and Europe to understand how the less affluent European producers can deliver the goods.

“When you don’t have the means, you need to be inventive, and it’s amazing how creativity rises to the occasion,” Bauer says.

International English-language TV hits by European producers are not a totally new phenomenon. In the 1990s, the biggest achievement of the German company EOS and its Beta Film division was The Bible, one of the biggest mini-series of all time.

Unlike then, when such blockbusters were a once-in-ablue-moon treat for TV audiences, demand from broadcasters today has skyrocketed.

According to Bauer,“The economy is bringing that need to the forefront. Every network needs event programs because feature films are increasingly being seen on all different media platforms before hitting the free-to-air broadcasters.”

Overnight, the right event drama can raise a broadcaster’s brand amid the hundreds of channels available. Accustomed to the high-quality but expensive Hollywood imports, local audiences expect more. That challenge is further exacerbated when broadcasters slash their budgets because advertisers are spending less in today’s extremely fragmented media market.

But independent studios are meeting the challenge and developing a host of English-language mega-dramas with hallmarks that read, “Made in Europe.”

This year,Tandem will be completing the eight-part, one-hour event drama World Without End, which, like the Emmy-winning and Golden Globe–nominated The Pillars of the Earth, is based 4/12

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drama co-productions to the worldwide market. on a best-selling Ken Follett novel. The cast comprises a list of stellar names, such as Cynthia Nixon and Miranda Richardson.

Also on Tandem’s books in 2012 is Labyrinth, a four-hour mini-series shot on location in France and South Africa and with the British director and screenwriter Christopher Smith at the helm. Additionally, Tandem is the distributor of Titanic: Blood and Steel, a $33-million 12-part series about the birth of the historical ship produced by the Italian De Angelis Group.

EUROPEAN STYLE

Competing in the same English-language TV-entertainment space is France’s Lagardère Entertainment. Its Atlantique Productions subsidiary is producing a 12-part, 52-minute spinoff of Transporter, the action movie made by the French producer Luc Besson and starring the British actor Jason Statham.

If one delves deeper into how these high-end productions are financed, one sees that the original production companies bring in multi-territory co-production partners, avoiding the burden of one enterprise shouldering the tens of millions of dollars in costs.

Transporter is being made by Atlantique and the Canadian QVF Inc., with M6 for France, RTL for Germany, HBO/ Cinemax in the U.S., and Canada’s The Movie Central and The Movie Network.

The Pillars of the Earth had funds from the Canadian public broadcaster CBC and the German network Sat.1, and it debuted on Starz in the U.S. and The Movie Central and The Movie Network in Canada.The co-producers were Ridley and Tony Scott’s Scott Free Productions and a Canadian outfit, Muse Entertainment.

Canada’s Shaw Media and Sat.1 were investors in World Without End, as were the co-producers Scott Free, Take 5 Productions, Mid Atlantic Films and Galafilm.

Tandem’s Bauer says companies like hers manage the costs by being astute about the most efficient funding methods: “You finance out of Canada, use international partners and then sell to the U.S.” Dirk Schweitzer, the managing director of the Munichbased Tele München Group (TMG), concurs: “The biggest challenge is to sell into the U.S., so it helps to have U.K. and/or U.S.-based partners.”

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TMG, famous for its co-productions, including the $25million mini-series Moby Dick and the two-part action drama The Sea Wolf, has gone into production with an unidentified major drama series this year; it is scheduled to go on air in 2013.

TMG’s Schweitzer points out the need to be flexible about the required investment. “The main source for funds for English-language productions is presales. But we put the equity up (usually more than 20 percent) mainly against international sales done by our own international distribution company.”

In Germany itself, ironically, TMG has created one of the public broadcaster ZDF’s most enduring English-language dramas. For several years, it has been producing Englishlanguage mini-series based on the British author Rosamunde Pilcher’s romantic novels set in England.

Another major European broadcaster, France’s biggest commercial network, TF1, is diversifying into English-language

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A sign of success is to sell to the U.S., one of the world’s toughest TV markets. HBO has acquired EuropaCorp TV’s Transporter. EuropaCorp is in talks with other U.S. platforms to sell the next installment of the conspiracy thriller XIII.The action series first aired in 2008, was placed on a hiatus and returned to production this year.

EOS-Beta Film’s Borgia, about the scandal-riddled papacy in 16th-century Rome, was a roaring success in France, Italy, and Austria and pulled in up to 6.2 million viewers on ZDF. And just to show how new digital media is opening doors for these European English-language products, Borgia has also been sold to Netflix, the streaming-TV service giant, for the U.S. and the U.K. CREATIVE CONTROL

Mind your manor: Tele München produces TV movies for ZDF based on Rosamunde Pilcher’s romance novels, including Shades of Love.

production by forming a partnership with the French producer EuropaCorp Television. It is a subsidiary of Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp film-and-TV empire, which has extensive experience producing successful English-language feature films.

SHARING THE RISK

Inviting broadcasters to share the financial risks, as opposed to selling finished products to them, can make a difference.

“Even though we can bring to broadcasters a quality product they can’t fund by themselves, this is more about producing for the channels, as opposed to selling to the channels,” TMG’s Schweitzer observes.

Funding will always remain an issue, notes Tandem’s Bauer, hence the need to “look at different ways [to produce], especially via international co-productions. We want to be able to afford the cost and still produce high-quality entertainment.”

Production companies also rely on what they call “soft money,” the subsidies and tax credits available in domestic or overseas markets seeking to lure producers to use their locations.

Just because it is cheaper to shoot big-budget works in Europe, though, does not mean the end result will be cheap, Eric Welbers, Beta Film’s managing director, declares. Sometimes, it depends on the value of the euro compared with other major currencies. It is cheaper to shoot in Eastern European markets such as Romania and the Czech Republic than in North America or Northern Europe. And Canada and Ireland offer some of the most generous tax credits or subsidies. But being economical does not mean selecting second best, Welbers adds. “You just can’t go anywhere for locations. For Borgia, it made sense for us to shoot in Europe; there are no Renaissance buildings in North America.”

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Getting the finances right shouldn’t control the creativity, producers say. But for a work of art that financially depends on foreign partners, the allocation of creative control can be a sensitive issue.

“Tandem has always taken the lead in all its projects,” Bauer says. “For The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, we cut the deal with Ken Follett, we put together the finance and made the co-production deal with Scott Free; we did the casting and I was on the production floor for many months.

We’re a small team, so it’s very hands-on at Tandem.”

When Tandem enters a project as a deficit financier, it expects to have the right to veto certain creative decisions. But Bauer states that Tandem’s working relationship with Scott Free shows why finding a mutual stance is essential for the production.

“We’ve done several projects together and they have a level of respect that is in keeping with my own, and that’s a voice you don’t normally find on the financial side.You’ve got to let the creative needs lead you into what you need financially, otherwise the production’s development isn’t organic and it ends up looking like shit.You have to ask yourself,‘What makes sense for my story?’”

EOS co-produced Borgia (which cost $30 million and was written by Tom Fontana) with Atlantique Productions, the French pay-TV giant Canal+ and the Czech producer Etic Films. Public broadcasters ZDF of Germany and Austria’s ORF were also involved.

“No one wants to fund a project with plenty of money and have no say,” Beta Film’s Welbers says. “This is managed differently from project to project. But as long as the talent is acknowledged as very good, [the funder] should trust the production. With Borgia, everyone accepted it was Tom’s product; you need someone who is respected in that way.”

But Welbers advises caution: “Not everyone is made for international co-productions.You can understand your local market, but you also need to understand the different mentalities of the companies you’re working with.”

Fontana is involved in another multi-territory co-production, Copper, a crime mini-series set in 1860s New York but shot in Toronto. It is being produced by EOS and Cineflix Studios for Canal+, BBC America and Canada’s Shaw Media, with Beta Film and Cineflix Rights sharing the distribution rights outside of North America. Its U.S. premiere is on BBC America this summer.

As GIT’s O’Connell notes, “U.S. broadcasters used to be the lead creative voices in international co-productions. Now, everyone asks what are the things that might work in other countries, not just the U.S. Hopefully, the end result is a show that feels really global.”

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TVE’s Isabel.

A

rguably one of the most dynamic television markets in Europe, Spain has seen its share of alternating cycles of growth and consolidation in the last two decades. Now more than ever before, it is struggling to adjust to the reconfiguration of major players in the market—a situation exacerbated by the deep recession that has hit the country.

The current upheaval is full of uncertainties for broadcasters and production companies alike.

The first wave of consolidation hit the pay-TV sector, when the market could not sustain two competing satellite platforms, and narrowed it down to only one.The second wave hit free TV. In 2009, the commercial network Telecinco acquired Cuatro, and at the end of last year, Antena 3 merged with LaSexta.

All along, the public broadcaster Radio y Televisión Española (RTVE) has been struggling with its funding. In January 2010, the government imposed a new financing model, which included a ban on advertising and imposed a tax on telecoms, commercial networks and pay-TV companies to make up for RTVE’s lost advertising revenue.There is talk that the government may be forced to revoke the ban, as it needs to reduce its subsidy to RTVE, and since the public broadcaster could not function on such a limited budget, it would need the additional revenue provided by advertising.

PAIN IN SPAIN

n i e d a M

Not surprisingly, consolidation, the recession, the subsequent decline in advertising and tightening of production budgets, and the numerous new digital channels with limited capacity to commission shows, have all hit Spain’s production companies hard. Audiences have become used to the significant choice of programming that a competitive landscape can provide. Broadcasters certainly want quality but don’t have the funds to maintain high license fees for programs.The situation is so difficult that some broadcasters are threatening to cancel shows—even very successful ones—because they just don’t have enough money.

“It’s really expensive to produce content utilizing your own resources, so that’s why we’re focusing on news,” says Santiago González, the director atTVE. “In other genres, like entertainment, we try to produce 80 percent of our schedule in-house. It’s harder to make great fiction internally, due to the scarcity of manpower, but also because at TVE we have a two-pronged approach: on the one hand we use our own resources, but on the other we try to boost the Spanish media industry, and that approach is not always easy.”

During 2010,TVE’s main channel, La 1, was the most-watched network in Spain. It averaged a 16-percent audience share in its first year without advertising.Three episodes of Águila Roja, produced by Globomedia, were among the 50 most-watched shows, with shares of nearly 30 percent.

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take every day. Sometimes they miss the mark and sometimes they don’t. We try to get it right, but it’s not always possible.”

Telecinco works with companies like Globomedia, Ida y Vuelta and Plural Entertainment to make quality productions like Aída, “which is a clear example of a long-running series that continues to garner success week after week,” says Cotino. However,Telecinco has not been making long-running series recently, preferring productions like Tierra de lobos or Punta Escarlata that run between one and three seasons, as is usually the case with dramas in Spain.

CONTENT CAPABILITIES

Good morning: Con el culo al aire is one of several original series produced for Antena 3.

However, RTVE decided to cut its programming budget by nearly €200 million for 2012, which could jeopardize the production of new episodes of Águila Roja and Cuéntame cómo pasó, despite the fact that both are hit series. The fate of these shows will be decided once the pubcaster’s final budget is set.

Telecinco and Antena 3 have also had to rethink their strategies for producing fiction in 2012 as their resources have been limited by the advertising crisis. According to a top executive at Mediaset España, the owner of Telecinco and Cuatro, “The party is over.We’re [waiting to see if there will be] an improvement in the economy and the advertising market. It’s not about cancelling products, but rather assessing costs. We have to produce less expensively. The numbers don’t add up.”

Should adverse conditions persist, Telecinco could delay the launch of a number of shows, including the series El don de Alba, the reality shows MQB and Supervivientes, and the Spanish version of The Voice. Antena 3 could have to withhold the premieres of El tiempo entre costuras, Cuentos del siglo XXI and Imperium, as well as the talent show El número uno.

SMALLER BUDGETS, BIGGER CHALLENGES

“It’s a challenge to produce in Spain because costs are so high and TV networks’ budgets are increasingly restricted,” says José Antonio Salso, the acquisitions and sales manager at Antena 3 Televisión. “Despite that fact, prime-time and early afternoon series still have significant production budgets, but there’s currently more experimentation with new production formulas.”

Salso highlights the high-end telenovelas Gavilanes and La Reina del Sur, both co-produced with Telemundo, but states that these days, everyone has less money to spend and is therefore forced to find more creative ways of making shows.

“It has to do with finding an idea and trying it out to see if it works,” explains Silvia Cotino, a representative of the international sales department at Mediaset España, the owner of Telecinco. “Evidently, there are many risks that networks 168

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Spain’s more than 200 production companies collectively saw their revenues decline by 6 percent in 2010 as networks demanded highquality shows for lower prices.

Globomedia currently produces successful shows including Águila Roja, Aída, El barco and Punta Escarlata.The company makes an average of 1,200 hours of programming a year and is currently working on various projects, including Luna, el misterio de Calenda with Antena 3, which will air on the network in prime time; and an untitled comedy set in a fashion magazine, in co-production with Mediaset España to air on Telecinco.

“In the ’90s we had to deal with [broadcasters importing] fiction from North America, and we all know they’re great producers and have a lot more money,” says Daniel Écija, the president of Globomedia. “We believe local sensibilities are very important and we learned that the difference was we had less money, but we still wanted to make a great product. So we decided on comedy, love, and emotions. I believe Latins live these themes in a very particular way and we’ve tried to speak to the emotions and feelings. Sometimes, when you have to compete against series in English, local settings and subject matter make a difference.”

Spain’s top content producers are looking to the international market for new opportunities. “2011 was a complicated year everywhere, but the balance we came up with at RTVE was positive,” says Rodolfo Domínguez Alfageme, the commercial director at the company. “The truth is, our natural market is Latin America and we’ve had substantial growth with fiction series, due to the success and acceptance they’ve had, not only in Spain but elsewhere, series such as Cuéntame cómo pasó and Amar en tiempos revueltos.”

Imagina International Sales is the distribution arm of Grupo Imagina. It has a catalogue of some 9,500 hours of programming and more than 200 titles covering every genre for television.

“Imagina International Sales’ results in 2011 were very good in general, even better than we expected,” says Laura Miñarro, the company’s sales manager. “I think it’s mainly due to our catalogue, which includes product that customers are looking for.”

Miñarro points to the excellent results garnered by El barco and Punta Escarlata, which has sold into all of Latin America, and Águila Roja, distributed in the U.S. Hispanic market and into a few Latin American countries as well.

Clearly, the crisis has forced everyone to look beyond Spanish borders and expand their horizons wherever they can.

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EBELING: We use our idle media advertising inventory like a

venture fund to support young or growing businesses that have an above-average affinity with TV advertising.Very often these companies have attractive business ideas but not sufficient funds to afford a classical TV campaign. We give them a very attractive price for advertising, but in return, we get a percentage of the revenue generated from the products or services they are advertising. With some companies there are also equity options.

ProSiebenSat.1’s

Thomas Ebeling

By Anna Carugati

TV EUROPE: And this has been well received?

EBELING: It has been very well received, mainly by young online businesses, but also by some businesses in the areas of fashion and health and beauty.

TV EUROPE: I have read that you would like to reduce the

company’s dependence on the German-speaking market.

How do you plan on doing this?

EBELING: The German market will remain crucial for us, but we want to generate 50 percent of our revenues outside the classical German-TV advertising market.We have developed a so-called Four Pillar Growth Strategy. In addition to the broadcasting business in Germany, we will expand our international broadcasting operations, we will diversify our business into digital and adjacent businesses, like online ventures, online commerce platforms, online gaming, online dating platforms, music and live entertainment, and we will expand our production business Red Arrow Entertainment internationally.

TV EUROPE: What does the advertising market look like this Back in 2000, two television companies, ProSieben Media and Sat.1, merged to form the largest broadcasting group in Germany, ProSiebenSat.1 Media. Since then, the company has expanded beyond Germany’s borders and diversified its business. Today, ProSiebenSat.1 Media is led by CEO Thomas Ebeling and has 27 channels in 10 countries, reaching 67 million households each day. It also owns Germany’s most successful video-on-demand service, maxdome, as well the production entity Red Arrow Entertainment Group and its international-distribution arm, SevenOne International. Ebeling talks to TV Europe about the strengths of ProSiebenSat.1 and its potential for further growth.

TV EUROPE: Despite the fragmentation of the audience and of the advertising market, do you continue to see broadcasting— advertiser-supported television—as a good and healthy business?

EBELING: Human beings want to be entertained and customers need advertising. TV continues to be the strongest medium for the largest number of people. It is indispensible. It is the most effective and efficient advertising medium because it has fast reach, relatively low cost and emotional impact. I think no other medium can actually match this.

TV EUROPE: ProSiebenSat.1 has introduced some interesting new revenue-generating models. Tell us about the media-forequity and media-for-revenue-share businesses.

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year in Germany?

EBELING: I would say this year will be a solid year.We don’t

see a crisis, but we don’t see a boom year either. We believe that the market can continue to grow.

TV EUROPE: What opportunities for growth do you see for

your stations outside of Germany?

EBELING: We are still very positive about the opportunities

in the Nordic region, because in these countries we have basically two sources of revenue growth, which are advertising and distribution income [subscription fees]. Outside the Nordic region, we believe in opportunities in the Far East and South Asian markets. We are watching the Central and Eastern European markets closely.

TV EUROPE: Are you looking to acquire stations?

EBELING: There are usually steps we go through before

buying. We usually enter markets with our international sales operations and start by selling content to local TV stations. We then work at setting up a production business.

If we understand the market opportunities better, then we can evaluate buying a station. Obviously, we are very selective about what we look at because we want to enter highgrowth markets, but at a reasonable multiple, and that takes a lot of preparation.

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TV EUROPE: You have also said that by 2015, 50 percent of the group’s revenues will be generated outside traditional TV advertising in Germany. How do you plan on achieving this?

EBELING: In the German market we see the opportunity to generate distribution income [retransmission fees for TV channels]. With the introduction of HD, we have the opportunity now to generate distribution income.

Outside Germany we see very dynamic growth opportunities in the Northern region. A very important source of growth will be our digital business, where we are bullish on the growth potential for the online-video, online-gaming and onlinecommerce businesses we participate in. And we continue to build our production business.

Ready for battle: Event TV movies like The Revenge of the Traveling Whore are a firm fixture on Sat.1 in Germany and are generating strong international sales courtesy of SevenOne International.

TV EUROPE: The VOD platform maxdome has been very

successful. What have you learned about the way consumers want to view content? What are they willing to pay for? What business models are working in the online content world?

You provide consumers with different ways of paying for the content you offer.

EBELING: Basically I would say the fundamental attractiveness of maxdome for consumers is the wide range and high quality of the programs it offers. Also very important are the reliability of service and the ease of payment. When you are pursuing those standards people will respond favorably even though they are still very price-conscious.What we are seeing is that some people like to pay a low monthly payment, a subscription fee, in order to have access to a wide library of content. Other consumers prefer to download on occasion, to buy on occasion—these are the so-called “snacking consumers.” Both coexist and I think the combination of subscription and special offers that people are willing to pay for is the model for the future.

TV EUROPE: Is online viewing becoming more popular

than linear viewing?

EBELING: Don’t get me wrong, linear viewing,TV viewing,

will remain strong, but in addition a lot of people want to have, at any point in time, access to large content libraries of top quality. And that is why a video-on-demand service like maxdome is more of a competitor to DVD rentals and services like Netflix than it is of linear TV channels. In addition, you will have nonlinear viewing online, which is more catchup TV viewing. And for this we have a special platform called MyVideo. There we offer our TV websites, where we know telenovelas and series get very good viewing numbers.

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TV EUROPE: You mentioned online gaming and online

commerce. Are these the types of digital initiatives that you would like to build upon?

EBELING: Yes, we have had very good experiences using our television marketing power to make online games very successful. We have signed a major deal with Sony Online Entertainment, where we have access to eight of their blockbuster games, and we are their exclusive marketing partner in Europe.

And we know how to make these games successful because we have a presence both on TV and online. We have other agreements with other content providers and we work very closely with companies like Bigpoint, and from that perspective I am very bullish about the outlook of online gaming for us.

TV EUROPE: High-quality successful programs are the heart

of any channel, and certainly SevenOne International has sold many of those around the world. Tell us about some of the successes of your program-sales division and the formatdistribution businesses, because formats are quite important today, too, aren’t they?

EBELING: I believe there is a growth potential of more than €100 million in this business and I’m confident the steps we have taken so far lead in the right direction. In 2011, SevenOne International presented more than 1,300 hours of programming in its sales catalogue; 660 hours alone were produced by Red Arrow–owned companies.

They closed major deals all over the world and I am especially excited about major deals in key territories like the U.S. Netflix bought the great mobster dramedy Lilyhammer and will air it all over North and South America. Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, a local adaptation of International Emmy Award-winning Benidorm Bastards, will air on NBC, after a special preview in January scored number one in its time slot and had NBC’s highest viewership in that slot in 28 months. And Betty White’s Off Their Rockers is only one local version of that show. It has already been adapted in over 30 countries. And we have many more great shows in our portfolio: My Man Can, for example, created by a Red Arrow company, debuted in 2011 in Denmark and South Korea and we closed deals in Ukraine, Lithuania and Belgium. And then there’s You Deserve It, developed for Red Arrow by Dick de Rijk, the creator of Deal or No Deal. It’s the first game show where a contestant plays for someone else—someone who deserves it—and has already been sold to 28 countries.

TV EUROPE: Looking ahead 12 to 24 months, what are your

priorities for the ProSiebenSat.1 group, as technology keeps changing the way viewers enjoy their programming?

EBELING: The key priority is to make our Four Pillar Growth Strategy work.We also want to really make sure that all of our content is available on all platforms and that we capitalize on our content as best we can. Finally, we want to find a way to expand a strong position in a changing environment.

TV EUROPE: That is the challenge for all media companies, constantly adapting changing technologies and viewing habits, isn’t it?

EBELING: Yes, and that is why we are really working hard to diversify our business and transform our company into a digital and broadcasting entertainment powerhouse.

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@25

Thomas Valentin

By Anna Carugati

Ever since its launch in 1987, the French commercial channel M6 has resonated with viewers, especially the younger demos. It has become the home of cutting-edge, innovative shows in all genres, and today is the second-most-watched channel in France in prime time. M6 has not only made a name for itself with its own original productions, it is the number one channel every Friday evening with NCIS; The Glades has also scored high ratings—a testament to M6’s openness to imported shows.

In recent years, M6 has distinguished itself in news as well. As French viewers have tired of traditional evening newscasts, M6 has responded with Le 19.45, whose more contemporary and fast-paced presentation of the day’s top news has garnered high ratings.

Thomas Valentin, the vice-chairman of the executive board and head of TV channels and content at M6 Group, the parent company of M6, has spearheaded the channel’s success from its early days. Valentin is keeping M6 true to its commitment to innovation, while finding ways to satisfy viewers on digital platforms.

TV EUROPE: What factors have led to M6’s continued success over the years?

VALENTIN: M6 is now a major channel in the French TV landscape, able to gather a large and loyal viewership thanks to a complete program offering. During its first 25 years, the channel focused on developing innovative, strong and sustainable program brands, in line with its values of remaining close to its viewers, providing relatable and accessible content, always remaining up to date and maintaining a deliberately positive tone.

TV EUROPE: What kind of creative environment do writers and producers find at M6?

VALENTIN: At M6, writers and producers find a partner that listens to their talent. M6 has always searched for originality and uniqueness in an effort to create a strong identity within the French television landscape. This strategy has always been well received by creators who have seen in M6 a space of freedom where they can express themselves in a contemporary manner and push boundaries.

TV EUROPE: What is your strategy for original and commissioned programs? What dramas, comedies and formats fit the M6 brand?

VALENTIN: M6 has created brands that have set the standard in all genres of programs: entertainment shows (La France a un incroyable talent, Un dîner presque parfait), TV events (L’amour est dans le pré, Top Chef, Pékin Express), magazine shows (D&CO, Maison à vendre, E=M6, 100% mag), news magazines (Capital, Zone Interdite) and local fiction (Scènes de ménages, Victoire Bonnot).

The latest successful challenge of M6 was to develop a benchmark news program that would comply with our standards of excellence and be very popular with viewers.

Le 19.45 was launched in September 2009 and has been growing tremendously since then. In 2011, Le 19.45 was the only TV newscast to increase its ratings. Since October 2011, from Monday to Friday, Le 19.45 has been the most watched TV news program by housewives under 50 and it enables M6 to [frequently] be the leader among the 15to-49 target demo.

M6 gained the viewers’ trust by offering a range of programs that meet their expectations. In 2011, with an audience share of 10.8 percent among 4-plus (compared to 10.4 percent in 2010), M6 is the only major channel to increase its viewing share in a market that has never been more fragmented.

In terms of fictional programs, M6’s original productions are regularly awarded at festivals and have allowed us to discover new talent and establish enduring brands that create buzz and become must-see programs.

Three of M6’s original French series were among the top ten most-watched programs in 2010, attracting an average of 4.7 million viewers: Victoire Bonnot; Ma femme, ma fille, deux bébés, which earned 35.5-percent share among households under 50; and L’amour vache.

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and gave way to spin-offs in prime time that performed very well.

Short-form fiction continues to become more successful each year, despite fierce competition, thanks to Scènes de ménages, loosely adapted from the Spanish series Escenas de matrimonio. Each evening, more than 4 million viewers follow the daily lives of four couples.

In the next two years, in addition to producing our own long-running series and short-form fiction, we will also embark on international co-productions. Two examples of projects already in production are XIII, a 26x52-minute series adapted from the cult comic series of Jean Van Hamme, and Le Transporteur, a 12x52-minute series based on the hit movies of Luc Besson (with international partners such as RTL in Germany and HBO in the U.S.).

TV EUROPE: How does imported programming fit into Dinner theater: M6’s slate of format adaptations includes Un dîner presque parfait, based on ITV’s Come Dine with Me.

In 2011, there were more successes for M6’s original series. For example, Dans la peau d’une grande, which garnered 4.4 million viewers.

Demonstrating a continued desire to innovate, in the last ten years, M6 successfully launched a new form of television storytelling: short-form fiction. The first was Caméra Café, which attracted an average of 3 million to 4 million viewers each evening, and gave way to two feature-length films and was adapted in some 60 countries. Kaamelott aired after Caméra Café. It scored just as impressive ratings

the M6 schedule and brand? What imported shows have been successful in the last two years?

VALENTIN: Many very successful formats are broadcast on M6—for example, Farmer Wants a Wife, Got Talent, Cash in the Attic, Come Dine with Me, Top Chef or Trouble with the Neighbours.

Of course, as far as formats are concerned, the key issue is to sort out the right programs that fit the editorial line of the channel. Innovation is the first thing we look for when we consider a program. M6 is the channel that dared to

School days: Victoire Bonnot is a series of French TV movies set against the backdrop of an urban school, which has been airing on M6 since 2009.

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The right steps: The locally developed dance-talent series La meilleure danse has been very successful for M6’s DTT channel W9.

launch Big Brother [as Loft Story] at a moment when reality TV TV EUROPE: What is M6’s relationship with the Hollywood did not exist in France. It is the channel that made factual studios? entertainment popular and made a success of the new generaVALENTIN: Our major partners, with whom we have tion of cooking shows such as Come Dine with Me or Top Chef. general agreements, are CBS, Disney and Fox, but we In addition to innovation, M6 has developed an edito- acquire programming from other studios as well. rial line based on authenticity. By dealing with daily life issues, showing real people in their endeavors to change TV EUROPE: Tell us about M6 Group’s family of chantheir lives or their achievements, M6 has succeeded in cre- nels strategy. How do the various channels complement ating a close relationship with its TV viewers. one another?

Hence there have been many successes in the last two years. For L’amour est dans le pré, 2011 was the season that broke all records, with an average of 6.1 million viewers. La France a un incroyable talent—2011 was the best season since the show’s creation, with an average of 4.3 million viewers. Top Chef, an average of 3.8 million viewers for season two—that’s an increase of 300,000 over season one. Maison à vendre had 3.8 million viewers on November 29, 2011, the second-highest rating the magazine show ever got.

On ne choisit pas ses voisins— 2.6 million viewers for its pre- TV everywhere: M6 Replay has been ranked as France’s leading catch-up TV service, delivering miere on November 29, 2011. a large library of content to computers, tablets and mobile phones.

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VALENTIN: M6 Group set up a coherent and interlocked family of channels to meet the expectations of all the viewers every day. These channels have strong personalities and identities, complementary profiles and coordinated program schedules to satisfy a demanding public, which faces an increasing number of offers and nonlinear services.

M6, the mother-ship channel of the group, is powerful, unifying and targets the whole family. M6 is close to its audience, modern, positive, innovative and accessible. M6 reached a new milestone this year, being the third channel among viewers 4-plus and the second-most-watched channel in prime time. In addition, M6 is more and more often the market leader in the evening; in fact, it was the leader among viewers 4-plus 41 times in prime time in 2011, compared to 19 times in 2010.

The digital channel W9 cultivates the same family-oriented and innovative character of M6 with a special focus on entertainment, dynamism and audacity. W9’s profile is slightly younger than its older sister. In 2011, the channel confirmed

VALENTIN: M6 Group’s strategy for making content avail-

able online has always been very ambitious.The M6 network was one of the first channels available on 3G mobile phones.

M6 was also the first major commercial network to launch an ambitious catch-up TV service, one that included almost the totality of its programs and available on all screens: not only the PC, but also IPTV, tablets, mobile phones and connected TV sets.

One example of this ambitious strategy of providing content on all platforms is that 40 percent of all iPad or iPhone owners in France have downloaded the M6 app, which allows access to live programming, catch-up TV and to a service of social TV conceived around the programs in our schedule.

Always in keeping with our desire to be present on all platforms and all screens, we have recently launched a service on Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

The M6 Group provides a large selection of programs from its various channels: full episodes available for free on catchup TV services, clips from various shows as well as original

Magazine rack: Original entertainment and news magazines, such as 100% mag (left), Le 19.45 (middle) and E=M6 (right), are a crucial part of the M6 slate.

its success: W9 is the first DTT channel and the fifth national channel in prime time and holds 43 of the 100 best DTT ratings in 2011.

Téva successfully targets women, broadcasting original brands and exclusive documentaries. Téva is cool, dynamic and sincere. For its 15th anniversary, Téva, which launched in 1996, broke a double record in 2011: it was the bestrated [pay-TV] channel among [female] viewers 4-plus and among housewives under 50.

Paris Première is the channel of culture, openness and impertinence. Resolutely Parisian, Paris Première targets primarily upper socioeconomic demographics through a diverse range of programs, including major comedy shows, sharp and edgy series, iconic cultural programs. For its first edition, Zemmour & Naulleau, the novelty of this season, broke a record in late night with 264,000 viewers, doubling the rating of that time slot.

Série Club, the channel featuring all series, is expert, exclusive, relaxed, and gathers nearly 6.4 million viewers every month.

TV EUROPE: What is M6 Group’s strategy for making content available on digital platforms—do you provide full episodes online and on mobile phones or only clips of programs?

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clips, and interviews available on our various websites that enrich the viewer’s digital experience.

We are also present in the SVOD subscription market with Pass M6, a unique offer that for less than €10 a month allows access to current and past series from our channels’ schedules.

The group is also at the forefront of research for new “double-screen” formats, such as the one on The X Factor in 2011, which featured the web show Fan Factor. This allowed viewers to access a second video stream, on their tablets, of behind-the-scenes footage during the show.

TV EUROPE: How popular are M6’s catch-up TV services?

What are viewers watching online? How much do you expect this trend to grow?

VALENTIN: We launched our catch-up service, M6 Replay, in March of 2008. According to Global TV, a recent Médiamétrie research report, M6 Replay is the leading catch-up service, having already been used by more than 56 percent of all catch-up TV users, an increase of 16 percentage points in two years. Together, our catch-up services, M6 Replay, W9 Replay and M6 Bonus, have continued to affirm themselves in 2011 with an average of 40 million videos streamed each month. While these are significant numbers in the online world, they are still small compared to viewing of live televi4/12

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French style: Dans la peau d’une grande is one of M6’s original productions.

sion—a few minutes each day of catch-up TV compared to three hours of live TV. In general, we’ve seen that the addition of a new platform does not cannibalize existing platforms.

Therefore the catchup viewing on mobile and on tablets has been additive to usage on PC and IPTV. This is encouraging since we know that there are platforms still in embryonic stages—for example, connected TVs and game consoles.

In terms of which programs are the most watched, there’s no surprise there—the shows that are most viewed on catchup TV services are the same as the shows that are most watched

live on television. Entertainment shows and series represent a large part of the usage.

TV EUROPE: Do you provide programming to websites that are not part of M6 Group?

VALENTIN: We are not opposed in principle to providing content to third-party websites. But this must be done based on a clear business agreement and the websites must respect our brands and our programs. If such a deal were possible, we would be happy to move forward as we have done successfully in our partnership with MSN for news in M6 & MSN Actualités.

TV EUROPE: As viewers watch more and more online, what kind of programming do broadcasters like M6 need to offer in order to attract large audiences?

VALENTIN: We do not believe that nonlinear programs will take the place of linear programs. To the contrary, we believe in a strong complementary offering.This requires, first of all, continuing to make very good TV shows that entertain, inform and elicit an emotional response from our viewers. It is around “strong” programs that we can provide our viewers with a truly rich experience, by integrating in the best way possible all the new possibilities of the digital world: social networks, new platforms and additional content.

A History of M6 1987: The channel M6 launches on March 1.

First promo campaign: “C’est à voir, c’est sur M6” (“Check it out, it’s on M6”).

1996: The m6.fr site goes live. M6 takes part in

1988: M6 creates new viewing habits by invent-

1997: On its tenth anniversary, the M6 Group

ing “counterprogramming.”

moves to its new Neuilly-sur-Seine head office.

1989: “La petite chaîne qui monte” (“The little

1998: Launch of the M6 Music channel on TPS.

the launch of the satellite TV platform TPS. Launch of the Téva channel.

2006: M6 broadcasts 31 World Cup matches.

Launch of L’amour est dans le pré on M6.

2007: Launch of the D&CO magazine on M6.

The M6 Group celebrates its 20th anniversary.

2008: M6 Web launches the catch-up service channel that ascends”) becomes the channel’s new signature phrase.

1999: M6 becomes the second-most-viewed channel in the under-50 age group.

1990: Creation of M6 Films.

2009: 6 minutes headline news replaced by a new 2000: Launch of M6 Web, in charge of the group’s

1991: Creation of Métropole Productions.

Launch of E=M6. New promo campaign: “La chaîne qui monte (pas si petite que çà)” (“The channel that ascends (is not so small)”).

new technology developments with three operational segments. The TF6 channel is created with TF1.

2001: Launch and success of Loft Story, France’s first reality TV show.

1992: Creation of M6 Interactions. M6 posts its first profitable financial year. M6 Kid is created.

M6 Replay. The M6 channel tops the ratings of the year with the France versus Italy Euro football match.

2002: The M6 Group acquires 100 percent of the Girondins de Bordeaux football club.

1993: Creation of Série Club. Launch of Capital

newscast, Le 19.45. Launch of Scènes de ménages.

Creation of the catch-up service W9 Replay.

2010: M6 broadcasts La Nouvelle Star in 3D. Launch of iPhone and iPad apps. The M6 Group creates its foundation. W9 becomes the leading DTT channel in France.

2011: Year of record ratings for M6 with Le

and Zone Interdite. New slogan: “Souriez, vous êtes sur M6” (“Smile, you’re on M6”).

2003: The Studio89 production subsidiary is created.

1994: Group M6 shares are listed on the Second Marché of the Paris Stock Exchange.

2004: The M6 Group acquires 100 percent of the Paris Première channel.

19.45, Scènes de ménages, L’amour est dans le pré. In October, W9 becomes the fourth national channel for the under-50 age group. In November, M6 becomes the second-mostwatched national channel during prime time for the fifth consecutive month.

1995: M6 Droits Audiovisuels becomes one of the top ten French exporters of TV programs.

2005: Launch of the W9 channel on DTT. M6 Web launches M6 Mobile by Orange.

Jubilee.

Launch of Nouvelle Star, the French version of Idols.

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Dogan TV’s

Irfan Sahin

By Anna Carugati

Kanal D is the undisputed market leader in Turkey, with broadcast, production and international-distribution businesses. In 2010, it was the most-watched network for 308 days out of 365 and in 2011 it maintained that trend. As part of the Dogan Media Group, Turkey’s leading media company, Kanal D uses its resources to produce a variety of shows that not only satisfy its domestic market but are proving to be quite popular around the world. Irfan Sahin, the CEO of Dogan TV, talks about Kanal D’s success.

TV EUROPE: What factors have contributed to Kanal D’s position as the most-watched channel in Turkey?

SAHIN: Launched in 1993, Kanal D is Turkey’s leading media company in the development and production of entertainment, news, and information for a wide audience. Kanal D reflects Turkey’s vision with a modern, creative and innovative approach to television broadcasting. According to 2011 figures, Kanal D has maintained its leading position with an average 20-percent audience share in prime time.

In brief, five factors have contributed to this success: creativity; long-term stability; being part of Dogan, the largest media group in Turkey; talented young people working at the channel; and addressing the large Turkish audience in the right way. All those elements have made Kanal D the leading channel in Turkey for many years.

Being creative, innovative and dynamic, the channel introduced many new television programs, including several television series, foreign movies, talk shows, game shows, children’s, women’s, sports, news and magazine programs. Kanal D has positioned itself at the top of the TV sector with its successful serials, educational and entertaining children’s shows, ethical news programs and talk shows presented by the most popular television stars.We broadcast content that relates to everyone living all around Turkey.

TV EUROPE: In particular, what types of programs resonate

the most with the Turkish audience?

SAHIN: For quite some time, locally produced TV series, espe-

cially drama series, have been and still are the trend in Turkey.

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According to rating measurements, the audience chooses to watch Turkish TV series in prime time. Kanal D has a different prime-time series for each day of the week: Arka Sokaklar, Kanıt, Öyle Bir Geçer Zaman ki, Kuzey Güney, Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne?, Yalan Dünya, Kesanli Alı Destani, Umutsuz Ev Kadınları. Some are dramas, some are comedies and some are action series. Most of the mainstream TV channels have similar programming schedules. Entertainment and game shows are also the type of programs that resonate with Turkish audiences.

Kanal D is not only a TV channel, it also produces content. We are developing new ideas either in-house or with other production companies. [Not only are we] up to date with global and local trends, we are also trendsetters. For example, we have developed the format of Bana Hersey Yakısır and currently it is being exported to many other countries, such as Germany, Spain, the United States and Ukraine.

TV EUROPE: What are the forecasts for the Turkish adver-

tising market this year?

SAHIN: Despite the global crisis, the TV advertising market

in Turkey has been and still is strong and growing. In 2011, the Turkish TV ad market increased by 15 percent, thanks to the strong and improving Turkish macroeconomic environment. It is evident the Turkish ad market has great potential considering the amazing demographics of the country and the expected increase in wealth in the long term.

While the world is still going through the global crisis, in 2012 we are expecting 10-percent growth in the Turkish TV advertisement market.

TV EUROPE: What makes Turkish serials popular in many

different countries?

SAHIN: The success of Turkish TV productions is stimulated by

the high competition in the prime-time slots of the commercial free-to-air TV market. Every commercial TV station airs at least one locally produced drama series.There is a great preproduction process in which the producers and the scriptwriters work hard on the story, the scripts and the cast.

The series are shot in HD and in internationally accepted high-quality standards. All these factors differentiate Turkish dramas from their regional competitors and inevitably bring higher quality and popularity.

Turkish TV is no different than others in many aspects. In Turkey, local production, especially drama, is very important.

Turkish dramas are local, but the stories have universal elements that can be enjoyed everywhere in the world. The quality of production, cast and scripts is very high and continues to get better.This is highly recognized by the audiences in more than 70 countries in the world.

For the last few years, as Kanal D, we have broadcast TV series that reached 60- to 70-percent audience shares, such as Binbir Gece, Ask-ı Memnu, Yaprak Dökümü, etc. Because of their quality, those series are not only being aired in Turkey, they are also being exported to many other countries.

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By Mansha Daswani

In 2002, Carl Hall, then at HIT Entertainment, led a management buyout of the HIT Wildlife division. Armed with about 300 hours of programming, Hall set up Parthenon Entertainment as an independent producer and distributor of documentaries. This year, Parthenon celebrates its tenth anniversary with an enlarged catalogue, encompassing factual and kids’ fare, and several sister companies under the Parthenon Media Group banner.

TV EUROPE: What have been some of the milestones in the

growth of the company?

HALL: In 2005 we took over [Welsh broadcaster] S4C’s inter-

national program catalogue. We also created a presence in Wales, Cymru International, to fund local programming directly with Welsh producers. This has provided us with a fantastic source of programming over the years.Then, in 2007 we opened our wildlife production offices in Bristol, just over the road from the BBC’s Natural History Unit. It’s now one of the largest parts of our business. In 2009 we acquired a

Parthenon’s

Carl Hall

minority stake in Arcadia Entertainment (now Arcadia Content), based in Canada. We are now able to focus more intensely on the Canadian market to co-produce with them, specifically on documentaries.

In 2010 we provided investment for the award-winning CGI, VFX and animation company 422 South.The company develops software which often provides us with the ability to develop programming ideas. When they presented a software tool which enabled them to re-create the ocean bed from the information provided by oceanographic surveys, we were able to develop an idea for a show that became Light the Ocean, produced for National Geographic Channels and due to air in summer 2012.

TV EUROPE: How do you balance your own productions

with third-party titles in your catalogue?

HALL: People always say, Isn’t it a threat to move into production if you represent other people’s shows? But it’s completely the opposite.You need to be at the very high end of production to get an audience with the commissioners. Once you’re in that door, it doesn’t matter whether it’s with a Parthenon-originated program or one that’s come from a third party.

For us, the program idea is the important thing, not necessarily the track record of the producer. However, our first distribution deal was with Scandinature and we still represent them today. Other producers we have worked with and still represent include Story House Productions, Windfall Films, Darlow Smithson, NDR Naturfilm and Base Productions.

We also develop new program ideas and offer them to our most trusted partners as co-productions. For example, we are currently working with the Smithsonian Channel on a new documentary series looking at forensics.The program had to be filmed in Washington with a lot of coordination with the Smithsonian Museum. Rather than fly our own crew out there, we gave the production to Story House Productions.The company is based near there, we know them and have worked with them in the past and they are perfect for this kind of programming.

Essentially, we go wherever it’s most efficient to be.

Our next move is to find a production company in Australia that we can invest in.With Canadian, British and then Australian operations, we could do treaty deals within the group for the really big documentaries, the multimillion-dollar series.

TV EUROPE: What are some of your other goals?

HALL: We’re not a company that rushes into the latest trends

without having an eye on the long-term view. For example, when the [new-media platforms] came along and people were adding program libraries to them, I was concerned that it was adding value to other companies but not necessarily generating any revenues. Something we have always stipulated for our producers is to keep all the multimedia rights clean and unencumbered.We now own one of the biggest libraries available in all territories in every form of new media. Now, of course, we’re about to enjoy the benefits of that.

When I started Parthenon, in 2002, we invested money to produce everything in HD even though nobody wanted it back then. It meant that five years later, we had one of the biggest libraries for people launching HD services all over the world. So it’s always, If we’re going to do it, let’s think ahead.

We have done the same with 3D, which is not going to be a massive part of our business, but it’s likely to have longevity in some form or another going forward.

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By Mansha Daswani

After more than a decade of heading up acquisitions at the Modern Times Group, Camilla Hammer joined Shine Inter national at the end of last year as its new CEO. From the company’s London base, Hammer leads a team charged with capitalizing on Shine International’s deep portfolio, which encompasses drama, entertainment, documentaries and more, across the globe. In her first interview since taking on the new position, Hammer speaks exclusively to TV Europe about her strategy for broadening Shine International’s worldwide presence.

TV EUROPE: What is your big-picture strategy coming into the company?

HAMMER: As an industry we all know that content is king, and therefore creative excellence is at the center of everything we do.That will continue to be the main focus for Shine Interna-

tional going forward as we build our team’s reach and success.

We work closely with the acclaimed production companies across the Shine Group as well as with an impressive network of successful third-party producers, who are all delivering high-quality programs across our key genres.

Many markets are focusing more and more on local productions, where in the past broadcasters were more reliant on readymade shows from the U.S. Shine International is fortunate to be the home of some of the most exciting and relevant formats in the world.With this growing theme, I believe we are best placed to partner with these broadcasters in bringing them superb productions and shows best suited for their slots.

TV EUROPE: How are you structuring Shine’s sales efforts?

HAMMER: We have placed our sales team in key territories.This

resource and versatility gives us the capacity to have a better understanding of our buyers’ ambitions, along with trends and market insight. With this infrastructure in place, we have built our success through having a passionate understanding of each program’s individual DNA, mapping out strategic sales plans for each one of them, whether this is third-party or inhouse. Our expertise and reach allows us to identify the right partners across all rights and platforms, anywhere in the world.

Shine International’s

Camilla Hammer

TV EUROPE: The format business has become very crowded.

How have your titles managed to cut through the clutter?

HAMMER: We represent original, flexible formats for every

part of the schedule, and have a trusted reputation built on the success of major brands, including MasterChef, which is now in 36 countries and [with] further adaptations planned; together with The Biggest Loser, which remains the world’s most successful lifestyle brand.We are dynamic and passionate about our shows and the unique structure of Shine Group, which joins together Shine International and all 26 in-house production companies. [This structure] allows us to be fleet of foot and not bound by complex processes and internal approvals, or struggling with creating revenue from a massive but dormant back catalogue.

TV EUROPE: Are there areas that you’d like to be doing

more in?

HAMMER: We are heading into MIPTV with a new scripted strategy, our biggest volume of drama to date, and it will showcase the very best, including [titles] from the BBC, HBO, SVT and CTV and made by producers such as the BAFTA award-winning team at Kudos. We will launch a major new campaign entitled “Your New World of Storytelling,” which is headlined by Hunted, the highly anticipated action thriller for BBC One and HBO; along with Real Humans, which is truly exceptional Nordic noir; and season two of The Hour, which is from the screenwriter of the Oscar-winning movie The Iron Lady.

In an environment where less scripted content has been available to buyers, we’re feeling incredibly excited to be launching four major prime-time drama titles, two of these being returning commissions. In the buildup to the market, our team across our four international offices have been busy closing deals on multiple new titles from our new catalogue, all ahead of their official market launch at MIPTV. 188

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P R O F I L E

Panini’s Brand Plan The Italian Gruppo Panini was set up in 1961. Among its first products were trading cards of players of the major Italian football teams. Since football is the country’s national game and passion, the cards, and their accompanying albums, quickly become extremely popular among children.

In the last 50 years, Panini has expanded its business beyond collectibles, becoming a leading multinational publisher of comics, children’s magazines and manga in Europe and Latin America.

On point: Metal Hurlant Chronicles, one of Panini Media’s lead offerings, is an adaptation of an iconic ’80s comic.

In 2006, Panini set up The Licensing Machine, dedicated to managing TV, home-video, promotional and merchandising rights of entertainment and sports properties. Peter Warsop, Panini’s group licensing director, explains the genesis of the licensing division.“Our very first excursion into programming was not in fact anything too strategic on our part, but out of necessity if we were to maximize our collectible sales. Occasionally we would find that we were sitting on the collectible rights of a property which was not being given adequate TV exposure and therefore not totally conducive to a successful launch of our products. Rather than miss an opportunity we started to offer to [sell the TV rights on behalf our partners] and the consequence was that we gained some limited experience of selling to broadcasters. This took on a new dimension in 2005, when one of our Japanese associates asked us to take on the role of licensing agent for media and merchandise rights in several European territories; Naruto and Fullmetal Alchemist then became the first two franchises we represented and our group licensing agency, The Licensing Machine, was formed to ensure Panini gave attention and specialist input to serving the requirements of these new roles.”

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The Licensing Machine has since managed other properties, including the preschool show Kokomon. The Licensing Machine’s Panini Media division was set up to focus on selling TV properties to broadcasters worldwide.

Panini Media has branched out from animation into liveaction series. It will be bringing several shows to MIPTV. One of the properties is Metal Hurlant Chronicles, a live-action adaptation of the iconic ’80s comic. “We asked some of our partners like Araneo of the Dupuis Audiovisuel Group, Nexus, with the support of Fortis Films funds, to join us in bringing to the production of season one the value it deserves,” says Warsop. Panini Media is the worldwide distributor and has sold the show to 40-plus markets. “Working with co-producers and the series director, Guillaume Lubrano, we brought in a strong international cast,”Warsop adds.

At MIPTV, Panini will be looking to secure new broadcasters for Metal Hurlant Chronicles, in particular from the U.K., Scandinavia, Japan, Italy, Spain and North America. “We will also be continuing discussions with Canadian and European partners and hopefully conclude agreements to raise the budgets for seasons two and three, which are around $1 million per episode.”

Signs is another live-action series Panini Media is offering the international market. Production on the 12 one-hour episodes, with a budget of $13 million, begins this spring for delivery to broadcasters starting at the end of 2012. “We are very excited at being the exclusive worldwide distributor,” says Warsop. “With XII Tribes Entertainment as executive producer of the series, we will be launching presales and presenting an exclusive teaser along with the main casting for the series. With a very high-quality production team, notably Albert Sagalés, Randy Bradshaw as showrunner and Patricia Harris Seely as director, XII Tribes Entertainment will be supporting the launch of the series by bringing Ysé Brisson, who is the author, and one of the main actresses of the series to our exhibition stand at MIPTV.” Panini Media also has a number of projects in development for which it will be seeking partners at MIPTV: a Swedish crime-mystery series, Jorsdkott:Tales of Silverhodj; a series with partner Araneo based on a comic book written by Jean Van Hamme, the author of Largo Winch and XIII; and a series for family and teens, The New Adventures of Poly, which is a remake of the iconic ’60s series Poly and is being developed with partner WE Productions.

Warsop sees numerous opportunities for Panini Media.

“Our priority is to ensure we do not lose focus on delivering the best possible range of services to our principles and provide exciting and profitable content to our broadcasters and licensees. Secondary to this we will add new programming selectively and based upon our ability to do the best possible job of representing it.”

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