World Screen MIPCOM 2011

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THE MAGAZINE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA • OCTOBER 2011

www.worldscreen.com

MIPCOM Edition

Time Warner’s Jeffrey Bewkes Viacom’s Philippe Dauman Disney’s Anne Sweeney Lionsgate’s Jon Feltheimer ESPN’s George Bodenheimer

The Revolutionary

James Cameron STAR POWER Liberty Global’s Michael Fries RTL’s Anke Schäferkordt ProSiebenSat.1’s Andreas Bartl MTG’s Hans-Holger Albrecht Showtime’s Matthew Blank AMC’s Joshua Sapan NBCUniversal’s Jeff Shell BSkyB’s Sophie Turner Laing BBC Worldwide’s John Smith Globosat’s Alberto Pecegueiro CBC’s Hubert Lacroix

Jeremy Irons Nigel Lythgoe Anthony Bourdain

SPECIAL REPORT

Content Trendsetter Award Winners

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contents

OCTOBER 2011/MIPCOM EDITION

Publisher Ricardo Seguin Guise

departments WORLD VIEW

Editor Anna Carugati Executive Editor Mansha Daswani Managing Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Contributing Editor Elizabeth Guider Special Projects Editor Jay Stuart Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Elizabeth Bowen-Tombari Executive Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Rafael Blanco Editorial Assistant Marissa Graziadio Online Director Simon Weaver Production & Design Directors Craig Brown Michele Villas Art Director Phyllis Q. Busell Sales & Marketing Director Cesar Suero Business Affairs Manager Terry Acunzo Sales & Marketing Assistant Vanessa Brand Senior Editors Bill Dunlap Kate Norris Contributing Writers Chris Dziadul Chris Forrester Bob Jenkins Juliana Koranteng David del Valle David Wood Copy Editors Grace Hernandez James Trimaco

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A note from the editor.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

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349

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special report

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24

By IFTA’s Jean Prewitt.

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New shows on the market.

Honoring top programmers, the inaugural World Screen Content Trendsetter Award recipients are CTV’s Mike Cosentino, Channel 5’s Jeff Ford, Sky’s Sarah Wright and Televisa’s Carlos Sandoval.

—Anna Carugati

industry trends

SPOTLIGHT

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The Borgias’ Jeremy Irons.

IN THE NEWS

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MIPCOM Personality of the Year, Disney’s Anne Sweeney.

CREATOR’S CORNER

OVER-THE-TOP TELEVISION

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The Bold and the Beautiful’s Bradley Bell.

This special report on how Netflix, Hulu and others are affecting the traditional TV model includes interviews with Time Warner’s Jeffrey Bewkes,Viacom’s Philippe Dauman, Lionsgate’s Jon Feltheimer, ESPN’s George Bodenheimer, Liberty Global’s Michael Fries, RTL’s Anke Schäferkordt, ProSiebenSat.1’s Andreas Bartl, Modern Times Group’s Hans-Holger Albrecht, Showtime’s Matthew Blank, BBC Worldwide’s John Smith, BSkyB’s Sophie Turner Laing, AMC Networks’ Joshua Sapan, Globosat’s Alberto Pecegueiro and Comcast’s Matthew Strauss.

—Elizabeth Guider & Anna Carugati

STUDIO SHOT

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NBCUniversal’s Jeff Shell.

BEHIND THE SCENES

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Muse’s Michael Prupas.

TECH BEAT

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Cameron Pace Group’s Vince Pace.

MILESTONES

one-on-one

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VIEWPOINT UPFRONT

WORLD SCREEN CONTENT TRENDSETTER AWARD

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By the International Academy’s Bruce Paisner.

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Hubert Lacroix on CBC at 75.

TIME WARNER’S JEFFREY BEWKES

The chairman and CEO of Time Warner is bullish on the company’s television and film production-and-distribution operations.

WORLD’S END

608

In the stars.

—Anna Carugati

on the record

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FILMMAKER JAMES CAMERON

The revolutionary director shares some insight into 3D filmmaking and what’s in store for 3D TV. Ricardo Seguin Guise, President Anna Carugati, Executive VP & Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani,VP of Strategic Development

WORLD SCREEN is a registered trademark of WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, Suite 1207 New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.worldscreen.com ©2011 WSN INC. Printed by Fry Communications No part of this publication can be used, reprinted, copied or stored in any medium without the publisher’s authorization.

—Anna Carugati

in conversation

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LIONSGATE’S JON FELTHEIMER

The independent studio’s co-chairman and CEO talks about lucrative digitalmedia deals.

—Anna Carugati

WORLD SCREEN is published seven times per year: January, April, May, June/July, October, November and December.

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OCTOBER 2011/MIPCOM EDITION

AN ENGLISH AFFAIR Radical shifts are under way in the U.K. 174…DRAMATIC CLOSEUP European drama reaches new highs 182…POLAND POINTS THE WAY A profile of this dynamic market 188…INTERVIEWS RTL Group’s Anke Schäferkordt 194… ProSiebenSat.1’s Andreas Bartl 196…MTG’s Hans-Holger Albrecht 198…BSkyB’s Sophie Turner Laing 200…BBC Worldwide’s John Smith 202…ITV Studios’ Kevin Lygo 204…Star Media’s Vladislav Riashyn 208 TOP SCOUTS A survey of leading programmers 290…THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES Theme parks based on popular brands 300…KIDS GET CONNECTED Using social media to build hits 306…BRAND LICENSING SPECIAL REPORT L&M trends 315…INTERVIEWS Dan Povenmire & Jeff “Swampy” Marsh 331…Disney’s Anne Sweeney 334…Super RTL’s Claude Schmit 336…Turner’s Michael Carrington 340…Lagardère’s Karine Leyzin 344…KI.KA’s Sebastian Debertin 346 TESTOSTERONE TV A look at male-skewing factual shows 378…HOME SWEET HOME Home-renovation and real-estate shows are drawing viewers worldwide 384…

INTERVIEWS Anthony Bourdain 390…Al Jazeera English’s Al Anstey 392…A+E Networks’ Sean Cohan 394

FEELIN’ GOOD Broadcasters are seeking out feel-good formats 412…A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN Distributors are entering into creative partnerships to find new ideas 424…INTERVIEWS Nigel Lythgoe 434…FremantleMedia’s Gary Carter 438…Armoza Formats’ Avi Armoza 442…Global Agency’s Izzet Pinto 444…PROFILE Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? 446 STRIKING GOLD Asia’s biggest pay-TV brands are ramping up their original content and digital initiatives 462…INTERVIEWS Turner’s Steve Marcopoto 470…Universal Networks’ Christine

asia pacific

Fellowes 472…GMA’s Wilma Galvante 474

BRAVE NEW MIDDLE EAST The Arab Spring protests have reshaped Middle Eastern media 482…M-NET AT 25 The South African broadcaster celebrates a milestone anniversary 488

BRAZIL FACES THE FUTURE What’s in store for this emerging market 524…UNIVERSAL

These targeted

APPEAL Distributors are finding new opportunities

magazines

worldwide 534…INTERVIEWS Ledafilms’ Pedro Leda 546…Telefe’s Fernando Varela 548

appear both inside

THE LEADING SOURCE FOR

World Screen

PROGRAM INFORMATION Listings

and as separate

of numerous distributors attending MIPCOM 565

publications.

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world view

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR ANNA CARUGATI

The Power of Youth I’ve been feeling pretty old lately, and nowadays that’s not such a good thing.

During my childhood, however, I was raised to revere the elderly. I grew up in Italy and my grandparents were the keepers of much knowledge.

They taught my cousins and me how to cook, sew, knit, fish, read music and play instruments. I learned more from my grandparents and parents about World War II than I did from any textbook in school. I left behind the closeness of the extended family and the life lessons I learned from my beloved nonni in the old world when I moved to the new world, America, in 1970. Wow, what a difference: color TV, shows about genies, witches, doctors, cops and lawyers; Coca-Cola was teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony; and there was an endless variety of shampoos, beauty products and magazines just for teens. Most notably, America in 1970 was a country ruled by youth.

Demanding to be heard in their protest of the war in Vietnam, they were also starting trends in fashion and changing social mores; their beliefs and behaviors were being reported in the press and reflected in movies and TV shows.

Being old was no longer something that commanded respect; in fact, as teenagers we were taught not to trust anyone over 30. From point, it seems, the young took the steerTHE MILLENNIALS that ing wheel of society and never let go.Through the decades they have been willing and eager ARE CHANGING to adopt any new technology: from VCRs to DVRs, from Walkmans to PlayStations, from laptops to the World Wide Web. While we THE ESTABLISHED Baby Boomers took to new devices quickly and made them part of our lives, today’s RULES OF THE Millennials, the 14- to 34-year-olds, aren’t just embracing the Internet and new digital platforms, they are changing the established rules MEDIA BUSINESS. of the media business.Their penchant for sharing music files brought the recording industry to its knees. Their preference for watching movies and TV shows wherever and whenever online has overturned traditional business models.

Now there is another revolution in the making—or is there? There is so much talk of cord-cutting: people canceling their subscriptions to cable or satellite providers in favor of over-the-top (OTT) services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or Boxee. Is it cord-cutting or cord-avoiding? I’ve witnessed this firsthand with my son and his friends. As a junior in college he moved out of his dorm and rented an apartment with his best friend. They had a TV but no cable. Why? Because the 20

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TV served as a monitor for their videos games. He graduated and got a job, rented another apartment and still kept a TV for his video games, but no cable. He said he could find any movies or shows he wanted on Netflix. Now, two years and a payroll raise later, he is asking me about wide-screen TVs and cable packages.

He was just waiting to have enough money to afford cable. Research is showing that much of the cord-cutting that is going on in the U.S. is due to the raft of foreclosures—people who have lost their homes and are not able to pay a monthly subscription.

In my household we have cable and we enjoy Netflix.

They each offer a different set of conveniences. I see the two as coexisting; I don’t see one supplanting the other.

What Netflix and the other OTTs have replaced is Blockbuster. Yet cord-cutting is an issue that the television industry is observing very closely, and we have dedicated the main feature in this issue to it—Elizabeth Guider has done another exceptionally good job at reporting this ever-evolving story. I interviewed top executives, including Time Warner’s Jeffrey Bewkes, Viacom’s Philippe Dauman, ESPN’s George Bodenheimer, Showtime’s Matthew Blank, AMC Networks’ Josh Sapan, Liberty Global’s Mike Fries, BSkyB’s Sophie Turner Laing, MTG’s Hans-Holger Albrecht, ProSiebenSat.1’s Andreas Bartl and the RTL Group’s Anke Schäferkordt.

As much as the tastes and habits of younger generations are influencing the media industry, I was very pleased to find that members of my generation are shaping how and what we watch. We have in-depth interviews with James Cameron, whose passion for special effects and 3D are changing movie making; Anne Sweeney—she and her team at Disney/ABC have made content available on multiple platforms and allowed fans to connect even better with their favorite shows; and Jon Feltheimer, who has led Lionsgate to make groundbreaking deals with digital platforms.

And to satisfy my love of history, I had a wonderful chat with the extraordinarily talented Jeremy Irons, who stars in The Borgias. He shared his views of how the use and abuse of power is as prevalent today as it was in Renaissance Italy. I’m still feeling old these days, woefully inept in this fast-moving digital age. I want to speak with my cousin in Italy; I think I’ll have my son download Skype on my computer.

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global perspective

REFLECTIONS ON MEDIA ISSUES

BY BRUCE L. PAISNER

India Rising: Notes from a Journey When Subhash Chandra, the founder of India’s Zee TV, steps up to the podium next month to receive the International Academy’s Directorate Emmy Award, he will be the first Indian so honored, and he will represent a country that has emerged as a major player on the world stage.

Twenty years ago, when Subhash started Zee, such a development was scarcely imaginable. The only television in India was state-controlled. There was no private industry in the media sector. But Subhash both led the way and rode the wave to a remarkable transformation of the media in one of the largest countries on earth.

My wife and I were privileged to spend nearly a month in India last February, much of it on behalf of the International Academy. We met politicians, broadcasters and television stars, looked for tigers in the national parks and spent an evening with the Maharaja of Jodhpur. The Maharaja lives in one-third of his ancestral palace and shrewdly rents the INDIA IS NOW AT A remainder to a luxury hotel.

He has no political power, enormous persuasive WATERSHED POINT IN but influence with his subjects.

His guest a few days before ITS INTEREST IN us had been Bill Gates, looking to enlist the Maharaja’s support for a nearby irrigaAND RELATIONS tion project.

We were struck over and over again by both the riches WITH THE REST of India and the complexities.

Here is the largest democracy OF THE WORLD. on earth—more than one billion people—who somehow govern themselves with a working parliamentary system.

Here are some of the richest people on earth and some of the poorest, who manage to live together in relative harmony, particularly considering the state of conflict in much of the rest of the world. India is charming and bureaucratic, private and crowded, unbelievably beautiful and sometimes dysfunctional, all at the same time. And we saw only a small part of this large, diverse country. There are many Indias, we were constantly told.

After the trip, an American friend asked me if there was some way I could describe India that he could relate to.

What I said was, although there are of course dissimilarities (no tigers, no maharajas), if you think of the United States in the 1950s you might have a pretty good comparison. India now, like the United States then, has amassed great wealth and is building infrastructure of all sorts at astonishing speed.

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It is attempting to right injustices like the caste system that have gone on for centuries, just as the U.S. spent the 1950s starting to come to grips with segregation.At the same time, like the U.S. in the ’50s, India is basically inward-looking, focused on its own life and its own development and not deeply concerned about the rest of the world.When Americans in the 1950s thought about foreign policy at all, they talked mainly about the Soviet Union. With the Indians right now, the foe is Pakistan. The issues are different, of course, but the obsession is the same.

The other notable similarity is the emergence of a vibrant and fast-growing middle class. Indians are taking to the highways and planes, and crisscrossing their country in astonishing numbers, for business and for pleasure. Groups of orderly schoolchildren crowd every tourist site. Education is exploding. And there is an endless compulsion to see and experience things. During our time in the tiger parks, we were surrounded by Indians also looking for tigers—and in a hurry to see one, so they could move on.The growth has inevitably created competing government bureaucracies, and odd contradictions. Though the tourism ministry exhorts people to come see tigers, the environmental ministry insists all visitors stay on the park roads, and forbids the use of cell phones to report tiger sightings. Thus ordinary tourists will see a tiger only if one happens to stray across the road right in front of them. Most leave disappointed.

Internal issues notwithstanding, I believe India is now at a watershed point in its interest in and relations with the rest of the world. All that human energy, and especially that search for a better life, will gradually lead the country to look outward, even as it works to meet the needs of its rapidly emerging middle class. Here is a statistic: only onethird of the population in India even has a television set.

What a market that will be!

We left India with fond memories and a desire to return.

And we are particularly indebted to two outward-looking TV professionals: Anil Wanvari, the founder and CEO of IndianTelevision.com, and Shruti Bajpai, the New Delhibased general manager of HBO India.They organized our meetings, press interviews and social events, and are very insightful on the media scene in India.They are strong symbols of the India to come.

Bruce L. Paisner is the president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

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viewpoint

A LOOK AT INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENTS

BY JEAN PREWITT

On the Fringes of Digital Distribution In the U.S. alone, the independent film and television industry—those who produce programming financed outside the major studios and broadcasters—generates more than 70 percent of the feature films, receives 70 percent of the most coveted awards and, every day, launches the careers of new creative talent.

Traditional distribution channels offer limited space, so much of this output has struggled to reach audiences.

Whenever a new online media venture or platform launches, a rash of articles herald the arrival of “new opportunities for independent creators.” The premise is that every platform will be hungry for content and, to fill the vacuum, will either look far beyond the major studios or offer creators the ability to directly upload content. Yet, as members of the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA) have found, there are significant difficulties in finding a sure commercial footing.

The lag time is atypical. In the early days of the homevideo market, independents were at the forefront in providing content to video stores. As broadcast networks around the world privatized, independents quickly connected to these new buyers for their films.The cable syndication market was also a natural for independently produced TV fare.

This experience has not yet translated to the commercial Internet or VOD. Why? There are several reasons.

The independent business model relies on raising production financing on a picture-by-picture basis, with distributors licensing films in pre-production and guaranteeing royalties against future earnings. Few, if any, of the digital platforms currently “pay upfront,” or participate in the risk of content production.Traditional distributors—who do pay advances—receive both exclusivity within their territory and windows and protection against exploitation by other platforms that would undermine exclusivity.

Moreover, few of the digital platforms are able to effectively exploit independent content. Independents are told that their lineups are too small in relation to the transaction costs involved in acquiring rights. Most platforms want to advertise that they have “everything,” but they don’t actually have the server capacity or search functions to allow consumers to sort through “everything.” Hence, titles without major marketing have little chance of being discovered or making money on the Hulus and iTunes of the world.

Add digital theft to this litany of barriers. Distributors have seen traditional home-video revenues shrink as illegal online distribution has exploded; their contributions to production financing have dropped in parallel. Unlike the major studios, independents cannot “outrun” digital theft by shifting to a worldwide release strategy or by merging windows, because it is impossible to coordinate individual dis24

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tributors’ needs throughout the world. Hiring investigators, lawyers and antipiracy technology firms is not a realistic option. Industry and governments must assist with education and legislation to preserve and restore the consumer’s willingness to pay for content.Without that, the digital marketplace will only realize a fraction of its true potential.

These factors are some of what hinders independents’ entry into the digital marketplace. More significant, however, are limits created by the overall market structure. In the U.S., consumers have at best two choices for broadband access, each of which offers its own “media play.” Unless consumers have multiple choices for broadband access, they have no real choices about content selection. IFTA has been outspoken about the danger that without net neutrality protections, ventures between major media conglomerates and broadband providers will lead to exclusive supply arrangements that lock out independents from online storefronts.

It is crucial to protect against this and promote wireless and other new competitive access choices for consumers.

Despite obstacles, some elements are starting to fall into place, as the digital delivery business matures.

Expanding bandwidth availability and server capacity is critical to reaching consumers by providing shelf space to numerous and diverse titles.This goal is consistent with public policy and has been embraced in theory by broadband providers. Search capabilities are growing in sophistication and will eventually give consumers the ability to find content beyond the “blockbuster” level of today’s digital platforms. Solid metrics to predict audience share and revenue from digital distribution are also within reach, and should allow distributors to factor revenues from digital into their traditional presale and advance deals. Content creators must find new approaches that will appeal to online audiences.

Government must address competition and net neutrality before the marketplace is stunted, locking out independents and limiting the commercial potential for new programming for this medium.

Independents have the content, creativity and energy to take on the new digital environment and help shape entertainment for the future. It is up to us as industry leaders to press for the positive changes that will make this a reality.

Jean Prewitt is the president and CEO of the Independent Film & Television Alliance, the global trade association for producers and distributors of independent programming.

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A+E Networks www.aetninternational.com • • • • •

Picker Sisters Russian Dolls Lifetime movies Raising the Titanic Monster In-Laws

A+E Networks’ Raising the Titanic (working title) seeks to answer the questions of why this “unsinkable” ship became “mortally” wounded and why it broke apart so quickly. “The subject matter should fascinate a broad audience,” says Ian Jones, the managing director for international content sales and commercial development. Picker Sisters is a series from Lifetime in which Tanya McQueen and Tracy Hutson find antiques and adapt and sell them from their L.A. store. “The U.S. audience is fascinated by such programming and we’re confident that this will appeal to a wider international audience due to a unique female touch,” Jones says. Another Lifetime series, Russian Dolls, looks at life within a Russian community in the U.S., while Monster In-Laws allows viewers insight into the relationships between married couples and their in-laws. A+E Networks also has a range of Lifetime movies that appeal to a wide female demographic, notes Jones.

Picker Sisters

“A+E Networks is fortunate to have a broad

range of nonfiction and fiction programming at the market.

”

—Ian Jones

ALL3MEDIA International www.all3mediainternational.com • Beaver Falls • Fresh Meat • Billy Connolly’s Route 66 • Stephen Fry’s 100 Greatest Gadgets • Worth a Fortune

On the heels of the global success of the British hit Skins, ALL3MEDIA International is introducing two new youth-skewing dramas at MIPCOM, E4’s Beaver Falls and the Channel 4 comedy drama Fresh Meat. “New youthappealing drama is always in demand,” says Louise Pedersen, the company’s managing director. “To bring two new major youth dramas to MIPCOM is very exciting for us.” Pedersen also expects strong interest in two series fronted by well-known personalities: in Billy Connolly’s Route 66, the Scottish comedian traverses the famous American highway, and in Stephen Fry’s 100 Greatest Gadgets, the actor and writer counts down his favorite devices. Both presenters, Pedersen says, are “globally known stars with a loyal following worldwide.” Also on offer is a new game-show format, Worth a Fortune, which was recently piloted by ITV.

“[At MIPCOM] we will be focusing on new markets and new-media opportunities.”

—Louise Pedersen

Beaver Falls

THE LEADING ONLINE DAILY NEWS SERVICE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA INDUSTRY. For a free subscription, visit: www.worldscreen.com

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AMC/Sundance Channel Global www.amcnetworks.com • Sundance Channel • WE tv

Introduced to the international market in 2009, Sundance Channel and WE tv, part of the AMC Networks portfolio, have been expanding across the globe. “Our channels are now widely distributed in Asia, Europe and North America, and programming from AMC Networks is seen in more than 30 countries,” says Harold Gronenthal, the company’s senior VP and general manager.“Our focus is to continue to expand Sundance Channel in Europe, as well as WE tv and Sundance Channel in Asia. This includes launching linear channels in HD and SD, offering content on multiple distribution platforms in new markets, and additional launches with partners in countries where we already have a presence.” Gronenthal is looking forward to bringing signature brands from the AMC Networks’ U.S. stable to the international feeds, including Mad Men, with season one slated to roll out on Sundance Channel in Spain and Asia and season two headed to France and Benelux. For Gronenthal, MIPCOM presents an opportunity to “cultivate new business with operators and platforms while continuing to expand our relationships with existing partners.”

“Since the first international launch just over two years ago, we’ve experienced strong growth momentum for both Sundance Channel and WE tv.

”

Mad Men

—Harold Gronenthal

Argonon International www.argononinternational.com • • • •

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake Bravest Freshly Squeezed CashintheAttic.com

“With Swan Lake premiering on Sky Arts

and Sky 3D we would like to push this title internationally to both arts and 3D buyers.

”

The super-indie Argonon brings together Leopard Films, its drama arm Leopardrama and Leopard Films USA with Remedy Productions and Remedy Productions Canada.

Argonon International is taking this content out to the global market, with programs and formats that span the entertainment, drama, factual, lifestyle and factual-entertainment genres. Among them is Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, presented in 2D and 3D. “Firmly crowned as a modern-day classic, this controversial production is perhaps best known for replacing the traditional female swans with a menacing male ensemble,” says Katie Stephenson, Argonon’s sales executive. The Bravest format has been a success for BBC One, with its mix of high-octane drama and real-life crime.

“With the proven success of Britain’s Bravest Cops we would like to push the format Bravest and show broadcasters and producers how it can easily be turned into a franchise,” says Stephenson.Argonon is also presenting Freshly Squeezed and the website CashintheAttic.com.

—Katie Stephenson

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake

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Artear www.artear.com • The Social Leader • Left on the Shelf • Be Kind to Me • More Than Partners • Gypsy Blood

A mix of telenovelas and series will be available from Argentina’s Artear at MIPCOM, led by the The Social Leader. A top performer on Channel 13 (El Trece) in Argentina, averaging a 44-percent share, the series stars Julio Chávez, Gabriela Toscano, Luis Luque and Rodrigo de la Serna. It focuses on a community activist as he works to better his neighborhood. Left on the Shelf, meanwhile, tells the story of three unwed sisters who come to rely on each other in the aftermath of their mother’s death. Be Kind to Me chronicles a relationship in transition as a couple must get to know each other again after two decades of marriage.

Also on the series slate is More Than Partners, set in a law firm, while the telenovela lineup is led by Gypsy Blood.

Artear is also bringing some factual fare to the market, with Fantastic Biographies, Methods—about the creative processes used by artists and musicians—and Tasting Notes, fronted by Argentine Sommelier School director Marina Beltrame.

Gypsy Blood The Social Leader

Azteca www.comarex.tv

“ This year all of our

• Huérfanas • Cielo Rojo (Under a Red Sky) • Emperatriz

productions have a cast of international stars, which makes them very attractive to audiences around the globe.

The new telenovelas from Azteca offer broad audience appeal, according to Marcel Vinay, Jr., CEO of the Mexican broadcaster’s distributor, Comarex.“All our telenovelas have something in common; each one offers an excellent story line that is appealing to young and adult audiences alike.

Love stories that anyone can relate to are presented with the high quality that is characteristic of all Azteca productions.”

Another quality of the slate, Vinay says, is the caliber of the shows’ casts. Emperatriz, for example, is headlined by the well-known novela star Gabriela Spanic. The show has already shored up slots in more than 35 countries. In addition, Vinay notes, Edith González stars in Under a Red Sky. “She’s known for her great career and hits like Doña Barbara and Corazón Salvaje.” The show also features Mauricio Islas, “considered to be one of the most successful telenovela stars in Latin America,” Vinay says.

Rounding out the slate is Huérfanas, the story of three wealthy young girls whose fortunes take a turn for the worse when their parents die.

”

Huérfanas

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—Marcel Vinay, Jr.

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Band Contents Distribution www.band.com.br

“At MIPCOM 2011, Band Contents

• Threedom • Angels of Sex

Distribution will [increase] its business worldwide, expanding distribution from the conventional [platforms] to new media, such as VOD.

Tapping into the plethora of new-media platforms emerging worldwide is a key priority for Band Contents Distribution at MIPCOM, according to Elisa Ayub, the company’s director of international content.

Ayub is leading the efforts to place content produced by the Brazilian broadcaster on screens worldwide and she is eyeing deals with both linear and on-demand platforms in Cannes this month.

On the slate is Threedom, a series about three young people who wind up living together in an apartment in São Paulo. The show will appeal to young-adult audiences, Ayub says.

Angels of Sex is a comedy set in Rio de Janeiro. It follows a pair of “clumsy” angels, Ayub says, who head to Earth to help people with their romantic problems.

“The production is a hot comedy that will [target] and entertain viewers of all different ages.”

Other properties that Band will have available at MIPCOM include the reality shows The League and Police 24h and the telenovela Forbidden Passions.

”

—Elisa Ayub

Angels of Sex

Beyond Distribution www.beyond.com.au • Buzzy Bee & Friends • Dark Minds • This vs That • Classical Destinations • Comedy Catalogue

Comedy Catalogue: Margaret Cho

Beyond Distribution is complementing its strong portfolio of children’s and factual content with an extensive comedy catalogue this MIPCOM. “We started to build this genre a few years back and now we’ve gone ballistic with it!” says Munia Kanna-Konsek, the head of sales. On offer are 35plus titles from artists such as Puppetry of the Penis, Nina Conti and Margaret Cho. Kanna-Konsek notes that it’s “a whole range of artists that would appeal to various age groups and be suitable to a whole range of channels. Beyond has become the one-stop shop for comedy.” Building upon its successful crime-and-investigation strand of programming is Dark Minds. “This series bring fresh eyes and ideas to unsolved serial-killer investigations and the intriguing element of the anonymous source,” Kanna-Konsek says. On the factual front are This vs That and Classical Destinations. Beyond is also bringing a new preschool show to the market, called Buzzy Bee & Friends.

“With strong interest

already registered on a number of titles, the aim is to negotiate across platforms where the end result is happiness for the buyer, producer and the distributor.

”

—Munia Kanna-Konsek

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Broadway Video Digital Media www.bvdigitalmedia.com • As the World Turns • Guiding Light • Another World • Search for Tomorrow • The Edge of Night

Specialized in services such as video encoding and digital asset management, BroadwayVideo Digital Media (BVDM) is making a big push into international content distribution with a recently acquired library of soap operas. Earlier this year, BVDM scored the worldwide rights, across multiple platforms, to a collection of soaps produced by P&G Productions, a division of the consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble.The slate is led by As the World Turns and Guiding Light, together with Another World, Search for Tomorrow, and The Edge of Night. “We’re very excited about bringing almost 21,000 hours of new content to the market in new and different ways,” says Mark Yates, BVDM’s president.The goal forYates is to introduce the series to new markets. His sales team has begun discussions, and “we were surprised at the interest level in places we didn’t expect it, such as Latin America. They’re producers of their own telenovelas, yet there’s absolutely interest in this content.”

Guiding Light

“ We feel that there’s a tremendous pent-up demand [for these titles] because they have not been marketed, they have not been aggressively sold.

”

—Mark Yates

Canal Futura www.futura.org.br • • • • •

Money in the Pocket

Collective Consciousness Leva Money in the Pocket Ecological Footprint Echoes of Brazil

Gearing up for its 15th anniversary in 2012, Brazil’s Canal Futura began celebrating this milestone in September with a variety of commemorative programming. “All of Canal Futura’s programming is dedicated to promoting ethnic and racial equality, community spirit, entrepreneurship and cultural pluralism, combining education and entertainment,” says Lúcia Araújo, the general manager. The slate for MIPCOM includes the short-form animation Collective Consciousness, the documentary Leva, the game show Money in the Pocket, and the environmentally focused Ecological Footprint and Echoes of Brazil. MIPCOM, says Araújo, “is a good opportunity to enhance the relationship with the stations that are already our partners and to start new relationships with channels that identify with our programming. We want to build new contacts in Latin America. The European market also interests us, especially Portuguese-language countries.”

“ We seek to enrich people’s daily

development, offering them entertainment and useful knowledge for life.

”

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—Lúcia Araújo

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Caracol Television www.caracolinternacional.com • The Secretary • Yellow Team • Infiltrated

“Our goal is to continue

The Secretary

strengthening our global position as distributors of innovative and attractive content for our clients.

Commenting on her expectations for MIPCOM this year, Lisette Osorio, the senior director of international sales at Caracol Television, says, “Our goal is to continue strengthening our global position as distributors of innovative and attractive content for our clients. We’re positive that we offer clients a portfolio with the products that satisfy their programming grids: love and humor with The Secretary and Yellow Team, and action, drama and intrigue with Infiltrated.” Osorio says buyers can expect innovative content with high production values from the company, and that its broad-range catalogue features series, formats, and telenovelas full of comedy, action, drama, intrigue and emotion. “The Secretary is a fun telenovela; it tells the story of a man who, after finding out he has a daughter, returns to his country to support her,” says Osorio. “However, the only job he’ll find is a secretary position and he will have to survive in world full of women.”

”

—Lisette Osorio

Carsey-Werner Television Distribution www.carseywerner.com • In with the Flynns • WWI: The War to End All Wars • America’s Serial Killers: Portraits in Evil • Civil War: America Divided • That ’70s Show

Best known for its deep library of classic American comedies and dramas, Carsey-Werner Television Distribution is unveiling a new property at MIPCOM: In with the Flynns.

Produced for BBC One by Caryn Mandabach, the show “is a refreshing family sitcom about a young couple juggling with the dilemmas faced by many young parents today: headstrong children and demanding older members of the family,” says Alexandra Taylor, executive VP of international television distribution. Carsey-Werner will also be presenting a portfolio of documentaries, among them WWI: The War to End All Wars, America’s Serial Killers: Portraits in Evil and Civil War: America Divided.“The documentaries have fascinating footage and should appeal to the increasing number of viewers who are interested in history,” Taylor says.

Rounding out Taylor’s list of MIPCOM highlights is the comedy That ’70s Show. “Set in the past, this great sitcom will never be dated, and the HD format gives it a new life.”

In with the Flynns

That ‘70s Show

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Cineflix Rights www.cineflixrights.com • Casino Confidential • Driving Wars • Design Dealers • My House,Your Money • A Gypsy Life for Me

The distribution arm of the production outfit Cineflix, formerly called Cineflix International Distribution, will be exhibiting at MIPCOM under its new name, Cineflix Rights. “The name change emphasizes how we have been stepping up the company’s growth by exploiting our growing range of genres, increasing our deals in new territories and raising the amount of business we do with other producers,” says Paul Heaney, president and managing director, on the rebrand. Launching Cineflix Rights “with a bang” is a priority for Heaney at MIPCOM, where he is looking to make “our new, bigger booth a must-visit destination.” Also on the agenda is increasing the company’s third-party business through acquisitions and expanding sales to emerging territories. New titles on offer are Casino Confidential, “the first time a top LasVegas casino has opened its doors,” Heaney says; Driving Wars, “a very innovative but simple format”; plus Design Dealers; My House,Your Money; and A Gypsy Life for Me.

Driving Wars

“ There are strong, visual elements to all of

[these shows] which will help broadcasters and platforms attract and retain viewers.

”

—Paul Heaney

Content Television www.contentmediacorp.com • BAMMA • The Millionaire Tour • Strictly Sexual: The Series • Twist of Faith • The Big Goofy Secret of Hidden Pines

The Millionaire Tour

Through its ongoing collaboration with the U.S. digitalmedia studio Vuguru, Content Television will be presenting the thriller The Millionaire Tour at MIPCOM. The title, which stars Dominic Monaghan and Jordan Belfi, is available as a 15x6-minute online series or a 90-minute television feature. “The Millionaire Tour features an all-star cast and a high-voltage story line,” says Saralo MacGregor, executive VP of worldwide distribution.“It is also a great example of a new breed of content that has the level of production value to work across all platforms, allowing buyers to maximize reach and revenue from one single acquisition.” MacGregor is also excited to be presenting BAMMA, a series of events from the British Association of Mixed Martial Arts. “With exceptional production values and renowned commentators, each event provides fantastic content for international broadcasters as we develop BAMMA into a major worldwide brand.” Also available are Strictly Sexual: The Series, Twist of Faith and the TV movie The Big Goofy Secret of Hidden Pines.

“ Our MIPCOM titles all have a strong element of added value, which will make them hugely appealing to a wide variety of buyers at the market.

”

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— Saralo MacGregor

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Echo Bridge Entertainment www.echobridgeentertainment.com • Pearl Jam Twenty • Arachnoquake • Ice Comets • Tasmanian Devils • Teen Days

Pearl Jam Twenty

From Academy Award-winning director Cameron Crowe comes Pearl JamTwenty, a documentary about the band, marking their 20th anniversary. Carved from more than 1,200 hours of rare and previously unseen footage, live performances and recent interviews, the film chronicles the years leading up to Pearl Jam’s formation, their rise to fame and the chaos that ensued soon thereafter. Pearl Jam Twenty is one of several highlight titles from Echo Bridge Entertainment.

Emilia Nuccio, the senior VP of international distribution, says, “Our new slate of made-for-Syfy premieres (Tasmanian Devils, Ice Comets, Arachnoquake and Ghostquake) will be produced by Active Entertainment.” Echo Bridge forged its first partnership with Active Entertainment over a year ago with five films. “The new slate will feature the same high-quality production and CGI effects that Active is known for,” Nuccio says. Echo Bridge is also looking forward to presenting buyers with Teen Days, an animated teen talent show.

“ Buyers have

come to rely on us for the quantity, quality and diversity of programming we offer.

”

—Emilia Nuccio

Electus-Engine Distribution www.electus-engine.com • Fashion Star • Mob Wives • Marco Polo

At the start of this year, Ben Silverman’s Electus set up a global distribution arm with its acquisition of Engine Entertainment. For Chris Philip, the president of the combined operation, called Electus-Engine Distribution, the merger was a “perfect fit…that enables us to secure a growth strategy well into the future.” The Electus-Engine Distribution slate includes a number of properties that Electus is producing for U.S. networks, including Fashion Star, which launches on NBC this winter. “Host Elle Macpherson and celebrity mentors Jessica Simpson and Nicole Richie help up-and-coming fashion designers showcase their brands. We are selling the finished tape and looking to produce locally everywhere,” Philip says.Another key U.S. reality show is Mob Wives, “a fascinating look at the mafia world from inside the family’s kitchen and how the hierarchy and idiosyncrasies of the mob system permeate throughout the entire family.” Philip also sees strong potential for Marco Polo,“a big-budget action-adventure series that will entertain a wide audience.”

Mob Wives

“[We aim to] set up strategic

production partnerships now that we have a wealth of formats and advance discussions in the scripted area.

”

—Chris Philip 42

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Endemol Worldwide Distribution www.endemoldistribution.com

“We are looking to

• Hell on Wheels • Wild Boys • Happily Divorced • The Exes • Leverage

consolidate sales for our new slate of product and continue to secure positioning for the key Endemol franchises that have enjoyed continued renewal over the past years.

Endemol Worldwide Distribution has a host of American dramas and comedies to offer worldwide broadcasters this MIPCOM.There is the co-production with Entertainment One for AMC, the ten-part western Hell on Wheels, about the building of the transcontinental railway in the 1860s.

“This series has it all—greed, corruption, revenge, love—set against the backdrop of the most potent turning point in American history,” says Cathy Payne, the company’s CEO. Back for a fifth season is TNT’s Leverage, with Timothy Hutton, bringing the slate available to 77 episodes.Two TV Land comedies are on offer: Happily Divorced with Fran Drescher, recently renewed for a second season, and The Exes. Endemol is also showcasing a new Southern Star Entertainment drama for Seven Network called Wild Boys. Payne highlights several key unscripted franchises, such as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Fear Factor and Wipeout. “They offer bulk in hours, broad audience and proven performance,” she says.

”

—Cathy Payne

Hell on Wheels

Entertainment One www.eonetv.com • The Firm • Hell on Wheels • The Walking Dead • Call Me Fitz • Rookie Blue

Entertainment One Television is showcasing new and returning dramas at MIPCOM that point to the company’s “ability to attract impressive creative partners and talent,” according to Prentiss Fraser, seniorVP of worldwide sales and acquisitions. Fraser points to The Firm—the television continuation of the 1991 John Grisham novel that will roll out on NBC, Global and AXN worldwide—as an example, noting that the show’s cast includes Josh Lucas, Juliette Lewis, Callum Keith Rennie and Molly Parker. Also new to the market is AMC’s original Hell on Wheels, a co-production with Endemol starring Anson Mount, Common, Colm Meaney and Dominique McElligott. Both shows, Fraser says, “have already generated major buzz without even having premiered yet.” Also available will be three series that have proven ratings success: The Walking Dead, with a second season available; Rookie Blue, also in its second season; and Call Me Fitz, starring Jason Priestley.

The Walking Dead

“ Each of these programs includes a stellar

cast paired with creative and intriguing story lines, setting us apart from any other independent studio at MIPCOM this year.

”

—Prentiss Fraser 44

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Fox Telecolombia www.foxtelecolombia.com • La Mariposa • Lynch • Kdabra • Mentes en shock • Tabú Latinoamérica

La Mariposa

“We hope to showcase

Fox Telecolombia’s recent productions to our clients from around the world.

“MIPCOM is without a doubt the industry’s most important event of the year, and we hope to showcase Fox Telecolombia’s recent productions to our clients from around the world,” says Samuel Duque Rozo, the company’s president and CEO. He notes that Fox Telecolombia’s content is produced with the highest standards, running the gamut from telenovelas and series to documentaries, variety programming and competition shows. “Our highlights for this year include La Mariposa, starring María Adelaida Puerta and Michel Brown,” says Duque Rozo. “[In addition,] there’s Lynch, another series produced for Moviecity. It’ll have 13 onehour episodes and is currently in post-production. The series stars Natalia Oreiro and Jorge Perugorría.” Other titles from Fox Telecolombia’s portfolio include the second seasons of Kdabra and Tabú Latinoamerica, as well as Mentes en shock.

”

—Samuel Duque Rozo

FremantleMedia Enterprises www.fmescreenings.com • The Wedding Band • The X Factor USA • My Babysitter’s a Vampire • Tree Fu Tom • SLiDE

The U.S. version of the worldwide hit format The X Factor arrived this fall, and FremantleMedia Enterprises (FME) will be looking for sales on this brand-new treatment of one of the most successful singing competition formats in the world. FME has also been ramping up its drama efforts, and has The Wedding Band, produced by FremantleMedia North America and Mike Tollin Productions, to offer. The show premieres on TBS next summer. Of FME’s further highlights, David Ellender, the global CEO, says, “There is huge demand for high-quality tween and teen programming, evidenced by the success of My Babysitter’s a Vampire in the U.S.A. I’m really excited about the transmedia elements of SLiDE, which will allow audiences to fully engage with characters and follow their experiences across a number of platforms. For younger audiences, Tree Fu Tom is an enchanting series, with amazing animation and high-class voicing talent.” The show features the voices of the former Doctor Who actors Sophie Aldred and David Tennant.

“ FME has always The Wedding Band

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provided content that reflects what audiences want right now.

”

—David Ellender

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Globo TV International www.globotvinternational.com • Cat’s Cradle • Passione • Miracle Hands • The Cariocas • Extreme Planet

Having seen strong sales across its portfolio this year, Globo TV International is optimistic as it heads into MIPCOM that it will shore up new slots worldwide on its slate of fiction series. Raphael Corrêa Netto, the head of international sales, highlights the telenovela Cat’s Cradle, which, he says, features “the perfect love triangle.... It has been sold to over 15 countries and has achieved superior levels wherever it has aired, especially in Latin America.” Another telenovela on offer is Passione. Set in Brazil and Italy, the show has sold to 14 markets, Corrêa Netto says.Two shorter-run series in the mix are the five-part Miracle Hands, about a doctor who returns to his hometown to face his past, and the tenepisode The Cariocas. Each episode tells the stories of women from different parts of Rio de Janeiro. On the factual front, Corrêa Netto highlights Extreme Planet, “which shows the journey of a team of Brazilian journalists traveling to Antarctica, the Andes, Norway and the Bahamas, facing challenges that test their limits.”

Passione

“Our portfolio is very dynamic and continues [to showcase] programs that were successful in Brazil.

”

—Raphael Corrêa Netto

GRB Entertainment www.grbtv.com • Braxton Family Values • American Greed • Full Force Nature • Hurricane Hunters • Confessions: Animal Hoarding 2

Braxton Family Values

GRB Entertainment’s programs for MIPCOM will appeal to buyers looking for well-performing U.S. shows with broad appeal, says Marielle Zuccarelli, the president of international distribution. She cites as an example Braxton Family Values, a reality series about the singer Toni Braxton and her siblings that is delivering ratings wins for WE tv. In addition, Confessions: Animal Hoarding is one of Animal Planet’s toprated series. American Greed is a CNBC series going into season five. “Full Force Nature season one has been sold in over 150 countries and we are now launching season two.” New to the market is the six-part Hurricane Hunters. “Our goal is to keep expanding our global reach and to strengthen our relationships with producers and broadcasters,” Zuccarelli says. Part of the company’s expansion plans includes its entry into the scripted-content market.

“Our initial goal is to acquire 10 to 15 features a year, both theatrical and made-for-TV movies,” she says. “By 2012, we are planning to produce our own films.”

“ GRB is …

bringing the highest quality of nonfiction that engages and inspires viewers around the globe.

”

—Marielle Zuccarelli 48

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High Hill Entertainment www.highhillentertainment.com • • • • •

Mystery’s Dangerous Seductions Novela Confessions Star Ranking Delicious Passion Plus

Novela Confessions

High Hill Entertainment’s Mystery’s title has several attractive features, explains Carlos Mesber, the company’s CEO, beginning with the composition of the story telling process. “It’s an anthology series portrayed by lead actors from telenovelas. In addition, everything has been filmed cinematically with the highest quality.” With Dangerous Seductions, the story line is one similar to love stories from telenovelas, Mesber says. “The premise takes place in the Latin showbiz industry, where everyone seems to be unsympathetic and callous. Here, the real protagonists are love and suspense. This dramatic series is also filmed cinematically with supreme quality.” Novela Confessions is a show about television gossip and showbiz. Also with star power, Star Ranking is a countdown of the top 25 Latin celebrities. “A show like this has yet to be produced featuring actors from telenovelas,” Mesber adds. Delicious Passion Plus interviews the most famous telenovelas’ lead actors in a kitchen.

“ We are always looking to partner up with other production companies.

”

—Carlos Mesber

ICAP Media www.icap-media.com • Lucky • Bad Actress • The Legend of Hell’s Gate • Raspberry Magic • Absentia

Following the completion of its acquisition by the brokerage firm ICAP, Moving Pictures Film & Television has been rebranded ICAP Media. Now led by Dean Becker as CEO, the newly renamed company has expanded its library, which now encompasses more than 400 feature films and 300 hours of HD content. The slate that is being presented at MIPCOM includes the dark comedy Lucky, with Colin Hanks and Jeffrey Tambor, and the western The Legend of Hell’s Gate, starring Eric Balfour and Summer Glau. There’s also Raspberry Magic, about a girl who thinks she can save her parents’ marriage by winning the science fair; Bad Actress, with Chris Mulkey and Corbin Bernsen; and God Don’t Make the Laws. Other highlights are the thriller A Dangerous Place, the horror film Absentia, the crime offering Cartel War, a package of films under the 2012: Apocalypse banner and the documentary series Mysteries of the Universe.

The Legend of Hell’s Gate

Absentia 50

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Illusion Studios www.illusionstudios.com • Sueña Conmigo • OkUpArte • Chronicles of a First Time • Teo Scratch • Illusion Park

Teo Scratch

Since its launch, three years ago, the Argentine production outfit Illusion Studios has been keen to make a name for itself on the international market by making co-production and distribution deals with major players. On the tween series Sueña Conmigo, for example, Illusion worked with Televisa and Nickelodeon, while Peter Punk is a co-production for Disney XD. Having found success building those properties into multiplatform brands, the company has been “encouraged to increase the number of projects of development,” says CEO José Luis Massa. Illusion is looking to firm up European partnerships on its new slate, which includes Chronicles of a First Time, Teo Scratch and Illusion Park, a preschool multiplatform project.“Our idea is to replicate the format first in Latin America, then arrive with a significant brand positioning in Spain and then spread to [the rest of ] Europe,” notes Gastón Cami,VP of international sales and co-productions. Driving the company’s business in Europe is its director of sales and co-productions for the region, Adrián Sicilia.

“From the very initial idea, [we] design properties that will become global brands.

”

—José Luis Massa

Incendo www.incendo.ca • • • • •

Look Again

Deadly Hope Crisis Point Burden of Evil Do No Harm Look Again

Turning ten this year, the Canadian producer and distributor Incendo is unveiling a new slate of TV movies featuring recognizable female leads under its Incendo Thriller banner. There’s Look Again, with V ’s Morena Baccarin—about a woman who suspects that her boyfriend was murdered by her best friend’s lover—Deanna Russo and Lauren Holly in Do No Harm, Natalie Zea in Burden of Evil and Rhona Mitra in Crisis Point. Rounding out the slate is Deadly Hope. “As we celebrate our ten-year anniversary, I am pleased to continue to supply our clients around the world with outstanding edgy, modern movies that have established Incendo as a leader in its field,” says Gavin Reardon, who heads up international sales and co-productions at the company. Incendo is producing five to six TV movies a year, and currently has some series in the works for production in 2012.

“I am pleased to continue to supply our

clients around the world with outstanding edgy, modern movies.

”

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—Gavin Reardon

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Kanal D sales.kanald.com.tr • Time Goes By… • Fatmagül • Lady’s Farm • A Night in June • Forbidden Love

“ We will keep

Lady’s Farm

adding new hit TV series to our catalogue to satisfy our existing clients’ demand for new content.

Broadcasters across Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Africa have developed a taste for Turkish dramas recently, a trend that has benefited the international sales arm of broadcaster Kanal D. “There is huge competition between major players in the Turkish free-to-air market, which is the reason for the huge improvement in the [local] dramas,” says Ozlem Ozsumbul, the head of sales and acquisitions at Kanal D. “Production companies and TV channels in Turkey are investing more in the business in general. This means better content for our customers.” Owned by the Turkish media conglomerate Dogan, Kanal D will be at MIPCOM with a view to building upon broadcaster relationships it has developed in Central and Eastern Europe and Africa, as well as expanding its client list into east Asia and Latin America.

On offer are the dramas Time Goes By..., Fatmagül, Lady’s Farm, A Night in June and Forbidden Love.

”

—Ozlem Ozsumbul

MarVista Entertainment www.marvista.net • Dangerous Attraction • 3 Holiday Tails • Shattered Silence • The National Tree • Fairfield Road

In August of this year, MarVista Entertainment secured a new investment from a group led by venture capitalist Brian N. Sheth with a view to stepping up its expansion plans.

The financing will be used to expand MarVista’s 2,000hour-plus library. “We have produced over 100 hours of original programming, and the additional investment will allow us to build upon our current level of production, and accelerate our acquisitions strategy to augment our already significant distribution catalogue,” says CEO Fernando Szew. Priority titles at MIPCOM are Dangerous Attraction, 3 Holidays Tails, Shattered Silence, The National Tree and Fairfield Road.“We also have six original movies in development, all to be produced in 2012,” Szew notes. “As always, MIPCOM serves as an ideal industry business platform whereby we have the opportunity to meet with broadcasters to learn directly from them [about] any current trends in their market, what types of programming are working for them, and what new programming they are looking for.”

The National Tree

“ The additional investment will allow us to build upon our current level of production and accelerate our acquisitions strategy.

”

—Fernando Szew

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Mediabiz www.mediabiz.com.ar • • • • •

Left on the Shelf Sleeping with My Boss Killer Women Nine Moons Coffee Stories

The Buenos Aires-based Mediabiz is the international scripted-format agent for a number of production companies in Latin America, including fellow Argentinean outfits Pol-ka and Quark, Prodigo from Brazil and Be-TV from Colombia. On behalf of Pol-ka, Mediabiz is bringing to the market the dramedy Left on the Shelf, the comedy Sleeping with My Boss and the true-crime drama Killer Women, which has been “successful in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and Italy,” says Alex Lagomarsino, founder and CEO. Mediabiz is also showcasing Nine Moons, about a pair of obstetricians who fall in love, and Coffee Stories, revolving around a group of characters in a café.“Their extraordinary stories and great scripts attract audiences,” Lagomarsino says. Building its business in Asia and Eastern Europe is Mediabiz’s priority for MIPCOM, he adds. The company also hopes to “expand our business on the co-production side and offer production services for international companies.”

Left on the Shelf

“ These shows have been

successful in prime time, getting high ratings on Argentine TV and in the countries where they have been sold.

”

MediaCorp www.mediacorp.sg The Rest of My Life Is for Sale

• Angels of Troubled Paradise • Street Teachers • Living for the Dead • The Rest of My Life Is for Sale • The Pupil 2

For four years, the Singaporean broadcaster MediaCorp has been working with Japan’s NHK on the Asian Pitch, an initiative to support the production of documentaries from Asia. MediaCorp is bringing to MIPCOM four titles from this collaboration: Angels of Troubled Paradise, Street Teachers, Living for the Dead and The Rest of My Life Is for Sale. “The Asian Pitch has successfully discovered original stories from around Asia,” says Sharon Loh, the assistant VP of the content-distribution division. “The result is the production of original documentaries with an Asian perspective.”

Adding to the MediaCorp mix is a Singaporean legal drama, the 13-episode The Pupil 2.“Exposure at MIPCOM gives us the opportunity to explore licensing rights on new-media platforms such as video-on-demand, IPTV, the Internet and mobile,” says Loh.“Other than content offerings, we are also looking into collaborations with interested partners to aggregate our content to create specific channels.”

“ We are confident that these new titles will

be welcomed by buyers at MIPCOM given the increasing appetite for Asian material.

”

—Sharon Loh

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—Alex Lagomarsino

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Mentorn International www.mentorninternational.com • Life’s Too Short • An Idiot Abroad • Sirens • How Sex Works • Full Throttle Saloon

An Idiot Abroad

Continuing its association with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, Mentorn International is unveiling the second season of An Idiot Abroad—which follows Karl Pilkington around the globe—at MIPCOM. Also on the slate is Life’s Too Short, the new comedy from Gervais and Merchant featuring Warwick Davis. Rounding out the comedy slate from the company is the Channel 4 show Sirens. The three comedies “have already attracted a huge amount of interest around the world,” says David Leach, Mentorn’s managing director. Leach is also excited to be presenting shows from the U.S. production outfits owned by Mentorn’s parent, Tinopolis: A. Smith & Co. Productions, BASE Productions, Mentorn USA and Pioneer U.S.The highlights include Full Throttle Saloon and How Sex Works.“Our new U.S. series and formats from our new partners will follow the success of Mentorn USA’s Paradise Hotel, Work Out and Worst Driver and will be an excellent fit with our catalogue,” he says.

“ We are now the one-stop shop for major

new British comedy shows, including both of Ricky Gervais’s new series.

”

—David Leach

National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (FINAS) www.finas.gov.my • The Challenger • The Malay Chronicles: Bloodlines • Mantera • KL Gangster • The Ancient Pushovers

The Malay Chronicles: Bloodlines

Heading the Malaysian delegation at MIPCOM this year— a group organized by the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (FINAS)—is Sri Kamaruddin Siaraf, the secretary general of the country’s Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture. His presence speaks to the Malaysian commitment to enhancing its content-creation and export capabilities. More than 30 Malaysian companies, representing broadcasters, new-media outfits and producers of documentaries, drama, animation and film, will be on hand showcasing their products. Titles available at the Malay pavilion include The Challenger, The Malay Chronicles: Bloodlines, Mantera, KL Gangster and The Ancient Pushovers. At least one-third of the companies will be attending MIPCOM for the first time. “The Malaysian contingent’s objective this year is to put innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship at the forefront of the global film and multimedia content supply chain,” says Siaraf.

“ The [content] market in Malaysia has grown tremendously and

positively in the past year, thanks to the great commitment and concerted effort of the Malaysian government.

”

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—Sri Kamaruddin Siaraf

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NBCUniversal Television Distribution www.nbcuni.com • Alphas • Grimm • Smash • Suits • Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan

With the integration of the Comcast and NBCUniversal content libraries now complete, NBCUniversal Inter national Television Distribution has a total of 4,000 feature films and 75,000 episodes to offer buyers. The slate for this year’s MIPCOM is drawn from NBCUniversal’s flagship NBC broadcast network as well as its stable of hit cable properties. From Syfy there’s Alphas.

USA Network’s newest hit is the legal drama Suits. G4’s Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan is a ten-part docu-series inspired by the Oscar-winning feature film The Hurt Locker. From NBC, meanwhile, are the new crime series Grimm and the musical drama Smash.

Grimm

Smash

ole Communnications www.olemm.com

With offices in Toronto, Nashville and Los Angeles, ole has established itself as one of the world’s largest independent music publishers. Founded in 2004, the company has amassed a library of 40,000 hours of TV music. It represents TV and film publishing rights for several content owners, including MGM, Scholastic Entertainment, Cineflix, Nelvana, WGBH and DHX Media. It also offers producers access to its 100-percent rights-cleared song catalogue through oleclear.com. The company is headed to MIPCOM “to identify new prospects for publishing deals, interact with current clients, increase ole’s visibility in the audiovisual production community and, above all else, build relationships,” says David Weitzman, the company’s director of business development. “Many of the most successful deals closed at ole started with meeting a decision-maker at MIPCOM.”

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“Many of the most successful deals

closed at ole started with meeting a decision-maker at MIPCOM.

”

—David Weitzman

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Opus Distribution www.opusdistribution.com • Deadly Sibling Rivalry • Ring of Honor Wrestling • I Want Your Money

Over the past year, Opus Distribution has enlarged its operations with the appointment of a new salesperson and the expansion of its slate beyond feature films and TV movies. Marking its MIPCOM debut is Opus’s first series, Ring of Honor Wrestling. The 60x52-minute series, which features action from the Ring of Honor professional wrestling league, delivers “high-flying and athletic stars,” says Ken Dubow, the president of Opus. The company is also showcasing a timely documentary with I Want Your Money. Available in one-hour and 90-minute versions, the film uses interviews and animation to look at the debate over taxes in the U.S., contrasting President Barack Obama’s policies with those of President Ronald Reagan. On the movie front, there is Deadly Sibling Rivalry.

I Want Your Money

“ I Want Your Money is a new documentary on the taxation fight in the U.S. told through expert witnesses and satirical animation.

”

—Ken Dubow

Osiris Entertainment www.osirisent.com • Ashes • Clear Lake, WI • Bunnyman • The Fall • Cayman Went

Cayman Went

Founded by the filmmaker Evan Crooke, Osiris Entertainment has positioned itself as a high-quality supplier of feature films. Crooke, the company’s founder and CEO, says that the company brings “great entertainment at an affordable price to our buyers worldwide.”

Buyers can peruse a slate that includes Cayman Went; The Fall; Clear Lake, WI; Bunnyman; and Ashes.“An integral part of the film-acquisition process at Osiris is to constantly monitor the marketplace for the specific genres that appeal to the widest possible audience,” Crooke says. “Our topperforming properties, along with many other films in the Osiris library, feature notable casts, compelling story lines, strong production values and eye-catching artwork.”

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“ Osiris Entertainment’s

strength is the ability to deliver very strong [and] commercial independent films at an affordable price for our buyers worldwide.

”

—Evan Crooke

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Playboy Television International www.ptvioriginals.com Foursome

• Foursome • The Stash • Playboy’s Sextreme Makeover • Celebrity Sex Tales • Badass

Playboy Television International has expanded its portfolio with the creation of the Playboy Light brand.“We’ve taken some of our most popular titles and created nonnude versions,” says Marisa Tamburro, director of sales and marketing. “Shows like Foursome still have all the drama, sexiness and intrigue of the originals but can now be enjoyed by a wider audience. We hope that our Playboy Light library will entice buyers who don’t currently have erotic blocks on their channels.” Also on offer are “femaleappealing reality series [and] high-action travel/adventure content for guys,” Tamburro says. She highlights The Stash, Playboy’s Sextreme Makeover, Celebrity Sex Tales and season two of Badass.

“ Playboy is excited

to introduce a mix of reality-style series and new non-nude versions of our most popular shows.

”

—Marisa Tamburro

Radio-Canada www.radio-canada.ca • • • • •

On Zenon’s Farm Greenpeace: From Hippies to Lobbyists Meltdown Ecclestone’s Formula Reach for the Top

Radio-Canada holds the rights to a broad library of content that includes animation, concerts, documentaries, dramas, interviews, news and more. At MIPCOM, the company will be highlighting the kids’ series On Zenon’s Farm; the doc specials Greenpeace: From Hippies to Lobbyists and Ecclestone’s Formula; the factual series Meltdown; and the quiz format Reach for the Top. “We’ve built a solid reputation as documentary producers and distributors over the years,” says Robert Trempe, the senior executive director for revenue at Radio-Canada French Services.

“The quality of our production is appreciated and recognized, and we believe that now we are in a position to offer buyers other production genres.”

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“ The goal is that, for broadcasters

around the globe, the Radio-Canada brand become synonymous with quality production.

”

—Robert Trempe

Greenpeace: From Hippies to Lobbyists

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Rainbow Releasing www.rainbowreleasing.com • • • • •

Queen of the Lot Just 45 Minutes from Broadway Festival in Cannes Eating: A Very Serious Comedy About Women & Food Hearts and Minds

Rainbow Releasing is the international distributor of feature films from the well-known independent director Henry Jaglom, including his most recent release, Queen of the Lot.The film, a Hollywood satire starring Noah Wyle,Tanna Frederick, Christopher Rydell, Peter Bogdanovich and Mary Crosby, headlines Rainbow Releasing’s lineup. Sharon Lester, the director of distribution, will also be talking to clients about Just 45 Minutes from Broadway, which also stars Frederick, as well as Judd Nelson, David Proval, Julie Davis, Jack Heller and Michael Emil. Several of Jaglom’s previous releases will be highlighted at MIPCOM, including Festival in Cannes, with Maximilian Schell, Anouk Aimée, Greta Scacchi, Ron Silver and Zack Norman, and Eating: A Very Serious Comedy About Women & Food. Rounding out the slate is Peter Davis’s Oscar-winning 1974 Vietnam War documentary Hearts and Minds. Lester is eyeing both broadcast and DVD deals for the slate.

“ All [of these titles]

Queen of the Lot

Record TV Network www.recordtvnetwork.com • Jackpot!

• Samson and Delilah • Esther, the Queen • The Law and the Crime • 50 by 1

Jackpot!, a Brazilian telenovela about a group of friends who win the lottery, is Record TV Network’s top property for MIPCOM. The series scored a 22-percent share in its home market and touches on themes such as corruption, intrigue, betrayal, prejudice and romance, says Delmar Andrade, the director of international sales.

“Besides the telenovelas, we also [offer] Samson and Delilah; Esther, the Queen; The Law and the Crime; [and] documentaries such as 50 by 1, Extreme Savage, X-Ray Adventure, Reporter Record and Camera Record,” he says.

Discussing Record’s international business, Andrade says that African countries in particular—Cape Verde, Mozambique and Uganda, among others—have shown an affinity for the broadcaster’s productions. “In addition, we have advanced significantly in negotiations with the Middle East. In Europe, Portugal transmits our telenovelas on [free] and also pay TV.”

Jackpot!

“ Jackpot! tells [the story of] what happens to the lives of those who become millionaires overnight.

”

—Delmar Andrade

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are highly acclaimed, well-reviewed films with North American theatrical releases.

”

—Sharon Lester

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Rive Gauche Television www.rivegauchetelevision.com • • • • •

Born to Explore Hollywood’s Hot List Girl’s Guide to Depravity Ca$h & Carry Do You Know What You Did Last Night?

Richard Wiese, an Emmy-winning producer and the youngest person ever to have served as the president of the Explorers Club, takes center stage in Rive Gauche Television’s new series Born to Explore. The host of the 13-part series travels across continents in search of experiences not found in guidebooks. The company is also bringing to the market Hollywood’s Hot List, a countdown clip show consisting of ten half-hour episodes.

Having recently expanded into formats, Rive Gauche also has a studio game show, Ca$h & Carry, and a comedyreality title, Do You Know What You Did Last Night?, inspired by The Hangover. On the scripted front, Rive Gauche is highlighting the comedy Girl’s Guide to Depravity. “We are constantly searching for good ideas that aren’t currently on the air and place our bets on these [shows] because we believe they fill a void in the marketplace,” says David Auerbach, the president.

Girl’s Guide to Depravity

“ Clear and compelling concepts and

fresh talent are what will make our shows and formats appealing for buyers.

”

— David Auerbach

RTI Producciones www.rtitv.com Pasión de Gavilanes

The focus for the Bogotá-based RTI Producciones is on letting the world know that Patricio Wills has resigned from his post as the president of Telemundo Studios and is now back as the president of RTI. The outfit will continue to develop stories and production services for Telemundo, as RTI maintains its position as one of the largest independent TV production facilities in Colombia. RTI is behind many Hispanic TV hits, and is now available to work with other clients. RTI has produced approximately 9,500 hours of fiction (telenovelas, series and comedies)—including Pasión de Gavilanes and Queen of the South—1,500 hour of entertainment (reality and game shows), 500 hours of sports and 2,500 hours of musicals and documentaries, among other products.Wills has been involved in the production of more than 35 telenovelas and multiple entertainment shows. He has collaborated in the development of TV shows with many of Latin America’s most important writers, among them Gabriel García Márquez and MarioVargas Llosar.Wills has also led the international distribution efforts of RTI, which resulted in agreements with companies such as Disney, Discovery, Globo, Sony, Telemundo and Televisa.

Queen of the South

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RTVE www.rtve.es Cuéntame cómo pasó

• Águila roja • Cuéntame cómo pasó • Amar en tiempos revueltos • Un país para comérselo • Plaza de España

Águila roja, one of RTVE’s programming highlights, portrays the struggle against criminals who spread panic and oppression in Spain. David Janer plays humble schoolteacher and loving father Gonzalo de Montalvo, who hides his double identity as the avenging Águila roja. Cuéntame cómo pasó is a series that takes a trip down memory lane, with a touch of tenderness and humor, while Amar en tiempos revueltos revisits the Spanish historical period between the fall of 1945 and spring of 1948, where two characters from different social classes interact. On the documentary front, RTVE offers Un país para comérselo, in which Imanol Arias and Juan Echanove explore Spain’s gastronomy and landscape. “We’ll be launching the news program Plaza de España and mini-series, [especially] Operación jaque, which tells the story of the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt,” says Rodolfo Domínguez Alfageme, the commercial director at RTVE.

“ We’ll [be presenting buyers with] a

selection of the company’s best titles.

”

—Rodolfo Domínguez Alfageme

Saban Brands www.sabanbrands.com • Power Rangers Samurai • Paul Frank Industries

After having returned to television in February, Power Rangers Samurai’s next target is retail shelves worldwide. Saban Brands, together with its licensing and merchandising partners, is planning to launch merchandise in key international territories in the fourth quarter of this year and into the beginning of 2012, says Kirk Bloomgarden, the senior VP of international licensing. This follows the introduction of Bandai toys into U.S. retailers earlier this year; other categories hit shelves in time for the back-to-school season in the fall. “We’re covering all markets between now and the first quarter of next year,” Bloomgarden says. “Western Europe is all going out now and Latin America as well.

Australia just launched in July. So the remaining markets in the first quarter of 2012 will really be Eastern Europe and some of the emerging markets—Turkey, etcetera. And then we will have covered the globe.”

Saban is also discussing plans for Paul Frank Industries brands—including the iconic monkey Julius—which the company acquired last year.

Power Rangers Samurai

“ We recognize that digital is so important today.

It’s a huge play for us.”

—Kirk Bloomgarden

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Scripps Networks International www.scrippsnetworks.com Andy Bates’ Street Feasts

• Food Network • Fine Living Network

Over the last year of building its business in Europe, Scripps Networks International has been thrilled with the “mercurial rise of Food Network in the U.K.,” says Bob Baskerville, the general manager. “The U.K. ratings are up substantially, driven by increased sampling of the channel and strong stickiness.” Given the maturity of its British business, Food Network U.K. has stepped up its local commissions strategy, beginning with Andy Bates’ Street Feasts and followed up by Reza, Spice Prince of India. Outside of the U.K., Scripps has notched up carriage deals for both Food Network and Fine Living Network in Europe. In addition, “we’ve been gradually expanding carriage of our channels in parts of the Middle East” and Africa, says Baskerville. “In less than eight months, we have seen Food Network become the secondhighest-rating lifestyle channel on [MultiChoice]. This quick success has led us to become even more intent on building a business in South Africa that’s committed to the territory for the long haul. That means we’ll be increasing our presence in terms of affiliate support, localized content and talent procurement, marketing investment, all of that.”

“ In just about 18

months’ time, we have become one of the unquestionable leaders in lifestyle programming in the U.K.

”

—Bob Baskerville

SevenOne International www.sevenoneinternational.com Louie Spence Dance Project

• Lilyhammer • Betty White’s Off Their Rockers • The Greening of Whitney Brown • Louie Spence Dance Project • You Deserve It

It’s been a particularly good year for SevenOne International’s U.S. business. Its Dick de Rijk format You Deserve It has been picked up by ABC, while Benidorm Bastards has been remade for NBC as Betty White’s Off Their Rockers. Jens Richter, SevenOne’s managing director, is also looking forward to presenting a new U.S. TV movie, The Greening of Whitney Brown, which has a cast that includes Aidan Quinn and Kris Kristofferson, as well as the drama Lilyhammer, which stars The Sopranos’ Steven Van Zandt.

Another well-known personality on the slate is Louie Spence, the choreographer and dance instructor featured in Pineapple Dance Studios. The six-part Louie Spence Dance Project is slated to air on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.

All of these shows, Richter says, “are produced with a clear focus on the English-language markets. Featuring international stars and commissioners like ABC, NBC and OWN, this is truly international programming.”

“ These programs reflect the diversity in the product we can provide viewers.”

—Jens Richter

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Shaftesbury www.shaftesbury.ca • Good Dog • Resistance • Totally Amp’d • From Spain with Love • Who’s Sorry Now?

Over the last few years, Shaftesbury has expanded its distribution portfolio beyond live-action kids’ fare. Its slate for MIPCOM includes the Ken Finkleman comedy Good Dog. On the factual end, there is Who’s Sorry Now?, a “timely documentary focused on high-profile scandals,” according to Shane Kinnear, senior VP of sales and marketing, and the lifestyle food and travel show From Spain with Love with Annie Sibonney. On the kids’ front, meanwhile, Kinnear highlights Resistance, “one of the most ambitious kids’ series ever made, which focuses on five teenage resistance fighters trying to fend off an alien invasion.” He continues, “We’re looking forward to talking to existing and new partners about our growing slate of digital properties. We’re excited to be bringing our first online and mobile series to the market, including Totally Amp’d, a new series for tweens that combines traditional content with interactive elements for an entirely fresh approach to kids’ entertainment.”

“ From drama and

comedy to kids, lifestyle and documentary, Shaftesbury is bringing its widest-ranging slate ever to MIPCOM this year.

”

From Spain with Love

—Shane Kinnear

Shine International www.shineinternational.com The Hour

• Mobbed • Bar Rescue • The Hour • The Listener • The Biggest Loser

The mix on offer from Shine International covers every part of a broadcaster’s schedule, says Matt Vassallo, the VP for Latin America and U.S. distribution.“Our scripted slate is stronger than ever, with series including The Hour and season three of The Listener, with the latter now sold in more than 50 territories.” The Hour, which recently scored a second-season commission from the BBC, is set in the world of TV journalism in the mid-1950s. On the unscripted side, Vassallo highlights Mobbed,“a truly unique format with an incredible mix of singing, dancing and performance coupled with hidden-camera surprise.” The formats Bar Rescue and The Biggest Loser feature transformations.“Bar Rescue really breaks down a strategic approach to running a successful business,” explains Vassallo.“As well as winning the hearts of U.S. audiences on a massive scale, The Biggest Loser has also gone on to achieve remarkable international success.” The show boasts 54 series produced in more than 100 territories.

“ We want buyers to look to us to identify

new programming across all genres, from the world’s leading reality competition franchises to multi-rig factual programming to never-before-seen shows that reach coveted demographics.

”

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—Matt Vassallo 10/11

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Starz Media www.starzglobal.com Spartacus: Vengeance

• Magic City • Spartacus: Vengeance • Dan Vs. • A Christmas Wedding Tail • Stolen Child

The original-programming strategy at Starz in the U.S. is bearing fruit for the premium network’s distribution arm, Starz Media. The division, led by Gene George as executive VP of worldwide distribution, comes to MIPCOM with two new original dramas: Magic City, slated for an April 2012 debut, and the second season in the Spartacus franchise, Spartacus:Vengeance. “We are concentrating on very high-quality genre content unlike anything ever before seen on television,” George says.

“Since we are creating this content for our pay premium channels in the U.S., our shows tend to be more edgy, which also adds another level of appeal to the marketplace.” George will also be talking to clients about the animated series Dan Vs., now in production for a second season, and two TV movies: A Christmas Wedding Tail, starring Jennie Garth and Brad Rowe, and Stolen Child, starring Emmanuelle Vaugier.

“ Starz has focused its growing original-

programming slate under the premise that our content must have global appeal.

”

—Gene George

Televisa Internacional www.televisainternacional.tv • Double Life • The One Who Couldn’t Love • Pequeños Gigantes • Hoping Heart • Darling Sweetheart

Telenovelas dominate Televisa Internacional’s portfolio of new properties for MIPCOM. There’s Double Life, in which Angélica’s life is thrown into disarray when her husband, Santiago, is involved in an accident and disappears.

He is eventually proclaimed dead and after two years of mourning Angélica marries a wealthy older man, Ricardo.

But Santiago returns and Angélica must cope with living separate lives with the two men she loves. Another novela, The One Who Couldn’t Love, revolves around the residents of Hacienda del Fuerte, including the ailing, bitter Rogelio, his sister Cynthia and his nurse Ana Paula. The series Hoping Heart focuses on a woman who starts her life over after the death of her husband. A new Televisa novela with a comedic bent is Darling Sweetheart. Rounding out the slate is a light-entertainment format called Pequeños Gigantes. In it, eight teams of children between the ages of 4 and 12 demonstrate their talents.

The One Who Couldn’t Love

Pequeños Gigantes

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The Television Syndication Company (TVS) www.tvsco.com • • • • •

80 Waves

Playing Through 80 Waves Baldo Real Life 101 Ron Hazelton’s Housecalls

The Television Syndication Company (TVS) is looking to reach a wider group of broadcast clients with its family entertainment. On the slate is the reality format Playing Through, about three young men trying to make it into the PGA Tour. On the documentary front, one of the highlights is 80 Waves, looking at professional surfers. “It has already been licensed to German-speaking territories, Brazil and Australia,” says Cassie M.Yde, the president of TVS. Also in the factual arena is the lifestyle series Ron Hazelton’s Housecalls.The show, saysYde,“has been on air throughout the U.S. for ten years. He demonstrates no-measurementsneeded home projects, so there won’t be a problem with metric versus U.S. units.” TVS is also presenting its first animated project, Baldo. “We are very excited that this has both English and Spanish tracks available and a valuable message to deliver,” Yde says. She also highlights the kids’ education series Real Life 101.

“ TVS is now in its 22nd year, and 2011 is

proving to be a banner year due to our everexpanding catalogue of compelling content.

”

—Cassie M. Yde

Tricon Films & Television www.triconfilms.com • • • • •

Love Trap

Metal Evolution Michael, Tuesday’s & Thursday’s Love Trap InSecurity Game Changers

Tricon Films & Television is coming to MIPCOM with a broad catalogue encompassing both scripted and lifestyle fare. Titles taking top billing include the 11-part Metal Evolution, which “delves into the vast world of heavy metal, a genre of music that has been popular worldwide,” according to Jon Rutherford, VP of sales and acquisitions. Also in factual is Game Changers, about inventors who are changing the world. Love Trap gives participants the chance to reveal a secret crush.

Comedies in the mix are InSecurity and Michael,Tuesday’s & Thursday’s. “Tricon is coming to MIPCOM with both a strong [back] catalogue and great slate of new titles,” says Rutherford. “We are continuing to further our expansion into new genres, in scripted prime time as well as factual and kids. Our goals are to meet with new potential partners as well as providing new content to our existing clients.”

“ Whether scripted or lifestyle, our series

have high production values as well as themes or topics that appeal to international audiences.

”

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—Jon Rutherford

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Tuvalu Entertainment www.tuvaluentertainment.com • Innovators That Changed the World • Sugarland

Tuvalu Entertainment is building its business on the basis of top-notch creative partnerships. “We believe the global collective partnership of Tuvalu Entertainment, with our international broadcast co-producers and investors, illustrates how an entertainment-content company can harness the experience, expertise and dynamism of some of the most exciting and creative entertainment minds today who are all working together towards a common goal,” says Paul Johnson, the company’s CEO and executive producer. “We consistently listen to what our broadcast partners need and are creating premium television with the potential for the best audience ratings at the lowest possible cost. Aside from that, and perhaps more importantly, we give a minimum of 10 percent of our net profits to Tuvalu’s goal of becoming the first country in the world to be 100-percent sustainable in energy, water and food by 2020.” Johnson notes that the company is working on a select group of projects, including Innovators That Changed the World, which, Johnson, says “will entice and inspire millions of viewers with very relatable human stories of hard work and achievement,” and Sugarland.

“ Tuvalu Entertainment specializes in premium film, TV and digital productions created [through] partnerships.

Innovators That Changed the World

”

—Paul Johnson

Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution www.foxfast.com The Playboy Club

• Terra Nova • New Girl • Homeland • The Playboy Club • American Horror Story

Some of the fall season’s most buzzed-about new shows are on Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution’s slate. There’s the long-awaited Terra Nova, focusing on an ordinary family that travels to prehistoric times as part of an experiment to save the human race. The series’ list of executive producers includes Steven Spielberg, Peter Chernin, Brannon Braga, René Echevarria and Jon Cassar.

New Girl is a comedy starring Zooey Deschanel as a geeky but lovable young woman who moves in with three single guys after she suffers a difficult breakup. Adapted from an Israeli drama, Homeland is a new series for Showtime with Claire Danes as a driven CIA officer who is convinced that a celebrated American soldier is actually part of a sleeper cell planning a terrorist attack. New for NBC is The Playboy Club, which is set in the ’60s. It’s from executive producer Brian Grazer. And from Glee’s Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk comes American Horror Story.

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Venevision International www.venevisioninternational.com • Passions of the Heart • Natalia • The Black Widow • See the World • Animal Atlas

Natalia

Expanding its library beyond telenovelas, Venevision International is offering the worldwide market the wildlife series Animal Atlas as well as documentaries such as The Pulse of Latin Music and the travel show See the World. These will be available at MIPCOM alongside new novelas, including Passions of the Heart, from Venevision Productions in Miami; Natalia; and The Black Widow. Also on the agenda for MIPCOM is further expanding the reach of Eva Luna, says Cesar Diaz, VP of international sales. The show has been a tremendous success for Venevision with sales worldwide, including in Spain, where it airs on TVE. Commenting on Venevision’s worldwide business, Diaz says Englishand Portuguese-speaking markets in Africa are a focus, as are Asian territories such as Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and China. The company’s Eastern European business has also been strong.

“ The telenovela genre

has no boundaries and its success is recognized worldwide.

”

—Cesar Diaz

Vision Films www.visionfilms.net • • • • •

Lake Effects Beautiful Wave Beautiful Wave Unscripted Coral Reef in 3D Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: A Diamond Celebration

The family dramas Lake Effects and Beautiful Wave are two of the feature films that Vision Films will be bringing to MIPCOM. “We offer a large array that will play well at either prime time, daytime or late night,” says Lise Romanoff, the company’s managing director.

Romanoff also mentions that the films have “good cast [members], such as Jane Seymour, Aimee Teegarden, Steven Bauer and Mena Suvari, and good story lines, such as coming of age, families reuniting, overcoming addiction and finding retribution.” By way of documentaries, the company is offering several specials, featuring, among others, Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga; the 85minute Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: A Diamond Celebration; plus Coral Reef in 3D. Rounding out the slate is Unscripted, which Romanoff describes as “a long-running celebrity talk show that is up close and personal and relevant.”

“ [The last two years] have been very good for

us as we continue to expand our programming from features and documentaries to now include TV series.

”

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—Lise Romanoff

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WWE www.wwe.com Raw

• Weekly Flagship Shows (Raw, SmackDown, NXT and Superstars) • WWE PPV Specials • WWE Tough Enough • WWE Studios • WWE Digital Opportunities

WWE Raw will soon be reaching its milestone thousandth episode. “This longevity is testimony to the strength of our weekly flagship shows and the legions of fans that we have worldwide,” says Dominic Hayes, the senior VP and managing director of WWE International. Hayes says the weekly flagship shows drive viewers to WWE’s pay-per-view specials, where the story lines of the weekly programs conclude and the start of the new dramas take place.“This strategy has ensured WWE has remained one of the world’s leading PPV producers for over 20 years.” WWE Studios has found success with its first four movie releases as an independent production house. A further four titles are slated for release over the next year, as well as more co-production titles in the future. “We are also...constantly looking at new business models within the mobile and online arenas,” he adds. The slate is complemented by WWE Tough Enough.

“ WWE continues to be a leading and

innovative content provider, airing in more than 145 countries in 30 different languages.

”

—Dominic Hayes

Zephyr Media Group www.zephyr-media.com • Vibrant TV

Zephyr Media Group is leading a consortium of companies to launchVibrant TV, a U.S. channel dedicated exclusively to programming from the international market. Slated to launch in June 2012, the channel will air blocks of programming in the genres of lifestyle, reality, sports and kids. Zephyr Media’s CEO, Dan Zifkin, and an acquisitions team will be at MIPCOM to meet with broadcasters and producers. “As an industry and MIPCOM veteran, I am aware of the extensive amount of compelling international TV programming that is currently not being seen in the U.S.,” Zifkin says. “American viewers deserve to have access to this content!” Of his acquisitions remit, Zifkin says he is looking for “programming that reflects the lifestyle, attitudes and viewpoints of countries and cultures around the world that will appeal to the mass audiences of the U.S.We believe Vibrant TV will be a window to the world with respect to programming for the American viewers.”The plan for MIPCOM is to “establish strategic partnerships with producers and distribution companies, to continue our review of the compelling programming available for the U.S., and to share our vision of Vibrant TV with broadcasters and producers.”

“ Vibrant TV promises to be a unique

alternative for viewers in the U.S., enabling them to experience the world through the eyes of producers and people from other cultures and societies.

”

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—Dan Zifkin

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PROFILING TELEVISION’S HOTTEST STARS

BY ANNA CARUGATI

With a voice that is rich, deep, mellow, sometimes unsettling, always convincing, and smooth as a glass of good cognac, Jeremy Irons is a prolific and versatile actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune. He has often played complex, conflicted, sometimes less-than-ethical characters, most recently Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, patriarch of the infamous and powerful family at the height of the Renaissance, in Showtime’s series The Borgias. Irons, who has also won two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy and a Tony, took time out from filming the second season of the series to speak with World Screen.

the past I had done a program about F. Scott Fitzgerald for Showtime and they had aired Lolita and I’d been very affected by the way they show their product—they take a lot of care about it. So that was all good. The idea of a five-month stint [it takes five months to shoot a complete season of The Borgias] and doing something possibly for future years worried me a little bit, but I had been watching how better and better work was being done on American television. Some of the series are really splendid in the way they are made. So I thought, why not? Let’s go for it.

That’s how it came about.

Jeremy Irons WS: How did you become involved in the project?

IRONS: I was approached by [the director] Neil Jordan, who told me he was writing a series. He’d had a film for a long time he was trying to get made about the Borgias; finally, he decided he would offer it to a television company as a series. So for the first time in his life he was writing a television series and he asked me if I would be interested in playing Rodrigo, who becomes Pope Alexander VI. I said, “Let me think about it,” and I did some research and discovered that Rodrigo was an immigrant from Spain. He was a very large man. I’m not a large man, so I said to Neil, “You really should get somebody who looks more like him,” He said, “No, no, no, no, it’s all about power and the abuse and use of power.

You know all about that.

You can do that. No one knows what Rodrigo looked like.” So I thought, I’d love to work with Neil. We had talked about it a lot in the past; he is a consummate filmmaker. In 86

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WS: Rodrigo Borgia is nothing if not complex. What

appealed to you about his character?

IRONS: It’s interesting, he was a newcomer amongst

the Roman families. He was very powerful and, like many of the rulers of that time, very Machiavellian, as we would now call it. When Rodrigo died he was vilified by a succeeding pope and [then developed] a bad reputation, not only Rodrigo as a pope, but the whole family. When you delve into the history books and the biographies, you discover that that was not necessarily the truth. One book in particular I was researching listed all the adjectives that had been used to describe Rodrigo.

They were extraordinarily broad in spectrum. He was a great church organizer. He was quite concerned and quite successful about strengthening the Vatican, which was in a very weak position when he became pope.

He was wonderful company, great bon viveur, a man of great appetite for food and for women and for all of life, really, in that Spanish and Mediterranean way. And on the other end there was the fornicator, the murderer and the assassin and a lot of very negative adjectives. And I thought, this is very interesting, let’s try and find out what makes this man—either good or bad— [behave the way he does]. A man who, while being head of the church with an explicit belief in God, a man of his time, also managed to have 12 children and many lovers. I thought that is a very interesting character to try to weave through. From my research, reading as widely as I could, a lot of it writing that was written while he was alive, Neil and I together really tried to create this powerful man who loved and lived hard, and who I suppose in modern eyes, probably behaved quite badly on occasion.

WS: Are there still parallels from the Borgia reign to cer-

tain realities in our world today?

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ing your concentration up, keeping your enthusiasm up.

One of the great things is that over [the course of a season] we have four directors, so one of the challenges is adapting to the new way the director will work. But all in all it’s a very pleasurable job, actually.

WS: Throughout your career you have often played

Playing a pontiff: Irons stars as Rodrigo Borgia in the Showtime series The Borgias, sold worldwide

by CBS Studios International.

IRONS: I certainly see them.The seat of power is a very complicated place, whether it be Washington or Brussels or wherever. I don’t think people change. I’ve always felt that [throughout] history, reading what people have said and what people have thought, their ideas may change as they build on each other’s, but I don’t think people are any different, and the way power is used and abused is really no different. The methods may be different but still, if we decide from a seat of power to get rid of somebody, that person is got rid of.We still spin or lie, however you’d like to call it, to cover our tracks. I don’t think the wielding of power has changed at all.

roles that were conflicted or not completely ethical.

What sort of roles appeal to you?

IRONS: I’ve had some great opportunities but I’ve always known that I wanted characters that really interest me, who don’t necessarily add up immediately, who have enigmatic qualities, who have the complications which we as human beings have. It’s very rare, apart from people like Shakespeare or Harold Pinter or some of the great dramas, that you get characters who are flawed as we all are and yet possibly good at times, who have many layers. That’s what I always try to look for, people who interest me.... It’s sort of a gut instinct that I have when I read something. In a way, one of the joys of acting is you have an opportunity to explore someone else, and it’s quite nice to explore someone who is a fascinating character. That’s what I’ve always looked for, apart, of course, from always wanting good directors and good production, so that one’s work is backed up. And then, of course, good sales at the end, so that hopefully one’s work is seen.

Too much drama is made, especially in film, which is really interesting and which never really gets out there, unfortunately. With DVDs we have a longer run, but it’s terribly important that the work we do does get seen, otherwise we are wasting our time.

WS: Can you reveal anything to us about season two

of The Borgias or is it a guarded secret?

IRONS: Season two will probably move a bit faster.We’ve

WS: What challenges does a TV series present to you

as an actor that are different from the challenges that shooting a feature film would present?

IRONS: Well, one of the great gifts of television is that one has more time. We’ve had nine hours to tell the story that we have transmitted [in the first season]. We are going to have ten hours to transmit the second. If it goes to four seasons, which it might well do, there will be 39 hours to tell the story of 12 years, which means that you can go into much greater depth.You can play the inconsistencies.You can have the luxury that you don’t have in a feature film— which in a way is more like a short story—to go into depth of character and depth of story. And although with The Borgias there are many stories happening and so everybody gets their allotted time, you are still able to have the luxury of a greater amount of time than you do in a film.

So that is one of the main advantages. The challenge is that it’s a long haul; it’s five months. Fortunately, we are shooting in Budapest, which is a very nice place to shoot.

I like that I have the occasional couple of days to sort out my life. So I would say that the challenges are just keep88

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spent a long time in season one setting up the whole situation, and now the characters are off and flying.You’ll see new characters, but that’s probably about all I can say.

WS: What other projects are you involved in?

IRONS: The picture Margin Call, which I made with

Kevin Spacey, is based loosely around the Lehman Brothers collapse, which I think will be an interesting film. I have a picture I just finished called The Words, which will probably be coming out next spring. I’m looking forward to the re-release in 3D of The Lion King [Irons was the voice of Scar], which will be fun for everybody.

And after this I’m going off to make Henry IV parts one and two, which will be for British television, directed by Richard Eyre. It will be nice to get back to some Shakespeare. And then I’m off to make a picture with Bille August, the director I worked with in The House of the Spirits, and then a picture called Night Train to Lisbon.That’s what I have in store. I can’t see a lot of time out, but that’s how I like it.

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MAKING HEADLINES IN THE MEDIA INDUSTRY

BY ANNA CARUGATI

Personality of the Year:

Anne Sweeney

As technology continues to serve up new platforms and devices, some media executives have been nervous or complacent about finding additional ways to satisfy viewers’ desire to enjoy content wherever and whenever they want. Not Anne Sweeney. As co-chairman of Disney Media Networks and president of the Disney/ABC Television Group, she is at the helm of a team that continues to explore possibilities in the digital world, from the groundbreaking deal with Apple in 2005 that made episodes of some ABC shows available for purchase on iTunes, to streaming episodes online on ABC.com, to creating apps for the iPad. She has also made significant deals to turn broadcast television into a multi-revenue business. For these and many other accomplishments, she has been named MIPCOM 2011 Personality of the Year.

WS: What have you learned about how consumers are viewing content?

SWEENEY: We’re really seeing the continuing evolution of television and we know our consumers want flexibility. This is the demand that’s driving multi-stream viewing.They want access to their content on whatever their platform of choice is, whether it’s a TV, a PC, a mobile phone or, most recently, an iPad, as well as on our digital platforms—ABC.com’s full episode player and the ABC Player iPad app. The majority of the viewing takes place in the first week an episode is available. So this tells us that we’re still seeing the digital platforms being used primarily as a catch-up tool allowing people to watch episodes that they’ve missed. Continuing the evolution of putting our content on other platforms, we started to develop iPad apps. We created the Grey’s Anatomy Sync app, the Oscars Backstage Pass app and the ABC Family Chatterbox app. There were really three key reasons to do these. The first was to create real stickiness with our viewers. The second was to deepen their engagement with our shows and our brand, and the third was to enhance the linear television experience. We’ve launched all of these apps over the last 12 to 18 months, and more than anything it tells me how innovative our team is and how prepared they are to take risks to deliver their content in new ways that would be compelling to our audience. A couple of our apps have been nominated for Emmy Awards, which has been very exciting for everyone, but we’re really focused on creating technology that changes our business and improves the production of our content.

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than 20 technology innovations that are patent pending right now. The ABC Player iPad app launched the day the iPad was available in stores.

WS: You’re finding that all of this viewing off the network is incremental, right?

SWEENEY: Yes. We do research constantly on this, we still see that it’s incremental. Even though the iPad app has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times and we’ve clocked about 40 million episode starts to date, the viewing remains incremental.

WS: Has it been a challenge to get advertisers to follow your programming from the linear channel to ABC.com?

SWEENEY: You know what’s so interesting, after we announced the iTunes deal, my phone of course lit up like a Christmas tree. We were getting phone calls from our broadcast affiliates, from advertisers, from a myriad of our business partners. The phone call was, “I understand why you did this, but whatever you do next, put us in the mix.

Plan to take us with you.” So six months later, we launched the ABC full episode player and we did a beta test for 60 days. We invited ten of our broadcast affiliates and ten advertisers in and we said, “We’re going to be doing research throughout. We’ll share all of the research with the people who came into the test and then we’ll decide whether this is a good idea or not.” One of the great things about that test is we all learned together that this was a very good idea and we saw going forward what we needed to do to make it a great experience.

WS: ABC has also made deals with Netflix.Tell us about

those deals, and can over-the-top services be a friend to a broadcaster or a cable network?

SWEENEY: The key is really to be experimental, and when getting into a deal with Netflix, making sure we give ourselves the ability to do shorter-term deals that allow us to look at the results and to study our consumers and see how they’re using these services. So as a content provider we see any viable method of commercially and securely delivering our content to consumers as good.

So the key going forward is really establishing business models that provide us with a fair return on our investment, and we’ve been very careful about determining which content to experiment with on these platforms.

WS: You launched ABC TV On Demand last year on

BT Vision in the U.K. Do you have plans to launch more on-demand services in other territories?

SWEENEY: We do, and actually I love the ABC TV On Demand backstory. Ben Pyne’s [the president of global distribution at Disney Media Networks] team, led by Catherine Powell, came to me one day with the idea of ABC TV On Demand.We’re always very cost-conscious in our business and I loved the idea but I said, “OK, great.Wonderful.

Figure out how to do it within your budget.”And they went

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off and developed the technology and today we’re on BT Vision in the U.K., having launched in September of 2010. In March of this year we launched the service in Portugal with ZON Videoclube, followed by Germany with Vodafone in April, and we hope to announce more launches in European markets in the next few months.

WS: It used to be that many in the media business considered cable and satellite services better positioned in today’s very fragmented marketplace because they had a dual revenue stream, while broadcast TV was considered weaker because it only has advertising.

But how is the view of broadcast TV changing and how are retransmission and affiliate license fees making broadcast healthier?

SWEENEY: You hit the nail on the head.The retransmission consent fees, the fees from the licensees from affiliates, have made the broadcast-television business a multirevenue-stream business for the first time in history. Just in the past year we closed some groundbreaking deals with Cablevision, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. We see that these operators now recognize the value of our broadcast content with cash compensation for retransmission.We’ve also reinvented our relationship with our ABC affiliates.We really have established an unprecedented level of collaboration with them and our recent agreements with our affiliates across the country ensure that we’ll realize greater revenue from their success going forward as well. We’ve also done something that is fascinating and hasn’t been done before, but I’m happy to say we’re leading the charge. We’ve created something called an inventory exchange system [which offers each ABC station the opportunity to buy commercial slots in shows that air on the ABC network at an appropriate price for their particular market], thus allowing the network and the affiliates to maximize the monetization of ad inventory.We’ve really injected entrepreneurial thinking and market dynamics into a model that hasn’t changed literally for 60 years.This will basically allow the broadcast network and the affiliates to look at the value of the commercial time and have an exchange system where whoever has the most opportunity can derive the most value.

and we have very, very positive buzz on Twitter and Facebook and other social-networking sites.

WS: It is fascinating to see that Facebook and Twitter and other social media are creating opportunities to reach your viewers in ways that you didn’t have a few years ago.

SWEENEY: Yes, it’s fascinating to us. Once Upon a Time, which is a new ABC Studios show, really earned the most praise in social media when we gauged it against the number of impressions. Good Christian Belles was another one that was getting enormous buzz, and this was weeks and weeks before they went on the air.

WS: The economics of daytime network television have changed to the point where now you are replacing some beloved soap operas with other kinds of shows.

SWEENEY: Yes, it has changed really dramatically.We’ve been watching the ongoing evolution of viewers’ appetite and quite frankly this evolution brought a lot of challenges to our established schedule. We made many attempts to adapt to the challenges.We moved All My Children to Los Angeles.We cut budgets back.We did everything to try and preserve these great stories, but in the end, the audience for daytime dramas had diminished dramatically and they just weren’t at a level where we could sustain that kind of programming. We looked at the success of The View and we did a lot of research about what viewers of daytime television really want. So we shifted our daytime business accordingly and have developed programming that we believe will help viewers have a path to a better life.

WS: What has Paul Lee, the president of the ABC Enter-

tainment Group, been preparing for this fall season?

SWEENEY: Well, Paul had a very ambitious and I believe

very successful development season. He has put together a strong schedule that balances the stability of some of our hits with some very big creative swings.When you look at the roster of talent that he’s attracted to ABC...it’s a very, very exciting time for ABC the network and ABC Studios. In fact, we’re going to be showcasing the world premiere of one of our mid-season shows, Missing, at MIPCOM. We have, of course, paid very close attention to social media

WS: What role is ABC News playing in offering consumers news on multiple platforms?

SWEENEY: News is actually the perfect content for the digital era because its value is in its timeliness. People want to stay connected to what’s happening in the world....We were early movers in the digital space with ABCNews.com. We have an iPad app, which delivers ABC-quality journalism and a very customizable user experience. We’re also leveraging social media to bring viewers the stories they care about and to engage them

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Best served cold: Emily VanCamp headlines the cast of the new ABC drama Revenge.

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in the news

Fairytale ending: Once Upon a Time is a new fantasy-drama series airing on ABC on Sunday nights as a lead-in to Desperate Housewives.

in those stories.... During the 2008 presidential election we partnered with Facebook to bring real-time insight into the campaigns and the candidates’ debate. And during the Michael Jackson memorial, I feel that ABC News took our efforts in that online community to a whole new level. We made it possible for users to link to ABCNews.com, participate in polls about Michael Jackson’s legacy and watch video-on-demand clips of the service that were posted throughout the day. They could also share their memories of Michael Jackson with other members of the online community that were created on that page. So it’s not just about delivering the news, it’s about engaging people in news and encouraging the conversation.

WS: ABC Family has some very successful shows. Wasn’t

Paul Lee the one who started the whole original-programming thrust on ABC Family? Has that strategy paid off?

SWEENEY: Oh, very much so. Paul was the president and really founder of this millennial strategy, and Kate Juergens is our head of programming who developed all of these shows. The Walt Disney Company bought what was the Fox Family Channel ten years ago.The first thing we always look for is the gap—we look for what’s missing in the landscape—and we realized that there was a huge group of viewers who were being overlooked and underserved. It’s that young-adult demo; they had aged out of Disney Channel but they hadn’t fully aged into ABC.We called them the millennial generation. They’re the kids between the ages of 14 and 34 who grew up...in this digitally enabled world.

They’re very tech savvy, they’re a driving force in social networking and they’re also the largest generation in the history of the U.S. There are 86 million of them, which also 92

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makes them a huge consumer force, and this offers wonderful opportunities to our advertisers. So we paired great content with technology, and ABC Family became a true social network. It became the first TV network not only to give viewers the shows that resonated with them, but it also gave them the social-media interactivity. This is very important because those millennials thrive on social interactivity and they have an expectation that it will be part of entertainment. So at ABC Family, we engage our viewers before, during and after our shows via Facebook, Twitter, ABCFamily.com and other sites.We knew from our viewers that The Secret Life of the American Teenager was a hit long before the ratings came in because we saw hundreds of thousands of viewers go online to talk about the show right after it aired. It actually crashed our website in the process—always a good sign!

We see ABC Family as an area of potential growth [internationally]. Its shows have been selling very well outside of the U.S. WS: You’re being given the Personality of the Year award at MIPCOM. What does this recognition mean to you?

SWEENEY: First of all, it’s an incredible honor. I spent more than 20 years working in the international television arena, and it’s been a great experience. To be recognized in this way is just extremely gratifying. But the best part to me is that it gives me a huge platform to publicly acknowledge, thank and celebrate everyone in the Disney/ABC Television Group and our Disney Media Networks team. They create the best content in the world.They continue to develop new and innovative business models and they are just a wonderful group of people that I’m privileged to work with.

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t’s hard not be jealous of program buyers. Not only do they work in a thriving and exciting business that allows them to shape the viewing habits of millions, they are pampered and fêted at every turn. As Kevin Lygo, who is now the managing director of ITV Studios, told us in 2006, when he was the director of television at Channel 4 in the U.K., “I thoroughly enjoy the week in Los Angeles at the Screenings, where I am treated like some Russian billionaire arriving in a limo. They take you to the theater and about eight people greet you, ‘Are you ready to see our programming now?’ and you answer, ‘Naw, I think I’ll have another latte.’ You sit there not believing you are being paid for watching the wonderful new dramas and comedies coming up on American telly. And then you go to some gorgeous hotel poolside—that’s a tough job.”

All kidding aside, it is a tough job, and everyone in the business understands how crucial imported programs are to the health of a network. A top acquisitions executive must have the ability to predict the success of a show, and, with a

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dash of luck, choose a gamechanging program that will shatter the previous ratings records in its time slot. This executive must also have the ability to counter program the schedule of a competing outlet, do research to better understand the viewing habits of the viewers, and negotiate increasingly complex multiplatform agreements.

We at World Screen have long recognized the importance of these men and women and their contribution to the industry.At MIPCOM 2011 we are pleased to partner with Reed MIDEM to celebrate the achievements of four of these executives by awarding them with the Content Trendsetter Award. Each comes from a different background: one is the buyer for the most successful pay-TV operator in Europe, one acquires programs for Canada’s leading commercial network, one buys for one of Britain’s terrestrial services, and one is the acquisitions executive for four networks in Mexico.They each are well established and praised by their peers, having worked successfully in their positions for several years. Let us introduce them to you.

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Mike Cosentino Senior VP of Programming CTV Networks, Canada CTV is Canada’s largest private broadcaster. It offers a wide range of news, sports and entertainment programming and has been the mostwatched television network in Canada for the past nine consecutive years. To maintain this leadership position, Mike Cosentino has had to secure the best American programming, including CSI, The Mentalist and Grey’s Anatomy.

For the 2011–12 season, CTV has placed its bets on Pan Am, Unforgettable and Whitney.

CTV, like the other Canadian networks, broadcasts these series simultaneously—on the same day and time—as the U.S. networks.

That means that when Cosentino is at the L.A. Screenings in May, viewing the pilots of the new network offerings, he has only a few

hours to make his buying choices, to try to snatch up the shows he wants away from his competitors and secure them in time for their premiere in September.

A 16-year veteran of the broadcasting industry, Cosentino developed an eye for acquisitions and program scheduling while working directly under two of Canada’s pre-eminent programmers, Susanne Boyce and Ivan Fecan, from 2007 to 2011.

Over the years, he notes, “Some of my successful acquisitions have been The Voice, The X Factor, The Mentalist, Unforgettable and Smash.”

He is also quite proud of the decision to strip The Big Bang Theory Monday through Friday, a strategy that has delivered a huge, and young, audience.

Jeff Ford Director of Programs Channel 5, U.K. Jeff Ford oversees three linear channels at the British commercial broadcaster and an online on-demand service. Channel 5 is a generalentertainment channel that offers American hits like the CSI franchise, NCIS, The Mentalist, documentaries, entertainment, films, the children’s block Milkshake!, Europa League Football and cricket coverage.The channel 5*, which launched as Five Life in 2006, became FIVER in 2008 and was rebranded as 5* in March of this year, attracts a younger audience with a mix of soaps, movies, entertainment, documentaries and edgier series like Californication, Burn Notice and Archer. On 5USA, the offerings include some of most popular American series, as well as drama, comedy, films, sports and youth programming. Demand 5 is a 30-day catch-up service that provides viewers online access to much of Channel 5’s prime-time schedule.

Ford has been part of Channel 5’s growth at two different periods in his career. He was there for its launch, in 1997, and helped build the channel for eight years. He then joined Channel 4 in 2005 and was responsible for buying both feature films and series for the broadcaster’s portfolio of channels: Channel 4, E4, More4 and FilmFour. During this time he acquired some of the most sought-after U.S. series, including Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives. He returned to Channel 5 in 2009 and has shepherded its bouquet of services through the change in ownership from the RTL Group to Northern & Shell, a publisher of newspapers and magazines. He has witnessed the evolution of the television business. “When once it was a linear offer, things were simpler in terms of programming.

Now, we are looking at shows that can still be relevant or entertaining through VOD months later.”

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Sarah Wright Head of Acquisitions BSkyB, U.K. Sarah Wright acquires product for a portfolio of channels that include the general-entertainment channel, Sky1, which offers mainstream family viewing with imported shows like The Simpsons, Fringe, Lie to Me, Modern Family and The Middle; the contemporary and classical arts channels Sky Arts 1 and Sky Arts 2; the British home of HBO programming, Sky Atlantic, with such series as Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire and Curb Your Enthusiasm; and the entertainment channel Sky Living that appeals to both men and women but is more of a female channel. It airs imported shows like Bones, Criminal Minds, Nikita and Cougar Town.

This range of programming requires not only an instinct for which dramas and comedies will click with her audience, but also an understanding of

theater, opera, dance, jazz, rock and classical music to satisfy the most discerning of viewers. After all, for a pay-television service, the goal is not to score a certain rating in a given time slot, the key is supplying a flow of programming that will increase customer satisfaction—and will maintain a loyal subscriber base.

“Buyers have always been on the hunt for ‘the next big thing’—it’s at the core of our job description—and editorial judgment has always been vital,” says Wright. “But now we need to be ahead of the curve with our knowledge of new technology, keeping constantly abreast of market developments, so that we can acquire the right set of programming rights to keep our customers happy.”

Carlos Sandoval General Manager of Content Acquisitions, Online Video and Business Development,Televisa, Mexico Televisa is a powerhouse, the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world. Its businesses range from film and television production and distribution to free-TV and payTV channels and to professional sports and live entertainment. As big as the conglomerate has become, the heart of Televisa, and the vehicle through which it touches the lives of millions in Mexico, is its four free-TV channels. Canal de las Estrellas is the flagship channel, with telenovelas, variety shows, news and sports programs. Canal 5 mixes homegrown and international productions, children’s and youth programming and internationally acclaimed series like CSI and Law & Order.

Galavisión presents novelas, wrestling, movies, series, including American hits, com-

edy programs and news. FOROtv focuses on news and analysis of current events and business during the week, and films on the weekend. Sandoval acquires programming for all four channels.

All buyers find themselves, at one point or another in their careers, with limited budgets, due to contractions in the advertising market or to domestic or global recessions. Sandoval has recently weathered such difficulties. “I am proud of having maintained our relationships with the Hollywood studios through several difficult years. Most of the output deals that we have in place were made before my time, but renewing them, while trying to satisfy opposing needs and navigating through six years and a world crisis, has been a challenge.”

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creator’s corner

EXPLORING THE CREATIVE MINDS BEHIND THE WORLD OF TELEVISION PRODUCTION BY ANNA CARUGATI

The Bold and the Beautiful ’s

Bradley Bell While some prime-time dramas barely make it past two episodes, the daytime drama The Bold and the Beautiful has been on the air for more than two decades. It premiered in March of 1987, created by soap-opera legends William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell, with their son Bradley working as a writer.

Today, Bradley is head writer and executive producer of this daytime serial that is seen in 100 countries around the world.

WS: Even though it is very much a Los Angeles show, it has resonated with audiences around the world.What is it that somebody from Italy or Asia can relate to in the show?

BELL: It’s stories about sisters and brothers, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers. No matter what language you speak or where in the world you live, that is the international language of family. Everyone understands it and can relate to it. All of these stories have a moral component where people are trying to do what’s right, but don’t quite know which way to go. The characters aren’t good or bad, they are human beings with different personality traits, and in the end hopefully they are uplifting and beautiful life-affirming stories.

WS: What has been the secret to the show’s longevity?

BELL: There is no one secret.

It’s been a wonderful collaboration between actors and directors and writers and distributors and timing. So many things worked for us that it’s hard to single out one thing, but I think it’s been a wonderful chemistry between the writers and the actors that has really shined throughout the series.

WS: Sadly, a number of soaps have been cancelled. How

WS: How do you work with your

WS: Have you had all these characters living inside your

team of writers?

BELL: I really guide the story. I have two associate head writers working to flesh out the outlines, which will then go to the dialogue writers. The scripts then return to me and I will edit them. But I’m really the one, as I have been for 20 years, guiding the story as head writer.

is it that The Bold and the Beautiful is going strong?

BELL: Network television has [evolved a great deal].

Viewing habits are changing. There is competition from cable and satellite. There is the Internet with web series.

But as with any industry, strong business models will survive. For us it’s been such a blessing to be distributed in 100 countries around the world. That gives us the ability to sell the show domestically at a deficit and still be able to produce it and have the business model work.

Other shows that haven’t had global distribution can no longer make a go of it; it’s simply too expensive. That is what separates our show as a business.

head all the time for the past two decades?

BELL: Nonstop. It’s unbelievable, it’s so consuming, but

it’s so wonderful. It’s so much fun to wake up in the morning and immediately I go into the characters, in the shower, on the drive to work. It’s wonderfully consuming!

I think the family gets a little annoyed when I check out once in a while. They can tell their dad’s not in the room even though physically he is! It’s something that I lived through with my father and I get it. I just love it.

WS: You’ve given the show a new look, a new opening

and more exterior shots. You even shoot scenes outdoors, which is uncommon for a daytime drama.

BELL: We made a decision a few years ago to bring the city of Los Angeles in as a character of the show. So we wanted to bring in more shots of the city and we wanted to get outside more. I was down in the studio, and although I’ve been there 20 years, I noticed there were these giant doors that led out to a terrace. I thought, why are we not opening these doors and shooting outside? So we investigated it, we got an extension cord for our cameras, so all we need to do is wheel them out to the terrace, and it’s turned out to be a real fresh look for the show.

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WS: The business has certainly changed since 1987.

BELL: If someone told me that there would be 200

choices and we’d still be on the air I would have bet against it, but I’m so happy that we are still here.

WS: But from the beginning it’s always been a show

about relationships.

BELL: Definitely, and it’s about romance. I think that even

with these 200 channels there is very little romance on television. It’s so important and it’s fun and it’s beautiful.

October will be a very romantic time and there will be a great wedding and a location shoot outside of California in a spectacular setting—it’s going to be epic!

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THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS FROM HOLLYWOOD

BY ANNA CARUGATI

NBCUniversal’s

Jeff Shell As the president of NBCUniversal International, Jeff Shell is responsible for several businesses, including international TV production and distribution and global television networks. He must also keep an eye out for international growth opportunities for NBCUniversal and Comcast Corporation, his division’s parent companies. He recently relocated to London from Philadelphia, where he was president of Comcast Programming Group, and has been restructuring NBCU’s international activities.

nitely want to get behind the labels that we have like Carnival, which produced Downton Abbey, a huge international success, not just in the U.K. Monkey Kingdom and Chocolate Media are our factual-entertainment production entities, and Matchbox is highly regarded for its quality drama, as well as factual entertainment. For all our production brands, we want to give them the resources they need to ramp up their production slate.We’ll be opportunistic and look for other ways to invest—but we’re much more focused these days on increasing and supporting the entities we have as opposed to buying additional assets.

WS: NBCUniversal owns Carnival Film & Television and

WS: What growth do you see in the international program-distribution business?

SHELL: I’m very optimistic about the TV-distribution business for a number of reasons. Number one, we have a very good business despite our U.S. content engine not operating on all cylinders. If you look at the shows we have to sell internationally, we’ve clearly been handicapped in recent years by the lack of hit dramas from the NBC network. The company is re-investing in the broadcast network, with Bob Greenblatt coming in as the chairman of NBC Entertainment. From the international TV distribution perspective, we’re looking forward to increased content coming from the U.S., which will help our business.

Secondly, one area often overlooked is the success of international sales for U.S. cable original productions, which has exploded in recent years. We have the number one leading U.S. cable channel, USA Network, and many of its shows, whether Covert Affairs or Suits, sell extremely well internationally.This was my first year attending the NBC Universal International screenings in May.The show Suits played as well as any drama we had. It shows that buyers aren’t as concerned anymore with where a show’s coming from—good content is good content.

Lastly, we’ve already had some success with local production from places like Carnival. The fact that we can sell local content combined with strong U.S. content positions us well to continue to grow our distribution business.

Monkey Kingdom in the U.K. Do you have plans to acquire production companies in other territories?

SHELL: We recently acquired an interest in a production company in Australia called Matchbox Pictures. We defi-

Armed and ready: NBCU’s distribution slate includes hit U.S. cable series like Covert Affairs.

WS: How are you positioning NBCUniversal’s international business?

SHELL: One of the first things we did was combine our Universal Networks group with our TV-sales operation.

That’s important to understand because you walk into a territory with a number of different assets, and each territory has a unique set of variables to be considered. In some territories you might choose to only sell your content or have a limited network presence, while in other territories you may want to drive your network business and put a lot of your top-tier content on your own networks to make that happen. So, we’re really looking at it on a territory-byterritory basis.

WS: What opportunities for growth do you see in the channel business?

SHELL: We already have pretty strong brands: Universal Channel, DIVA, Syfy, 13th Street, Studio Universal, E! Entertainment Television,The Style Network and CNBC.The challenge is trying to figure out the dynamics of each market.

In some territories, the channel business is really, really good because the pay-TV market hasn’t yet developed and you can expect strong growth in the future. Other territories are more similar to the U.S., where you have lots and lots of channels, lots and lots of advertising; and it’s getting a bit mature with consumers increasingly viewing content across multiple platforms and multiple devices. In those markets you can’t just launch a network like you did in the past; you have to be a little bit more innovative in finding your [growth]. It really depends on the markets—in some there is huge opportunity for traditional models, while in others you have to be a little bit more creative.

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CHRONICLING THE CREATION OF TODAY’S BIGGEST SHOWS BY ANNA CARUGATI

Muse’s Michael Prupas It’s been a good year for Muse Entertainment. Series, TV movies and mini-series produced or co-produced by Muse earned a total of 17 Emmy nominations and 34 Gemini Award nominations. Among these titles, which include The Pillars of the Earth and Being Human, it is The Kennedys and its ten Emmy nominations that drew the most attention, particularly after having been cancelled by HISTORY in the U.S., the channel that originally commissioned the project. Michael Prupas, the president and CEO of Muse, gives us an inside look at this critically acclaimed mini-series.

WS: How did The Kennedys come about?

PRUPAS: Dirk Hoogstra [HISTORY’s

senior VP of programming] had been very interested in trying to get a series going about the Kennedys for several years. He initially approached us through our colleagues at Asylum, with whom he had had dealings in the past, and asked if there was some way we could put a project together. We suggested getting involved with Joel Surnow, who had been a very successful executive producer on 24 and somebody we and Asylum had worked with on a pilot we’d done for TNT. The instigation for The Kennedys did actually come from HISTORY but the team was put together from a previous experience we had had together. We all agreed we would produce it under the auspices of Muse as the production company and we hired writer Steve Kronish to [write] the show and Joel provided comments all the way through.

PRUPAS: First of all, I have to say that none of the pro-

ducers had any direct contact with any member of the Kennedy family and I’m not prepared to say that they were involved directly, though there are a lot of fingers that would point that way. What I can say is we were working very closely with the HISTORY executives, primarily in New York, who had come up to the set, who had seen the cuts and been incredibly supportive of the project all the way through.They had read the scripts; they had their historian read the scripts.They had their historian tell us that every single episode of the script was historically authentic, and we had that in writing before we started shooting.We bent over backwards to make sure the material being presented was not only the truth but was supported by proper research in every single case.We were quite surprised that they turned around and said they didn’t want to broadcast it.

What we had known through the process was that some of the dialogue had to be changed, some of the time frames and locations had to be changed for dramatic and production purposes.When I say the dialogue had to be changed, we don’t know exactly what was said in [private moments in the bedroom], but in situations like the Cuban Missile Crisis, every single word that was pronounced in that Cabinet room during the entire 13-day period was recorded and is available to historians. But we weren’t going to run a 13-day episode, so we needed to cut things back and make it dramatic. No one has actually challenged us on that particular episode, it was more the personal stuff in the show that the people close to the Kennedy family would rather not have seen in public. They wanted to have it buried until long after their grandchildren were dead.

WS: How much historical research went intoThe Kennedys?

PRUPAS: Steve Kronish had been a Kennedy aficionado

for many years and when he started the process, he referred to 30 different books of the 2,000 books that have been written about the Kennedys over the last 40 or 50 years; he was very much immersed in that material. There were discussions that went on with us, with the network, as to what kind of approach we wanted to take. The key point that needs to be remembered about the series is that this is not a political series per se—it’s a story about a family more than anything else and how this family rose to a position of such significant, iconic status in America and in the imagination and minds of people around the world.

WS: What can you tell us about why HISTORY decided

not to air The Kennedys? What is it that the Kennedy family was so opposed to?

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Power couple: The Kennedys, distributed by Muse, notched up ten Emmy nominations this year.

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KEEPING TRACK OF ADVANCEMENTS IN TECHNOLOGY BY ANNA CARUGATI

Vince Pace and James Cameron have been working together since the filming of The Abyss.

Their shared passion for underwater production segued into a quest for ways of harnessing 3D technology and making it userfriendly enough for Cameron to film Avatar. In fact, the two developed the fusion 3D camera system to Cameron’s exacting specifications. Earlier this year, they formed the Cameron Pace Group (CPG), a company that specializes in 3D production.

Pace talks to World Screen about this evolving technology, which is revolutionizing the movie industry.

Cameron Pace Group’s

Vince Pace WS: The technology is constantly evolving, but at this point what are the best ways of using 3D? PACE: There’s a lot going on when we’re shooting a 3D film, but the key is seeing it much like a calculator. When you plug in the numbers, the answer is always correct.

You’re not into the electronics of the calculator, you’re into the result. So the concept of the fusion system has always been driven by the end result, which is to entertain, as opposed to the mathematics of it all.That is what separated us from the rest of the filmmaking community. Everybody wanted to have the formula that was correct: here’s how you do it, this is the math that you apply to it and this is the dimension that you get from it. But Jim’s perspective of good 3D was that it should become a part of the end product....

A lot of times I’ll tell people it’s very much like the ingredient of salt to a chef.When used correctly you don’t even know it’s there; when used incorrectly—it doesn’t matter if you use lobster or filet mignon—all you comment on is the salt. So the key for us is, what is the end result when we’ve added this ingredient called 3D? If we’ve enhanced the flavor of filmmaking we’ve done our job.... Ours is a different philosophy than saying, here are two cameras, when used together and when driven at the same rate we’re going to extract a 3D product.We’re much more interested in a pleasing experience for the viewer.

WS: How did Avatar influence the acceptance of 3D

among filmmakers?

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were saying to me, “We really don’t think 3D is going to be successful.” With the release of Avatar, they did a 180-degree turn and said, “3D is our future.” And that’s not a solution either. You can’t, all of a sudden, state to the public that 3D is here. We still had a little ways to go, as was demonstrated by some of the display systems and the rush to convert films to 3D and so forth. But the good news is, I think we’re through some of that.

For instance, Transformers: Dark of the Moon was a good film for us. People received the 3D well and they enjoyed the experience. We worked with a director, Michael Bay, who had serious concerns about the 3D process and how it impacted him as a filmmaker. We were able to meet those demands and make the product look cool. I’ve done that with Martin Scorsese, I’ve done that with Ang Lee. It really is a rewarding experience when you take people that are so creative and so involved in the process and give them the tools they need to express that creativity in this medium.We promote the live-action 3D natural form of filmmaking because we feel that’s truest to form. We just need to make it more cost effective and more conducive to the filmmakers’ experience, and that’s the path that CPG is on.

WS: I’ve read that Avatar was a seven-year process of

learning how to shoot in 3D. PACE: I would say it took us about three to four years of

learning [the technology] and then another four years to do Avatar. The primary [goal] was to let Jim be a filmmaker, not to create a technology barrier. When we realized [the 3D system] was small enough, mobile enough, high resolution enough to meet the demands of a cinematographer, that gave him the confidence that he could go back to being a good director and make a film.

WS: That must have involved tremendous vision.

PACE: It does. Jim has that capacity for dialoguing on

a component level, whether it’s science, electronics, physics—it’s a little bit of da Vinci, Newton and Rembrandt all rolled in one. He can dance on all the different subjects, but his greatest gift is his ability to envision what could be happening in the future. He pushed towards that, especially as it relates to entertainment.

WS: What are CPG’s other activities?

PACE: We do the business of 3D here. We are serv-

icing films in the 3D community today. This is a business for us, we don’t think it’s going away, we think it’s maturing and growing, and we want to be involved in that growth. We have a dual goal: one is to maintain the momentum of 3D, move it forward and take advantage of the here-and-now solutions, and two, we have a design and resource team that is working on where entertainment will be three to five years from now.

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CELEBRATING THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES BY ANNA CARUGATI

This year CBC/Radio-Canada celebrates its 75th anniversary. Since November 2, 1936, the Canadian public broadcaster has been serving its viewers while contributing to the democratic, social and cultural life of the country. What started in 1936 as a radio service extended into the first television transmissions in 1952, and today includes a range of radio, television, Internet, and satellitebased services, in both English and French plus eight Aboriginal languages.

Among its brands are the national English-language broadcaster, CBC Television; CBC News Network; the digital TV channel bold; the French-language network Télévision de Radio-Canada; the arts channel ARTV; and the websites CBC.ca, Radio-Canada.ca and TOU.TV. As president and CEO Hubert T. Lacroix explains, CBC/Radio-Canada is embracing the digital world while remaining true to its mission of enlightening, informing and entertaining.

WS: What have been some of the most important contributions CBC/RadioCanada has made to the television industry and society in Canada?

LACROIX: We have a very important history as the national public broadcaster. When we say in our mission that we want to express Canadian culture and Canadian identity, that we want to enrich the democratic life of Canadians and we want to be recognized as the leader in both, this is where we have contributed a lot. But we have also contributed by pioneering a lot of the broadcasting technology that you see every day.

The Broadcasting Act has these three famous verbs that everybody knows well. Our mandate is to enlighten, inform and entertain. It’s about Canadian programming and producing it in both official languages [English and French]. When you think about CBC/Radio-Canada, that’s what we do.

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@75 In an environment where Canadians have all sorts of media options, and with the States so close to our country, we need to create a space that Canadians can call their own. It’s a place where we think we reflect the diversity of voices and where Canadians can form their individual, social and political identities.This is where Canadians can connect with each other and talk about stories that concern them, their country and the world. This is what we have brought to society—a space. And that’s why we exist. We do that with our programming, whether it’s news, current affairs, drama or comedy, and it’s distinctively Canadian, because when you watch CBC/RadioCanada in prime time, you see Canadian shows made

by Canadians for Canadians. We do that also by drawing really important audiences around major events, because we have the broadcasting infrastructure and we’re connected coast to coast. When we talk about the Canadian experience, whether it’s the hockey playoffs or elections, or what we recently did with our coverage of the Royal Tour [Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, visiting Canada] or when we pick up an awards show or a concert—this is when we bring Canadians around Canada “wow” moments. And in our 2015 Everyone, Every Way plan, we want to emphasize that even more.We’ve committed to doing ten signature events both in French and in English that we would broadcast on all our platforms. That’s the first piece of our mandate.

The second piece is what we’ve done on the technology front. We were the first ones to go coast to coast with the first television station and that’s why we’re celebrating our 75th anniversary this year. And as early as 1955, CBC/Radio-Canada’s television services were available to 66 percent of the whole of the Canadian population. Fast-forward to 2011 and we’re the first ones to broadcast in 3D television, we did it last year.

Our websites are spectacular. They are the most frequented media sites in this country. Just about everything we do is available online either by way of live

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ready for license-renewal processes, that it’s not only about content, but it’s also about the important motor that we are in this economic environment.

WS: Is the CBC’s funding secure? For how many years

at a time do you get your government funding?

LACROIX: That’s what’s a bit crazy about our model.

We’re only funded on 12-month cycles, contrary to the BBC or the Australian Broadcasting Corporation or some of the other public broadcasters in the world.What we’ve told the government since I arrived in January 2008 was that it wasn’t about more money, but it was about us wanting to make sure we could manage these great assets and great people that we’ve been entrusted with in the best possible way. It’s about stable, long-term and predictable funding so we can fulfill the mandate and the expectations of Canadians.

Cruise control: CBC is a strong supporter of the Canadian production sector, investing in dramas like Republic of Doyle, which is sold worldwide by Content Television.

streaming or podcasts. We were the first ones to stream video on mobile devices.When you look at how fast we adapted and how much we lead all the other broadcasters in that field, we’re very proud. That’s the second very big contribution that we have made to Canadian television and society.

WS: Tell us about the strategic plan 2015 Everyone, Every Way. LACROIX: 2015 Everyone, Every Way is really our road map for the next five years. It’s about one thing: strengthening the relationship we have with Canadians by building on the things we have found to be important through all the research we do and the connections we make. It’s about being more national, more regional and more digital.

There are three important thrusts to 2015 Everyone, Every Way. The first is about content. When I say “more Canadian,” it’s about being even more distinctive in the programming that we deliver. It’s about making sure that

WS: How has CBC/Radio-Canada played a role in boosting the Canadian economy?

LACROIX: That is an important piece of what we do and we wanted to emphasize it. Canadians and the government give us—and we are very grateful for it—C$1.1 billion a year. It’s been the subject of a lot of conversation.We do things with this C$1.1 billion that no business model would allow a private broadcaster to do. We cover places and we produce programming that is not entirely driven by ratings or makes sense in a business model. But there is more to it.

We asked Deloitte & Touche to conduct a study on the impact of CBC/Radio-Canada on Canada’s economy, in much the same way that I saw the BBC do a similar study a couple of years ago when it launched its update of its strategic direction. So we went to the same people, asked them to look at Canada and at what we brought. For every dollar invested in CBC/Radio-Canada, the study found that we create close to four times that value for the Canadian economy. Deloitte estimated that the C$1.1 billion [we receive] generates about C$3.7 billion dollars in economic value. It supports not only thousands of jobs and businesses in our corporation but also many in the private sector. That was an important piece of the conversation that was missing and we wanted to make sure that when we talk about the public broadcaster, as we were getting

Sports night: CBC covers local sports highlights with series like Hockey Night in Canada.

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our services on a local level. This strategic direction will allow us to get to 6 million of them in the next five years and we have announced the first five places where we will be intensifying our efforts: Kamloops and Kelowna in British Columbia, we will be bolstering the Victoria station, doing more in Vancouver and being more local in Toronto. On the Radio-Canada side, in Rimouski, in Eastern Quebec, we have a new multimedia center that will open in September 2012 to cover the Gaspé peninsula.

The third piece is digital and we can’t do anything but lead in the digital area, where we have made the commitment that a minimum of 5 percent of our media budgets will always be invested in digital platforms.That will be over time, so that by 2015, CBC will invest anywhere between C$80 million and C$90 million to make sure we can be on all platforms so that Canadians can access our services when and where they want.

WS: How is CBC serving Canadians on multiple platforms?

LACROIX: It used to be one broadcaster would broad-

Bookish nature: Canada’s longest-running documentary series, The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, has aired on CBC for 50 years.

prime time on CBC television is about Canadian shows.

For years, when we were not as successful, we needed to rely on U.S. programming to bolster our audience in the beginning of the evening and bring people to the programming that we had. Now that we’ve been extremely successful with recent shows, we think we don’t need those American shows anymore.They served their purpose, so the focus in prime time will be about Canadian programming and the signature events I mentioned. We’ve committed to ten signature events both on Radio-Canada and the CBC. They’re going to be multimedia. It’s about bringing significant impact and a great number of Canadians around events that no other broadcaster can actually deliver. These signature events include the Live Right Now campaign [a national initiative to help Canadians improve their health] and the concert Radio-Canada did with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to raise relief funds for the Japanese when the terrible tsunami hit their country. That’s the Canadian content piece of the strategy.

The second thrust is about being more regional.

Canadians have told us that this is a top priority and we have sometimes failed to live up to their expectations, so we’re committing even more to it. I believe you cannot be a public broadcaster without being really deeply rooted in the community. It’s about expanding our services in places where we have gaps in coverage.

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cast to many people. Now it’s much more one to one.

It’s about you choosing a program that you might not have watched as it was airing and either podcasting or recording it. We want to make sure that we understand and continue to follow the consumption habits of the people who use our services, because it’s clearly now a one-to-one relationship.We want to make sure we are on whatever platform or device our viewers are using.That’s the 5 percent commitment to digital programming I was talking about. It’s also about realizing that what we do is content. We’re not the platform, we want to be on the platform, but the CBC brand is defined by the programming it does, by what you listen to or what you find on our website—not by your telephone or your iPad. So that’s our plan: to continue delivering and to continue leading on the digital programming side.

WS: CBC has been a strong supporter of Canadian pro-

ducers and has invested heavily in Canadian content.

Why has this been important and how will you be maintaining this commitment?

LACROIX: This takes us back to the 2015 roadmap. I have an interesting number for you. We invest more in Canadian programming than all of the other Canadian conventional broadcasters combined. Last year, we invested C$683 million; the whole of the industry invested C$640 million. Here’s another important number: 93 percent of our programming budget in the last fiscal year was spent on Canadian programming. If we don’t do it, we understand no one else will. This is our mandate. This is why when we talk about being the leader in expressing Canadian culture, when we talk about Canadians wanting to see themselves in prime time, we talk about Republic of Doyle, which is done in Newfoundland; 18 to Life, which is done in Montreal;

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Little Mosque on the Prairie, which is done literally on the prairies, and some of our radio shows, which come out of Calgary or Montreal. When you put everything together you realize what’s important for Canadians, and what is crucial and central to our mandate and our ability to be distinctive, are our Canadian stories.

Staying current: Marketplace is CBC’s long-running investigative consumer series.

WS: There’s been considerable vertical integration and consolidation in the Canadian TV industry. Has this impacted viewers?

LACROIX: I don’t think it’s impacted viewers yet.

Viewers have not yet seen any change when they watch the screen, but the landscape has changed dra-

matically. We are right now the only national television broadcaster that is not owned by a cable or a satellite company. When I went in front of our regulator, the CRTC, a few months ago, we talked about vertical integration. The first point I made was that the CRTC cannot assume that these companies will voluntarily compromise their commercial and corporate interests and those of their shareholders—which is normal because ultimately that is who they are responsible to—in order to promote the objectives of the Broadcasting Act. So when CBC/Radio-Canada creates content, we must have access to all these communication platforms that now literally belong to our competitors.When we negotiate with Shaw [that owns Global TV] or Bell [that owns CTV] for their satellite or cable space, they have media assets and they compete against us every day.They compete exactly for the same advertising dollars. So we told the CRTC, in an environment like this, we must have access to these platforms, we must have a prominent place on these platforms, we must have access to the latest technology and it must be on a reasonably commercial basis. These are the challenges but they haven’t yet hit the viewer because these conversations and these big groups have only gelled over in the last 15 to 18 months.

WS: How does the CBC ensure a plurality of voices in its entertainment and news programming?

LACROIX: It’s about us ensuring that the public broadcaster does not give you an opinion—it gives you different voices, different points of view, so that you at home listening and watching form your own opinion.

You become a better voter and this is why in our mission we talk about enriching democracy and that’s where the diversity of voices principle is so important.

We promote diversity in two other ways. First, we understand that Canada has changed and you can’t be a public broadcaster and not realize that you have to be a reflection of what Canada is. We have a whole bunch of initiatives to make sure we take into account diversity in our recruitment, the people we hire and the people you see on the air.

Secondly, certain big cities, particularly Vancouver and Toronto, now have more people of diverse backgrounds than any other cities in this country. People have also moved in this country. It used to be that certain provinces out west or in the prairies were not as populated as some of the provinces in the eastern part of Canada. Now that has changed because of economic priorities. We need to make sure we follow Canadians where they are and that we reflect them so that the stories we produce resonate with them. Diversity means those people who are working in northern Alberta and northern British Columbia might not look like me, yet we have to make sure we understand what connects them to the public broadcaster.

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OVER THE TOP

TV Liberty Global’s UPC Broadband provides tripleplay services across Europe.

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ixty years ago, moviemakers in Hollywood were just as rattled as broadcast, cable and satellite players are today.Their business was declining and in disarray—5,000 theaters closed as the film-going audience dwindled from 75 million to 50 million a week over a five-year period ending in 1951, and many companies went to the wall. Show business suddenly found itself playing by a new set of rules as the once unassailable studios and a few intrepid independent producers had to grapple with a new technology and leisure-time alternative called television.

What started as a mechanical curiosity right after World War II became a consumer staple within a decade: a million sets flew off U.S. retail shelves in 1950, double that number just a year later. So, what did the movie moguls do in response? They variously resisted, griped, took advantage of the newfangled medium for their own purposes and reinvented their content to remain competitive and distinctive. A few admittedly fell by the wayside, but many others prospered, finding eventually that coexisting, even commingling and crosspollinating the two businesses, made economic and creative sense.

Much has changed since the early days of television, when the upstart medium challenged the relatively cozy celluloid coterie. Today’s entertainment landscape is much more varied in its offerings, consolidated in its ownership, global in its reach and perspective, and merciless to those who cannot adapt quickly. Audiences and consumers are more immersed in it than ever before—in some cases for more hours a day than they sleep—but they are also, largely thanks to digital technology, much more fragmented, fickle in their tastes, and impatient to view and interact with what they want, when they want, on whatever device.

Not surprisingly, they are migrating to services where the user experience is enjoyable, easy to access, operate and share, and inexpensive. In doing so, they are beginning to cut the cord, as it were, with traditional multichannel providers—whether delivered by cable, satellite or telco—in favor of

S

what’s being clumsily called overthe-top on-demand, via newly outfitted television sets or broadband Internet connections on computers and other devices.

SEISMIC SHIFTS

This cord-cutting—which some say is overblown and often doesn’t involve “cutting” anything—has media mavens wringing their hands. Making it more nervewracking, no one knows how much of a shift in viewer behavior will take place, and precisely for whom it will be problematic and for whom an opportunity. But since perception is reality, there is arguably reason to think that video-streaming online is, like the advent of television, cable, CDs,

Group who advises TV stations on content and other issues. The key question, Carroll says, is (still) how to monetize the Internet, and what the trade-offs are in terms of advertising density online.

“No one yet has the answer, but all the protagonists have to be there in order to figure out what’s the best formula for making money on these new platforms,” Carroll says.

Blair Westlake, the corporate VP of the media and entertainment group at Microsoft—who spent 18 years at Universal before joining the computer giant—adds, “Consumer habits are notoriously hard to predict. Witness the jaw-dropping falloff in just five years of the studios’ DVD business, from $20 billion in revenues a year to around

Elizabeth Guider reports on the effects that over-the-top (OTT) video services like Netflix, Hulu and others are having on the traditional TV model.

DVDs,VCRs, DVRs, the Internet, high-def, Blu-ray and Twitter before it, a new twist in the overall media narrative.

Consider this take on the phenomenon from Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein who tracks the performance of a range of media players and cautions about bumps and byways along the road.

“Media stocks are story stocks.

Ditto cable and satellite, where stocks seemingly rise and fall not based on changes to earnings and cash flow estimates but instead based on narratives about whether Netflix will or won’t spell the end of pay TV as we know it. All that makes the task of forecasting narratives just as important as the task of forecasting earnings,” he wrote in a recent research report.

“I wouldn’t call OTT necessarily a big threat, but it is a significant change in the entertainment sphere which has to be part of any company’s thinking going forward,” says Bill Carroll, a VP and the director of programming at Katz Television 10/11

$13 billion. More pertinent today, consumers online are opting to rent movies and TV series much more avidly than they are buying them.

Inasmuch as the margin on electronic rentals (transactional videoon-demand—$3 to $6) is roughly 25 percent of what a content owner enjoys from purchase transactions (electronic sell-through—$15 to $17), coupled with the volume of rental transactions not even equaling, let alone exceeding, electronic sell-through and disc sales, content owners’ net revenues are in turn suffering. Technology has given consumers a very appealing, less expensive choice—to rent for a fraction of the cost of ownership, which works for the majority of people.”

Don’t forget either, Westlake counsels, that consumers are not a monolithic entity all doing the same thing. “Yes, a narrow swath may want to watch only movies they choose now and again, and hence likely may become exclusive video-streamers, but they don’t represent the typical or majority

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viewer, who now watches on average five and a half hours a day.”

Consider the latest figures from SNL Kagan: a modest 4 percent of consumers have so far dropped their cable or satellite subscription in favor of direct access to content via one or another video-streaming service. Kagan projects that multichannel substitution via OTT delivery will grow from 2.5 million households at the end of 2010 to 12.1 million homes by 2015.

“The OTT substitution estimates account for nearly 10 percent of the occupied homes in the U.S. in the five-year forecast.”

Other entities, including the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), put the forecast much higher: CEA claims that 10 percent of paybox subscribers plan to disconnect this year.

A cautious person would point out that what consumers say they’re going to do is notoriously unreliable. And yet, a modest uptick is undeniable, especially among young consumers, who are typically most receptive to the latest media advances.

CHURNING THE NUMBERS

Sanford Bernstein’s Moffett suggests, for example, that cord-cutting may actually not be the operative description: It should really be “cord-nevers,” in that many of these folks never had the need or the money to pay for a multichannel subscription to begin with. To his mind, the data on all this is ambiguous, in that the motivation for churn may be as much a financial issue—to most people the United States is still in recession and homes that have been foreclosed on likely had their wires pulled out—as a technology issue.

Another pay-to-view study, released back in the spring by J.D. Power & Associates, concluded that “the predictions of the demise of television subscription service are clearly premature. With 52 percent of television customers reporting that they still watch regularly scheduled programming as it is broadcast, the current model will remain viable for the next two to three years at a minimum,” wrote Frank Perazzini, the company’s director of telecommunications research.

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German heavyweights: Linear TV is still the driver for German broadcaster RTL, but the channel has expanded into multiplatform services with the on-demand player RTL NOW, while its website delivers extensive video highlights for programs like RTL Boxen.

And in August, the research outfit IHS weighed in, arguing that DVR, on-demand and other forms of nonlinear programming will account for 16 percent of television viewing in the U.S. in 2015, up from 10 percent in 2010, with the remainder made up by traditional linear TV watching. In the U.K., nonlinear will account for 13 percent of viewing in 2015, up from 8 percent in 2010, with other European countries trailing those percentages.

CBS Corporation’s chief research officer, David Poltrack, has long contended that it is the use of DVRs, now in a third of U.S. households, that represents the real challenge right now, since playback viewing hasn’t yet been fully monetized by the big content players because ratings aren’t extensive enough.

Nonetheless, were projections like Kagan’s and others to hold true, the falloff in subs for traditional distribution outlets could become a considerable concern, says Thomas Eagan, the managing director of media equity research for Collins Stewart.

For one thing, the segment of the population that is most likely to be early adopters are single heads of households, who are generally young and, in this case, gen-

erally female—males are largely still in thrall to sports programming, and almost all the major games are viewable only via traditional distributors and not by online players. (All the top sports leagues have long-running contracts with broadcasters and cable networks, and hence the so-called disruptors will have little opportunity for a while to wrest such rights away from the traditional media.) Still, young, single females are a highly desirable advertising target and hence could spark accelerated outlays of ad dollars online. Already, advertising associated with most of the key “disruptive” services—Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc.—is growing at a considerable clip, though from a minuscule base.

sorts, including resistance to price increases by their customers, new online entrants popping up weekly, steeper licensing fees from content providers, and their inability to offer live events, not just sports but finales of reality blockbusters like American Idol, Survivor or Dancing with the Stars.

During a steamy summer, Netflix, for example, saw its secondquarter revenues just miss investor expectations, causing the stock

(which admittedly had almost doubled over the past year) to take a hit.

There were also jitters because of an eyebrow-raising 60-percent fee hike for those customers who want both DVD rentals and a video-streaming plan. In the immediate aftermath, a sizeable tranche of the Flix faithful announced that they were planning to jump ship. Just a couple of days later, Facebook revealed that it was partnering with Warner Bros. to provide pay-per-view offerings that could eventually affect Netflix’s core business.The social-networking giant boasts 500 million devotees (20 times Netflix’s universe), though for now those users aren’t in the habit of paying for anything on that site and Facebook doesn’t have wide distribution across devices that connect to the living room TV set. But, the future comes.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said while his stock was bumping around in late July that he was “feeling great” about the pricing decision for customers because the additional revenue would allow Netflix to pay rising licensing costs to stream films and TV series. He predicted that the service, which reported 25 million subscribers in the second quarter, could hit $1 billion in revenues in the fourth quarter.

THE DISRUPTORS

On the other hand, these disruptors of the status quo aren’t necessarily having an easy time of it.

Yes, according to the J.D. Power survey they score above-average customer-satisfaction scores, which focused on six factors: variety of videos provided; ease of use; cost of service; customer-service experience; billing; and promotions. But they are facing headwinds of all 118

The cord-cutting effect?: Netflix’s instant streaming service is available on numerous devices, including Apple TV.

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But as HBO discovered 20 years ago, Netflix and its ilk may find that just being an aggregator of other people’s product—especially when others find they can aggregate content just as cleverly themselves—doesn’t cut it. In the end, it took top-notch original programming à la The Sopranos and Sex and the City to transform the Time Warner–owned paybox into a media must-have. Thus, the stunningly rich deal for a world-exclusive TV series called House of Cards to be directed by the film auteur David Fincher is, if all goes well, a harbinger of original commissions to come at Netflix.

THE HULU DANCE

As for that other pioneer in the streaming space, Hulu, its three broadcast-network owners, NBC, ABC and FOX, are still in the midst of trying to offload it, presumably because it’s more of a management headache than the three can jointly handle and because its value proposition is still iffy. Profitable it is, but apparently just barely. In late July, FOX decided to change the way viewers access TV episodes of hot shows like Glee and Family Guy online, extending the waiting period to eight days except for those who subscribe to a participating and authenticated video distributor (who would have next-day access). Word was that ABC was toying with a similar delaying tactic, which could further confuse consumers who say the pricing and inventory on Hulu are frustratingly illogical. (The 4-yearold service offers some episodes free and others for a subscription fee; some are available 24 hours after broadcast; others a week later or not at all.)

Hulu, too, is seeing the logic of undertaking original production, unveiling in early August its firstever long-form nonfiction series, A Day in the Life, from docmeister Morgan Spurlock.

Meanwhile, other so-called disruptors—Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster and Google—have been taking

turns kicking the tires at Hulu, but also continue to refine, expand or upgrade their own video-streaming services. Google TV, for example, is focusing on building out and forking out for its own professionally produced content for the web, rather than just relying on other people’s back catalogues.

Not that other entrants are being deterred from their own forays.

The world’s largest retailer, Walmart, which snapped up the fledgling online group Vudu 20 months ago, recently began streaming movies the same day they come out on DVD, in its own bid for a share of the disruptors’ pie. In keeping with its focus on a clientele of modest means, Walmart’s offerings can be rented for as little as $.99 (up to $5.99) and purchased for as little as $5.00. That model is not dissimilar to Apple’s iTunes, which charges $3.99 to rent current titles and upwards of $14.99 to buy.

Other upstarts include the New York-based Bamboom, which is working to overcome hindrances (legal as well as technological) to

On-screen investments: Sky in the U.K. allows subscribers to access its content—which includes David Attenborough’s Flying Monsters 3D for Sky 3D (top) and the new Sky1 drama Mad Dogs—in a variety of ways beyond the linear TV experience.

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Against the wall: Sat.1, home to event TV movies like Am Ende Die Hoffnung, offers up a slate of series, specials and more on maxdome, the online on-demand portal operated by the ProSiebenSat.1 Group.

broadcasting live signals to individual subs in a circumscribed geographical area. As Forbes magazine put it recently, “Bamboom has yet to expand beyond beta or into new markets and its founder, Chaitanya Kanojia, doesn’t have a clear idea of how he will make money. But if the company can avoid suits (or prevail), it will go a long way toward giving viewers the freedom to ditch their cable/satellite/telco providers.”

ORIGINAL PLAYS

So, are these disruptors really all that different from broadcasters and cable networks, and will their growth trajectories be any different? Just as the other two businesses went through distinct stages—from a mere utility to providing local access, to aggregating reruns, to becoming producers of original content—so, too, may online players evolve. The Internet started, after all, as a utility (allowing folks to do email, get stock quotes, check the weather), and then provided for local access (as in user-generated content on YouTube and the like). It is now busily aggregating movies and TV shows and showing signs of moving toward original (and professionally supervised) content production.

Take the upstart Vuguru, jointly owned by Michael Eisner’s Tornante and Canada’s Rogers Media, which styles itself as an indie studio that develops and finances scripted content for newmedia platforms. During the summer its first high-profile project, The Booth at the End, premiered in various formats on “new” (Hulu) and “old” (Citytv, FOX International Channels) platforms, cut up into mini episodes or stripped in five half-hour segments.

“We’re analogous to a Lionsgate,” Larry Tanz, the president of Vuguru, states, “in that we’re focused on producing scripted content but for new platforms, internationally as well as domestically. And yes, I think we will see others stepping up to produce original content in order to brand themselves in the online arena, just the way in the cable sphere HBO did a decade ago with The Sopranos or AMC did more recently with Mad Men.” Tanz says his company has ten other scripted projects in the works, though budgets are nothing like what they are for a broadcast series such as, say, CBS’s The Good Wife or a cable drama like Mad Men. However, if just one or 122

two creates buzz and draws significant viewership, it could shift the dynamics of the company and affect perceptions of online’s artistic capabilities.

Meanwhile, the traditional cablesatellite-telco operators have no intention of ceding the field to these obstreperous upstarts.

COPYRIGHT COMPLICATION

Steve Effros, a cable industry veteran and the former head of the National Cable Television Association (NCTA), who is now a media consulant, is adamant that “cord-cutting” is a misnomer, and doesn’t reflect the fact that most viewers pay for a package of programming of some kind.

“Yes,” he says, “there is increased competition to deliver more customized packages and to accommodate newer platforms of delivery, but by and large all the cable MSOs are gearing up to do just that.” That’s what authentication and TV Everywhere are all about—for one subscription, a consumer can access content on any device he is connected to.

“The real challenge for the industry,” Effros argues, “is copyright.”

Program providers are asking themselves (and not always coming

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to the same conclusion) how, say, video streaming of their content on an Apple iPad fits into their copyright structure and what should be charged for it. Increasingly the cablers are happily finding that apps for these mobile tablets are reinvigorating their VOD biz and are less cumbersome, and costly, than settop boxes.

In short, Effros and several others in the cable/satellite trenches believe their industry can thwart any threat from Netflix or Hulu, but only if studios, networks and distributors work together to sort out copyrights and simplify licensing negotiations.

“The reason why there’s interest in these Internet video providers is that they’re deploying technology that’s making the experience better for consumers,” Time Warner Cable’s (TWC) CEO, Glenn Britt, told MarketWatch during the NCTA’s annual trade show in June.

The platform’s top executive went on to say that the biggest stumbling blocks to competing effectively against these disruptors are moving nimbly and untangling rights.

“Even amid signs that cable now has the technology and the inter-

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face to provide a consumerdevice of their choosing—a friendly video-on-demand smart phone, a tablet comoption, cooperation with the puter, a PC, a gaming concompanies that make movies sole, an Internet-enabled and TV shows remains an television set. elusive target,” Britt says.

And even if the game is “Copyrights are very comstill in the early innings Stateplicated. Creating something side—and ideas like Ultraviolike TV Everywhere for all let remain just pie in the sky of that programming is a so far—all of the key U.S. nightmare of rights negotiaplayers have extended their tions. Some content compaonline deal-making sights nies say it’s worth all of that; From the Beeb: Following its success at home, the BBC’s iPlayer is being expanded outside of the abroad. Just to cite one examsome say they don’t know if U.K., beginning in Western Europe. ple: CBS recently inked it’s worth all the time and nonexclusive deals with effort.” (TWC itself did report triple play at $84.99 for a year LOOKING TO THE CLOUD Amazon and with Netflix that will strong Q2 numbers, by attracting, (no contract), and is offering a Seems the Hollywood studios bring an array of the Eye’s series to tellingly, more broadband customers DIRECTV/DSL double-play deal already have an ace up their the former’s service in the U.S. and and offsetting slowing demand for for $54.99 that includes free NFL sleeve, or, as one pundit puts it, to the latter’s in Canada and Latin “They have their heads in the America. Leslie Moonves, CBS TV subscriptions.)

Sunday Ticket.

One thing cable and satellite oper“I’d say all the pay-TV operators cloud.” Several of them are work- Corporation’s president and CEO, went as far as to single out those ators are quickly getting better at is are becoming more innovative and ing on something called Ultraviotwo deals for boosting the network’s marketing their services and updating are bent on improving their users’ let, which, word has it, would be a revenues in the second quarter. Not their images. Consider the latest experience,” says Collins Stewart’s rights locker in the sky to be only is Netflix flexing its muscles packages and promotions they’ve Eagan. Just one example he points to accessed via cloud computing.

“Think of it as the digital equiv- abroad, but so is Hulu, with a first been dangling in front of consumers. is DIRECTV’s customer interface, alent of a DVD library, which con- subscription service agreement for DIRECTV is touting a two- which he rates as “lightning-fast.” year contract that offers discounts Finally, what’s a provider of con- sumers will soon be able to unlock the Japanese market. As Netflix, of a whopping $31 per month for tent to make of all this? A lot of as easily as they turn on a TV set,” Amazon et al. gear up to expand in the most lucrative foreign arena, the first year. Comcast is waving a moolah, eventually, provided its explains one studio veteran close Europe, expect the Hollywood sup$100 Visa gift card in front of new deals are innovative and flexible to the talks. Buying a movie online subscribers to its $99.99 triple-play enough to account for unexpected would give consumers the right to pliers to gleefully strike other such stream it from the cloud to any catalogue-product agreements. package. Verizon is pricing its shifts in the landscape.

Across the Pond It’s not just in the United States that new players are goosing the biz.

Britain is arguably just as dynamic an arena for online experimentation.

Take SeeSaw, a 20-month-old ad-supported online TV platform based in London, which delivers TV shows from British broadcasters and indie producers as well as international-based TV providers to a million visitors per month. Recently snapped up by the U.S. merchant bank Criterion Capital Partners, the service has hired international broadcast vet Michael Jackson to spearhead its programming dealmaking.

“There’s no doubt that viewers are increasingly consuming a lot of video online, and we think our service scales beautifully,” says Adam Levin, Criterion Capital Partners’ managing director.

While he wouldn’t be drawn on a date for breakeven for SeeSaw, Levin stressed that rights holders, in both the U.S. and the U.K., are now approaching him about deals. “As an aggregator, we can deliver an experience and a range of content that British viewers can’t access anywhere else,” says Levin. The fact that his company backs the socialnetworking site Bebo, with which SeeSaw interfaces, is another benefit. Levin says the company was sniffing around prospects on the European Continent but has not yet struck any major deals there.

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And then there’s LOVEFiLM, which operates not only in the U.K. but also in Germany and Scandinavia, and was bought out by Amazon last January. The service offers 70,000 titles (mostly film but also games and some TV series) and counts about 1.8 million subscribers.

“Our starting point was that we felt a fresh, innovative model had a place in the British market,” explains Simon Morris, LOVEFiLM’s chief marketing officer. “Initially this was the online DVD rental model, which proved to be a real game changer. More recently, this has evolved into a hybrid model of streaming and physical.”

Not that breaking in to the market was a cinch: Morris points out that the competitive environment is “very tough,” with a unique payTV world featuring Sky, very strong free-to-air broadcasters, catchup TV pioneered faster there than anywhere in the world by the BBC iPlayer, and great online and offline retailers.

Still, the marketing chieftain believes the company’s clearly defined aim—“to offer the widest range of content on the broadest possible range of platforms”—stands it in good stead. For the moment, Morris adds, “We don’t have the skill set for content origination.”

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Jeffrey Bewkes Abbe Raven

CHAIRMAN AND CEO, TIME WARNER

Jeffrey Bewkes worked for many years at HBO before joining the corporate ranks of Time Warner. He witnessed firsthand the development of HBO’s services from one channel to multiplex channels to on-demand. He also has extensive knowledge of the cable industry because, up to last year, Time Warner owned Time Warner Cable. From this vantage point, he is extremely confident of the long-term health of both basic- and premium-cable offerings.

WS: There has been so much talk lately

about viewers canceling their subscriptions to cable or satellite providers. What’s your view on the issue of cutting the cord?

BEWKES: It’s like a story in search of facts that aren’t there. There hasn’t been cutting of the cord.We are in the midst of a tough economic period in the U.S., and there are flat growth rates to subscription television delivered either by a satellite, a telco or a cable operator.Approximately 95 percent of American homes subscribe to some package of

television channels. That hasn’t really changed. Normally that has been creeping along at 1- or 2-percent growth as the economy adds households, but over the last year or two it’s been pretty flat.The huge noise was made when it went down a tenth of a percent.

WS: What is really causing the slower cable-

subscription rates?

BEWKES: What is going on is much more

about the competition among the distribution companies—cable, telephone and satel-

[And the fact is] ratings are going up, viewership is going up, program budgets are going up, retransmission fees are going up, profits are going up, everything is going up in the TV business. Everybody is watching; you are getting more choice, and you are about to get all of that on demand, whenever you want, on whatever device you want, with no change in price. It’s still only $2 a day—you can have every TV in your house lit up with all this programming, 24 hours a day, for your entire family, or you can buy half a cup of a grande

“New services that make it easier to enjoy TV programming are expanding the entire market for TV viewing.” lite companies. They compete for doubleand triple-play offerings. And then on top of all of that there’s the recession.

WS: Do you see cord-cutting happening

anytime soon, as so many in the press have been suggesting?

BEWKES: Usually there are two reasons given for why people would want to cut the cord.

One, they see the rise in Internet-delivered video services like Netflix, and theorize that young people are not going to pay for cableTV packages.We’ve seen no evidence to support that, particularly as young people graduate and get jobs and get their own homes. What we’re seeing is that new services that make it easier to enjoy TV programming are expanding the entire market for TV viewing.

The second reason everybody says there could be cord-cutting is because they think the cost of TV subscriptions is too high. [It is assumed] people will want to pay $10 for Netflix instead of $50 for 80 or more channels of TV. That whole thought process is also unsupported—in fact, more people are watching more TV than at any other time in the industry’s history and they are receiving greater value from it.

If you are paying for a TV subscription today, you are paying about $2 a day. That’s what it costs to get hundreds of channels of news and sports and movies and TV [series].

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latte down at Starbucks. The press tends to be off on this story, and the real story is that the appeal and value of multichannel subscriptions is improving as we move to a mobile, on-demand environment.

WS: Netflix recently raised its rates from $9.99 to $15.98 per month for online streaming and DVDs. Many subscribers were pretty upset, and I read in an article that one consumer said Netflix was no longer worth the money. For the same amount she could get HBO On Demand.

BEWKES: That’s true. That’s a 60-percent price increase. Nobody has ever put through a 60-percent increase—nobody is even putting through a 5-percent increase—in the cable industry.

WS: Tell us about HBO GO, HBO’s online

authenticated on-demand service.

BEWKES: It’s very successful.The HBO GO

app has been downloaded almost 5 million times, and 85 percent of the subscribers who are using HBO GO are watching dramatically more HBO programming. HBO has all these programs on demand, which no other network does. Remember, it’s going to be on every device, and it doesn’t cost anything to get it if you are an HBO subscriber. It’s a great example of where television is headed.

For more from Bewkes, see page 211.

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Philippe Dauman Abbe Raven PRESIDENT AND CEO, VIACOM

From networks like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, to individual shows like Jersey Shore, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Victorious, Viacom’s brands are extremely popular among young viewers. Reaching out to them on whatever digital platform or device they may be using and offering content they want to watch, are top priorities for Philippe Dauman.

So is protecting the value of Viacom’s assets.

WS: You reported a 37-percent increase in profits in the third quarter.What factors contributed to such a strong financial performance?

DAUMAN: AtViacom, it’s about creative excellence, focused strategy, fiscal discipline and resourcefulness.Those factors serve as the foundation for our success.We’re an entertainmentcontent company, so fueling the creative engines throughout our company is always the first priority…and we have been unyielding in our commitment to invest wisely in content.

That continues to help us invigorate our brands and connect with audiences around the globe.

Our hit programming and the audience connections we forge make our networks a gateway to some of the most highly valued audiences around the globe. During the most recent reported quarter, we attracted new advertisers and expanded the reach of our content onto new distribution platforms and in international markets.

Paramount Pictures [which is owned by Viacom] has had tremendous box office success this year. It is number one at the domestic box office and, by mid-summer,

All of this digital distribution is layered on top of the transactional revenue we already receive from platforms like iTunes or Amazon, which provide download-to-own and download-to-rent options for viewers.

WS: How are over-the-top (OTT) services

helping you revitalize your library sales?

DAUMAN: We have always had great programming with compelling characters— both real and animated. Our brands have long-standing connections all over the world

“Viacom has enjoyed a substantial boost in incremental revenues from new and renewed digital-distribution agreements.” it had already surpassed $2 billion at the international box office—five months earlier than its prior record. Paramount also set an industry record, releasing six $100-million domestic box-office hits in a row, led by the global blockbuster Transformers: Dark of the Moon. All of this theatrical success bodes well for future home-entertainment releases.

WS: How much did emerging revenues

from digital distributors like Netflix contribute to these results?

DAUMAN: Viacom has enjoyed a substantial boost in incremental revenues from new and renewed digital-distribution agreements. These digital deals—which include both media networks and motion-picture titles—come with very high margins and, fortunately for us, we own the majority of our content, so there is a lot more room for incremental growth in this area both in the U.S. and internationally.

Keep in mind that while big names such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon represent entirely new partnerships for content producers, many of the traditional content distributors are also very interested in acquiring incremental digital rights. Those discussions are taking place as well, and I think you’ll see some interesting deals in the coming months and years.

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with highly targeted audiences, which tend to skew young and are some of the heaviest users of these new distribution platforms.

Many of our new digital-distribution deals primarily involve older content from across our media networks. Again, since we own the vast majority of that content, we control our own destiny.There are distributors of scale out there who are prepared to pay substantial dollars for library content. And our content is incredibly valuable to their future success.These arrangements also allow us to avoid some of the complexities that arise when we are making digital deals for current programming.

This is an area of great opportunity in the U.S., but also internationally, where for regulatory or other reasons, we haven’t been able to introduce our content through traditional television networks.

WS: Some media companies see OTT ser vices like Netflix as disruptors of their businesses. How have you made your business model with Netflix work?

DAUMAN: Let’s look back at the history of the cable-television business. First we dealt with one distributor: the local cable company.

Then satellite distribution emerged and, for the first time, there was competition for our content. Fast-forward again to when telecom distribution entered the picture, which brought another buyer to the table. Each new

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distributor raised the level of competition in the marketplace—which is great for the consumer and great for us. The same is true today with the profusion of digital distributors.

We know our content is valuable and we also know that it fuels the success of new distributor offerings.

MTV’s Jersey Shore.

So we approach each new distribution opportunity armed with a rigorous financial and opera- America and Europe, and we expect to see tional discipline to ensure that every deal ulti- more in Asia as well. This provides healthy mately provides us with incremental growth. incentive for competitive distribution partners There are many digital-distribution mod- to make compelling investments in quality els in the marketplace. Hulu Plus is different content, and we know that our television and from Netflix, which is different from the film libraries are very much in demand. I do Amazon model. Even Facebook has entered expect that you will see more of these deals the video-rental market, and they provide a with a wide variety of players, big and small, unique product as well. We are open to dif- throughout the world. ferent models as long as they generate incremental monetization opportunities.

WS: Tell us about the success of some of One of the factors we consider is the nature Viacom’s scripted series and how they help of specific programming when determining Viacom build its brands. which model to choose. For example, The DAUMAN: We’re developing more original Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert programming than ever before for our Report are incredibly topical, and they produce media networks as well as our branded diga new show every day.We know that the digi- ital properties, and we are enjoying tremental distribution of a prior day’s show helps gen- dous success. Research—understanding our erate buzz and actually drives ratings for today’s audiences’ interests, preferences and conshow. So it’s promotional and we also sell cerns better than anyone else—is a huge advertising.The same does not necessarily hold driver of this programming success. And it’s true for other programs. A scripted show has a helping us to build our brands in the U.S. longer run and we can repeat it effectively and around the globe. Many of our most more often. It requires a longer window before successful programs in the U.S. have grown it hits digital platforms.As a result, we maximize into regional and even global hits.

Take Hot in Cleveland from TV Land as an monetization over time and across platforms.

We are getting increasingly sophisticated as we example. It was an instant hit in the U.S., becoming the number one original sitcom on evolve our digital distribution strategy. cable television last year. It’s now been licensed WS: How are you seeing competition in in about 150 territories around the world and digital distribution increase internationally, is among the highest-rated shows in Canada and how is that affecting your bottom line? and Australia, frequently beating U.S. broadDAUMAN: As I said, competition is a great cast network sitcoms. And it will air on our thing for a content company and, yes, we are newest network,Viacom Blink!, which just seeing more of it in the international market. launched in Poland.

We’ve seen interest in digital delivery of our Continuing with the TV Land example, content climb substantially in Canada, Latin we also have Happily Divorced and Retired at 10/11

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35, both of which have helped us to expand our reach to adult audiences.

At BET, we more than doubled our investment in original programming over the past several years. Scripted programming has been a huge accelerator of its success. Earlier this year, the cable debut of The Game ranked as the top ad-supported scripted series premiere in U.S. cable history, with 7.7 million total viewers.

That same night, BET introduced a romantic comedy, Let’s Stay Together, and well over 4 million viewers tuned in. Both shows are coming back and they will be joined by another new sitcom, Reed Between the Lines, starring Tracee Ellis Ross and Malcolm-Jamal Warner.

There are plenty of other examples across our media networks.VH1 has generated an impressive jump in its ratings in the past couple of months due in part to the success of Single Ladies, an original comedy series.

And MTV is building a solid track record of success with scripted programs, most recently renewing Teen Wolf and Awkward.

I can’t leave out the phenomenal success of Nickelodeon. Let me just highlight one example, House of Anubis.This scripted show originated in the Netherlands and is the first Nickelodeon series to be filmed overseas.

Its freshman season delivered strong ratings in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, where it was the number one live-action show among kids. We’re now looking forward to continuing this success with season two.

Investing in content is an imperative at Viacom, and you’ll see even more scripted programming on our networks in the months and years to come.

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Jon Feltheimer Abbe Raven CO-CHAIRMAN AND CEO, LIONSGATE

The key to Lionsgate’s success has been identifying audience niches that the major studios were not serving and providing them with movies and TV series they could not find elsewhere. Jon Feltheimer and his team continue to look for new business ventures and are mining opportunities in the digital world.

WS: Lionsgate has demonstrated a willingness

to embrace new platforms, perhaps more so than other studios.

FELTHEIMER: As a young company, we were structured from day one to target the large niche-affinity audiences that are a part of today’s digital marketplace, and we’ve become pretty adept at using new distribution platforms to connect with these consumers.

Building our company without a lot of legacy has enabled us to take a fresh approach to new digital platforms that allow us to market, distribute and monetize our content in different ways.We believe that one of the value propositions we offer our investors is that

we’re young enough to have a fluent digital vocabulary but old enough to have built a valuable stockpile of brands and franchises.

We want to position ourselves as an industry leader in each of the four ways we look at the digital marketplace: One, we just started creating new content specifically for digital platforms. We know Netflix is doing House of Cards with Kevin Spacey. It’s also been reported that Jenji Kohan, the creator of Weeds, is developing a show for Netflix.

Though we can’t comment specifically on

model, but shape the distribution model around the content. How have you been doing that?

FELTHEIMER: Content creation drives the whole value chain. You take something that reaches an audience and has long-lasting value and then you build a distribution pattern and a business model around it.You can’t create a deal and then look for content that fits the deal.

I was recently reminded of the analogy that the Yankees built Yankee Stadium around Babe Ruth. They made the right field porch so that he could hit most of his 714 home

“Digital...allows us to experiment with windows and variable pricing in ways that we weren’t able to explore before.” that report, that is exactly the kind of premium content that we are looking to create for these digital platforms.

Two, we are monetizing our content on these digital platforms both domestically and internationally. Whether it’s the Mad Men syndication deal or the deal we made recently in Latin America for Mad Men and our library product that is generating five times more revenue and EBITDA than we got previously for our catalogue in that region—this brings in millions and millions of incremental dollars to our EBITDA. Three, we have formed distribution partnerships. EPIX is a good example of that.

The EPIX deal with Netflix gave us a way to layer both new and traditional distribution partners in what I think is a new business paradigm for the pay-television business. It allowed us to respect our traditional partners, it allowed us to support our investment in high-value feature films, and it enabled us to connect to consumers with an “anytime, anywhere” approach that was different from what had been tried previously.

And the fourth thing that digital does for us is it allows us to experiment with windows and variable pricing in ways that we weren’t able to explore before.

runs there. I guess that was the same thing— they took a piece of content, which was Babe Ruth, and they built the distribution, which was the stadium, around him. Fragmentation within the digital marketplace fits our business model of targeting large niche audiences, and that has changed the game for us. A lot of shows, particularly cable and paytelevision shows, can generate really significant profits in a digital world by aggregating lots of revenue from lots of platforms without attracting the tens of millions of eyeballs that broadcast-network shows do. A show like Mad Men, whose loyal audience isn’t that broad but is really deep and continues to increase on a long-term basis, can air on multiple platforms over a long period of time and become a very, very valuable franchise.

When you have shows with a deep audience, and platforms like Netflix that recognize the value of these deep affinity audiences, you can generate really significant dollars.

When you look across all platforms, not all of them digital, Mad Men has made over $100 million in revenue just from home entertainment, which includes VOD, SVOD and EST [electronic sell-through]. It’s pretty indicative of how digital distribution, shaped around a great piece of content, is a tremendous combination.

WS: You have said that producers and distrib-

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For more from Feltheimer, see page 397.

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George Bodenheimer Abbe Raven

PRESIDENT, ESPN AND ABC SPORTS & CO-CHAIRMAN, DISNEY MEDIA NETWORKS

Perhaps no one knows the ESPN fan better than George Bodenheimer. He joined the company after college, in 1981, as a driver for the mailroom, and has been there ever since. He moved up the ranks and in 1998 was named president. He was also appointed president of ABC Sports in 2003, and co-chairman of Disney Media Networks in 2004. Through the years he has witnessed firsthand both advances in technology, which he has embraced—and made sure ESPN has kept pace with—and changes in viewing habits. Regardless of the channel, platform or device, the goal is the same: serving the ESPN fan.

WS: ESPN’s mission has always been to serve its fans. How has this mission driven your “best available screen” strategy?

BODENHEIMER: It is a simple strategy: in order to fulfill our mission, we need to be where the fans are. New technology and innovation have enabled us to serve fans when they aren’t in front of their TVs,

whether that’s on their computers, listening to their radios or using their mobile or tablet device.The added benefit is that these devices [reach audiences in time periods when] we previously could not reach fans, which in turn creates an additive audience for our content.

WS: How did you decide what to offer

online, and what do your fans expect to find on the ESPN websites?

BODENHEIMER: Ultimately, what fans want drives us. ESPN has a long and rich his-

supported short-form sports video in the U.S., and likely in the world. On ESPN.com alone, we create about 70 pieces totaling 200 minutes of video a day.Video is a core part of what ESPN does. We’re leaders in multiplatform programming and we’ll continue to provide fans with more and more video across a number of screens, and we plan on maintaining that trend.

WS: Is online viewing in any way cannibal-

izing viewing on the linear channels?

“New technology and innovation have enabled us to serve fans when they aren’t in front of their TVs.” tory of providing accurate, up-to-the-minute sports news and information, as well as analysis and smart commentary, throughout the world. Whether it is ESPN.com, ESPNcricinfo, our local sites (like ESPNNewYork, ESPN.co.uk or ESPN.com.br), ESPNsoccernet or any of our other websites, that’s our core mandate. On top of that, we work to layer the best online library of sports video, podcasts, feature and investigative journalism, and a set of social tools and avenues that allow fans to share their passions and points of view with each other and with us. At the same time, we have to find ways to deliver on that in a way that allows us to build a successful and sustainable long-term business.

WS: How popular is streaming live sports on

your websites?

BODENHEIMER: We stream thousands of

live and on-demand sports events around the world, through broadband services in more than 50 countries under the ESPN3, WatchESPN, ESPN Player and ESPN Play brands.

What we stream, and how many events, varies by market, but the principle is the same: serve underserved groups of fans that are passionate about sports, and use technology to deliver that in the best possible way.

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BODENHEIMER: No. We do a lot of research about how sports fans consume content, and we see the entire pie—whether it is TV, online or mobile devices—growing.

In fact, 2010 was ESPN’s highest-rated year, and ESPN.com had a record year as well.We have learned time and time again that crossmedia usage is not a zero-sum game. A heavy user is a heavy user, and we continue to do our best to satiate them across screens.

WS: In what ways does ESPN offer such

high value to cable and satellite operators?

There is much talk of “cord-cutting.” How real of a threat do you think this is?

BODENHEIMER: We are in the service business, whether it’s serving our fans or our affiliate partners. Sports is live, compelling, highly prized programming that is rarely time-shifted, which makes it valuable to our partners. As for cord-cutting, it’s something we’re watching closely, but to date research has shown that it is a very limited phenomenon. We have found that, of the very small number of viewers who no longer have multichannel packages, most tend to do it for economic reasons, not because they are getting their video content from other sources.

WS: How are you serving fans on mobile devices?

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The World Cup on ESPN. BODENHEIMER: Very aggressively.We want

to serve sports fans wherever they are, and we deliver our sports content to their mobile devices through the ESPN Mobile Web, text messages, audio, video and of course our mobile apps. In the U.S., we capture about 70 percent of the time spent with sports on mobile. Our ESPN ScoreCenter and ESPN Radio apps have been the number one free and paid sports apps on iTunes for more than a year. Our WatchESPN app in the U.S. allows fans to watch ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN3 anywhere on their iPhone, iPad and Android devices through affiliated partners. In the U.K., ESPN is already the thirdranked sports destination on the mobile web, and ESPN Goals—which delivers all the goals from all 380 Barclays Premier League matches to smartphones—has been the top sports app, and among the top five free apps, consistently. ESPNcricinfo is the clear leader for cricket on the mobile web in India, and in Australia we just acquired a company, Extracorp, that operates the leading footy-tipping site on the web, and a leading app that pairs with it. So we’re establishing leadership in many places around the world all through-

out the year, and we have many other mobile apps tied to specific sports and events—like the X Games, FIFA World Cup, college football bowl season, fantasy baseball and football—that enable fans to stay engaged with the sports they love.

ESPN to provide fans with richer, more indepth information whenever they use Google to look up data about a league, team or player. In addition, we’ve worked with new companies like Pulse, to optimize ESPN content for the iPad news reader.

WS: What is your strategy for making ESPN content available on third-party websites and platforms?

BODENHEIMER: As a general rule, we try to use our media to deliver our content, but we recognize that fans utilize many online and mobile platforms to keep up with their favorite teams and players, as well as engage their friends and fellow fans. So we have embraced things like Facebook Connect across many of our sites and services and we work with many innovative partners. For example, we have worked with YouTube to establish our own branded channel on that site because we know that fans look for our video content there. We were also the first company to have our own video player used on our YouTube channel. We are working with Google to create enhanced search results using microdata, which enables

WS: How are you using social-media sites to

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further your connection with fans?

BODENHEIMER: ESPN has been very

active integrating Facebook, Twitter and YouTube into how we make our content available to fans. We’ve also created two social games for Facebook. Last September, we launched ESPNU College Town, which immediately became the most popular sports social game on Facebook, and in July we launched ESPN Sports Bar, which reached 1 million players in its first month.

WS: ESPN has a huge international presence. What further growth do you see in international markets?

BODENHEIMER: We are looking to grow around the world in much the same way; localized content distributed through a plethora of technology and innovation.

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Michael Fries Abbe Raven

PRESIDENT AND CEO, LIBERTY GLOBAL

If there is any doubt about the future of cable television, one need only look at Liberty Global.

It’s the leading cable operator in 14 countries, most in Europe but also in Australia and Latin America, serving 28.3 million subscribers and providing video, broadband and telephony. As Michael Fries explains, ten years ago revenues were only $1 billion; today they amount to more than $10 billion.

WS: What are the factors that have been driv-

ing Liberty Global’s growth over the last year?

FRIES: There have been three factors. We have a pretty concerted focus on driving scale. If you look at what we’ve done in the last three years, we’ve concluded about $15 billion in M&A [merger and acquisition] transactions all focused on rebalancing our footprint into Europe. When we complete the remainder of these deals, about 90 percent of our revenue will come out of Europe.That helps us in a number of ways: first, it drives capex [capital expenditure] and content ben-

efits. Second, we’re extremely focused on innovation. Look at what we’ve done with broadband—we have 22 million homes today that can get 100 megabits of broadband speed. That’s certainly a key focus for us and that’s allowing us to regain market share from telcos and really become market leaders again in broadband. Third, we’re always focused on organic growth. If you look at digital, even though we’re 48-percent penetrated with digital receivers today, we’ve got something like 8 million households that are still watch-

thing like €3.50, €4 [$5, $5.80] a month per customer in extra revenue. So VOD is really an important piece of the cable promise, and even though the vast majority of usage is free—which is fine with us because we’re generally not paying for that content—it’s very much a product and service subscribers expect to be able to access randomly.

WS: How are you allowing your subscribers

to access that content on their iPads, online, wherever they may be?

“We have the best relationship with content providers: we protect their content; we pay them for content.” ing analogue television, so with HD and the DVR and VOD, we’re able to drive a pretty compelling digital product into our homes.

WS: What kind of demand are you seeing

for double- and triple-play offerings?

FRIES: It goes without saying that for us the bundle really is the product today. Some 40 percent of our customers take a bundle from us, and I’d say 85 percent of the net [subscriber] adds that we’ve created in the bundled environment have come from triple play. There’s no turning back—the bundle really is what drives our business and broadband drives the bundle. In Europe, some 70 percent of our triple-play sales include a broadband speed of 20 megabits or higher.

They work hand in hand.

WS: What about video on demand?

FRIES: For all cable operators, video on

demand is becoming very much a basic component of the video offer. Today we’ve launched video on demand in seven countries.

We have tens of millions of streams each month. The reasons that people are using the video-on-demand service vary by market. In most cases, catch-up TV from broadcasters, movies and key cable channels drive usage. But it varies by market. And VOD is not just a retention tool for us; it’s also a revenue driver.

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FRIES: There are three things cable does very well today. Given the size of our pipes, we are the best at providing connectivity.We have a very large customer base in the video sector and we have the best relationship with content providers: we protect their content; we pay them for content. But there are three things we don’t do well.We don’t really allow you to move our content onto other devices.

We don’t allow you to integrate other content onto the TV screen or into your cable box, and our user interface, our programming guides, leave a lot to be desired. What we’re focused on in our company is really [improving] those three weaknesses. Later this year we’re rolling out in Holland what we call Horizon, which is our new IP gateway that will do all three of those things. It’s an amazing user interface with 3D rendered graphics powered by an Intel computer chip.

We’re integrating web content and online content into the user experience on the television set with apps and widgets. It will be a very powerful recommendation, search and navigation tool. It’ll automatically find your iPad and your PC and allow you to share content between them, and it’ll come with an over-the-top cloud-based service that allows you to watch the content we have available on your iPad or PC free of charge.

In my opinion it’s cable’s game to lose, and the innovations we are introducing on the

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Liberty Global’s UPC Broadband.

digital platform are going to be tremendous game-changers in Europe.

WS: What does cable do better than over-

the-top providers like Netflix or LOVEFiLM? FRIES: Customers still want quality, which

means they want the best content, and nobody provides better content than cable.We have all the free-to-air channels, we have all the studios, all the premium sports, all the live content, and we provide it on multiple devices in multiple ways. Secondly, people want clear signals. It’s not easy to access content from various over-the-top providers using different browsers and different applications, and cable is really a one-stop shop. If you’re going to provide folks with an easy one-stop shop, it has to have simple and functional tools and it has to be a clear signal, an easy experience.

Thirdly—this is more of an industrial point— I don’t think people want to work that hard.

The idea that somehow, in the future, all of your content will be consumed from any and all sources whenever you choose and you’re going to search for every single piece of that content, I think is false. Consumers want curators, they want aggregators. They want people they trust to provide them with great content, and they trust brands and they trust certain destinations.

WS: Is the issue of cord-cutting something

you’ve started thinking about in terms of your business in Europe?

FRIES: It’s not really that evident or a big risk today for us in Europe.The European market is very fragmented, so over-the-top providers have had a difficult time entering this market. Rights are not easy to come by. Language issues, structural and regulatory issues exist, and so the breadth and the quality of content isn’t there today. Scale is hard to achieve. The second thing to remember in

Europe is that we have a very cheap video product—on average our video product is €15 [$22] a month, not €60 [$86] like in the U.S. So the opportunity to come and undercut cable with an inferior content offer but a slightly better navigation tool is either zero or shortlived. And despite the concerns around cordcutting or cord-swapping, depending on how you want to describe it, TV viewership around the world continues to rise. There seems to be no lack of people willing to sit down and watch television, and broadcast revenues are hitting new highs. I’m not by any stretch suggesting that we’re ignoring the trend, I’m just pointing out that we’re being very sensible about the pace of that trend and watching things probably a little more closely than others.

WS: You talked about Horizon.What are some of the other services you’re offering to maintain the loyalty of your subscriber base?

FRIES: In terms of retention, certainly the bundle is the stickiest part of our offer. If you look at Europe, our triple-play customers churn 50 percent less than our single-play customers. We also need to continue to improve and innovate the experience, so faster speeds, more HD channels, new services like Horizon and our own over-the-top platform. As long as we continue to innovate and improve the customer experience, I think we’re in great shape.

we’re also spending considerable time on making that digital-video experience much more rich with projects like Horizon. We also have to stay ahead of the curve on broadband, so even though 85 percent of our homes can get 100 megabits today, we’ve got to continue to drive and be market leaders in broadband. If you look at us versus the U.S., regulators definitely like us in Europe; we have a very level playing field, we’re driving competition with the telcos. I’d say we have a lot of opportunity in terms of building further scale in Europe. There’s something like 8,000 cable operators in Europe, it’s like the old days in the U.S. We have a tremendous opportunity to continue to consolidate that market and derive the benefits that scale delivers.

In terms of some of the risks, I’d say there’s no question that European cable operators face the same basic consumer challenges and over-the-top risks that U.S. operators face.

The difference is the time frame. Because the market is highly fragmented, because it’s very difficult to enter the markets that we operate in, because we have such an inexpensive video product to begin with and because we’re innovating at a faster pace than even our U.S. peers, it’s going to be difficult in our markets for over-the-top services. But we’re vigilant; we never ignore these things. We’re trying to innovate around them.

WS: What are the opportunities and chal-

WS: Are you looking at opportunities in

lenges for Liberty Global and cable operators in general in the next 12 to 24 months?

FRIES: If you look at our opportunities, first of all, as I mentioned, we have a very long digital runway, so we’ve got 8 million homes that are watching a few dozen TV channels. Every time we put a digital box in the house we double revenue, and today 138

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Latin America or Asia?

FRIES: Ten years ago we were in 27 countries

with roughly $1 billion in revenues. Today we’re in 14 countries with $10 billion in revenues. We’ve decided very purposely to focus our resources today in our core markets where we can drive scale, raise capital, and where there are the best opportunities for us.

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Anke Schäferkordt Abbe Raven CEO, MEDIENGRUPPE RTL DEUTSCHLAND AND RTL TELEVISION

At the helm of the RTL Group’s German operations, Anke Schäferkordt oversees the TV stations RTL Television, which is the most successful commercial station in Germany; Vox; N-TV; RTL II; Super RTL; the three digital niche channels, Passion, RTL Crime and RTL Living; and a portfolio of websites with highly successful catch-up TV offerings.

Germany would have been invited to offer their programs under the umbrella of each station’s brand. Now that the cartel office has turned down our plans, we are concentrating again on our own catch-up sites, RTLNOW, VOXNOW and SuperRTLNOW, which launched last year. On the other hand, we went to court and have appealed the decision of the cartel office.

the linear channels. Last year more people than ever, across all relevant target groups, were watching television in Germany.That leads us to the conclusion that providing shows on the Internet in case viewers have missed them on TV strengthens the relationship between our viewers and our television programs.

WS: Does RTL Deutschland have plans for

SCHÄFERKORDT: We strongly believe that

other online on-demand services?

advertisers will benefit substantially from the

WS: The German cartel office objected to the

proposed joint-venture online platform between Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland and ProSiebenSat.1.What did the two companies want to offer consumers?

SCHÄFERKORDT: The idea of the proposed joint venture was to establish a single technical platform for all catch-up services in Germany. The joint venture would have been in charge of the technical services only, while every network would have decided independently what programs to offer as a catch-up service and whether and how to sell advertising. Every television station in

WS: How willing have advertisers been to

move online?

“The fast-growing usage of our online and mobile content is not cannibalizing viewing of the linear channels.”

SCHÄFERKORDT: We have already established our own online offerings, station by station. We started in 2007 with RTLNOW.de.

VOXNOW.de and SuperRTLNOW.de followed in 2009 and 2010. We offer an adsupported catch-up service, where viewers can watch shows for free within seven days of the TV broadcast. We also offer a preview and a library version, both of which are pay models.

We keep on optimizing these services and plan to introduce them soon into the cable market.

WS: How popular are the catch-up TV

services, RTLNOW.de and VOXNOW.de?

SCHÄFERKORDT: Keeping in mind that

the offer as of today is a web-only offer, the development of unique users and video viewers is more than promising. RTLNOW.de, for example, guarantees approximately 20 million video views per month of full episodes. I expect these figures to increase substantially as soon as our offers will be available on cable, too.

WS: What are you learning about how viewers are watching programming online?

SCHÄFERKORDT: We have learned that we are on the right track in offering viewers our content wherever and whenever they want to be informed or entertained by us....

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combination of TV advertising and online advertising. While online display advertising is a highly fragmented market with huge competition and high price pressure, online advertising has proved to be the driver of our growth.We can offer advertisers the best professional video content in which they can place their advertising.

WS: How are the digital channels Passion, RTL Crime and RTL Living performing, and what have been some of their successes?

SCHÄFERKORDT: [They] are doing very well. With much more than 2 million subscribers, they are among the most widely distributed and most successful channels in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. On RTL Crime we show a broad variety of highquality documentaries and drama series like the CSI franchise or Hustle. Recent program acquisitions for RTL Crime have been, for example, the Starz series Spartacus: Gods of the Arena and the BBC’s The Shadow Line.

On RTL Living we show high-quality lifestyle programs with hosts like Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Heston Blumenthal, Michael Palin and Alan Titchmarsh. The Passion channel targets female viewers with German soaps and international contemporary and period drama.

For more from Schäferkordt, see page 194.

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Andreas Bartl Abbe Raven

CHIEF GERMAN TV OFFICER, PROSIEBENSAT.1 MEDIA

ProSiebenSat.1 Media’s maxdome is Germany’s largest video-download site. It offers consumers more than 35,000 titles ranging from feature films, series and comedy shows to sports, music and cartoons. As Andreas Bartl explains, the key to maxdome’s success is the variety of ways in which viewers can access its content.

WS: Last January, ProSiebenSat.1 took full control of the online VOD platform maxdome. What prompted this investment and what has made maxdome so successful?

BARTL: From a strategic point of view it’s a very important asset, so we wanted to take full control of it in order to take our next steps with maxdome.The business looks very good, the churn rate is much better and we have been able to attract a lot of new clients. We definitely think that TV content on demand will be much more popular in a couple of years, so this is why we chose to acquire the full company.

WS: Maxdome offers viewers download-forrental, purchase and subscription models.

Which is proving to be the most popular?

BARTL: Well, the good news is that all three options seem to be popular. This is also part of our strategy: we give our viewers the full freedom for how to use maxdome because there are different types of customers—some don’t like subscriptions, some are cash-and-carry clients and have the possibility to pay per view, and some want to subscribe. It depends on how much convenience you want and how much

such a big success in Germany in free-toair television. But if you have a series that is the hit of the year, it’s a model that is very interesting for both television and online.

WS: So the big hit shows on linear TV are also the ones that are popular on maxdome?

BARTL: Definitely, there is a very close relationship. Free TV makes the brands, makes the series popular, and then you can use them online very, very well. Good old television is still the gatekeeper in building brands.

“On-demand seems to be even strengthening the loyalty of viewers to a certain show if they know they will not miss an episode.” business you want to have with maxdome, and our clients are using this freedom. But the most popular transaction is subscription.

WS: How is your relationship with the

Hollywood studios and other distributors?

BARTL: Very good. We have been working with most of the Hollywood studios for 20 years doing deals, and of course we are discussing with them the issue of using content on demand. They have an interest in exploring the possibilities, so we have found some good agreements. This led to a very good stock of programming we can offer on maxdome.The attractiveness of our wide range of programming has led to the market positioning we have with maxdome. It’s very important. But the Hollywood studios are open to discussions, so it’s going hand in hand.

WS: You did some quite innovative deals some years ago when Disney allowed episodes of Lost, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy to air first on maxdome, even before they aired on your linear channels.

BARTL: Yes, for an extra amount of money episodes have been available on maxdome before their run on regular television, so if you were really interested in Lost and could not wait until the following week for the next episode, we did some good business with this. It worked pretty well. Lost was not 142

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WS: Some television executives think even-

tually there may be more viewing on demand than watching linear channels.

BARTL: Nobody knows about the future. I don’t think on-demand television will make linear television obsolete because watching linear TV is a kind of social experience of millions of people watching the same event at one time—it gives people things to talk about. For me, linear television is a vital force of society, so I think it will be the leading medium for years. But definitely ondemand use of television content will grow, especially by the distribution of new technologies like tablets and also hybrid television. If you can run your online content on television sets it will be a big step for ondemand television. The good news is that so far there has hardly been any cannibalization of linear channels by on-demand viewing.

In fact, on-demand seems to be even strengthening the loyalty of viewers to a certain show if they know they will not miss an episode—especially for shows that are serialized and where missing an episode means you lose track of what’s going on with the series. I think on-demand television and linear television will have a very good and fruitful relationship and will stimulate each other for years.

For more from Bartl, see page 196.

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Hans-Holger Albrecht Abbe Raven PRESIDENT AND CEO, MODERN TIMES GROUP

The Modern Times Group (MTG) operates a portfolio of free-TV and pay-TV services in 33 countries. While many channel programmers view over-the-top services as disruptors of the traditional methods of delivering content to consumers, MTG’s Viasat Broadcasting has not only launched its own online on-demand service, but has found that it complements the linear channels.

WS: In Scandinavia you launched Viaplay, the market’s first over-the-top Internet ondemand service. How has it been received?

ALBRECHT: Viaplay is rapidly gaining momentum as it offers viewers a unique proposition they can’t find anywhere else.We are continuously working on further developing the service, adding new content and making it available across more platforms—all in line with our ambition to offer premium content anytime, anywhere and on any device.

WS: Several media companies feel over-thetop services are a threat to traditional linear

cable and satellite channels. How do you view over-the-top services vis-à-vis your free-TV and pay-TV channels?

ALBRECHT: Instead of seeing them as competing distribution methods, we see them as complementing each other. In fact,Viaplay has increased the footprint of our pay-TV business.

We try to secure the distribution rights for all platforms, which in turn offer the viewers greater flexibility for when, where and on what device they would like to consume the content offering.

WS: In the markets in which you operate, is

television still commanding the largest share of the advertising market?

ALBRECHT: In Scandinavia television has a stable market share on a national level.There is, however, much room to grow in the regional ad markets, which are very big, particularly in Scandinavia where they constitute 40 percent to 60 percent of the total advertisement market. We are subsequently moving into this space by expanding our regional presence, starting in Sweden.

“To make over-the-top entertainment work, you need premium, exclusive and local content from recognized brands.”

A good example is our broadcast of [the soccer] UEFA Champions League in Scandinavia, where we show matches on free TV and pay TV, as well as offering most matches for live streaming on Viaplay, giving everyone a chance to follow their favourite team.

To make over-the-top entertainment work, you need premium, exclusive and local content from recognized brands. In Scandinavia,Viaplay is an online one-stop shop for premium TV, sports and movies, and we can offer several thousand movies, in addition to more than 1,000 sports events every year, as well as premium local productions from MTG’s free-TV channels.

WS: What demand are you seeing for HD

channels?

ALBRECHT: Our pay-TV subscription

numbers are increasing. Part of the explanation is that viewers not only demand a greater choice of channels, but also an enhanced viewing experience that HD offers. The number of subscribers to Viasat’s recordable digital set-top box, multiroom and HD services continues to grow every year.

Over the last year we have launched several HD channels in the Nordic region and in emerging markets, and more can be expected. Apart from HD, we were also the first broadcaster to launch a 3D service in Scandinavia.

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TV viewing is much higher in the emerging markets than in Scandinavia, but the advertising spend per capita is significantly lower, rendering a significant growth potential. The emerging markets are subsequently growing much faster than they are in Western Europe.

WS: How have your investments in content helped your free-TV and pay-TV businesses?

ALBRECHT: Content is king. That goes for both free and pay TV. A strong content strategy underpins our multichannel mediahouse strategy where we position our channels in order to cater to particular audience groups. On the pay-TV side, we are clearly the premium content provider of choice.We have throughout the years built a very strong content platform that delivers entertainment at your command.

A good example of how we can combine this for both free and pay TV is the groundbreaking deal we made with Twentieth Century Fox earlier this year that covers the broadcasting rights to a range of blockbuster movies and hit TV series not only on our Scandinavian free-TV channels but also on Viaplay. This is also manifested when we acquire major sports rights, with the most recent example being our extension of the broadcasting rights to UEFA Champions League in Scandinavia.

For more from Albrecht, see page 198.

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Matthew Blank Abbe Raven

CHAIRMAN AND CEO, SHOWTIME NETWORKS

A wholly owned subsidiary of CBS Corporation, Showtime Networks operates a bouquet of pay-TV linear and on-demand channels. A raft of critically acclaimed and very successful shows, from Dexter and Weeds to The Big C and The Borgias, have been attracting talent and subscribers, making Showtime a major player in the pay-TV business.

WS: What has been the strategy for your original productions and how has it evolved over the years?

BLANK: We felt strongly that the value of first-run movies in the premium pay-TV window had been diminished by the number of places where you can find those movies. Typically, a movie comes out of the theaters and we get it a year later on Showtime—you can rent it on DVD, you can watch it onVOD, you can get it on Netflix, you can get it in any number of places, particularly now that tablets are everywhere. There are more places to get movies: wired game consoles, movies on

Facebook, Apple. Particularly over the past decade or so it has become very important to distinguish ourselves with programming that is exclusive to Showtime and that really brands the network. It’s been our strategy for quite a while to develop as much of that programming as possible and to elevate it in the hearts and minds of our subscribers, as well as among the press and consumers.

WS: What message have your original pro-

ductions sent to the creative community?

season two, but...we will no longer license any Dexter seasons until Dexter has completed its run on Showtime. After that time we would consider licensing all the seasons to various players in the marketplace. Similarly, The Tudors is out there right now, as are several older shows that were on the network.

We think it’s great for people to see what Showtime has been doing over the years; it’s great for people to become fans of our shows and hopefully fans of Showtime, and I think it helps us promote the future of Showtime.

“We don’t want to make deals with Netflix or others...that would diminish the value of Showtime.”

BLANK: It’s had a dramatic impact on the brand and on consumers. I don’t think we’re viewed as a “me-too” brand anymore, as we may have been a decade ago. More importantly, I think the creative community views Showtime as a really important step in the process, if not the first door they knock on with a great project. All of this is a function, one, of having broken through with a couple of incredible shows in recent years and, two, the marketing and branding behind those shows that have made them an integral part of the image of Showtime.

That’s our current strategy. Again, it’s a very fluid marketplace, how people want to watch programming is changing, pricing is changing.

We want to make sure we’re not just sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring what’s happening in the marketplace, but we’re pretty happy with our current strategy. First, we get to take advantage of a lot of the programming that we’ve owned over the years and are able to sell and realize nice revenue with, and second, we’re able to protect the assets that people are buying Showtime for today.

WS: Some companies see Netflix as a disrup-

WS: What content do you provide third-

party platforms? Is it just clips or do you also give full episodes?

BLANK: It’s a very fluid process. For instance, there are things we do today that we wouldn’t have done a couple of years ago. There are things we did a couple of years ago that we wouldn’t do today, just because the marketplace and technology are changing so quickly.

But we make clips widely available.We don’t make full episodes available in the same context, but we have licensed full episodes of our shows to Amazon, Netflix, and currently are continuing that process. We will not license an episode of one of our major series that is still on the air. In other words, Dexter is going into season six. There was a time, a year or so back, when we licensed season one and 146

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tor of the normal business model.You instead have found a good relationship with them.

BLANK: We have a great relationship with Netflix. They have been an important customer of Showtime and CBS Corporation for a lot of programming—again, not current programming, but programming that is off the air.

We think that they are really smart guys who have done a great job of developing the Internet-delivered marketplace.We’re also cautious. We don’t want to make deals with Netflix or others—this isn’t just a Netflix issue—that would diminish the value of Showtime.We want to make sure that Netflix and others are vehicles to sell our product but don’t become real competitors. That’s something we don’t want to see happen, but right now we think they’ve been great customers.

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.

Showtime’s Homeland.

WS: Is Showtime On Demand helping to

boost viewing and subscribers?

BLANK: We always believed that premium services should be the first players to provide you with new ways to consume product, and that’s why Showtime was among the very first to be in the ondemand business. When we launched ondemand about a dozen years ago, what was the first thing we saw from the very first research? Well, it wasn’t really a surprise: viewership—the average length of tune-in to our original programming— went up in excess of 20 percent. Viewers’ expressed likelihood to continue subscribing to Showtime went up. Most importantly, and this has a good deal to do with how we’ve been able to build and strengthen the brand, on-demand use helps us make sure we get the attribution for all the great shows that are on Showtime.

The worst thing is if somebody says, “Oh, I just love Dexter. I love seeing Dexter on HBO.” That doesn’t happen that much anymore, because so many people use Showtime On Demand and, by definition, have to go to the menu, find Dexter and the episodes they want to watch.There’s an increased level of connectivity between the network and the users when they are in the consumer interface for on-demand. There are all sorts of benefits. A great amount of the viewing of our shows

now happens either on DVRs or on-demand.

For example, in a given week, if you look at the viewing of Weeds, as much as 65 percent is taking place off the linear Showtime service.

So that’s very, very important.

We also think that within the universe of premium TV, we have a number of strategic advantages over other networks since we are not advertising supported. If you’re a fan of The Borgias, at the end of the day we love to see a nice weekly rating on Sunday nights but we don’t get paid for that now. We don’t have to talk to the ad agency the next morning about make-goods if we didn’t make a number, we don’t have to consider how we can charge advertisers more if we did better than we thought we would do on Sunday night. For us it’s all about the cumulative viewing and the opportunity to see Showtime in different ways, so that by the time this season of The Borgias is over, if you are a fan, you have had plenty of opportunities to explore all those episodes and you end up being a happy puppy. So ondemand is a really important part of the mix. The main premium networks were the first ones to offer on-demand services and we’ve contributed to the way people want to use television today—we have fueled the expectation that they have a lot of different ways of accessing the shows that they want to see.

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WS: There’s a lot of talk of cord-cutting.

How much of a threat is it?

BLANK: There is a tremendous amount of talk about cord-cutting. We haven’t really seen it. We look at our distributors’ monthly, quarterly, annual results, we see a lot of subscriber movement between cable and satellite and telephone providers, but we don’t see a lot of evidence of cord-cutting. I’m not saying it’s not happening in some areas but we don’t see a lot of evidence of it and we certainly see no evidence of it in terms of Showtime’s growth. We’ve just continued to have terrific growth for the past several years.

We’ve come through, or maybe we haven’t come through, one of the worst economies in the history of the United States. Are we to believe that the foreclosure rates wouldn’t have any impact on [cable and satellite operators] who are dependent on somebody being in a home and paying a bill every month? There are a lot of things happening because of the economy that probably mask the true act of what may be happening in the marketplace. What we look at are emerging customers—how will younger people who have grown up on the iPad and iPhone and Netflix and Hulu—in addition to having cable and satellite in their parents’ homes— choose to consume television in the future and how can we be certain that we’ll be providing them with the types of options they want? That’s really the challenge for us in the future. We think we have a tremendous opportunity because the subscription model travels very nicely, so there should be a relatively seamless migration to new technologies when the time is right.We think that our current distributors, many of whom offer broadband service, will be the beneficiaries in a lot of these new technologies because everybody needs an Internet connection to effectively access the product. But I think it’s too early to say that cord-cutting is a dominant trend in the business. And regardless of where the technology goes, we think that we have the programming that people want and we have a business model that will travel very nicely across technologies and serve all current and future users.

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John Smith Abbe Raven CEO, BBC WORLDWIDE

When audiences first demonstrated their desire to watch programming “wherever, whenever,” the BBC launched its iPlayer, an online videoon-demand service that defined and set the standard for catch-up TV. Hugely popular in the U.K., iPlayer is now being rolled out internationally, but as John Smith explains, it is just one part of the BBC’s digital strategy.

already reduced reliance on physical products by selling our stake in our audiobooks business and moving our magazines business towards a digital future. We’ll also further develop our mobile, apps and games offer and invest in BBC.com and digital sales of programs.

mix.We have incredibly important relationships with broadcasters all around the world whose audiences really rate our shows—and that is certainly not going to change.The evidence to date indicates that online viewing is additive, so we see this service as an “and,” not an “instead of.”

WS: What are your plans for the global

WS: What potential for growth are you see-

iPlayer?

ing in the download-to-own business?

WS: In what ways is BBC Worldwide driv-

SMITH: In program syndication we’re taking

SMITH: Our download-to-own (DTO) rev-

ing digital growth? How are you reducing your reliance on physical products?

SMITH: That’s a really important question for us.We’ve put digital capability in every area of the business. Our objective is to drive online and mobile growth, while reducing reliance on physical products.We’re aiming to have 10 percent of our sales coming from digital by 2012; we’re currently around 8 percent.We’re already doing well. For example, we’ve had 12 million downloads of our apps, 20 million program downloads via iTunes, and our Top Gear Facebook pages have over 11 million fans. We’ve

a broad nonexclusive approach, making content available via a range of third-party serv-

enue has almost tripled year on year and now makes up around 4 percent of our overall

“Consumers are increasingly demanding in what they expect in terms of choice and availability of video content.” ices as well as piloting our own VOD service, the global BBC iPlayer. I’m really excited about this. We are currently piloting the global BBC iPlayer app in Western Europe and we’ve been very pleased with the success so far. We’ve been topping the rankings in the iTunes app charts in more than half of our launch territories, which is a fantastic start. It’s long been an ambition for BBC Worldwide to launch its own international VOD service, and I believe we’re able to offer something unique. What sets us apart is that this is an editorially curated service that directs international audiences to a mix of current and classic high-quality entertainment online.This service is an important step forward for BBC Worldwide and the U.K. creative industry as a whole. It’s a great way for audiences to access great U.K. shows on the latest devices via a stylish, simple and contemporary user experience.

WS: Will having programming available on the iPlayer affect the way BBC Worldwide licenses its programming?

SMITH: No, that’s not the way our business works. Our sales-and-distribution arm and our portfolio of international channels are both thriving businesses and they work closely together very successfully to decide the best windowing strategies for our programs, and the global BBC iPlayer will operate within that 148

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video business.We’re iTunes’ number one TV partner in the U.K. and globally we’ve had over 20 million downloads to date.We expect digital to grow massively over the next year.

Our strategy is to recognize consumer needs and offer choice, easy access and value. Our DVD and DTO businesses sit alongside each other for this reason, and increasingly we’re looking at ways to combine physical and digital through hybrid products.

WS: The DVD market has decreased in recent years. How is BBC Worldwide product faring in the DVD market, and what opportunities are there still in the DVD business?

SMITH: Consumers are increasingly demanding in what they expect in terms of choice and availability of video content—they haven’t stopped wanting video, they are just watching it in different ways. Our own DVD business, 2 entertain, has just had its most profitable year ever, with strong sales in the U.K. and a significant rise in revenues in the U.S. For us, the key opportunities lie in digital and developing creative and interesting physical products for diehard fans that merge videos, toys, games, books, etc. Gifting is also absolutely key to our business— ensuring the strongest possible pipeline of content for Christmas is crucial.

For more from Smith, see page 202.

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Sophie Turner Laing bbe Raven A MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENTERTAINMENT AND NEWS, BSKYB

Innovation has been at the heart of the British pay-TV service BSkyB since the very beginning, from the electronic programming guide to the remote control with the famous interactive red button, from the personal video recorder to ondemand menus and Internet-enabled set-top boxes, as Sophie Turner Laing explains.

WS: How important are on-demand services

to Sky subscribers?

TURNER LAING: Our [personal video

recorder] Sky+, which we introduced some years back, has been an enormous success in allowing our customers to have control and flexibility over when they watch.And also we have both a push and a pull VOD in Sky Anytime and Sky Anytime+. Sky Anytime is where we push the highlights of the week to the set-top boxes. There is a separate piece of the hard drive that has the new films, the new first episodes of series, which are changed on a weekly basis. It’s not a huge amount of programming but it’s a way of being able to say

to our customers, since we’ve got 600 channels,“Here are some highlights to have a look at.” And we’ve built on this even further with the launch of Anytime+, which is our ondemand service, made possible because our boxes are Internet enabled. It gives people access to movies, box sets, entertainment and documentary programs when they want and is already used by over 800,000 households.

We’re giving customers the ability to define their own experience—watching what they want, when they want.

other screens in the house. So that was a very, very early step. But our feeling is our customers pay us monthly and we should make our content available for them not just on their TV screens but also on their laptops, tablets and smart phones.We have one of the most secure platforms in the world, so we are absolutely vigilant in making sure that if our content is enabled on your iPad or whatever device, it’s as secure as we could possibly get it.We are creators of IP and are now very determined to grow our original production business.We have

“Being a platform and a content creator puts us on both sides of the fence, so it makes us think slightly differently than others.”

WS: You recently introduced Sky Go. TURNER LAING: Sky Go launched in July

to all 10 million Sky television subscribers at no extra charge. It’s brilliant because it allows you to watch live TV on the move on devices including laptops, PCs, Macs, iPods, iPhones, etc. It’s particularly suited to sport— for example, cricket is played during the day when a lot of fans are at work. On laptops and computers, customers can access more than 30 live channels, including all five Sky Sports channels, Sky News, Sky Movies, Sky1, Sky Living and Sky Arts, supported by an extensive library of on-demand content.

WS: Tell us about your remote-record app.

TURNER LAING: To me this is just genius!

If you have forgotten to record a show, you program your PVR from your phone or from your PC at work. How absolutely brilliant is that? I promise you a child of 2 could do it.You just need a Sky ID and password.

WS: Has this type of authentication been a

problem with your customers?

TURNER LAING: No, not at all. Our first ven-

ture into this was when we launched Sky Player some years ago, which is our PC service.

We acknowledged that not everybody has multiple televisions in their houses, so if football was on the main screen then the kids could go watch a movie on a PC, thereby utilizing 150

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to protect our content from piracy. Being a platform and a content creator puts us on both sides of the fence, so it makes us think slightly differently than others.

WS: What is the strategy for providing your

original programming to over-the-top services?

TURNER LAING: We have always widely

distributed our channels. The Sky channels have been on the Virgin platform in the U.K. from time immemorial, so we accept that not everybody is necessarily a Sky household.

Sometimes you’re in a block of flats and you’re unable to put up a dish, so there will be other providers; they could be over-the-top or VOD via cable. But whatever the platform, the prerequisite is that they need to offer a highquality experience. We spend an inordinate amount of money investing in HD, so other platforms need to present the content as we would expect to see it on our own, which can be difficult for some of the over-the-top services.The platform needs to be secure so it does not undermine the value of our content and we need to be able to reach a wholesale agreement in which the partner pays the fair price for the content that we have to offer.We have a very competitive market here in the U.K., and competition is fantastic for the customer because it makes all of us step up our game.

For more from Turner Laing, see page 200.

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Joshua Sapan Abbe Raven

PRESIDENT AND CEO, AMC NETWORKS

Home to some of the most critically acclaimed and innovative series on television, including three-time Emmy Award winner for best drama, Mad Men, the U.S. cable channel AMC has become a preferred destination for millions of viewers. AMC, along with WE tv, Sundance Channel and IFC, is part of AMC Networks, headed by Joshua Sapan, who has used original programming and on-demand offerings to transform his company.

WS: How has original programming changed the game for your portfolio of channels, in particular for AMC? SAPAN: Our overall approach has been to add original programming to what were historically movie channels. It’s designed to give a greater perception of differentiation and propriety in the minds of consumers, to make the brands more distinctive in a world in which it’s increasingly challenging to be distinctive, and to ultimately have greater control over our

destiny—inasmuch as we have greater control over those shows.

AMC has had the most transformative quality from what earlier was a classic movie channel. Its original programming set out to add differentiation, define the brand, increase our audience and our perception among our commercial constituents. We began favorably with Mad Men and followed it with Breaking Bad, now in its fourth season, and it’s actually having higher ratings than we’d experienced and a tremendous critical reception.Along the

It has made the channel much more valuable for cable operators, because as they carry it, they become imperative. That is very good news. Mad Men’s quality also creates an imperative because it has the effect of elevating what people think of television.

On the advertising side, Mad Men has been great for us. It has actually allowed us to increase our advertising presence and be a much better and more valuable vehicle, which has rewarded us in advertising dollars, both in volume and in price. Mad Men, along with the

“The trend is moving away from linear schedules—television when it’s assigned— toward television when you want it.” way we added more series, including The Walking Dead, which is the highest-rated series on our air by far, and it, too, is coming back in the fall. There is also a series called The Killing, adapted from the wildly successful Danish television series Forbrydelsen. And we have a series that is shooting right now, for which we have very high hopes, called Hell on Wheels. It’s about the building of the transcontinental railroad.What all those shows have in common is that they are cinematiclike. I hope they really do reflect the reverence that we have for the writing and the artistry that is now manifest on TV, oftentimes to a greater extent than it is in the world of commercial film. We have had the good fortune of striking a responsive chord with consumers and with every other group that we deal with, so it’s had a very beneficial effect and has transformed the perception of AMC. WS: From a business perspective, how has

Mad Men improved your relationship with advertisers and with cable operators?

SAPAN: Very beneficially so. If there are imperatives in the world of television, they are normally found in the world of sports and great events. But there are certain dramas or TV shows that move into the spectrum of imperative—they are must-have shows. Mad Men is a must-have because of its cultural resonance and watercooler effect.

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other shows, has really made AMC a truly more potent place to be if you are an advertiser and want to make your products move from the shelves or from the showroom. We found that our share and volume of dollars and our diversity of advertisers, because of Mad Men and these shows, have put us in a very different economic position.That is important for us because it has allowed us to fund and fuel our increase in original programming.

WS: What have you learned over the years

about how viewers use on-demand?

SAPAN: If we first look at cable on demand,

which is content on a cable system that subscribers can access, what you see in statistics from cable operators is that the use of ondemand as opposed to linear viewing increases by the day.And for all the obvious reasons, it’s there when you want it. I think that trend will only continue, but it’s probably seen, in terms of its impact, more broadly and more completely when one looks at DVRs and TV Everywhere as components of on-demand, because a seismic shift is taking place.You particularly see it among younger people. The trend is moving away from linear schedules—television when it’s assigned—toward television when you want it. And I think that the next generation will view TV a lot more in terms of timing and time frame, like they view the web.That is to say they won’t first think when it’s on, they will

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first think of when they want it and make an assumption that it will be there when they want it. Linear television scheduling is still important today in terms of the economic construct, but in the broader mix of DVRs and authentication and multiplatform—with the exception of live events—it will increasingly become a less important construct.

WS: But aren’t linear chan-

nels very important in creating the brands for the shows they are associated with?

SAPAN: Linear channels do create importance for the The Killing on AMC. brand.The fact that they may be resident on a server and available at one’s desire doesn’t mean they ices will be derived by being very careful don’t help create a brand. A brand could be a about time frames and making certain that collection of shows that are available today on the subsequent or ancillary distribution— linear but also available on demand. Let’s take as has been the case with DVDs and syndian extreme example, if AMC were only on cation in the past—does not encroach upon demand and people wanted to watch their what is often referred to as the ecosystem. five favorite shows. If they knew that they This ecosystem has been very beneficial to were an AMC body of work and they us and has allowed us to fund our programaccessed them that way, then we would still ming. So we do not want to see it diminhave the brand benefit. ished and we will operate with great care.

Care has to do with pricing; we will not put WS: What is your relationship with Netflix our material on the web for free as many others do, and we never have. And when we and other over-the-top services?

SAPAN: It’s an emerging part of our lives, and deal with Internet-delivered paid-for video we think that the story is not yet told about systems, timing and pricing need to be hanhow compatibility will be achieved between dled very carefully. cable programmers and our distributors from whom we derive our lifeblood. Historically WS: If you do release your programming to television has had what’s commonly called Internet-delivered services, do you wait till the syndication. There has been a substantial show is off the air or do you sometimes offer period of delay between when a show first episodes while the show is still on the air? airs and when it airs in a subsequent means SAPAN: We actually don’t have a [generic] of distribution. In the past, syndication answer. We think that the show likely dicmeant TV stations. We think there is a place tates the answer. However, preserving the for Internet-delivered video—I would use timeliness of a show on our cable and that word as opposed to “over-the-top serv- satellite outlets, so that the only place to ices.” We think that compatibility between see a given show is when it’s in its current cable programmers like us and these serv- distribution on cable or satellite for that 10/11

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season, is at least a fundamental guideline.

So the principal of newness, freshness and revelation should be preserved for the primary outlet.

WS: What’s next for AMC Networks?

SAPAN: Our initiative into original pro-

gramming is not very old, so we’d like to think we are at the beginning of it. If we look at our channels, WE tv, Sundance Channel and IFC, we think that there are great opportunities for development and great opportunities to increase the importance of their imprint with shows, and we are quite pleased by that. We are also very interested in our international initiatives.We currently have AMC distributed in Canada and WE tv and Sundance Channel in Europe and Asia. That is going very well.

The opportunities for us to be distributed globally are important because they make the brands global, they increase our base and our footprint and they also increase the opportunity for us to produce material not only for our domestic platforms but for international platforms as well. That playbook has been well established by others and it is a very important initiative.

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Alberto Pecegueiro Abbe Raven CEO, GLOBOSAT

Globosat is Brazil’s leading pay-TV programmer. Since its launch, in 1991, it had been reaching only the portion of the Brazilian population that could afford the monthly subscription. In recent years, buoyed by the country’s strong economy and increasing middle class, as Alberto Pecegueiro explains, Globosat is well positioned for the future.

WS: Is the expanding middle class still contributing to Globosat’s growth in subscribers?

PECEGUEIRO: Yes it is, but the Brazilian economy is connected to the global economy, which means that there will be positive and negative impacts. But in general, the ability to foster solid growth and heat up the internal economy by adding new consumers to most [business] segments has proved to be a great engine for growth.

When it comes to pay TV, convergence and the combination of telephony, data and video also play an important role [in spurring demand and growth].

WS: Are you working to offer your content

on the Internet and on cell phones?

PECEGUEIRO: Definitely, we are actively working on that.We have an agreement with [the Brazilian cable operator] Net Serviços.We launched muu.com.br, a video portal with our content, which is available for Net Serviços subscribers. Net Serviços authenticates access to the portal where subscribers can watch a huge amount of Globosat content. In parallel, we are supporting Não, Net Serviços’ video-ondemand service, and we are negotiating with

from the economic growth in Brazil, which means there are thousands and thousands of people, almost millions, coming into the market every year that never had access to our channels. Our mission is to become interesting to these people. We have to take advantage of the opportunity now that we are finally in front of them and fight for their attention.We are making a major effort to do this.

When you talk about changes and challenges in the market, I think they are the same for everyone, even for a company like Netflix,

“There is a big difference between the laidback attitude of watching TV and the active process of selecting video on the Internet.”

Sky and other cable operators.We are already testing high bandwidth access to our linear channels. Just to be clear, our portal muu.com.br doesn’t provide access to linear channels, it offers access to our content on a nonlinear basis. We have a library and we are adding catch-up services for our programming, but not the linear channels.The moment cable operators feel confident enough to offer linear channels, we are ready to do so.This opens up a huge discussion about offering video on the Internet in Brazil and the recent announcement of Netflix and whether they will have a business or not, but we are doing our part.

WS: Given the changes in technology and the

growing competition in the market, what challenges will Globosat face in the next few years?

PECEGUEIRO: I believe the challenge will be in maintaining the ability to attract audiences to our channels, to entertain them, to inform them and educate them. The idea is to appeal to them, to be the reason they want to come home, turn on the TV and see what is available to them through our channels.

I believe that at this point in time, television remains unbeatable as a source of entertainment and relaxation. However, I believe there is a big difference between the laid-back attitude of watching TV and the active process of selecting video on the Internet. I don’t think they are the same thing. We are benefitting 154

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which has done an incredible job in the U.S. market. It seems very strange to me that after simply announcing that they are entering the Latin American market, their stock should go up by 10 percent. This surprises me because I believe the reason for this increase comes from people who don’t know anything about Latin America or the challenges that Netflix will have to face to enter this market. I believe that the reason for the increase in Netflix’s stock price is that American investors currently have very few options where they can place their bets because of the overall state of the American economy.They are behaving as if Netflix were the last great hope because of its stock’s recent performance.Whatever they can say that could contribute to increasing the value of its stock will be received in the market as the voice of God. It doesn’t mean that we don’t recognize that they have a great team or a proven track record, but I believe that even in the American market their challenges will increase. I also think we are far away from defining their recent entrance into Canada as a success.There are bandwidth problems, there are quality problems, there are a number of things going on.

Netflix is a good company; they are fighting and I can’t say that they are failing, but each day there is a more complex environment for them as well. They are not the future at this point in time. We are all trying to build our future together.

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Matthew Strauss Abbe Raven

SENIOR VP AND GENERAL MANAGER, COMCAST INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Comcast, the largest cable operator in the U.S., has been a leader in on-demand. Its extensive Xfinity service allows subscribers to catch up on missed episodes of shows from all major TV networks, watch entire seasons of shows and see movies the same day they are released on DVD. As Matthew Strauss explains, this offering is available on TV, online, on the iPad, at home or on the go.

WS: What factors have contributed to Xfinity’s popularity?

STRAUSS: Customers inherently like more choice and more control. Xfinity has given us the ability to not only offer video on demand, but we have a scalable infrastructure to go from 10,000 to 30,000 choices or 30,000 to 100,000 choices in the future.

Xfinity gives us the ability to offer faster broadband speeds and more HD networks.

Last year we offered 3D channels, both linear and on demand. It’s also given us the ability to look outside the home and offer the Xfin-

ity TV iPad app and Xfinitytv.com—we’re starting to untether the experience from just being in the home and giving customers the mobility to consume that video anywhere they want it.

WS: Xfinity has also helped Comcast increase its subscriber base and improve its image.

STRAUSS: There’s a word that I sometimes use that is not typically associated with cable, and that’s delight. I say that because when we launched our iPad app back in

slice of a much broader pie. Our focus has really been on offering the most comprehensive library of content. We’ve spent years trying to amass a library. We have deals with every studio, every cable and broadcast network, so that we have a definitive offering that goes across the full spectrum of windows from theatrical release all the way to library content and everything in between.When we launched on-demand, eight or nine years ago, over 90 percent of the content was free. The OTT services are offering a very targeted

“This isn’t like your parents’ cable company, this is a whole new generation of products and services that are really going to redefine cable.”

November, I remember I followed the Twitter feeds every night before I’d go to sleep, to see what our customers were saying about us. We really surprised our customers by offering them not only the possibility to watch favorite shows on demand anytime, anywhere, but also search on-demand menus, change channels on their TV sets and even schedule their DVRs remotely— through their iPad. There were others who were offering video on the iPad, so that wasn’t necessarily unique, but giving customers the ability to control their viewing experience using a tablet, that was different from what had been out there before. If you look at the remote control, it really hasn’t changed for 50 years, so to be able to approach the tablet and think of it as a way to reinvent the remote control, surprised people in a very positive way. As we continue to iterate these new types of products and services, customers are recalibrating what they think of cable, because this isn’t like your parents’ cable company, this is a whole new generation of products and services that are really going to redefine cable.

WS: What must a service like Xfinity offer to provide a better experience than overthe-top services?

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slice of [content]: either prior-season TV content or library movies or a very specific segment of TV content. I don’t necessarily see that as a replacement to what we offer. And that’s just video, which is clearly an important piece, but it’s just one piece. We look at how video and Internet and telephony all work together in a very cohesive way so the customer actually gets an enhanced experience, whether it’s seeing your caller ID appear on your television or the ability to program your DVR using an iPhone. It’s tying all these different products and services together in addition to having a definitive content library.

This is where customers will see the most value and the most convenience.

WS: How much innovation do your cus-

tomers expect from Xfinity?

STRAUSS: I think of it more in terms of value.

We continue to strive to add more value into our products and services. People obviously have a love affair with TV and video, but in many cases they don’t always realize how much better it could be. For example, ten years ago video on demand really didn’t exist, and today we just celebrated our 20 billionth program on demand. Ten years ago most people didn’t know what a DVR was, and today it’s in a third of all TV homes.The iPad didn’t exist 18 months ago, but we were able to create a new product out of it. Our

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Comcast’s Xfinity app delivering Showtime On Demand.

iPad app has been downloaded about 2.6 million times since we offered it. We’re constantly thinking of ways to add more value.

We recently introduced a few new products. One is Skype and video conferencing using the television. Another is our advanced cloud-based guide, next-generation Xfinity TV, which is going to open up a whole new door for us with respect to user interfaces, recommendation engines and social media. We’re continuing to find ways to innovate. But at its core, the innovation has to transcend itself into adding more value to our customers.

WS: How do you decide on which platforms you will make your services or your products available?

STRAUSS: We hold a fundamental belief that content should be available across all platforms, and a customer should have the ability to seamlessly access content, especially if they paid for it. If you look at our history, when websites and online video were really starting to proliferate, we put a flag in the sand, so to speak, and felt that this was an infrastructure that we wanted to build internally.

We and CIM (Comcast Interactive Media) had a focused effort toward building out for the web. When tablets came on the scene, we felt strongly that we should have an experience for tablets. It started with the iPad because we really were enamored with the large screen and the ability to have a very visual and immersible experience. We now have our app available on Android and

handsets and Honeycomb [Android 3.0] as well.You’ll continue to see us experiment.

We announced a relationship with Samsung and we plan on offering an Xfinity TV app on Samsung Internet-connected televisions.

We will likely experiment with game consoles as well, so we’re going to continue to broaden out into all these different touch points with a desire to make it easier for customers to find and access our content.

But there are a few things that are very important. First is security—the platform has to be secure to protect the content.We are also very focused on ensuring that advertising can be dynamically inserted and that there’s measurement so programmers can get the proper credit for the advertising. There is also branding. How does branding of the platform work? How does it reinforce that the content is part of a distributor’s offering? How does it reinforce the brand of the network? These are all things that get included as part of the evaluation. As new devices continue to come out into the market, we evaluate them closely, and if we think there is customer demand then you’ll likely see us go there.

WS: Programming is what drives all of this.

What has been your strategy in securing content?

STRAUSS: There has been a bit of an evolution in the last eight years or so. As new platforms were starting to emerge several years ago, we typically were approaching them on a platform-by-platform basis, looking to get content for video on demand, looking to get 158

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content for websites.We were focused mostly on getting a fairly large amount of programming. Over time we’ve gotten more sophisticated and we don’t really discriminate against platforms. We really look to secure rights for all platforms. We are also much more focused on what’s the window, how is it being refreshed, how the advertising works. We’ve gotten much more focused on trying to think ahead as much as we can about the future and ensuring that we have secured the rights so that a customer can access this content on any device or any platform.You’re starting to see that manifestation—the iPad is probably a good example, where right now we have about 7,000 hours of content available for streaming on the iPad, and that content is available both in the home and out of the home. We’re actually the only distributor in the country that offers Showtime Anytime on VOD, online and even on the tablet.

There’s quite a large library of programming that we’re offering.The rights for that content were secured before the iPad even existed in some cases. We’re trying to think ahead about the evolution of where these platforms are going and showing that we are securing the rights to the best of our ability, so we can continue to create these new products and services and give customers the best experience.

WS: The process of securing rights nowadays is very complex.

STRAUSS: For the past five years that was my world. I learned a tremendous amount and I probably saw more change from a rights-negotiations standpoint in the past 12 months than I did during those entire five years. It’s also given me an appreciation for some of the challenges that the programmers deal with on their end. At the end of the day, there has to be collaboration between distributors and programmers for this to really work. We’ve been very focused on partnering with the networks to unlock the value because it’s beneficial to the distributor, the programmer and the entire ecosystem if this content can proliferate onto different devices.

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one on one t seems like ancient history when, back in 2001, AOL took over Time Warner on the premise that the exciting world of new media—the Internet and digital platforms—would offer huge returns on investment and become more valuable than staid traditional media, like print, movies and television. Despite the fact that Time Warner’s established divisions were generating far greater revenues and profits than AOL, investors were enamored by cool dot-com companies that promised exponential growth and untold riches.

Well, we all know what happened. Not only did Time Warner divest itself of AOL in 2009, but all those traditional businesses, which had been denigrated as lacking exciting growth potential, have been driving the company’s expansion. So much so that the

media giant decided to concentrate purely on content, and last year spun off Time Warner Cable. Indeed, the film and television divisions—Warner Bros., Turner Broadcasting System and Home Box Office—have never been stronger.

Time Warner, headed by chairman and CEO Jeffrey Bewkes, had revenues in 2010 of $26.9 billion.

For Warner Bros. Pictures Group, 2010 was a very good year. It broke the all-time industry worldwide box-office record with receipts of $4.8 billion and passed the billion-dollar mark at both the domestic and international box office for the tenth consecutive year. Also last year, the studio had five films gross more than $100 million worldwide: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Inception, Valentine’s Day, Clash of the Titans and Due Date. In 2011, on the feature-film side, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 had grossed $1.3 billion by the end of August, while an early summer release, The Hangover Part II, had brought in more than $580 million. On the television side, Warner Bros. Television Group, at the beginning of the 2011–12 television season, is producing more than 50 series. Among them are: The Mentalist, The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Fringe, The Bachelor franchise, Gossip Girl and Rizzoli & Isles.

Turner Broadcasting System operates a range of entertainment, news and animation channels that are seen in the U.S. and around the world. Its brands include CNN, HLN, TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, Adult Swim and truTV, all of which exist as linear channels and as websites that stream programming. Collectively, the company reaches consumers in more than 200 countries around the world.

Home Box Office is the most successful pay-television company in the U.S. Its two brands, HBO and Cinemax, were number one and number two, respectively, in primetime and total-day ratings among all domestic premium pay-television services in 2010. HBO’s and Cinemax’s branded premium-pay and basic-cable television networks are available in more than 50 countries throughout Latin America, Central Europe and Asia.

HBO has produced some of the finest television series ever made. It continued that tradition in 2010 and 2011 with the series Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones; the mini-series The Pacific and Mildred Pierce; and the films The Sunset Limited and Too Big to Fail.

Well aware that subscribers want to be in control of their viewing experiences, HBO has been at the forefront of offering innovative ways of enjoying movies and series, most recently with HBO GO, the on-demand service that allows subscribers to access some 1,400 HBO shows online and on iPads, iPhones and Android smartphones.

The fact that the ill-fated merger of 2001 seems like such a long time ago is testament to how quickly technology is transforming the media business and the way consumers enjoy content. Bewkes is nurturing and expanding his feature-film and television units, while making sure their assets can thrive, and make money, in the digital world.

Jeffrey Bewkes Time Warner

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one on one WS: With viewers increasingly

watching programming on demand, what do linear channels have to do to maintain their relevance?

BEWKES: Linear channels have already become branded environments, so when you go to HBO or TNT or MTV you know what kind of programming you will get.

What branded linear channels have to do is take the programming that makes them a branded environment—a clear voice—and offer it on demand. There is one channel that has already done that, and that is HBO. It’s been on demand in the U.S. now for ten years and has very high usage of on-demand viewing.

Depending on the show, upwards of 30 to 50 percent of the viewing on HBO is on demand. There is no reason that the same thing could not happen to CNN or MTV or NBC or any other channel. If you like the channel and like the shows, and you have the shows on demand, you’ll tend to watch them when you want to watch them. And if you ask, well, what are Apple or Netflix or YouTube? They are distinguished by being on demand, not by what content they have. There is no content on Hulu or Netflix or Amazon or Apple that isn’t already available on an NBC, an HBO, etcetera. They

Walk on the wild side: Now in its second season, Boardwalk Empire has garnered critical acclaim for its lush depiction of Prohibition-era Atlantic City, scoring a Golden Globe last year for best dramatic series.

don’t have new or exclusive content. It’s usually older and it’s available somewhere else on a network with higher viewership, with a more

High drama: Warner Bros. Television’s CBS series Person of Interest, from J.J. Abrams, was one of the most anticipated dramas of the U.S. fall season.

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engaged audience. The reason that some of the new services are getting traction is that they are offering on-demand and the existing branded linear channels have not been fast to do so, with the exception of HBO and CNN. You can now watch the broadband-delivered CNN; increasingly you are going to be able to watch CNN video feeds for free if you have CNN in your house, which about 95 percent of Americans do.

WS: You have said the press has misreported the cord-cutting issue.

Have they done the same with authentication? Somewhere along the line it got a negative connotation, but as a user to me it seems pretty logical.

BEWKES: The negative connotation you refer to is perhaps the idea from some quarters that we should throw out our business model in pursuit of something different

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online, but that kind of thinking has been largely disproven.

Let’s take as an example HBO because it’s so simple. HBO went to multiplex 15 years ago and offered subscribers ten channels.

Then HBO put its whole schedule on demand. We’re here talking about it for other networks, but HBO did that ten years ago. As a consequence, viewership went up, subscriptions went up, engagement and the ability for you as a viewer to follow your favorite shows on HBO went up. But we did not charge extra for any of it. Was that good for consumers? Undoubtedly.

Was that economically good for HBO? Of course, it means the subscription is more valuable. And if more people pay as subscribers, HBO can raise its prices gradually over time because now HBO is not one channel, it’s ten channels, and all of their programming is on demand. It makes itself very strong

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by doing that, so you know the economics there are great.

If you then say, should HBO On Demand be available over the Internet, on my iPad, on my laptop, whatever, we say, of course, you’ve subscribed to it, you’ve paid for the programming, we’re going to give it to you on the Internet the same way it’s on TV, it will be on demand—it’s obvious. Why should our viewers have to pay again for programming that they are already paying for? That will strengthen the economic base for HBO. If you then say, well all right, since it’s a good idea for HBO, why isn’t it a good idea for TNT, MTV, CNN and all the other channels? By the way, in their case, putting all those channels online is even more obvious because some 90 percent of American homes have already paid for all of those channels. They pay for them, they like them, they watch them. Let’s take all of them and offer them on demand. And increasingly on-demand will include all television channels. In the U.S., we’ve seen some of the big broadcast networks now moving to an authenti-

cation model, too. If you look at the U.K., there are on-demand offerings from the BBC and BSkyB, which work pretty much the same way authentication works in the U.S. WS: Warner Bros. recently launched YOU On Demand in China. What appetite is there for on-demand services, and how important is this in international markets?

BEWKES: We launched YOU On Demand in China with content from Warner Bros., because we wanted to make sure that if you want to watch a film that is not in the theaters, or has been made available on pirated DVDs or filesharing sites, there ought to be a legitimate way you can buy it. If we can offer an on-demand service on either VOD platforms or Inter net pay-per-view platforms—that’s good for consumers who generally don’t want to steal content.

WS: What opportunities do you see for channels internationally?

The Turner Broadcasting channels are doing quite well. Is there more growth out there?

BEWKES: Oh sure. HBO is the

number one pay-TV channel in all of Eastern Europe, all of Latin America and all of Southeast Asia.

Turner’s CNN is the number one English-language news channel all around the world, and is a leader in online and mobile. Cartoon Network is number one or number two in a number of countries, like Brazil and China. It has more vibrant competition in Western Europe, but it’s very strong in Eastern Europe. TNT is gaining market share in South America. If you look at Latin America, from Mexico through Argentina, the Time Warner channels—which include HBO, Warner Channel, TNT, Turner Classic Movies, CNN, Cartoon Network and a bouquet of Latin American channels that originated from Claxson—are the leading channel package in all of Latin America.

As we have said publicly, we currently have earnings of $500 million a year from our international networks business, which we think will double in the next three to four years.

Racing to the screen: Warner Bros. releases The Dark Knight Rises, the latest in its lucrative Batman franchise, in 2012 with the hopes of surpassing the $1 billion box-office take from the 2008 release The Dark Knight.

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W WHAT BRANDED

LINEAR CHANNELS HAVE TO DO

IS TAKE THE PROGRAMMING THAT MAKES THEM A BRANDED ENVIRONMENT—A CLEAR VOICE— AND OFFER IT ON DEMAND.

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one on one WS: Is Time Warner interested in making acquisitions overseas?

BEWKES: Overseas we’ve got the leading ownership position—it’s a plurality, not a majority—in Central and Eastern Europe’s number one TV broadcasting group, CME. We also bought Shed Media in the U.K., which produces non-scripted reality shows. We have made a number of acquisitions in India, including NDTV Imagine, a branded general-entertainment channel. I mentioned the Claxson channels in South America, which are quite strong, particularly in Argentina. We bought the leading broadcaster in Chile, Chilevisión, which is branching into branded channels and pay-TV channels.

We’ve looked at all of the European commercial broadcasters that perennially come up for sale: ITV and Channel 5 in the U.K. and Premiere in Germany. We just haven’t found that they would work for us.

WS: Time Warner recently spun off Time Warner Cable, while Comcast merged its operations with NBCUniversal. Why was having both businesses not a good thing for Time Warner but it’s a good idea for Comcast?

BEWKES: It’s actually the same reason for both even though it sounds like the opposite. We thought the content business was where we would best be able to add growth to the company. We also thought that having a cable company that was as large as our entire Warner Bros.-HBO-Turner Broadcasting business was challenging, because the business of cable companies like Time Warner Cable, Comcast, or Cox Communications require that they carry a lot of debt.

They are basically like real estate, they are very thick assets, highly leveraged companies, that eventually will all need to consolidate and get bigger. So if we had kept Time Warner Cable we would have ended

up having to merge it with a larger cable company or telephone company, and that would have been 80 percent of Time Warner. But we wanted to have our exposure on the content side, not the cable side.

What Comcast has done is actually the same. The Roberts family [the

Dynamic duo: TNT’s slate of originals, including Rizzoli & Isles, has been a hit with viewers, and advertisers.

Time Warner

2010 revenues: $26.9 billion

Turner Broadcasting System

Turner owns and operates some of the leading cable television networks and related properties in the world, including CNN, HLN, TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, Adult Swim, truTV and Turner Sports. Turner also manages CNN.com, CNN Mobile, CNNMoney.com, TCM.com and CartoonNetwork.com, as well as NBA.com, MLB.com, PGA.com and NASCAR.com.

Warner Bros. Entertainment

Warner Bros.’ businesses range from feature-film, TV and home-entertainment production and worldwide distribution to home video, digital distribution, animation, comic books, licensing, and international cinemas and broadcasting.

Its brands include Warner Bros. Pictures Group, Warner Bros. Television Group, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, Warner Bros. Consumer Products, Warner Bros. International Cinemas, Warner Bros. Studio Facilities, Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures, DC Entertainment and New Line Cinema.

Home Box Office

Home Box Office’s broad portfolio of services includes HBO, HBO On Demand, HBO GO, Cinemax, Cinemax On Demand, MAX GO, HBO2, HBO Signature, HBO Family, HBO Comedy, HBO Zone, HBO Latino, More Max, Action Max, Thriller Max, 5 Star Max, W Max, Outer Max and @ Max. HBO and Cinemax’s premium-pay and basic-cable services have 85 million subscribers worldwide.

Time Inc.

Time Inc. is a leading creator of premium portable content. With 22 titles and 27 websites, its brands include Time, People, Essence, Fortune, InStyle, Life, Real Simple and Sports Illustrated.

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majority shareholders of Comcast] had close to 100 percent exposure to the cable business, but they wanted to get into the content business. They are trying to move over in the same direction as we are, which is the creation and packaging of great content.

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on the record list of the greatest feature film directors of all time would certainly include Orson Welles, Frank Capra, Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, David Lean, Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Some gave us timeless classics, others had compelling visions or advanced the movie genre with awe-inspiring special effects, and still others created worldwide blockbusters.

There is one person who belongs on this list who has not only done all of the above, but in the process, has revolutionized filmmaking. Not content to merely direct, he is also a producer, a screenwriter, an artist, a cameraman, a special-effects whiz and a major 3D proponent. And he made the two highest-grossing movies of all time: Titanic and Avatar. He’s James Cameron.

From a very young age, Cameron loved writing stories and reading science fiction. His father was an electrical engineer, his mother an artist, and he absorbed the talents and interests of both. At 15, he saw Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and after being mesmerized by the visuals and special effects, he knew he had to be a filmmaker. So consuming was this desire that in a biology class in high school, instead of following the lesson, he wrote a short story that would later become the movie The Abyss. This passion was confirmed when he saw Star Wars. From that moment there was no turning back.

His first big movie was The Terminator, in 1984. While waiting to secure financing for it, Cameron wrote the screenplay for Rambo: First Blood Part II with Sylvester Stallone, and Aliens, the sequel to the 1979 classic sci-fi movie Alien. The Terminator was produced on a now unthinkably low budget of $6.4 million, but grossed almost $80 million worldwide. It also firmly established Cameron as a screenwriter and director, and launched the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger as well.

Cameron then directed Aliens, which won the Oscar for best visual effects and best sound editing, and grossed some $130 million worldwide. Rambo: First Blood Part II, meanwhile, took in more than $300 million worldwide.

On The Abyss, Cameron brought into play his passion for the ocean, and the film set new standards for underwater shooting. More important, it brought to life the famous morphing effect that Cameron would later use to create the liquid metal T1000 in the hugely profitable Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which grossed $500 million and won four Oscar statuettes–for makeup, sound, visual effects and sound-effects editing.

While working on other movies, Cameron was preparing to shoot Titanic, his most ambitious project to that point.

To retell the tale of the doomed ocean liner, he spent most of his time on the bottom of the Atlantic, exploring the Titanic’s wreckage. At $200 million, the movie was way over budget, but it made more than $1.8 billion worldwide and won 11 Academy Awards—a tie with Ben-Hur—including best picture and best director for Cameron.

Avatar, released in 2009, made motion-picture history again.

Not only by becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time (at nearly $2.8 billion), but by advancing 3D and CGI effects to new levels. It was Cameron’s baby from the get-go. He wrote, directed, produced and edited it, helped develop the 3D cameras, and designed some of the characters. Some say Avatar has changed filmmaking forever. Intent on furthering the development of 3D technology, Cameron this year set up the Cameron Pace Group in partnership with cinematographer Vince Pace to pioneer tools that will assist in the production of 3D content.

Cameron talks to World Screen about 3D and his many other passions.

James Cameron

WS: Where has your passion for special

effects come from?

CAMERON: First of all, it comes from imagination and one’s internal landscape, the dreams and images that occur inside your mind. Then you see movies—in my case, as a kid, the animated films of Ray Harryhausen like The 7thVoyage of Sinbad or Jason and the Argonauts—and you get inspired that other people are actually taking the kinds of images you are seeing inside your own head and putting them up on a giant screen. Then you get excited about the process of how that is done. For me a pivotal turning point was when I saw 2001: 10/11

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A Space Odyssey, which was such a milestone in its time. It jumped over two or three or four levels of cinema visual-effects development and just took us to a whole new place.That inspired me to want to learn very specifically how these things are done.

And once your foot is set down a path, after that it’s just a matter of time and the number of iterations before you are a practitioner yourself, which is what I became.

WS: Vince Pace, your partner in the

Cameron Pace Group, described you as da Vinci, Newton and Rembrandt all rolled into one!

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on the record

I

I THINK THE NEXT REVOLUTION IN 3D OVERALL IS GOING TO BE THE WIDE-SCALE ADOPTION FOR BROADCAST.

CAMERON: I think Newton’s math was a little better than mine!

The reason I had to switch from physics to an English major was because of my C in calculus!

WS: Is every movie genre suitable to 3D or are some more so than others?

CAMERON: Conventional wisdom in the last few years has been that the big expensive animated films, the big expensive science-fiction and fantasy live-action films are the natural subjects for 3D. I would submit that there is another way of looking at this.The $100-million to $200-million films are going be spectacular with or without 3D.You take the 3D out of it, they’re still great movies. Where I think 3D has so much to offer is when you are doing just a straight drama—two people sitting in a room talking, or sitting in a car, or wherever the drama takes place— because the 3D really electrifies that experience. It makes us feel like we are physically present watching it happen. The most interesting thing

to watch in 3D are people in all their infinite colors. I think [the industry is] going to wake up over the next couple of years and see that 3D is really for things that people historically have not thought 3D was for.

Take Avatar, for example. I have a dramatic scene with Sam Worthington and Stephen Lang. They are sitting in a darkened commissary on the base. It’s a single camera shoot, two actors in a room, and it’s very powerful because of the 3D. I was struck making that film not by how much the spectacular scenes were lifted by the 3D, but how much the “mundane” scenes were transformed. Like I said, this will be the next revolution in cinema 3D. I think the next revolution in 3D overall is going to be the wide-scale adoption for broadcast.

WS: How do you envision that

happening?

CAMERON: Most of the big

movies are already either being shot in 3D or being converted to 3D,

and I’m not a big fan of conversion.

But the next big revolution is going to be in broadcasting, because there we have a relatively tiny amount of market penetration right now. Only a few, ESPN, BSkyB and so on, are actively producing and broadcasting in 3D. As that opens up, then all of these TV sets that are currently available and work very, very well, will actually have some content to play on them. If you take all the 3D movies that have been created to date you will probably run through them in two or three days, assuming they were all available on 3D Bluray right now, and they’re not.

WS: Is it correct to say that a lot of movies have been post-converted poorly and that has turned off some viewers to the whole 3D experience?

CAMERON: I think that’s fair to say, and conversion certainly can be done well. We’re certainly making every effort to do it as well as it can possibly be done on our conversion for the 3D re-release of Titanic next year. But that is a process that is taking us $18 million and a year to do.

The movies that are made for summer release, the big summer blockbusters, they might have a month and a half to convert them and they certainly don’t spend that kind of money to do it. So to me it’s a limited technique, but when it’s done right, it can be effective. The problem is, depth costs money; the more depth you put into a shot, the more money it costs to do the conversion, because there is more digital paintwork that needs to be done. Most people don’t spend the money to do it right.

WS: How do you feel about viewers

(Un)sinkable ship: Titanic, winner of 11 Academy Awards and the highest-grossing movie until last year, is going to be released by Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Pictures in 3D in 2012.

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watching epic movies like Titanic and Avatar on a small portable screen?

CAMERON: It’s a different experience. There are films that I personally won’t watch on a small screen: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lawrence of Arabia, Close Encounters. But with Avatar we packed the frame with a lot of action; and compositions were not specifically designed for a wide

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screen versus a small screen. Look, let’s face it, in a movie theater you are more surrounded, you are more submersed [in the movie]; you are going to be more emotionally impacted by it, but that’s true of any movie, whether it’s 2D or 3D or whether it’s Avatar or any other film.

That’s just the nature of entertainment in our world today. Some people choose the immediacy of watching on a tablet versus the special experience of watching a movie in the theater. I think Avatar, since its release, did a lot to lure people back to an appreciation of the cinematic experience. Having watched the film on smaller screens, meaning either a 40-inch home TV or even right down to a laptop, I don’t feel that the story is negatively impacted at all.

WS: I imagine 3D lends itself

beautifully to documentaries.

CAMERON: Yes, the first documen-

tary I made, Ghosts of the Abyss, in 2001, was shot in 3D. And we set ourselves some major challenges on that film of shooting 12,000 feet under water with 3D cameras and specially built housing and so on.

The first 3D film I made was actually a documentary, so I think 3D and documentaries go together very, very well because of, again, that sense of being there.You feel like you are bearing witness to something that is really happening right in front of your eyes. Because that is something that 3D does, it triggers a part of the brain to think that you are actually watching reality.You know intellectually that it’s a film, but part of your brain says,“Wait a minute, if I’m seeing depth here this must be something real, this isn’t a movie.” That little conversation is happening way back in your reptilian hindbrain the whole time that you are watching something and it just feels more real to you—so it has more impact. If you are making a documentary and you are trying to make a point or teach people something, [if it’s shot in 3D] it will have more impact and people will remember it longer. I actually think there is a huge mar-

Welcome to Pandora: Twentieth Century Fox’s Avatar, now the highest-grossing movie of all time with almost $2.8 billion at the box office, sparked a wave of 3D movies.

ket for educational media in 3D that goes straight into the classroom.

Neuroscientists and other scientists who are researching the effects of 3D on memory retention and cognitive skills have found that kids actually learn better when they are watching in 3D. WS: Beyond the spectacular effects

and the colors, Avatar offers a profound message about our need to respect the environment. Is that an important message for you to impart, that if we don’t start changing our ways we are going to destroy what Mother Nature gave us?

CAMERON: That’s exactly right, and that is aptly put, and that certainly was a very important subtext of the whole movie. We didn’t sell it that way. We didn’t tell people they were going to see an environmental film, but they certainly understood what the film was trying to say. I would say most people pretty resoundingly agreed with it, because the film made 10/11

a lot of money from repeat viewers.

There might have been a few ultraright-wing pundits that eschewed the film and stayed away from it as a result, but I would say for the most part that message resonated with viewers. That’s a good thing. That gives me some hope. Does that mean there is a sea change out there and that we are more ready to embrace our responsibility to this living planet?

I would like to think so.

WS: What can you tell us about Avatar 2 and Avatar 3? I read that Sam Worthington (who played the paraplegic former marine Jake Sully) would like to do ten of them with you!

CAMERON: [Laughs] I’ll sign him up for the ten! I’ll sign up myself!

Sam and I and Sigourney [Weaver] and everybody really enjoyed the process of making Avatar. We loved the bonding among ourselves as a creative group that came out of the film, and you don’t always get that

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from a movie. So we are all looking forward to doing another one. My fellow producer Jon Landau and I have chosen to make the second and third films together as one big production. It makes our jobs harder, but at the same time there will be some economies of scale from shooting it that way. I am not going to reveal too much about the story.

I have already gone on the record to say that we’re going to see other environments on Pandora, not just the rain forest, but more specifically the ocean: the shores, the intertidal and the deep-ocean environments of Pandora, which, of course, will be as phantasmagorical as the rain forest that we have already seen. But that is pretty much all I want to say about it at this point.

WS: Certainly this takes you back to

the ocean and the deep sea, which is another passion of yours, isn’t it?

CAMERON: That’s absolutely right.

I love making movies, and making

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on the record movies is the only thing that can get me away from the ocean.

WS: Were Jacques Cousteau or David Attenborough also influences on you when you were younger?

CAMERON: All the good documentary filmmakers, but certainly Cousteau had an enormous impact on me. He was singlehandedly responsible for my love affair with the ocean. In the mid-’60s I was living in a small town in rural Canada, 500 miles from the nearest ocean. But I absolutely had to learn to scuba dive and I did. And since then I have done an enormous amount of diving and underwater filming, and you can trace it right back directly to him. Jacques was a pioneer, an explorer, a diver, a filmmaker, he did it all and he set a great example for the rest of us who wanted to say something visually about the ocean.

WS: If we want to save our environ-

ment, the ocean is where we have to start, it’s our oxygen tank.

CAMERON: A lot of people incorrectly say that the rain forests are the kings of the planet. They are a very important part of the hydrological cycle and they are an important part of the carbon cycle, but really where we get our oxygen is from the ocean.

And the phytoplankton are really taking a beating and global warming has the secondary effect of more carbon going into solution in the ocean, which essentially lowers the pH, turns it more acidic. Most of the life forms of the ocean survive off of either plankton or coral that have calcium carbonate as their skeleton. And they can’t form calcium carbonate in an acidic ocean, so within 100 years we could be looking at the death of 90 percent of the life in the oceans.That is a horrific thing to contemplate when you think 100 years is an eye

blink in geologic time. But we as upstart hominids have come along and really started seriously mucking about with how the living part of our planet works.

WS: You have primarily worked in

film.Would you be interested in getting involved in a 3D television production, a mini-series or a TV series?

CAMERON: Absolutely. I think the first people that really break the ice and really start making television in 3D are going to find that the audience is going to be very receptive to it. So yes, that might be a fun project. I vowed after the series Dark Angel was cancelled in 2001 that I was not going to go back to television again, but for 3D I would because that is absolutely the next threshold. Right now it’s sports, music, basically real-time productions, but I think the next threshold is going to be scripted TV, onehour dramas, maybe even comedy.

WS: Some of the studios and payTV platforms want to offer viewers a premium VOD window 60 days after the release of a movie in the theaters.You are not a great fan of that plan?

CAMERON: Well, my concern is that it is going to erode what I think of as the sanctity of the movie experience. I am very concerned because the exhibitors are very concerned. They see this as a threat to their business. It’s very foolish of us in the movie business to do anything that might considerably erode our core business. I suppose they’ll try experimentally.

They’ll see how much people are interested in it and they’ll see how much it will hurt exhibition. I don’t think any of the studios are dumb enough to really do something that is really going to hurt their core business, which is theatrical exhibition.

Making 3D magic: Sigourney Weaver, Joel David Moore and Sam Worthington with Cameron during the production of Avatar, which was four years in the making.

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in conversation n many professions, whether in the arts or in business, you need to know the rules—the correct technique, procedure or transaction—before you can change them to do something differently or even better. Jon Feltheimer spent many years at major media companies, including New World Entertainment and the Hollywood studio Sony Pictures Entertainment, developing relationships with the creative community and selling shows domestically and internationally. Some of the hits he oversaw included The Wonder Years, Mad About You, The Nanny and Dawson’s Creek. He and his teams excelled at making the best possible deals in what today is considered the traditional media.

When Feltheimer joined Lionsgate, where he is now cochairman and CEO, he infused the company with an entrepreneurial spirit. He applied his considerable experience in the world of new-media platforms. Where other companies are still struggling to monetize their content, Lionsgate has changed traditional distribution rules, made up new ones, and in the process, made quite a bit of money from digital platforms.

It produces the critically acclaimed series Mad Men, which has made more than $100 million in revenue just from home entertainment, which includes VOD, SVOD and electronic sell-through.

Lionsgate is a nearly $2-billion diversified global entertainment corporation and includes motion-picture production and distribution, television programming and syndication, home entertainment, family entertainment, digital distribution and new channel platforms.

The company manages a library of around 13,000 titles.

Its feature-film slate generated more than $500 million at the North American box office in calendar year 2010, fueled by such hits as The Expendables, Lionsgate’s most profitable film ever; The Last Exorcism; Saw 3D: The Final Chapter; and Kick Ass. Last fall, Lionsgate announced a joint venture with the Mexican media giant Televisa called Pantelion Films, which acquires, produces and distributes a full slate of English- and Spanish-language feature films for the 26 million Hispanic moviegoers in the U.S. The company’s television-production-and-syndication business has 15 prime-time cable and broadcast network series on 12 channels, including the Emmy Award-winning drama series Mad Men and the Showtime comedy Weeds.

Lionsgate is also building a portfolio of new channel businesses, which includes FEARnet, the branded horror channel operated with partners Sony and Comcast; TV Guide Network, acquired in February 2009 and run in conjunction with JPMorgan’s One Equity Partners; EPIX, a premium entertainment channel with partners Viacom and MGM; and Tiger Gate, whose branded action and horror channels Kix and Thrill in Asia are managed in partnership with the Saban Capital Group.

Feltheimer is equally bullish about traditional and newmedia platforms; as long as Lionsgate continues to produce quality content, it will always find lucrative distribution opportunities.

Jon Feltheimer Lionsgate

WS: How are you using Netflix?

FELTHEIMER: The interesting thing

about digital partners is that they provide us with various ways of doing business.

Netflix is an important buyer of our content and a key strategic and financial customer/partner within EPIX, extending our content delivery to consumers who might not otherwise have it. But we also have 260 ad-supported and 180 ondemand titles on YouTube, and we’ve licensed nearly 500 feature films and television episodes combined to Hulu. These kinds of digital platforms have given us many options that we didn’t have before, and we can offer content to more buyers, across more platforms and windows, packaged in more different ways than ever before and, as a result, we’re turning digital pennies into millions of digital dollars.

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WS: How do you feel about the proposed premium pay-TV window that would make films available in the home 60 days after theatrical release?

FELTHEIMER: We don’t believe that there is any single “right” approach, but we do believe that the digital marketplace not only expands our audience and generates higher margin revenue, but it also enables us to explore different windowing strategies that allow us to customize our product offering for our consumers.

We will release Abduction, starring Taylor Lautner, 91 days after its September 23 theatrical release in a premium VOD window over the Christmas holidays, prior to its DVD release, priced at $6.99. This premium window will only be available for ten days, meaning we can put it up and take it down,

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AS TELEVISION SERIES MATURE THEY BEGIN TO CREATE BETTER MARGINS AND THEREFORE MAKE

In the board room: Mad Men, Lionsgate’s best-known television property, returns to AMC for a fifth season in 2012, while seasons one through four are currently available for instant streaming on Netflix.

INCREASING CONTRIBUTIONS TO OUR BOTTOM LINE.

which we could never do without the flexibility that digital platforms provide us. Our theatrical exhibition partners are comfortable with our approach and even offered a statement of support.

We’re releasing Kevin Smith’s film Red State at a premium VOD price of $9.99 30 days prior to its theatrical release, and you’ll see us experiment with other windows in the months to come.

WS: It’s been about a year since Pantelion Films, the joint venture with Televisa, was announced. How is that doing, and do you still see big potential in the U.S. Hispanic market?

FELTHEIMER: I do. Nobody has ever brought out a full slate of Spanish- and English-language films specifically for that market, and you don’t build a brand overnight, but we were pleased that Pantelion got off to a good start with the solid

Roughing it: Lionsgate’s 2012 film slate includes the highly anticipated The Hunger Games, based on Suzanne Collins’s best-selling young-adult sci-fi trilogy.

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performance of their debut film, From Prada to Nada. We’re in the process of developing it as a television series, and we’re excited about the next release, which is Saving Private Perez.

We’ve targeted a large and fastgrowing niche, we’ve got a strong partner in Televisa who understands the Hispanic audience and the programming they want and we’ve established the foundation for building the Pantelion brand over time.

WS: How have you been using social media to help draw attention and create communities around Lionsgate’s films and TV series?

FELTHEIMER: Social media serves as both an important outlet for the marketing of our films and TV shows and a strong platform for the launch of social games and other new content. Our film group is as adept as any team in the business at utilizing new media innovatively and costeffectively to market our product. For example, our recent partnership with Groupon enabled us to reach tens of millions of online consumers as an adjunct to our marketing campaign for the film The Lincoln Lawyer with very modest incremental spend, and the film grossed nearly $60 million at the North American box office.

Facebook is another example of the importance of social media. Lionsgate sites have nearly 45 million Facebook fans, growing at the rate of

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5 million fans a month.We’re utilizing this huge base not only to market our content online but to extend our brands into new businesses. As an example, we’re launching two new social games this fall built around our highly successful Weeds and Dirty Dancing brands. The launch of Dirty Dancing’s social game is part of a multiplatform initiative under which we will bring Dirty Dancing back to the big screen next year under the direction of Kenny Ortega, the choreographer of the original film and the director of High School Musical.

WS: Lionsgate’s TV division has

significantly contributed to the company’s strong financial performance. What has been driving its success, and how important a role has the digital marketplace played in its recent growth?

FELTHEIMER: Part of our television strategy was to avoid duplicating what the major studios were doing.We had a specific and targeted approach: producing shows for pay and basic cable and becoming a market leader in that niche. From our cable series Mad Men, Weeds, Nurse Jackie and Blue Mountain State to our syndicated shows like the Tyler Perry series House of Payne and Meet the Browns and Joe Roth’s series Are We There Yet?, we produce or distribute shows that are evergreen, enduring and repeatable properties, and we’ve created some unique financial models to maximize their profitability.

Even in the talk-show genre, we had a second cycle on BET for The Wendy Williams Show right from the beginning to mitigate our risks.

As television series mature they begin to create better margins and therefore make increasing contributions to our bottom line. Again, part of the benefit of digital distribution is that there are certain shows that are more valuable to the digital players than they are to the traditional players. Look at Mad Men. The two most significant bidders were both digital players.The rights went to Netflix, and the deal ended up being

worth two or three times what we would have gotten from traditional distributors. And the reason is pretty interesting—for a subscription VOD player a serialized program may be stickier and more valuable than an episodic series.

That’s what’s so great about what’s happening in the marketplace. As we expand our distribution choices and potential distribution partners, everyone wants something different. Things that are valuable to one might not be as valuable to someone else and vice versa. What we saw in the Mad Men deal was that a very important part of our catalogue was significantly bolstered by demand from a new, different and well-capitalized buyer.

plicated the business has become, compared to “the good old days of three broadcast networks,” but on the other hand there are so many opportunities to be mined.

FELTHEIMER: We had a very complicated negotiation over the three-year renewal of Mad Men and the three-year deal with Matt Weiner [the show’s creator]. A lot of the complication was due to the

very difficult job of ascertaining what digital rights mean, the value of those digital rights and how one would share those values. It was a very good example of both the tremendous value and tremendous opportunity going forward, but also of how much work we all have to put in to find these new models and be innovative as we go forward.

WS: When I was speaking to Josh

Sapan (the president and CEO of AMC Networks, which owns the cable network AMC, the home of Mad Men in the U.S.), he was remarking on one hand how com-

A polished look: The Lionsgate reality series Nail Files airs on TV Guide Network, which the studio owns in partnership with One Equity Partners.

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in conversation WS: Tell us about the progress you’ve made with TV Guide Network.

FELTHEIMER: We’ve made good progress transforming what was primarily a split-screen utility channel with a navigational component into a full-screen channel delivering entertainment. Our first priority was to phase out the TV listings scroll, and by the end of the year we expect TV Guide Network to be a full-screen channel in more than 80 percent of its homes.We’ve renewed carriage agreements with nearly all the cable operators, including Comcast, Charter and Time Warner Cable. So the first part of transforming the real estate is going very well. The second priority is programming: getting rat-

ings up and growing advertising.

We’ve acquired several shows, including our own show Weeds, and we just rolled out a new show called Nail Files from Jersey Shore creator SallyAnn Salsano, with several more new series and pilots planned in the fall. Those are the kinds of programming initiatives we need to elevate the ratings, increase the advertising revenue and grow the network’s EBITDA and free cash flow, and I’m confident about where the network is headed.

WS: What can you tell us about

the show with Charlie Sheen?

FELTHEIMER: We’re excited to be

in business with Charlie and Joe Roth, who produced the hit movie Anger Management, on which our

comedy adaptation is based. We’re doing what we like to do— moving quickly to capitalize on an opportunity and creating a unique and innovative business model that has lots of upside in success but which is also disciplined and mitigates risk. There is a tremendous amount of interest from showrunners, agents who represent showrunners and potential buyers of the show.

We think this could be a very big win for our company.

Man in charge: Kelsey Grammer stars as a Chicago mayor in Boss, a new series for Starz.

Peter Iacono Managing Director, International Television, Lionsgate iconic titles as American Psycho, The Princess Bride and Dirty Dancing, which we are remaking next year with Kenny Ortega at the helm.

Announcing its most recent quarterly results, Lionsgate pointed to healthy gains in revenue from its international television-distribution business. As managing director of international television at the studio, Peter Iacono has been driving the distribution of signature brands like Mad Men and Weeds around the world. He tells World Screen about what’s in store for the company at MIPCOM.

WS: What’s contributing to the increases you’ve

seen in international TV-distribution revenues?

IACONO: We have seen dramatic increases in the

demand for our flagship properties such as Mad Men and Weeds, along with an increased appetite for our strong library of feature films with such

WS: Are you looking to add any more thirdparty titles to your TV catalogue?

IACONO: Yes, we are always looking to add more third-party titles to our television catalogue.While we have phenomenal home-grown programs, we find that select third-party content is the perfect complement to what Lionsgate has produced and thereby expands our overall offering. For example, we’ve had tremendous success with such shows as This Is Not My Life, The Guard and Supermodelme.

WS: What new titles are you offering?

IACONO: Boss is an original series from Starz

and Lionsgate Television, starring TV icon Kelsey Grammer and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Gus Van Sant. The show centers on the Machiavellian machinations of a fictional Chicago mayor with a dark secret and is set to premiere exclusively on Starz on October 21.

Lionsgate Television is producing Boss in association with Grammer’s Gramnet Productions and Brian Sher and Stella Stolper’s Category 5 Entertainment. Nail Files is created and executive produced by SallyAnn Salsano and 495 Pro-

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ductions, the team behind the megahit series Jersey Shore. This new docu-series centers on Katie Cazorla, a blonde bombshell entrepreneur who owns and operates Hollywood’s fastest-growing celebrity-filled nail salon.

WS: Why do you think these shows will appeal

to international broadcasters?

IACONO: Nail Files is just great fun. Katie Cazorla’s

unabashed exuberance is infectious and wildly entertaining. Supported by the very strong ensemble cast I previously mentioned, audiences will find Boss a very compelling drama.This production also marks two important firsts: Kelsey Grammer’s first role in a dramatic TV series and filmmaker Gus Van Sant’s first direction of a TV show. On an interesting note, the series was shot like a feature. Unlike most series, which are shot week by week, it was only after all principal photography for all the episodes in season one of Boss were shot and complete that Gus and the team begin to edit and post all of the episodes. Boss is a key priority for us at MIPCOM—it’s a very strong new addition to our lineup.

Of course, we look forward to spending time meeting with our broadcast partners for our triedand-true series Mad Men and Weeds.

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world’s end

IN THE STARS

Almost every national constitution forbids the establishment of an official state religion. But this secular bent doesn’t stop people from looking to the heavens for answers to life’s most troublesome questions: Will I succeed? Will I find love? Will Anderson Cooper put me on “The RidicuList”?

Every day, papers and magazines worldwide print horoscopes—projections for people born in a specific month, based on the positions of the stars and planets. While many people rely on these daily, weekly or monthly messages for guidance in their lives, some readers skip over them entirely.

Kate Gosselin

Kim Kardashian

“The Situation”

Mel Gibson

Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino

Global distinction: Fallen Hollywood star.

Sign: Capricorn (b. January 3, 1956) Significant date: September 8, 2011 Noteworthy activity: The actor, who went off on an

Global distinction: Jersey Shore cast member.

Sign: Cancer (b. July 4, 1982) Significant date: August 17, 2011 Noteworthy activity: The Jersey Shore juicehead is

anti-Semitic rant during a drunk-driving arrest five years ago, is now said to be involved with a film about the life of Jewish hero Judah Maccabee. Gibson’s involvement with bringing Maccabee’s story to the screen angers some Jewish leaders.

Horoscope: “Capricorn is an open opportunist, and will not try to disguise this. Be sure that what you stand to gain is worth the repercussions you may incur.” (ask-oracle.com)

offered money to stop wearing a particular brand.

Abercrombie & Fitch says it would pay a “substantial amount” for him to not wear its clothing on air. “We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorrentino’s association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image,” the retailer says in a press release.

Horoscope: “You should try to control yourself from behaving rudely with others. Your bad behavior will only create trouble for you, especially in the case of your business.” (askganesha.getshopped.com)

The editors of WS recognize that these little pearls of random foresight occasionally prove prophetic.

But rather than poring over charts of the zodiac to predict world events, our staff prefers to use past horoscopes in an attempt to legitimate the science.

As you can see here, had some of these media figures remembered to consult their horoscopes on signif-

Anderson Cooper

Kate Gosselin Global distinction: Former reality TV mom.

Sign: Aries (b. March 28, 1975) Significant date: September 9, 2011 Noteworthy activity: The mother of eight, whose show

Anderson Cooper Global distinction: News anchor.

Sign: Gemini (b. June 3, 1967) Significant date: August 19, 2011 Noteworthy activity: The silver fox gets a major case

Kate Plus 8 was recently cancelled by TLC, buys an Audi TTS. It’s an unusual purchase for an out-of-work single mom, as the pricey sports car is a two-seater, accommodating just one out of her eight kids.The purchase comes to light days after Gosselin tells the media of her fears of providing for her family in her post-TV-series world.

Horoscope: “Aries should be frugal and cautious in financial matters, only investing their money well in business or industries that promise a good return.”

(123newyearhoroscope.com)

of the giggles during his “The RidicuList” segment on his Anderson Cooper 360° CNN show. The journalist laughs for almost a minute straight when delivering a pun-filled story about French actor Gérard Depardieu, who reportedly urinated in a plane’s cabin while it was delayed on the tarmac.

Horoscope: “Don’t let the mask of composure slip, Gemini. Remain calm, and to the best of your ability do whatever tasks need to be done.” (gotohoroscope.com)

Kim Kardashian

Bethenny Frankel

Global distinction: Famous for being famous.

Sign: Libra (b. October 21, 1980) Significant date: July 20, 2011 Noteworthy activity: The brunette media mogul sues

Global distinction: Former Real Housewives star.

Sign: Scorpio (b. November 4, 1970) Significant date: September 5, 2011 Noteworthy activity: The reality TV personality and

Old Navy for using a look-alike in a recent ad campaign.

Kardashian’s lawsuit says consumers may be confused by the ads and the model’s actual endorsements, which include her own clothing store and shoe line. Kim believes the copycat campaign has damaged her earnings somewhere in the range of $15 million to $20 million.

Horoscope: “It would be in your favor to meet new people who are modest. You could learn something from them.” (india-server.com)

nutritional chef ’s hot-selling Skinnygirl Margarita line is pulled from shelves of the grocery chain Whole Foods for containing a preservative linked to cancer. Court documents accuse Frankel and its maker that the margarita line is not “all natural.” A class action lawsuit is filed by a customer over the misleading product.

Horoscope: “Scorpio people are generally suspicious by nature. If you suspect that the motives of others are not as they appear, speak out.” (ask-oracle.com)

icant days, they could have avoided a few surprises.

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