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TVEUROPE
WWW.TVEUROPE.WS
JUNE / JULY 2014
Production Incentives
NATPE EUROPE EDITION
/ ZDFE’s Alexander Coridass
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CONTENTS
When Past is Present
Ricardo Seguin Guise Publisher Anna Carugati Editor Mansha Daswani Executive Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Managing Editor Joanna Padovano Associate Editor Joel Marino Assistant Editor Simon Weaver Online Director Victor L. Cuevas Production & Design Director Phyllis Q. Busell Art Director Cesar Suero Sales & Marketing Director Faustyna Hariasz Sales & Marketing Coordinator Terry Acunzo Business Affairs Manager
Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP & Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development TV Europe © 2014 WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, #1207 New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.tveurope.ws
FEATURE
9 MONEY MATTERS
Drama producers and distributors are tapping into tax breaks and other production incentives across Europe.
This year marks two very important anniversaries: the beginning of World War I and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Great War, fought between 1914 and 1918, claimed an estimated 10 million soldiers and wounded another 20 million. It was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but instead, it laid the groundwork for World War II. Another major anniversary is the fall of the Berlin Wall. Construction began in 1961 by the East German government, ostensibly as an “anti-Fascist bulwark” to keep the Western “Fascists” out; its real purpose was to keep its citizens from fleeing to the West. The Berlin Wall became the most powerful symbol of the Cold War. On November 9, 1989, as Communism was imploding across the Soviet Union and its satellite nations, for reasons that were related more to economics than to political ideology, the government of East Berlin announced it was changing its relations with the West—East Germans were free to cross over to West Germany. That night, people from West and East Berlin flocked to the wall, chanting, “Tor auf ” (Open the gate!).They used hammers and picks to knock out pieces of the wall. Later, bulldozers tore down the rest. Many considered the fall of the wall to be the official end of World War II and of the Cold War. Witnessing the events in Ukraine in recent months, one can’t help but question whether the Cold War ever ended at all, as certain factions claim allegiance toVladimir Putin’s Russia and others want to ally themselves economically with Western Europe. More questions arise following the recent elections for the European Parliament. With an extremely worrying resurgence of xenophobes, racists and even neo-Nazis, the doubt rises that history has been completely forgotten. Extreme factions— though small for now—are hell-bent on dragging Europe backward into the grips of intolerance, rather than looking forward and realizing that in today’s ever-more connected world and in a global economy that binds countries together, collaboration is the name of the game. But as the famous quote goes, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In this year of such important anniversaries, television will be providing a slew of commemorative programs offering perspective and analysis—many of them in ZDF Enterprises’ catalogue, and we speak to Alexander Coridass, the company’s president and CEO.We also offer a feature on various tax incentives provided to companies producing in Europe. Partnership and inclusion are the way forward in television and on the European stage, not hindrance and exclusion. —Anna Carugati
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INTERVIEW
18 ZDFE’s Alexander Coridass
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Atresmedia Televisión No Identity
/ Time in Between / Old Bridge’s Secret
The series from Atresmedia Televisión are produced for and broadcast by the Spanish channel Antena 3 in prime time. Many productions from the company’s catalogue have already aired in countries across Central and Eastern Europe, and now Atresmedia Televisión is attending NATPE Europe for the first time in an effort to increase this presence. “We think it is a good opportunity to strengthen our relationships with [existing] clients as well as to look for new contacts in the region,” says Diana Borbón, an acquisitions and sales executive at Atresmedia Televisión. Among the shows being presented at the market is the action drama No Identity, about a young lawyer who discovers that she was a victim of an illegal adoption ring. There are also the dramas Time in Between and Old Bridge’s Secret.
“Our sales in Eastern Europe have increased significantly over the last three years.” —Diana Borbón No Identity
Audiovisual from Spain B&B
/ El Príncipe / Bandolera
The Audiovisual from Spain umbrella at NATPE Europe is being organized by FAPAE and features the companies Atresmedia Televisión, BRB Internacional, Comercial TV, Imagina International Sales, Mediaset España, Grupo Secuoya and TV3 Televisió de Catalunya. Comercial TV is presenting the classic Spanish telenovela Bandolera. B&B is a new highlight from Imagina International Sales. Mediaset España is bringing out El Príncipe, and TV3 Televisió de Catalunya has the drama Family Fare to offer. Grupo Secuoya is placing its bets on the entertainment talent show The Shower. In the way of children’s entertainment, there’s Talking Tom & Friends, which BRB Internacional is producing and distributing worldwide.
B&B
Red Arrow International Bosch
/ Remedy / Married at First Sight
Based on a set of best-selling novels by Michael Connelly, Bosch was one of the first hour-long drama pilots to be chosen by Amazon viewers to move to series. The drama, commissioned by Amazon Studios, stars Titus Welliver (Argo, Lost) as the detective Harry Bosch. Red Arrow International is showcasing the title at NATPE Europe, where it is also offering the reality format Married at First Sight. The show looks on as strangers get married without meeting first. The medical drama Remedy tops Red Arrow International’s NATPE Europe highlights as well. “Going beyond the ER, each stand-alone episode is driven by a riveting case, where emotions and the pressures of the job run high, but family remains the focus underneath it all,” says Shakira Hoffmann, the company’s senior sales manager for CEE.
“With an A-list cast and crew, high-quality production and innovative twists, our programs come with builtin marketing strategies.” —Shakira Hoffmann Bosch 38 World Screen 6/14
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SPI International/FilmBox FightBox HD
/ MadscreenBox / FilmBox Arthouse
The focus for SPI International at NATPE Europe is on content acquisitions for its various channels, including FilmBox Arthouse. “While looking for content, we are also conducting sales, offering our rich catalogue of movies and TV series to the local payand free-TV networks throughout CEE,” says Berk Uziyel, the executive director of SPI International and FilmBox International. “We continue to offer blockbuster movies, popular TV series, miniseries and TV movies that are sought by TV networks all across the region. In addition, we offer a growing portfolio of thematic channels, including FightBox HD, which now features regular live events broadcast from various cities in Europe and the U.S.” The company is also exploring 4K opportunities as it gears up to launch MadscreenBox, an interactive game channel.
“Central and Eastern Europe is where we have become one of the key players in the areas of content sales, theatrical distribution and channel production and broadcasting.” —Berk Uziyel FightBox HD
Tandem Communications Spotless
/ Crossing Lines / Sex, Lies & Handwriting
Set in London, the crime drama Spotless tells the story of a troubled man whose tidy life is turned upside down when his outlaw brother crash-lands into his world and gets them involved in organized crime. Tandem Communications will be discussing the series with buyers at NATPE Europe, along with the procedural crime drama Sex, Lies & Handwriting. “We’re really excited about our new titles Spotless and Sex, Lies & Handwriting, both going into production shortly,” says Randall Broman, the VP of sales at Tandem Communications. “These are very original, unique series that have the potential to become breakout hits with a global audience.” Also on offer is Crossing Lines, which has two seasons available. The action thriller features in its cast William Fichtner, Marc Lavoine and Donald Sutherland.
“Our series are high-quality, eye-catching titles with top production values.” —Randall Broman Crossing Lines
ZDF Enterprises Thicker Than Water
/ Cecelia Ahern / Rusty Knight
The teams from ZDF Enterprises’ ZDFE.drama and ZDFE.junior departments will be at NATPE Europe looking to shore up deals. From the ZDFE.drama catalogue comes Thicker Than Water, about siblings who must run their late mother’s B&B together in order to collect their inheritance. “Thicker Than Water offers deep, authentic chararcters that the viewers are invited to follow and well-thought-through story lines,” says Fred Burcksen, the company’s executive VP and COO. “It’s a modern, characterdriven drama that offers a story that everybody can relate to.” Also from ZDFE.drama, two new romantic films based on books by the best-selling author Cecelia Ahern have been produced. Rusty Knight, which features characters made of recycled household utensils and tools, is a highlight of the ZDFE.junior slate.
“We are extremely proud that our programs are constantly met with growing interest from the CEE market.” —Fred Burcksen Cecelia Ahern 40 World Screen 6/14
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Drama producers and distributors are tapping into tax breaks and other production incentives across Europe. By Jay Stuart
money MATTERS BBC Worldwide’s Da Vinci’s Demons.
he globalization of television production has been a steadily growing phenomenon.The genie is out of the bottle. Hollywood is no longer a place so much as a state of mind. How wide open are the geographical possibilities? As wide as the whole world, if you take the example of Starz’s historical pirate series Black Sails. Shooting is almost finished on the second season of the program in Cape Town, South Africa. But it might have gone just about anywhere. Starz actually did budgets for other options, including Spain, Malta, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Hawaii, and looked at Australia and New Zealand. The show is produced by Platinum Dunes, Quaker Moving Pictures and Film Afrika.
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“Each possibility had a scorecard,” says Carmi Zlotnik, the managing director of Starz. “So, for example, Malta had tax benefits and a water tank, but no beaches. South Africa had benefits and beaches, but no water tank, but they built a water tank for us at Cape Town Film Studios.” No matter where producers look nowadays, they are increasingly likely to find some form of financial inducement on offer. “One of the main factors underlying the internationalization of production is the internationalization of production financing,” Zlotnik says.“Very few networks can do it all by themselves. Most of us put together money by selling off international rights, and that brings in all the dimensions of working with interna-
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Starz’s The White Queen was shot in Belgium, which offers a number of financial incentives.
tional partners, including the tax benefits and incentives.This has been true of feature films for a long time and it is increasingly true of television, and I don’t see it changing.” Competition for attracting production has been intensifying. One clear trend is that more countries are offering tax incentives and benefits for television drama productions, expanding on incentives for feature films. For a location,TV series are probably more valuable than feature films, which might only stay in a place for a month. Series can bring benefits that last (think of Breaking Bad’s impact in New Mexico). IMPORTANT INCENTIVES
Another current trend, perhaps less obvious, is that incentives are becoming more significant in the process of deciding where to shoot. “Benefits and incentives are tremendously important for producers,” says Arie Bohrer, the president of the European Film Commission Network, an association of national and regional film commissions representing members from 27 countries, and the head of Location Austria, his country’s national commission. “They are absolutely essential for a country to attract productions, and television productions are becoming more and more important.There are two factors to look at: the location and the incentives.These are almost equal, except in the case of productions like a [James] Bond film, which have independent financing. I would say that there is a trend toward the incentives becoming more important. Another trend is for countries to expand their film provisions into television. Britain and Ireland typify this direction.” Austria currently has tax-incentive schemes in place for TV co-productions as well as film co-productions covering up to 25 percent of local spending, with a maximum of €1.2 million per project. The total allocation is €1.5 million, which practically translates into two good-sized productions per year. Efforts are in progress to expand the scheme, currently available to service companies for feature films, to include TV productions. Big international TV productions brought to Austria include The Pillars of the Earth, produced by Tandem Communications and Muse Entertainment, and World Without End, produced 44 World Screen 6/14
by Tandem with Scott Free Productions, Take 5 Productions and Galafilm. Bohrer, a former line producer himself, says,“The reality is that you either eliminate incentives everywhere and nobody offers them or you have to play the game and offer them. Money is not easy to come by and the demand from producers for cheap money is growing.” DECISION-MAKERS
“The point of entry of our production decisions starts with the specific needs and demands from the story,” says Rola Bauer, the president of Tandem Communications. “We look at what we need in terms of look, feel, architecture and topography.We analyze how much we need to build on sound stages versus practical locations. Then we compare different countries and cities in terms of what they can offer with respect to our needs, creating a short list. From there, we look at the economic benefits of each of those possibilities on the short list and that’s when tax and production incentives start playing a role in making a final decision on where we’ll shoot or where we’ll post. “Once we have evaluated our production needs,” continues Bauer,“that’s when support incentives play a role in making a final decision, because who is going to say no to an economic incentive in a country or city where it makes sense to shoot the show?” After shooting two seasons of the detective series Crossing Lines in the Czech Republic, Tandem and Bernero Productions will be making the third season there this year. The show, with a budget of $3 million (€2.2 million) per episode, is co-produced with TF1 Production and Sony Pictures Television Networks in collaboration with Stillking Films. Incentives can work fast. After introducing a 20-percent cash rebate scheme in 2012, Croatia attracted HBO’s epic series Game of Thrones for outdoor shooting of several scenes. The amount of production in Croatia, which boasts a wide range of locations, was up threefold in 2013. Part of the third season of Borgia was shot there this year. “Every country is joining what has been called ‘the incentives race’ and is trying to profile itself as a production hub playing on its comparative advantages,” says Ana Delic, the filming
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Croatia, which offers a 20-percent cash rebate scheme, played host to some of the shooting of HBO’s Game of Thrones.
in Croatia program coordinator at the Croatian Audiovisual Centre. “Although the amount that can be obtained through incentives plays a significant role when producers are deciding where to shoot, other factors come into play, such as locations, weather, crews and facilities, as well as the transparency and stability of the incentives scheme.There is also a question of loyalty and word of mouth.” BY THE POUND
The U.K.’s ambitious tax-relief scheme for scripted television projects came into effect in 2013. It covers projects with a minimum core expenditure of £1 million (€1.2 million) per broadcast hour, with a rebate of up to 25 percent of qualifying expenditure. Unlike in many other places, there is no cap on the amount that can be claimed. A minimum of 25 percent of costs must be spent on U.K. qualifying production expenditure. The tax relief is available for “culturally high-end TV programs.” The British government has said the new regime is expected to have a “significant impact” on businesses producing such shows, with about 50 high-end television production companies in the country that may benefit from the relief. The government has estimated that the amount of support could reach £70 million (€86 million) by 2017–18. That figure is the amount of tax revenue that would not be coming to the Exchequer. For 2013–14, the estimate was £5 million (€6.1 million), forecast to climb to £25 million (€30.7 million) this year, £45 million (€55.3 million) next year and £60 million (€73.7 million) in 2016–17, if the program works as effectively as hoped. “The incentives are an excellent idea,” says Jonathan Berger, a partner specializing in production finance at law firm Harbottle & Lewis. “They apply to both indigenous and inward production. They will not mean more domestic production in terms of volume, but they will mean bigger productions and higher production values. There is enormous interest from Hollywood in the U.K. TV incentives. Everybody thinks we have great incentives.” 46 World Screen 6/14
“We were seeing an increasing volume of production leaving the U.K.,” says Oliver Lang, who steers the financial side of production as controller of content investment at BBC Worldwide. “In order to produce high-end drama and get scale, they were going to Eastern Europe and the Czech Republic, for example. Now, with the tax incentives, the U.K. is very competitive. We are seeing people staying.We are also seeing people coming with productions like Da Vinci’s Demons.” BBC Worldwide Productions has produced the show in Wales for Starz in the U.S. and FOX International Channels with Phantom Four Films and Adjacent Productions. “Any producer looking at high-end drama is going to be looking at tax incentives,” Lang says. “So, many places are offering them.The tax incentives put the U.K. on an even keel with other territories. Given other factors, such as the depth of the skills available and the disproportionate strength of our independent production sector, the U.K. is now in an advantageous position.” “The U.K. tax incentives for television have certainly made us more attractive as a partner,” says Susan Waddell, the CEO of Power, which co-produced the series New Worlds with all3media subsidiary Company Pictures in association with the U.K.’s Channel 4. The show was shot in the U.K. and Romania. “The number of people getting in touch with us about potential projects has increased noticeably over the last year or so. Everyone is looking at how to structure productions and co-productions to maximize incentives.The new tax incentives in the U.K. are the first and last consideration in what we do, though of course the evaluation of any project needs to tick the right creative boxes.” The U.K. initiative underlines the point that incentives have become indispensable for attracting international TV drama productions. There is perhaps no better illustration of the new reality than the experience of the Czech Republic. “You need to be able to offer tax breaks or cash rebates or some form of incentive because incentives are now being offered in so many places that if you don’t have them, you can’t compete,” says Ludmila Claussova, the film commissioner at the Czech Film Commission. “In 2003–04, we realized that we needed to bring in incentives. It took five years of hard work to convince the government to do so.We have great infrastructure, great crews and sets and costumes, and great locations close to Prague, but without incentives, it didn’t matter. It’s psychological.We would say, Let’s budget it, we might still be cheaper even without incentives, but [producers] didn’t even want to look.” MIGRATION PATTERNS
Claussova continues, “We were losing productions to Budapest, London and Berlin, as well as the U.S. and Canada in the sense that we were not attracting North American projects. About 40 [U.S.] states now have incentives. Many Americans looked at Europe and decided to stay home. Our incentives have put us back on the map.” The Czech incentives were introduced in June 2010 for film and television projects.The impact was not big at first, but business has been increasing and has grown four- or five-times higher since 2010. The Czech Film Industry Support Programme offers a 20percent rebate on qualifying Czech spend and 10 percent on qualifying international spend. Eligible spending may not exceed 80 percent of a project’s total budget.The rebate is available to features with a run time of at least 70 minutes and to TV
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Enterprises. “In some countries, these benefits can be very significant. The calculation of the budgets for these projects is transparent, so we know that the tax benefits and subsidies can be critical in closing the financing for projects. In Australia, for example, they are very helpful for live-action teen drama.They are also important in Scandinavia.” ZDF Enterprises’ most recent big co-production, the second season of Bron/Broen, was co-financed by SVT, Film i Väst, DR, Film i Skåne and NRK, and produced by Filmlance of Sweden and Nimbus Film of Denmark. ZDF Enterprises is a distinct entity from the ZDF network, which is supported by viewer license fees and fully finances about 95 percent of its commissioned programming.The company has a small portfolio of its own production companies. One of these, Network Movie Film, is producing the new series The Team (working title) for ZDF in association with DR, Nordisk Film, Lunanime and Lumière of Belgium, C-Films of Germany and Superfilm of Austria. The show has an overall budget of €9 million to €10 million, with about 90 percent of it covered by pre-sales and private investors.To cover the remainder, about €500,000 comes from the European Commission’s MEDIA Programme and €500,000 comes from German and Scandinavian funds. So that’s only about 10 percent. But in some countries, the proportion can be 30 percent or a bit higher. BIGGER BUDGETS Tandem’s Crossing Lines shot its first two seasons in the Czech Republic and will return there to shoot its third.
episodes with a run time of at least 40 minutes per episode.The program had CZK 500 million (€18.2 million) in incentives on offer in 2013. The Czech Republic had an unusually good year in 2013. Producers from the U.S., the U.K., Denmark, Norway, South Korea, France and Germany filmed projects there. Most of these were historical TV series. CZECHS AND BALANCES
The production of BBC Worldwide’s series The Musketeers spent €8.5 million, more than half its total budget, in the Czech Republic with local partner Czech Anglo Productions. BBC is now back to shoot the second season. The third and final season of Borgia was also shot on the Barrandov Studios backlot and in several locations around the country. The series is a co-production between Atlantique Productions, ETIC Films, Beta Film and Film United. After shooting two seasons in the Czech Republic, the third season of Tandem’s detective series Crossing Lines will be shot there this year. Last year, Sirena Film was the local service partner for the Norwegian series The Heavy Water War, produced by Filmkameratene with NRK.With a bit of poetic justice after the loss of productions over previous years, Czech locations doubled for London as well as German and Norwegian settings. To assess the real importance of benefits, it’s necessary to look at the scale of the impact. ZDF Enterprises, for example, invests about €40 million per year in international co-productions, especially with Australia and Scandinavia in the drama genre. “We are generally a co-production partner rather than the executive producer or line producer, so we are affected by tax benefits and incentives indirectly rather than directly,” says Alexander Coridass, the president and CEO of ZDF 48 World Screen 6/14
“For ZDF, the importance of subsidies is likely to increase as the company moves into projects with even bigger budgets,” says Coridass.“Over the next couple of years, we are planning to distribute big historical drama series covering topics such as Alexander the Great, the Medici and Ellis Island. For these projects, we are interested in getting as much money as we can from the available sources. The decision of where the main shooting takes place may depend on what sort of local support is available. Our approach will depend on the specific projects and situations. We are not talking about a TV movie budgeted at €1.5 million, but series costing €2 million to €5 million per episode, with six to eight to ten episodes. As your projects get bigger, every bit counts. If you are doing a TV movie and you need 5 percent to close your €1.5-million budget, you will find a solution. But if it’s 5 percent of €10 million or €20 million or €30 million, the challenge is greater. So potential sources of incentives are very relevant.” Coridass says that he does not see an El Dorado of benefits and subsidies available in the market, even if countries may be offering more. “At the same time, competition is growing as more and more producers are looking to make drama series. So it’s a matter of more competitors going after pieces of the same pie.” Tax benefits and other incentives are part of a matrix of factors in making decisions about production location, according to veteran producer Zlotnik at Starz. He also includes currency exchange rates, landscapes and settings, crew availability and technical proficiency, the acting pool, local infrastructure—which includes broadband connectivity as well as sound stages—post-production facilities and the travel distance. “We don’t have a specific points systems, but we make apples-for-apples comparisons,” Zlotnik says. “The budgets are the final representation of how they stack up, but some factors are hard to quantify.”
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Prague’s Barrandov Studios welcomed Borgia for portions of the filming of the final season of the bigbudget TV series.
He adds, “Tax benefits and incentives are always important, but they do not monopolize the discussion. The landscape of tax benefits and incentives is also changing. If you look at America, sometimes states create new benefits and sometimes they abolish them, or if they have a fixed pool of finance, they run out of money. The trend is for locations to see the benefits of attracting production and then try to make themselves more competitive.” The U.K. is now high on his list, with tax incentives that are “some of the best in the world,” Zlotnik says. On top of Da Vinci’s Demons, Starz has another U.K.-produced show, Outlander, set to debut in the U.S. in August. It was shot in Scotland, produced by Tall Ship Productions, Story Mining & Supply Co., Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Television. “It still feels like relatively early days for the U.K. tax credit,” says BBC Worldwide’s Lang. “One thing I have noticed is that additional money coming into production through the tax credit is going to increase the scale and ambition of productions, not drive up producers’ margins.” ISSUES ARISE
Attracting television production from North America is not just a matter of offering incentives, acknowledges Berger of Harbottle & Lewis. “There are some issues for the U.K. to wrestle with. The first one that comes to mind is studio space. If you look at the traditional U.S. model of doing [22 to 24] episodes over five or six seasons, you need to know that you can commit to going someplace that can handle that. The U.K. studios are not really able to accommodate that yet. I don’t think it will be a long-term problem, and things are being done to remedy it. “Another issue is the strong pound.The incentives are helping to offset the pound at $1.68. If the dollar moves to $1.40, the incentives will mean such a savings that Americans might even want to build studio space themselves. People like shooting here. We have good crews and it’s a good place to work. It’s all a question of cost.” And of course, it’s still about the actual locations. Two of Starz’s co-productions with the BBC were made in Belgium. One of them, The White Queen, about the English War of the 50 World Screen 6/14
Roses, needed the medieval locations of Bruges and elsewhere in Flanders, while the other, The Missing, now shooting in Wallonia and Brussels, has a fictional French setting. Belgium has excellent financial incentives, too. “For us, attracting production is about the whole package,” says Jan Roekens, the head of production at Screen Flanders. “We have the Flanders Region, which offers the specific settings that the production requires. Screen Flanders provides support.We also have a Belgian federal-tax shelter and the possibility of a local broadcast partner, and sometimes the Flanders Audiovisual Fund can come in as well.” MONEY TALKS
Screen Flanders can provide up to €400,000 in investment, while the tax shelter goes all the way up to €15 million, covering not more than half the budget of the production. In the case of The White Queen, 17.5 percent of the total financing came from Belgium. For The Missing, the Belgian proportion is likely to reach 22 percent of the budget. For The Team, partly shot in Flanders, the Belgian share will reach about 25 percent. “The incentive market is competitive,” Roekens says. “Every country is trying to do the same thing.” Incentives are still only a piece of the jigsaw. “Of course incentives are important and can be the catalyst to move a project forward, but being creatively true to and maintaining the integrity of the story is essential,” says Tandem’s Bauer. “Based on this starting point, all other decisions of where to shoot and where to post are then made.” However, for producers, the ubiquity of incentives is opening up new possibilities. In 2011, Power was acquired by the Sabido Group, part of the South African group Hosken Consolidated Investments, which owns the South African channel e.tv and is a joint-venture partner in Cape Town Film Studios.The South African connection adds another dimension to Waddell’s thinking about co-production and benefits. “We are keen to find projects that can benefit from both U.K. and South African incentives, double-dipping, so to speak, in both pools of benefits,” she says. Double-dipping might be the next trend.
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ZDFE’s ALEXANDER CORIDASS 18
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By Anna Carugati
As the commercial arm of ZDF, the German public broadcaster, ZDF Enterprises (ZDFE) does much more than sell a broad range of programs from the world’s largest German-language library. Besides distributing homegrown series, miniseries, TV movies, documentaries and children’s shows, ZDFE is charged with setting up international co-productions, representing third-party product, selling rights to digital platforms and managing a merchandising business. ZDFE was founded in 1993, and Alexander Coridass has held the position of president and CEO since 1998. ZDFE quickly established a reputation in the market as a reliable supplier of high-end programming, in particular series, documentaries and children’s fare. Coridass credits the willingness to take calculated risks, an eye for spotting quality programming and an experienced staff as key reasons for ZDFE’s success.
TV EUROPE: ZDFE has a long tradition of quality drama. There is a lot of drama in the market now.What type of drama is selling? CORIDASS: There certainly is a golden age of drama right now.We have always been strong in crime and cop shows. Event programs, mainly about historical events and personalities, have also proven to be popular. Overall, we believe that regardless of the genre, the core points to successful drama are high quality, exceptional scripts and good production values. Content that is made with heart and soul and brains is the great television of the 21st century. We are also excited by the new opportunities offered by the digital and VOD segments of the market. And we are taking additional risks.We have always been quite courageous. I remember when we made our first investment in Scandinavian product, a lot of people, both in Germany and outside of Germany, were astonished—to say the least—that we were investing in Danish drama, but we succeeded. We will go on with our strong Scandinavian offering but we are far beyond that level. We invest a lot in our own projects. We have British, American, German and Scandinavian companies with whom we have development agreements. We are very proud to see shows like The Bridge, Clan and others on Hulu, CANAL+ or Netflix. The series The Team (working title), which was produced with international partners under our aegis, will soon be released. Our drama output has become, as our customers tell us, a very important and significant part of their services. TV EUROPE: I also hear that there is demand for formats of scripted drama. What advantages do they offer? CORIDASS: From a distribution and development standpoint, formats give you a twofold opportunity: you can sell the original content, as we have with some of these programs, and at the same time, if you own them, you can sell the format rights.The good thing is that you can find licensees who are interested in producing a local version that makes a property even more valuable—and sometimes you can sell this remake as well. Again, global interest in European drama continues to grow and we register, especially in the format sector, a strong demand also, for example, for Belgian or German formats, programs and projects.The international and especially the AmericanVOD markets—and we still have to consider it a niche market— are really interested in acquiring European programs and they are having commercial success with them. But we are also developing and co-developing programs that also have the potential of being smash hits for international free-TV broadcasters. So, on the one hand, very early, we focused on the digital world and luckily have been quite successful in it. But on the other hand, I strongly believe that free TV will continue for at least two or three decades. So, we have to be at the forefront of new developments in the digital market, but we still want to sell solid, long-running series to free-TV broadcasters.We will do our utmost to enrich our catalogue with product that can serve all these clients.
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ZDFE has done a slew of international deals for the Danish/Swedish thriller series Bron/Broen, including with Hulu in the U.S.
TV EUROPE: Are you also finding good demand for enter-
tainment shows, whether finished or formats? CORIDASS: Definitely. Since the early days of television, variety shows, quiz shows and entertainment in general have played an important role in the schedules of all broadcasters. For ZDF Enterprises, this genre is not something new. We have sold the format of Wetten, dass..? (Wanna Bet?) in so many countries, especially in Continental Europe. But we don’t have a huge catalogue of brand-new formats; we simply have to expand that. One year ago, when we restructured ZDF Enterprises, we decided to establish a department called ZDFE.entertainment, and we mainly offer formats of game shows and variety shows. And we have a brand-new music show for kids, Your Song.We have some entertainment scripted programs, some retro classics that have seen a revival in Germany—Dalli Dalli, for instance, which was heavily sought after during MIPTV! So entertainment programming is a business, but it’s still a bit of a start-up for us. That was exactly the reason why we decided to establish this department, because we are convinced that there is potential in this segment. TV EUROPE: ZDFE has recently sold a number of factual titles to English-language territories. Tell us about these deals and why they were important. CORIDASS: We closed several deals in the past months with important partners such as BSkyB and UKTV in the U.K. as well as with Seven Network in Australia. In those territories, the demand is steady for educational and entertaining factual programs, and those deals prove that even though those programs are foreign—produced in North America or Germany—they nevertheless appeal to audiences worldwide. Those deals make clear that there is a demand for emotionally engaging, characterdriven and informative factual series like Rocket City Rednecks and Alaska State Troopers in both the U.K. and Australia, as well as for traditional, high-budget documentaries focusing on very relevant and universal topics, like natural disasters, for instance, such as Countdown to a Catastrophe, and programs filmed with high54 World Screen 6/14
speed cameras, thus unveiling natural wonders and paving the way for scientific insights, such as Invisible Universe. Being able to cater to the varied needs of our partners in different Englishspeaking territories is important for us. While the deals with BSkyB and Seven Network marked our first ones with those partners, we are looking forward to expanding the cooperation with both of them as well as with UKTV. Needless to say, over the years we have always been quite active in all English-speaking territories and have had long-standing relationships with partners such as A+E Networks and National Geographic.We are working on the special Apocalypse Neanderthal, which is a major co-production with A+E Networks. Furthermore, in the past National Geographic Channel acquired both seasons of Last Secrets of the Third Reich from ZDF Enterprises. And, of course, there are more collaborations like this one in the pipeline, as we produce and distribute the kind of strong history and wildlife programs that audiences crave. The notion of factual entertainment these days is extremely broad. In general, we can say that digital platforms are offering an extremely interesting market for us in the factual genre. TV EUROPE: What have been the strategies that have helped
ZDFE succeed in children’s programming? CORIDASS: We have had the right instinct for the right trends at the right time. We were the first ones who took huge, huge risks in co-producing teenage live action ten years ago.And since then, we have established very reliable partnerships, especially with Australian partners like Jonathan Shiff, Joanna Werner and others. This is something that is really sustainable; they trust us, we trust them and we continue to develop and produce really outstanding teenage live action, focusing on top scripts, top actors and top production values.And very often we have top TV networks on our side, be it [Australia’s] Network Ten, a French network or ZDF. And, of course, my team has built enormous experience.We are well connected and we have unique production and TV distribution know-how.
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