World Screen MIPTV 2013

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THE MAGAZINE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA • APRIL 2013

www.worldscreen.com

MIPTV Edition

American Television Lionsgate’s Jon Feltheimer Discovery’s David Zaslav A+ E Networks’ Abbe Raven Homeland’s Howard Gordon CBS’s David Stapf ABC’s Paul Lee Touch’s Tim Kring Showtime’s David Nevins FX’s John Landgraf AMC’s Charlie Collier USA’s Jeff Wachtel Turner’s Michael Wright ZDF’s

Thomas Bellut Turner’s

Leading Men

Gerhard Zeiler

Andrew Lincoln Dennis Quaid Bryan Cranston

Sky’s

Sophie Turner Laing Shine Group’s

Alex Mahon

Copper’s

Tom Fontana Prisoners of War’s

Gideon Raff The Amazing Race’s

Bertram van Munster

Ryan Seacrest Mr. Entertainment

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contents APRIL 2013/MIPTV EDITION

Publisher Ricardo Seguin Guise Editor Anna Carugati Executive Editor Mansha Daswani

78

86

Andrew Lincoln

Managing Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Contributing Editor Elizabeth Guider

78

Special Projects Editor Jay Stuart

The star of The Walking Dead gives a behind-the-scenes look at the hit AMC and FOX International Channels show.

Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Elizabeth Bowen-Tombari

—Mansha Daswani

Bryan Cranston

82

A chat with the Breaking Bad star as he wraps up his final year as meth dealer Walter White.

—Kristin Brzoznowski

Dennis Quaid

86

The veteran film actor has made the move to television with the CBS period drama Vegas.

—Anna Carugati

Milestones

Associate Editor, Spanish-Language Publications Jessica Rodríguez

88

Associate Editor Joanna Padovano

108

Online Director Simon Weaver

One-on-One

181

RYAN SEACREST

The popular television host and producer shares his passion for his work and his vision for building what many are calling a modern-day media empire.

FERNANDO SZEW

—Anna Carugati

The CEO of MarVista Entertainment reflects on the company’s ten-year anniversary.

—Anna Carugati

Spotlight

95

TOM FONTANA

The acclaimed American showrunner is developing content on a global stage with Copper and Borgia.

—Anna Carugati

Special Report

98

AMERICAN DREAM

This special report on the American content-production business includes interviews with Lionsgate’s Jon Feltheimer, Homeland’s Howard Gordon, Discovery’s David Zaslav, A+E Networks’ Abbe Raven, CBS Television Studios’ David Stapf, ABC’s Paul Lee, Touch’s Tim Kring, Showtime’s David Nevins, FX’s John Landgraf, AMC’s Charlie Collier, USA’s Jeff Wachtel and Turner’s Michael Wright.

—Elizabeth Guider & Anna Carugati WORLD SCREEN is published eight times per year: January, March, April, May, June/July, October, November and December.

Annual subscription price: Inside the U.S.: $70.00 Outside the U.S.: $120.00 Send checks, company information and address corrections to: WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, Suite 1207, New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. For a free subscription to our newsletters, please visit www.worldscreen.com.

On the Record

221

LIONSGATE’S JON FELTHEIMER

The CEO and co-chairman of the independent studio is always looking for ways to expand his businesses and scout for new opportunities to produce and distribute quality content.

—Anna Carugati

In Conversation

277

TURNER’S GERHARD ZEILER

High-quality programming, offered to consumers across multiple platforms, is driving the success of Turner Broadcasting’s channels around the world, according to the company’s president of international.

Art Director Phyllis Q. Busell Production Director Victor L. Cuevas Production Associate Meredith Miller Sales & Marketing Director Cesar Suero Sales & Marketing Manager Vanessa Brand Business Affairs Manager Terry Acunzo Senior Editor Kate Norris Contributing Writers Dieter Brockmeyer Bob Jenkins Juliana Koranteng Joanna Stephens David Wood Copy Editors Grace Hernandez Maddy Kloss Kathleen Payne

—Anna Carugati Ricardo Seguin Guise President

DEPARTMENTS WORLD VIEW GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE VIEWPOINT UPFRONTS ADVERTISERS’ INDEX WORLD’S END

THE LEADING ONLINE DAILY NEWS SERVICE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA INDUSTRY. For a free subscription, visit ww.worldscreen.com/pages/newsletter

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Anna Carugati Executive VP & Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & 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 ©2013 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.

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contents milestones APRIL 2013/MIPTV EDITION

PUBLIC & PROUD A look at the challenges faced by Europe’s top public broadcasters

144…

DEUTSCHLAND Spotlighting the German media market 154…INTERVIEWS Sky’s Sophie Turner Laing 160…Shine’s Alex Mahon 164…ZDF AT 50: THOMAS BELLUT The director-general of ZDF on the German pubcaster’s milestone anniversary 168…ZDF ENTERPRISES AT 20: ALEXANDER CORIDASS ZDF’s commercial arm is turning 20 176…PROFILE Foyle’s War 178 MEGA

HITS

Case

studies

of

Europe’s

top

five

formats

202…

#CONNECTED Social media and interactivity have become central to the success of many of today’s top formats 208…INTERVIEWS Shine’s Alex Mahon 214…Prisoners of War’s Gideon Raff 216…The Amazing Race’s Bertram van Munster 218

HUNGRY FOR APPS Apps are key for building shows into global hits 252…REAL KIDS Making factual shows for young ones 258…FAMILY AT 25 Joe Tedesco and J. Kevin Wright on the network’s 25th birthday 264…INTERVIEWS SUPER RTL’s Claude Schmit 268…DHX’s Steven DeNure 271…PGS’s Philippe Soutter 273…CELEBRATING EXCELLENCE The International Emmy Kids Awards 274 TASTY TV Food-based series are in demand 294…FUNNY MONEY A look at what’s new in the hidden-camera genre 302…CULTURE CLUB Spotlighting arts content available on the market 308…INTERVIEWS Discovery’s David Zaslav 298…A+E Networks’ Abbe Raven 300…National Geographic’s Germaine Deagan Sweet 310 GOLDEN DRAMA Asian dramas are finding new fans around the world 322…INTERVIEWS GMA’s Felipe Gozon 328…ABS-CBN TURNS 60: CHARO SANTOS-CONCIO

asia pacific

The Filipino broadcaster marks its 60th anniversary 330…ASIA WANTS FORMATS! Four buyers reveal their wish lists 334 AFRICA RISING Distributors from a variety of genres are finding a host of new opportunities across the African continent 342…INTERVIEW OSN’s David Butorac 348

CONTENT ON DEMAND Latin American distributors are pursuing deals with newmedia platforms 368…INTERVIEWS Tom Fontana 378…MarVista’s Fernando Szew 382

magazines appear both inside

THE LEADING SOURCE FOR PROGRAM

These targeted

World Screen

INFORMATION

Listings of numerous distributors

and as separate

attending MIPTV 389

publications.

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world milestones view

BY ANNA CARUGATI

Once Upon a Time For the past six months, I’ve had the extreme good fortune of diving into a most enjoyable activity: interviewing some of the most talented writers, showrunners and programming executives in our business.

This issue has a special feature on American television and I got to luxuriate in the inner workings of the creative process—a labor of love that makes me wonder: I get to do this and get paid for it, too? After so many interviews about creating shows, working in the writers’ room, nurturing creative talent, scheduling and promoting series, I’ve started to think about the origins of great storytelling.

As long as there have been people, they have been telling stories, whether through pictures (think of the ancient drawings in the Lascaux caves), or through oral storytelling (one of the first tales was the Epic of Gilgamesh, about a Sumerian king thought to have lived in 3000 B.C.), and then in written form. The Greeks were the first to excel there—they left us the timeless legacy of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Since those tragedies and comedies were first performed, people have been talking about storytelling and debating its value and role in society. Greek debated the value of SCRIPTED SERIES philosophers “mimesis,” a term that, roughly translated, means imitation, or PROVIDE THE FERTILE holding a mirror up to reality.

Plato argued that artistic creations were subjective, superficial and GROUND WHERE NEW untrue; not only were they not real, they conjured up emotional NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES responses, not rational ones—definitely not appropriate for a philosopher king. Aristotle, on the ARE EXPLORED. other hand, believed that literary art, because it is divorced from the accidents and random occurrences of history, is able to present higher, universal truths.

I’m no scholar, but I’m with Aristotle.“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Tolstoy sure hit the nail on the head with that observation.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity….” Doesn’t this sentence apply as perfectly today as it did in Charles Dickens’ 18th century?

Another subject of debate in literary criticism is story versus narrative. The story is what is being told, narrative is how it is told. Literary Darwinists insist we keep telling the same stories over and over; what’s changing is the way stories are told. If novels and plays used to be the main 30 World Screen 4/13

vehicles for helping us understand ourselves and our world, today scripted series provide the fertile ground where new narrative techniques are explored and relationships, issues, afflictions, addictions, are depicted in all their gritty reality.

Think of how television storytelling has evolved. I’ll take American shows as examples, since our main feature is all about U.S. cable and network series. In the postwar “I Like Ike” years, dramas and comedies depicted one-dimensional cops, doctors, husbands and wives; prime-time television was not about shaking up the status quo. Shows in the ’60s started to reflect the turbulence brewing in society, but while the stories were different, the structure of comedies and dramas was still formulaic.

Things started to change in the ’70s with the likes of Archie Bunker and a slew of comedies that showed notso-perfect human beings. Hot issues of the day were being presented, but the storytelling structure of dramas and comedies was largely uniform. In the ’80s, a new era dawned: laugh tracks slowly disappeared, hand-held cameras got up close and personal, ensemble casts ruled and characters became quirkier, more layered.What started in the ’90s and continued with the new millennium were multiple groundbreaking changes in narrative structures and a huge leap in production values: flashbacks, flash-forwards, the walk-and-talk, gruesome forensics, special effects—and suddenly we learned how to care about bona fide sons of bitches and unredeemable women.We are now comfortably at home in the land of the flawed character, and don’t we love it. Scripted television has never been better. It’s even making headway into networks that have been traditionally dedicated to factual programming.

We explore all these facets of American television in this issue—which has a brand-new look—with an impressive list of stars, showrunners and network executives talking about why and how, despite the huge costs and much debated development and pilot systems, America manages to churn out, year after year, some of the best television in the world.

We live, however, in a global industry.The U.S. has done its share of selling its TV series around the globe, but it has also started to absorb the best of what the rest of the world has to offer. One of the main venues where the give-and-take of ideas happens is MIPTV, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Regardless of the channel or platform, good storytelling fuels our business and enriches our lives.

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global perspective

BY BRUCE L. PAISNER

The Age of Obama American history has been defined by periods of great social ferment and change that leave the country vastly different.

Starting with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., historians began to identify these periods with the presidents who dominated them—thus Schlesinger’s two great biographies, The Age of Jackson and The Age of Roosevelt, eras when the U.S. changed so dramatically that it was essentially a different country coming out than it had been going in.

Recent events, beginning perhaps with the reelection of President Obama last November and continuing through his inauguration, suggest that we may be in the middle of another such seismic shift in attitudes, values and technology. Historians and time will determine whether this really is the Age of Obama and whether the U.S., both internally and in its relationship with the rest of the world, changes so dramatically over the next four years that Obama himself is forever associated with the change. Has he created a new voting coalition that will lead to progressive Democratic majorities in presidential elections for years to come? Will he advance the country to greater social equality, perhaps at a level never envisioned by even such idealists as Franklin Roosevelt? Can he surmount RECENT EVENTS... the opposition political and societal forces which challenge every dominant president? We SUGGEST THAT WE MAY will have to wait and see.

But we may already live in the Age of Obama so far as BE IN THE MIDDLE OF the media are concerned.

Part of this is technological, ANOTHER SUCH SEISMIC part something deeper.

The technology is easy enough to see.

SHIFT IN ATTITUDES, A president is credited with what happens on his watch, VALUES AND TECHNOLOGY. whether he caused it or not, just as the Age of Lincoln included the transcontinental railroad. And there is no question social media has come of age during Barack Obama’s presidency, a subject we address frequently at the International Academy. There were 80,000 tweets during the first inauguration and more than a million during the second.Today, we are tethered to smartphones and other devices to a degree unthought of when Obama became president. Even he spent much of his inaugural parade looking at his BlackBerry. By the end of his second term, the world will be well embarked on the information revolution and the ubiquity of social media, and his will be the U.S. presidency in which the acceleration took place.

34 World Screen 4/13

The deeper issue is one I have followed for over 40 years. From September 1967 to March of 1968, I worked for the Kerner Commission, which investigated the race riots of the mid to late ’60s in the U.S. My particular assignment was the chapter on media and racial relations. The Kerner Commission’s findings were summed up in its opening sentence: “Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” Our chapter reflected this, and said the fundamental media problem was that newspapers and television were a white person’s media, run by whites, staffed by whites and aimed at white audiences. We said until that changed, little else would change, either. Over the ensuing years, many of these things did improve, but I now believe we missed one essential point, though clearly none of us could have envisioned it in 1967: that things would not dramatically change until the U.S. had a black president, because the media are ultimately a mirror of society.Were he to be the right person—inclusive and charismatic and someone most people, whatever their political views, could admire on a personal basis— dramatic change could happen.

I believe it would be hard to watch the coverage of President Obama’s second inauguration and not believe that, finally, things have changed in the media world— from the pictures of the crowds, to the staffing on the anchor desks, to the enduring vision of a reelected black president and his family as quintessentially American.

It is dangerous to be too optimistic about this, but I do believe, at least as regards race, we are increasingly no longer two societies, and it is Barack Obama’s presidency that finally brought this about. Of course, there are still economic and other inequalities—and the country needs to address them. But the very fact that the U.S. elected Obama president—and more important, reelected him— means that something fundamental has changed, and in a way we could not have imagined in 1967.

The president now seems committed to a society in which most “outsiders” can have a place on the inside.

He made that clear in his inaugural speech. Whether he can lead the country along the path he outlined, and whether the U.S. over the next period of time does become a more multiethnic, multicultural and tolerant society will be the test of whether today’s images are a blip in the nation’s history or our era truly takes its place as the Age of Obama.

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

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milestones viewpoint

BY JÉRÔME DELHAYE

MIPTV: 50 Years of Looking Forward Speak to MIPTV founder Bernard Chevry and he’ll tell you that when he launched the event, in Lyon in 1963, most people thought he was crazy.

After all, there wasn’t an international market for buying and selling programs, most Continental European countries had a single public broadcaster and more often than not, as in the case of the SFP [Société Française de Production] in France, a dominant public production company.

When programs crossed international borders, it was mainly in the form of exchange deals rather than acquisitions. And just to add spice to the concept of buying and selling shows, there were no videocassettes or DVDs, leaving people to carry heavy cans of film to their projection rooms.

So perhaps it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise when, during a particularly impressive dinner to mark the end of the inaugural MIPTV, the mayor of Lyon, Louis Pradel, turned to a German delegate and announced that he didn’t think television—and by inference MIPTV—had a future!

Well, it didn’t have one in Lyon, that’s for sure. In 1965, Bernard Chevry opened the doors on the second edition of MIPTV, this time in the Côte d’Azur resort of Cannes, where it has been held ever since.

Chevry’s vision of an industry that would become truly international, with programs selling around the world, was revolutionary. Not only did MIPTV play an integral part in the development of the international television business, but, at a time when international travel was extremely timeconsuming, it provided television executives with a one-stop shop to come together to discuss that business. Over the next 50 years, deal-making and networking have remained the backbone of MIPTV. In the late ’60s, the market showed once again that it was looking to the future, albeit in a relatively modest fashion. An International Co-Production Office was opened in the show’s venue. This allowed companies to indicate that they had a project that they were looking for co-production partners on, and which countries they were interested in—all of which they chalked up on an old-fashioned blackboard! Potential partners read the postings and the Co-Production office put the various companies together.

The explosion of private European channels in the ’80s and ’90s, as the likes of Canale 5, RTL Television, Canal+, TF1, M6 and Sky Television entered people’s homes, coupled with the development of cable and satellite distribution, resulted in a host of new channels at MIPTV, alongside young independent production companies keen to supply content to the growing number of TV outlets.

The emergence of the specialist cable and satellite channels led to a restructuring and professionalization of pro38 World Screen 4/13

duction companies in certain sectors, notably in the field of documentaries.With the growth of specialist documentary channels, it became evident that a dedicated event, closely associated with MIPTV, was required to help documentary buyers access a maximum of fresh international programming in a single place. In 1998, MIPDoc was launched, hosting thousands of hours of documentary programs in a two-day screening event.

On several occasions, MIPTV has been the venue where visionary thinkers have announced the future of entertainment content agreements, many years before the market embraced them.That was the case in 1989 when the British independent production company Sunset+Vine unveiled a £1 million deal, with a leading soft-drinks manufacturer, to team up on a dangerous sports television magazine called Rocksport.Today, this kind of branded-entertainment deal is commonplace, and international brands such as BNP, British Airways, Red Bull, Coca-Cola, Dove and Nike are all represented at MIPTV. Similarly, at MIPTV in 1990, representatives from a young company, John de Mol Productions, were telling anyone who would listen that reality programming would be a major part of future television. John de Mol Productions later became Endemol, and reality-show producers are an integral part of the MIPTV community.

As MIPTV has established itself as the major gathering of television and digital content producers, some countries have used the event as their launching pad into the international market. Sensing a growing willingness in China to develop its television sector beyond its national frontiers, MIPTV 2004 held a dedicated China Day, attended by leading officials from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT).

Returning to Beijing, the SARFT officials decided to make MIPTV and its sister event MIPCOM their choices as events which they would use to promote Chinese programming and foster international production partnerships.

Fifty years after the “crazy” idea of its launch, MIPTV brings together more than 11,000 delegates from 100-plus countries.With the 2010 introduction of MIPFormats and the 2012 launch of MIPCube—bringing together startup companies, tech specialists, brands, agencies and producers of content for all screens—MIPTV has put down another marker for the future, as it prepares to set out on the next 50 years of its adventure.

Jérôme Delhaye is the director of Reed MIDEM’s entertainment division.

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upfronts

AFL Productions • Painfully Funny • Shelarious • Naked & Funny There is a high repeatability factor with many of the programs on the AFL Productions slate, which is led by the flagship Naked & Funny.This means that broadcasters can get maximum mileage out of a show, giving them more value from their initial investment, according to Yuri Volodarsky, the head of development and distribution at AFL Productions. The company’s hallmark is comedic clip-based programs, including the new offerings Painfully Funny and Shelarious. However, there’s also a bit of action in the catalogue, in the form of Police Patrol.These shows are complemented by nondialogue entertainment series such as 2Rude4UTube and hiddencamera shows like Crazy TV Pranks. AFL also has a B2B portal, Russian Footage Archive, which will feature a new section of unique, bizarre and scenic clips for MIPTV.

“We can generate a lot of cash for a broadcaster.”

—Yuri Volodarsky Naked & Funny

ALL3MEDIA International • Monty Don’s French Gardens • The Village • Foyle’s War

From the BAFTA-winning writer Peter Moffat comes the new epic drama The Village.The piece begins in 1914, when a young boy is being brought up on a farm in the Peak District of Derbyshire. “It’s emotional and atmospheric and tracks the passing of time over a whole century, through life in a single village,” says Liza Thompson, a senior VP of international sales at ALL3MEDIA International. The company is offering up the title to international buyers at MIPTV alongside Monty Don’s French Gardens. Thompson also says that Foyle’s War is “hugely appealing. My buyers are always on the hunt for strong primetime detective series and this one has an intelligent approach to the intelligence world during the Cold War.”

“The Latin American market is working well for us; they are embracing more British and Australian dramas presently.”

—Liza Thompson The Village

AMC/Sundance Channel Global The AMC Networks bouquet has been rolling out around the globe, offering viewers in other countries the chance to watch channels that have been established hits in the U.S. Leading these efforts is Bruce Tuchman, the president of AMC/Sundance Channel Global. “In the last year we have had significant growth in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Turkey, Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan, along with expanded on-demand offerings in numerous countries,” he says.

Globally Tuchman has seen an “even firmer demand from operators to provide compelling, gripping content that is available to authenticated subscribers anytime and anywhere.These trends and their urgency underscore what is at stake for the pay-TV ecosystem and, I believe, what we can uniquely help to provide.”

“We plan to expand the presence of both Sundance Channel and WE tv across platforms in existing countries as well as launch in new markets across the globe.”

Rectify on Sundance Channel 42 World Screen 4/13

—Bruce Tuchman

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American Cinema International • Fast Track • Raptor Ranch The race movie Fast Track, a lead title from American Cinema International (ACI), features daring stunts and a talented cast that includes Brett Davern and Beau Mirchoff of MTV’s Awkward and Corbin Bernsen of Major League and Psych. The company is also showcasing Raptor Ranch, a science-fiction title featuring lots of action and special-effects sequences. “These films aren’t just commercial and TV-friendly, they have great stories, too,” says George Shamieh, the CEO of ACI. “Both Fast Track and Raptor Ranch are action-packed, but they also have a lot of heart. I’m certain they will resonate with international audiences.” Shamieh says he is looking forward to presenting both titles to the global market in Cannes. “MIPTV will be a great opportunity to catch up and do business with old colleagues, and meet some new faces, too.”

“The Far East is an emerging territory, and we are targeting Europe, Australia, South Africa and Latin America.”

—George Shamieh Fast Track

Artear • Compulsive Times • Naked Family • The Social Leader

In the Artear series Compulsive Times, Dr. Ricardo Buso is responsible for treating patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who are seeking help at the Renacer Foundation.

There is Gerardo, who’s a workaholic and has Internet addiction disorder; Ines, an OCD hoarder with an eating disorder; Sofia, who suffers from DSH (deliberate self-harm); Teresa and her MPD (multiple personality disorder); and Esteban, a mythomaniac, a person with an irresistible impulse for lying and exaggerating.Together with his loyal friend and colleague Ezequiel, Dr. Buso will try to bring relief to outpatients every time they gather for group therapy. Artear is offering the 26x26-minute series for buyers at MIPTV, along with the 13x1-hour Naked Family and the 36x1-hour The Social Leader.

Compulsive Times

Artist View Entertainment • Assassins Tale • ICE Agent • The Tournament There are two new action thrillers in the Artist View Entertainment lineup this MIPTV, ICE Agent and Assassins Tale.

“Due to the high-end production values and action elements incorporated in the two features, we believe that the films can easily be acquired in all territories throughout the world,” says Scott Jones, the president of Artist View. The company is also presenting the series The Tournament, which Jones says is “unique in nature. The series follows a group of annoying sports parents who all think their sons can make it to the big leagues. In this case the forum is ice hockey, but, in truth, if you have ever had a child involved in sports you will relate all too well to the characters in this very entertaining series.”

“A bigger need for scripted series and feature films is emerging.”

—Scott Jones

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Azteca • Vivir a destiempo • The Other Side of the Soul • The Kings The renowned actress Edith González stars in the Azteca novela Vivir a destiempo, in which Humberto Zurita and Ramiro Fumazoni are fighting for her character’s love. As the exclusive distributor for Azteca, Comarex is featuring the telenovela on its MIPTV slate, which also includes the latest hit from the international star Gabriela Spanic, The Other Side of the Soul (La otra cara del alma). The title also features Eduardo Capetillo, starring for the first time in an Azteca production, as well as Michelle Vieth in her return to telenovelas. “After a huge success in Mexico and having already sold the telenovela in many countries around the world, we are proud to bring to MIPTV The Kings (Los Rey),” says Marcel Vinay, Jr., the CEO of Comarex.

“We have a cast of international stars that are well known all over the world.”

—Marcel Vinay, Jr. Vivir a destiempo

Beyond Distribution • BBQ Crawl • Mother of the Bride • Hidden in America

The reality show Mother of the Bride is the “perfect femaleskewed series,” according to Munia Kanna-Konsek, the head of sales at Beyond Distribution. The food-based BBQ Crawl, meanwhile, is ideal for co-viewing, she says. Kanna-Konsek also highlights Hidden in America, a series from Beyond Productions for Destination America that explores various subcultures around the country. “The U.S. has been incredibly lucrative for us this year, but only because we had the U.S. rights to exploit,” says Kanna-Konsek of Beyond’s recent sales success. “Sometimes producers feel they can get better deals themselves, but more often than not we attain greater results....

Asia has also continued to generate top sales for our kids’ programs,” she adds, mentioning History Hunters and Junior Vets.

“Our programs are always interesting, informative and entertaining.”

BBQ Crawl

—Munia Kanna-Konsek

BoPaul Media Worldwide • Blood and Sand • Game of Seduction • Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan Since last MIPTV, BoPaul Media Worldwide has added more than 300 titles to its catalogue, including new libraries from José Frade Producciones in Spain and OB Films in France. The two biggest sellers from those catalogues are Blood and Sand, starring Sharon Stone, and Game of Seduction (Une femme fidèle), starring Sylvia Kristel and directed by Roger Vadim. Alongside its range of classics, BoPaul Media Worldwide has new titles, including Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan. “Featuring Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, among other iconic filmmakers influenced by Harryhausen, this documentary has been acquired by big-name buyers like the BBC in the U.K., Sony in the U.S. and ARTE in France; we are confident it will attract similarly strong broadcasters in other major territories at MIPTV,” says Paul Rich, the company’s CEO.

“We continue to push to maintain our clear dominance among independent companies in the area of classic films.”

—Paul Rich Blood and Sand 46 World Screen 4/13

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Caracol Television • The Dance Floor • The Hypochondriac • The White Line Dance shows have already proven to work well around the world, and Caracol Television believes its new title The Dance Floor will follow suit. It contains the successful ingredients of celebrities, hit songs and spectacular staging, says Berta Orozco, a sales executive at Caracol. “The Hypochondriac, on the other hand, is a high-quality production which is available not only as a ready-made but also as a scripted format,” she says. “It is very suitable for Western European territories, which are more interested in adapting telenovelas than just merely buying finished products.” The White Line is in the same vein as Caracol’s successful series The Cartel and Pablo Escobar, the Drug Lord, as it deals with cocaine trafficking. The series is a co-production with Mexico’s Cadenatres.

“The trend is always innovation; if you have something really new and creative, I’m sure it’s going to be successful.”

—Berta Orozco The Hypochondriac

Carsey-Werner International TV Distribution • That ’70s Show • Roseanne • The Cosby Show

Iconic comedies are what feature prominently in the CarseyWerner International Television Distribution catalogue. This includes the coming-of-age comedy That ’70s Show.The company is also responsible for sales of the classic hits Roseanne and The Cosby Show, which are now available with HD versions.

“We’re fortunate to have series that continue to make their original viewers laugh and are also attracting new audiences,” says Alexandra Taylor, the company’s executive VP of international television distribution. “Remastering in HD is giving Carsey-Werner’s hit series The Cosby Show and Roseanne a new lease on life.” Taylor also points out that format sales for Carsey-Werner’s sitcoms are increasing, with other countries putting their own local spin on these American classics.

Roseanne

That ‘70s Show

CBS Studios International • Under the Dome • King & Maxwell • Ray Donovan Based on Stephen King’s best-selling novel of the same name, Under the Dome was given a straight-to-series order for 13 episodes by CBS. Barry Chamberlain, the executive VP of sales at CBS Studios International, says the show is “going to be one of those rare event television series that people will talk about.” King & Maxwell marks the first cable project from Shane Brennan (NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles). Chamberlain says that it “offers international channels a very watchable series with a great cast, a new case every week and the type of exciting action you can expect from the executive producer of NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles.”

Liev Schrieber stars in Ray Donovan, a new drama for Showtime that “hits all the right marks for distinctive and premium content that worldwide platforms are seeking,” Chamberlain says.

“With our global reach of sales offices and broad mix of content, there is no territory or client that we cannot support with top-shelf content.”

—Barry Chamberlain Ray Donovan 48 World Screen 4/13

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Cineflix Rights • The Day Kennedy Died • Trauma Investigators • Copper Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is the one-hour special The Day Kennedy Died.

Cineflix Rights is offering the film at MIPTV. It retraces JFK’s steps hour by hour in the lead-up to his death. “JFK’s assassination was one of the pivotal moments in recent history, a source of perennial fascination and conspiracy theories and, as such, of interest to audiences worldwide,” says Chris Bonney, the CEO of rights at Cineflix Media. The company is also offering Trauma Investigators, which follows an elite team of doctors as they conduct on-the-spot investigations. There’s a second season of Copper as well. Bonney says that given the success of season one in the international market, there are high expectations for the show’s sophomore run.

“The subject matter of all of these projects, whether factual or scripted, has real international appeal.”

—Chris Bonney Trauma Investigators

Content Television • Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn • Complicit • The Royals

Based on the best-selling Xbox franchise, Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn delivers a story of heroism and sacrifice. Content Television has the live-action drama available as a full-length movie or as a series.

“Audiences of all ages and cultures will be able to relate to this dynamic, lushly produced program,” says Saralo MacGregor, the executiveVP of Content Television and Digital. From the acclaimed writer Guy Hibbert comes Complicit. “With so much current global scrutiny as to what is and is not acceptable in the field of intelligence gathering, this drama provides a searing look at the subject, albeit a fictionalized one, that goes to the heart of the matter,” says MacGregor. There’s also the factual series The Royals.

“This is the sort of guilty-pleasure programming that will appeal to a very wide range of audiences worldwide,” MacGregor says.

“We believe that across all demographics, Complicit will be very well received by international audiences.”

Complicit

—Saralo MacGregor

Daro Film Distribution • Sinkhole • Secret Liaison • WWE library For more than 30 years, Daro Film Distribution has been supplying blockbuster theatrical films, action series,TV movies and more to the global market. At MIPTV the company is focusing on the new launches Sinkhole and Secret Liaison. Sinkhole follows the events that unfold after a massive sinkhole swallows a bus filled with students. A small-town paramedic with a traumatic past must overcome her fears to rescue the students, one of whom is her own daughter. Secret Liaison centers on a onetime top public defender who returns to L.A. to try to prevent her sister’s being sentenced to jail for first-degree murder.

Pierre-André Rochat, the company’s president, highlights the fact that Daro Film Distribution also has a library of content from the renowned action brand WWE to offer clients.

“We acquire worldwide rights and sell directly to TV broadcasters in all markets.”

—Pierre-André Rochat Secret Liaison 50 World Screen 4/13

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Echo Bridge Entertainment • The Apartment: Style Edition • The Challenger Sixteen of the best Muay Thai fighters from around globe come together to compete for the World Championship title and a $100,000 grand prize in The Challenger.The series is one of two new reality launches for Echo Bridge Entertainment, along with The Apartment: Style Edition. In this design competition, eight teams from various parts of the world participate in challenges that test their interior-design skills in a bid to win a brand-new luxury apartment. Echo Bridge also continues to offer a growing slate of disaster movies, “which have become quite a highly promotable franchise in many territories,” says Emilia Nuccio, the company’s president of international distribution. “These films are prime-time TV movies that will keep you sitting on the edge of your seat.”

“We target every territory because it is our experience that where you pay attention, you obtain sales results.”

—Emilia Nuccio The Challenger

Endemol Worldwide Distribution • Low Winter Sun • Continuum • My Kitchen Rules

Written and executive produced by Chris Mundy (Criminal Minds, Cold Case), the drama Low Winter Sun is an Endemol Studios and AMC Studios production for AMC. “Everyone loves a classic dirty cop show,” says Cathy Payne, the CEO of Endemol Worldwide Distribution. “Low Winter Sun’s stellar cast, Detroit setting and the fact that it is made for a network of the caliber of AMC, provide three strong selling points.” Endemol Worldwide Distribution is launching a second season of Continuum, the freshman run of which performed well for Showcase in Canada and Syfy networks in the U.K. and U.S. “Science-fiction viewers are some of the most loyal,” says Payne. My Kitchen Rules continues to sell widely as a format, along with strong interest in the finished Australian and British episodes, notes Payne.

“Having a base on the ground in key emerging markets such as Russia and the CIS has delivered strong results for us.”

—Cathy Payne Continuum

Entertainment One • Rogue • The Walking Dead • Dangerous Persuasions The award-winning British actress Thandie Newton stars in the original suspense drama Rogue. From Entertainment One (eOne) Television and Greenroom Entertainment, the tenepisode series marks DIRECTV’s foray into commissioning an original drama series exclusively for its customers. “Rogue is an amazingly gripping series with an incredibly dynamic and strong female lead,” says Prentiss Fraser, the senior VP of worldwide sales and acquisitions at eOne Television International. At MIPTV eOne will be debuting the show for the international market, alongside a third season of the hit drama The Walking Dead. In the unscripted arena is Dangerous Persuasions, which Fraser says is “a terrifying factual series [that] will be a great buy for channels programming crime and thriller content.”

“We continue to see the need for strong storytelling in both factual and scripted.”

—Prentiss Fraser Rogue 52 World Screen 4/13

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Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment • The Firm Flat Abs Solution • Beginning Yoga with Chrissy Carter • Gwen Lawrence’s Yoga for Fitness With the explosive growth of yoga and wellness activities around the world, Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment has high expectations for its new block of nine fitness titles. These include The Firm Flat Abs Solution, Beginning Yoga with Chrissy Carter and Gwen Lawrence’s Yoga for Fitness as well as Colleen Saidman’s Yoga for Weight Loss. “We have found that in recent years, with the expansion of digital platforms, there is also expanded interest in this type of content—yoga,Tai Chi, overall wellness—internationally,” says Bill Sondheim, the company’s president. “For example, yoga’s popularity in the U.S. is at an all-time high….We have seen this enthusiasm grow throughout territories all over the world and we are happy to meet the demand.”

“We are very excited about the enthusiasm we have received in the marketplace for our content.”

—Bill Sondheim Beginning Yoga with Chrissy Carter

Gaumont International Television • Hannibal • Hemlock Grove • Barbarella

The procedural crime genre continues to be a hot one, but lately broadcasters are requesting dramas with a bit of a twist. Erik Pack, the head of international distribution and co-production at Gaumont International Television, believes that Hannibal meets this requirement. “Hannibal in many ways is a classic procedural drama, but the series is being taken to another level by the creative mind of Bryan Fuller, as well as by having the established characters and brand recognition of Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham and Jack Crawford.” Another Gaumont title that comes with built-in recognition is Barbarella. The company also has Hemlock Grove, which is executive produced by Eli Roth and has a long list of international talent involved. “The stories and genres are universal and buyers are really responding to our slate,” says Pack.

“The talent Gaumont uses both in front of and behind the camera are big names from all over the world.”

—Erik Pack Hannibal

GMA Worldwide • Forever • Mother’s Love • Unforgettable Filipino telenovelas contain a number of elements that make them stand out in the international market, says Roxanne Barcelona, the VP of GMA Worldwide. These include the presentation of the country’s unique cityscapes and countryside that serve as the backdrop for the stories, as well as the integration of Philippine history into story lines and the representation of local cultures. These values are present in the titles Forever, about a young plantation heiress who falls in love with an ordinary farm boy, and Mother’s Love, which tells the story of three women and how each struggles to piece together her own family. GMA Worldwide is also presenting Unforgettable, about two childhood sweethearts who grew up poor and strove to better their lives.

“The universal themes of love, family, relationships, conflict, justice and many others…are inherently present in our titles.”

Unforgettable 54 World Screen 4/13

—Roxanne Barcelona

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Goldstein Douglas Entertainment • The Wedding Belles • The Proposal • The Travel Guys Alongside the perennial reality hit Cheaters, which is now in season 13, Goldstein Douglas Entertainment has three new series making their first appearances at MIPTV. The Wedding Belles features two amateur wedding enthusiasts helping couples plan their nuptials. The Proposal’s hosts help to plan outrageous marriage proposals. The Travel Guys has been a popular travel series in Canada for the past nine years but is now being offered to the international market for the first time. “We continue to see strong sales growth in Western and Eastern Europe and hope to build on recent success in Scandinavia and Latin America,” says Cord Douglas, a company partner and the head of sales and acquisitions. “We’ve also noticed...that broadcast markets are maturing rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa.”

“The strongest trend in the reality-TV world is the new emphasis on characters over concept.”

—Cord Douglas The Wedding Belles

GRB Entertainment • BBQ Pitmasters • How Booze Built America • Hurricane Hunters

Historical factual entertainment has been a hot trend among buyers, and GRB Entertainment is offering How Booze Built America, featuring the TV personality Mike Rowe. “Competition shows have also been one of the biggest trends worldwide, and we believe BBQ Pitmasters will appeal to those interested in quirky characters, the art of grilling and the drama of crowning a champion,” says Gary Benz, the president and CEO of GRB. Dramatic reality is on offer from the company in the shape of The Weather Channel’s hit series Hurricane Hunters and CNBC’s critically acclaimed American Greed, as well as WE tv’s Pregnant & Dating. GRB is entering into the sports genre with My Beautiful Game, which celebrates football’s greatest moments through the eyes of such icons as David Beckham and Didier Drogba.

“We believe in offering a full spectrum of programming that covers the entertainment interests of varied audiences around the world.”

—Gary Benz BBQ Pitmasters

Incendo • Time of Death • The Surrogacy Trap • Willed to Kill The female-led thriller has become something of a hallmark for Incendo. For MIPTV, there are three new titles in this category that the company is highlighting. Kathleen Robertson leads the action in Time of Death. The Surrogacy Trap features Mia Kirshner and Rachel Blanchard alongside David Julian Hirsh. Sarah Jane Morris stars in Willed to Kill. According to Gavin Reardon, the head of international sales and co-productions at Incendo, the combination of compelling story lines and strong characters has helped establish the Indendo Thriller brand.

“Our clients around the world are thrilled with our impressive slate of talent and production values,” says Reardon. “We are committed to delivering the best movies and television series for many years to come.”

“Incendo sets the bar for highquality, fastpaced dramatic television movies and series.”

Willed to Kill 56 World Screen 4/13

—Gavin Reardon

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ITV-Inter Medya • 20 Minutes • Red Scarf • Forget Me Not The Hollywood thriller The Next Three Days served as the basis for the Turkish drama 20 Minutes. Produced by Ay Yapim and sold by ITV-Inter Medya, the series tells the story of Menek and Ali, who love each other to death and risk their lives for one another. Can Okan, the president and CEO of ITV-Inter Medya, believes the title will appeal to global buyers because it has “an international story, very high production standards and also very popular casting, especially for the Middle Eastern region, with Tuba Büyüküstün.” The company’s catalogue also includes Red Scarf, based on a novel from Cengiz Aytmatov, as well as Forget Me Not. “Forget Me Not is one the best-performing daily telenovelas in Turkey,” says Okan. The series is in its fifth season.

“Series with international stories will always be more successful.”

—Can Okan Forget Me Not

ITV Studios Global Entertainment • Agatha Christie’s Poirot • Boom Town • Islands on the Edge

After a long and successful run, Agatha Christie’s Poirot is coming to an end. ITV Studios Global Entertainment (ITVS GE) is bringing the 13th and final chapter of the acclaimed detective series to MIPTV. The crime dramas Poirot, Agatha Christie’s Marple, Lewis, Vera and Endeavour have been sold by ITVS GE into a slew of major territories worldwide. “In a multichannel environment, the successful curators of slots are those with a constant flow of content that their audiences are looking for,” says Tobi de Graaff, the company’s director of global television distribution. “Our detective dramas are particularly successful in meeting this appetite as they are returning year after year, building up volume and a loyal following.”

Other titles that ITVS GE will be pushing at MIPTV include Boom Town and Islands on the Edge (working title).

“There’s a continued international appetite for long-running crime drama.”

—Tobi de Graaff Agatha Christie’s Poirot

Mission Pictures International • The Perfect Wave • Wild Hearts • The Littlest Angel High-quality and faith-based entertainment is what Mission Pictures International is focused on supplying to the international market. For MIPTV, its offerings include The Perfect Wave, which features Scott Eastwood, Cheryl Ladd and Rachel Hendrix. “This theatrically released film has groundbreaking cinematography and was shot in surfing hot spots all around the globe,” says Chevonne O’Shaughnessy, a company co-founder and its president. “Wild Hearts is another movie we’re excited to have in our catalogue,” she adds. Its star Rick Schroder co-wrote and directed the heartwarming story for Hallmark Movie Channel. Among the animated titles that Mission is presenting is The Littlest Angel, based on one of the top children’s books of all time. “These films have great casts with fans all over the world,” says O’Shaughnessy.

“Our films have universal, family-oriented stories that global audiences can relate to.”

The Perfect Wave 58 World Screen 4/13

—Chevonne O’Shaughnessy

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Motion Pictures Corporation of America • The Saint • When Calls the Heart The series The Saint follows the exploits of the international thief Simon Templar and his colleague Patricia Holm, as they steal from rich criminals and return the spoils to their victims.

Motion Picture Corporation of America (MPCA) is selling the title, which is “international by nature,” says Brady Krevoy, the company’s president. “It features a British protagonist having adventures in diverse locations across the globe, from the banks of the River Thames to Gstaad in Switzerland to the warm climates of San Diego.” MPCA is also selling the TVmovie series When Calls the Heart. Krevoy says that the familytargeted romance story “is part of a genre with a longstanding track record, appealing to wide audiences in territories throughout the world, with solid sales numbers to back it up.”

“MPCA has been lucky to sell in most of the world.”

—Brad Krevoy When Calls the Heart

Multicom Entertainment Group • GUN • Tropical Heat • Harts of the West

The anthology series GUN follows the path of a handgun and the impact it has on the lives of those who encounter it.The feature is presented by the late Oscar-nominated director Robert Altman.

Among the familiar faces appearing in the production are James Gandolfini, Kirsten Dunst, Carrie Fisher, Daryl Hannah, Randy Quaid, Jennifer Tilly and Martin Sheen. Multicom Entertainment Group will be discussing GUN with potential buyers at MIPTV, where the company’s other priorities are to promote Tropical Heat and Harts of the West.The former is about an ex-DEA agent who winds up working in Florida as a private investigator, while the latter is a drama about a big-city man who trades in his fast-paced way of life to journey out west. “Our shows have evergreen appeal and are not dated,” says Irv Holender, Multicom’s chairman.

Harts of the West

National Geographic Channels • Killing Lincoln • Wild Alaska • Evacuate Earth Killing Lincoln marks National Geographic Channels’ first original factual drama. Its two-hour debut in the U.S. broke viewership records for the company’s flagship channel. “It is an absolutely stunning production and the most recent success story in NGC’s efforts to expand the original programming offer while maintaining the values and credibility buyers expect from the brand,” says Germaine Deagan Sweet, the company’s senior VP of global content sales.Another highlight is Wild Alaska, a blue-chip special that looks at a story of survival in an unforgiving landscape. “Natural history is an evergreen genre that, when well produced, will find a home in just about any schedule with a family audience,” says Deagan Sweet. Evacuate Earth is a special that explores the scientifically plausible scenario of Earth being destroyed.

“It is important that we continue to lead the way with relevant and responsible programming that works for a global audience.”

—Germaine Deagan Sweet Killing Lincoln 60 World Screen 4/13

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ORF-Enterprise • Owl’s Odyssey • Beauty, the Beast and the Truth • Return of the Hoopoe Character-driven series with the potential to be long-running are what is in demand from the international market, says Marion Camus-Oberdorfer, the head of content sales for international at ORF-Enterprise. Camus-Oberdorfer has also noticed a trend toward factual-entertainment shows and a stronger appetite for series rather than specials. For MIPTV, she notes highlights from the company’s catalogue such as Beauty, the Beast and the Truth, which is “an emotional story with lavish re-enactments [and] a compelling subject matter showing how ignorance and cruelty can only be overcome by love.” Camus-Oberdorfer also points to Owl’s Odyssey, which she calls “a suspenseful story with amazing shots,” and Return of the Hoopoe as top titles.

“All three titles are blue-chip programs produced for our weekly prime-time nature and history slots.”

—Marion Camus-Oberdorfer Beauty, the Beast and the Truth

Palatin Media • Barabbas • Run • Bumped

Founded in 2011 by CEO Bernd Schlötterer, Palatin Media is an audiovisual media company active in worldwide distribution, production and 3D conversion. It has a strong footprint in German-speaking Europe for its distribution activities, with executives based in Munich, Berlin, London and Los Angeles.

Among its top catalogue highlights are Barabbas, starring Billy Zane. Run is a 3D feature starring William Moseley that spotlights the sport of parcour. Bumped, which is in the tradition of The Breakfast Club, stars Kellan Lutz, Camilla Belle, Katie Cassidy, Alex Gonzales and Xenia Siamas. The feature is directed

by Stephen Herek. Schlötterer and the Palatin Media sales team will be at MIPTV, at the German Films stand, ready to discuss these titles with prospective buyers.

“All of these titles have a unique concept, great cast and strong prime-time value.”

—Bernd Schlötterer Barabbas

Peace Point Rights • Film Catalogue • The DNA of GSP • Mercenaries Peace Point Rights is launching a brand-new catalogue of 40 films and several mini-series at MIPTV. “Indie films have been enjoying a robust market for several years and our new slate of 40 titles covers many genres, including action/thriller, comedy, sci-fi and romance,” says Les Tomlin, the president of Peace Point Entertainment. The company is also presenting its first-ever theatrical release, The DNA of GSP, about the reigning UFC welterweight world champion, Georges St-Pierre. “We have massive expectations for this film and doc mini-series,” says Tomlin. “The film has unprecedented access not only to Georges, but also to one of the largest sports in the world, the UFC.” Mercenaries is the company’s new factual series, narrated by Sean Bean and offering a unique and unprecedented view into the work of mercenaries.

“We always view MIPTV as a very international market and target our sales initiatives to a broad audience for this reason.”

—Les Tomlin Mercenaries 62 World Screen 4/13

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Playboy Plus Entertainment • Wild Life Miami • Foursome: Walk of Shame • Dream Dates Playboy Plus Entertainment is recognized globally as the premier provider of provocative content for adult men, women and couples. “Our features are known for their style and high production values and have recently become more comfortably placed alongside mainstream premium programming,” says Marisa Tamburro, the company’s director of syndicated sales.

Highlighted series include Wild Life Miami, which follows four singles girls as they share a house for a month in Miami. Foursome: Walk of Shame features comedians taking aim at some of the best episodes from past seasons of the Playboy TV reality series Foursome. There’s also a second season of Dream Dates, which gives viewers the chance to spend some intimate time with the Playboy TV models.

“Programmers recognize Playboy Plus’s diligence and relevance when it comes to original and exclusive content that will attract viewers.”

—Marisa Tamburro Dream Dates

Power • Air Force One Is Down • Cat. 8 • Ring of Fire

This year Power is maintaining its tradition of providing highend dramas and event programming, while continuing to build on its evolving factual slate. Leading the drama slate is Air Force One Is Down, a mini-series that charts the dramatic events that occur after a terrorist faction kidnaps the U.S. president and threatens to blow up the Vatican. There are also five new “end of the world” mini-series: Ring of Fire, Eve of Destruction, Delete, Cat. 8 and Exploding Sun. “Each production boasts spectacular visual effects with plenty of dramatic tension and is based around a different ‘extinction-level’ catastrophe and humankind’s fight to overcome it,” says Susan Waddell, the CEO of Power. New factual highlights include On the Edge as well as Rhino Wars, an investigation into poaching and the illegal trade of rhino horns.

“This year’s slate combines the escapism of spectacle and action with the emotive hook of human stories.”

—Susan Waddell Air Force One Is Down

RCN Television • Traffic with the Innocent • Don Pedro: Story of a Drug Lord • The Butterfly When the U.S. Spanish-language channel MundoFOX made its debut last year, it did so with a bevy of productions from RCN, a joint-venture partner in the network.This included the original series Don Pedro: Story of a Drug Lord (El Capo), which is back with a second season.The series set the bar high for MundoFOX viewers, and was followed up in its time slot by The Butterfly (La Mariposa), about an attractive woman who is one of the mostwanted international fugitives. RCN Television is offering both titles at MIPTV, alongsideTraffic with the Innocent. María Lucía Hernández, the head of international sales at RCN Television, says that the company’s telenovelas are appreciated worldwide for their classic love stories. Its series, meanwhile, have “an excellent voice and powerful stories,” says Hernández.

“The RCN brand has a hallmark of originality and quality.”

—María Lucía Hernández Don Pedro: Story of a Drug Lord 64 World Screen 4/13

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Red Arrow International • Jo • Lilyhammer • The Taste Jean Reno’s crime series Jo is now ready for buyers to screen.

Jo, shot on location in Paris, is the first series from the Emmy Award-winner René Balcer after his mega-success Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Red Arrow International is presenting the title alongside Lilyhammer, a second season of which is currently in production. “Rubicon did an outstanding job for the first season and now Netflix is a co-producer—it’s a truly international series which has been sold to over 130 countries so far,” says Jens Richter, the company’s managing director. Red Arrow International also has the cooking competition The Taste for buyers. With its U.S. premiere, The Taste delivered ABC’s top in-season unscripted debut in nearly two years.

“We want to build global brands for a global reach.”

—Jens Richter Lilyhammer

Scripps Networks International • Farm Kings • I Bought a Famous House • The Vanilla Ice Project

The bouquet of brands under the Scripps Networks International banner covers a large swath of food- and home-related lifestyle content. The programming from Scripps Networks’ Food Network, HGTV, DIY Network, Travel Channel and others is being offered to third-party international channels through Passion Distribution. Farm Kings is the first title that Passion will be taking to the market for Scripps from the country lifestyle network GAC. “We’re seeing early success with the docu-soap in the U.S. and we believe it has the makings of a global hit,” says Bob Baskerville, the COO of Scripps Networks International. “It’s very much a character- and story-driven show and I feel it shows a very different side of our lifestyle content.” In the home category, I Bought a Famous House and The Vanilla Ice Project top the list of highlights.

“There’s as large an appetite as ever for lifestyle programming.”

I Bought a Famous House

—Bob Baskerville

Shine International • Broadchurch • Vicious • In the Flesh The town that serves as the setting of the new drama Broadchurch is wrapped in secrets.The ITV series co-stars David Tennant (Doctor Who) and comes from the screenwriter of Law & Order: UK and the producers of Spooks. It is a major focus for Shine International’s sales remit, as is the drama In the Flesh, which comes from the director of Doctor Who. The comedy Vicious, meanwhile, stars the renowned actors Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi. “Shine International’s programming captures the hearts and imaginations of millions of viewers, everyday, in over 200 territories,” says Nadine Nohr, the company’s CEO. “At MIPTV we will be launching our largest catalogue of new and returning commissions to date—network commissions and high-profile productions from an array of TV’s most-trusted and exciting program-makers.”

“At Shine International we are all incredibly proud of our trusted name in original and high-quality programming and formats.”

—Nadine Nohr Broadchurch 66 World Screen 4/13

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Sierra/Engine Television • Crossbones • Rescue 3 • Siberia The acclaimed actor John Malkovich is portraying the lead role of the diabolical pirate Blackbeard in the new drama Crossbones. NBC gave the show a straight-to-series order for ten episodes. “TV production has gone through a shift in financing methods, as networks are now receptive to allowing a third party to assume a large share of the financial burden for a series in exchange for international rights,” explains Chris Philip, the CEO of Sierra/Engine Television. “These straight-to-series deals mitigate the risk for the network while ensuring artists retain full creative control at the budget level they require.This model ensures that international broadcasters will be delivered a full season.” Sierra/Engine’s Rescue 3 combines a U.S. syndication model with a straight-to-series model.The company’s catalogue also includes Siberia.

“The improved quality of scripted TV drama and the shift in feature production volume has made television a viable option for Alist talent, writers and directors.”

Crossbones

—Chris Philip

Sky Vision • Galapagos • Make Me a Millionaire Inventor • Motor Morphers

When Galapagos aired on Sky in the U.K. it was voted one of the top five most-enjoyed programs by viewers, according to Leona Connell, the head of global sales and acquisitions at Sky Vision. “Following the launch of Kingdom of Plants at MIPCOM last year, Galapagos provides some of the most breathtaking sights of the island ever witnessed on camera.We are expecting it to do very well at MIPDoc.” Sky Vision is offering Make Me a Millionaire Inventor as a finished show and as a format. “This new show visits inventors to see if their products can really become a reality and maybe even make them a millionaire,” says Connell. Motor Morphers is the newest in the form of boys-toys engineering competition shows, Connell says. “This is a genre which is still airing very successfully on so many channels worldwide.”

“Clients are requesting factualentertainment shows with strong characters so they can essentially tag ‘faces’ to their channel.”

—Leona Connell Make Me a Millionaire Inventor

Splash News A global supplier of entertainment news, photos and videos, Splash News delivers content to print, television and digital-media clients around the world. “Splash has the largest feed of Hollywood content in the world, syndicating to clients in 65 countries,” says Gary Morgan, the company’s CEO. “Each day we produce 20 minutes of short-form breaking news and evergreen show business packaged video shows in multiple languages: English, Spanish, French, German and, soon, Swedish, Russian, Arabic and Polish.” Splash also produces a 22-minute long-form TV show that airs in more than 30 countries. The series can be delivered with or without voiceover, so clients can easily plug in their own hosts and localized content. “By doing this, we can offer the show at very competitive pricing to meet any budget,” says Morgan.

“Splash has long been the biggest supplier of raw content to TV, print and web globally.”

—Gary Morgan

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Starz Worldwide Distribution • The White Queen • Magic City • Revenge MIPTV marks the first time that the new Starz original series The White Queen, produced in association with the BBC, will be showcased to the international market. A screening of the first episode will be available through Starz Worldwide Distribution. Also coming to MIPTV is a second season of Magic City, which will launch in the U.S. this summer. A new slate of TV movies will be on offer as well, including the female thriller Revenge. “For series, we look at historical and period pieces that allow the viewer to be [transported] and taken to another era,” says Gene George, the company’s executive VP of worldwide distribution. “Our movies fill a specific need in specific genres that are highly sought after due to playability and strong ratings potential.”

“We want our audience to feel an emotional attachment to the series and its characters, which really invests them in the programming.”

—Gene George The White Queen

Sullivan Entertainment • Out of the Shadows • Mozart Decoded • Anne of Green Gables

The two new documentary releases from Sullivan Entertainment, Out of the Shadows and Mozart Decoded, present the stories of some of the greatest artists in Western history. “Informative, high-quality documentaries continue to resonate more than ever with audiences who now specifically seek out these genres,” says Kevin Sullivan, the company’s CEO and executive producer.

Sullivan Entertainment recently worked closely with NHK Television in Japan to restore its classic series Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea for world premieres in HD in Japan. “With the renewed popularity of period drama in the world market, [the company has] begun the restoration of its entire library of period movies and series in an HD format that makes the library accessible to a contemporary audience,” says Sullivan.

“We are seeing factual programming getting picked up much more readily than in the past.”

—Kevin Sullivan

Out of the Shadows

Televisa Internacional • Wild at Heart • Carousel • Look Who’s Asking A remake of the hit telenovela Marimar, produced in 1994, Wild at Heart is a new production from Televisa. Mario Castro, the director for Asia and Africa at Televisa Internacional, says that clients around the world are sure to remember the success of Marimar, and therefore interest will be high for the 150x1-hour telenovela Wild at Heart. Castro also believes that buyers will have a strong interest in Carousel, which he calls a “charming story for families and children.” The 200x1-hour series features boys and girls from different races and social statuses, who are placed together in the same classroom, where their teacher Helena preaches unity and equality.The series presents the day-to-day challenges of children’s lives.There are also a number of formats in the Televisa Internacional catalogue, including Look Who’s Asking.

“We have the largest library of telenovela stories for clients to choose from.”

—Mario Castro Wild at Heart 70 World Screen 4/13

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Televisa Networks Among the channels found within the Televisa Networks bouquet is Canal de las Estrellas, or “Channel of the Stars.” Televisa Networks has delivered this channel internationally as well, reaching Europe and Australia as Canal de las Estrellas Europa. Productions such as True Love, Beautiful Love and As the Saying Goes… can be found on the Canal de las Estrellas Europa channel. Beautiful Love incorporates one of the most endearing Mexican traditions, mariachi music.The story in it begins when a handsome young millionaire, Santos Martinez de la Garza, deceived by his closest partners, is wrongfully accused of fraud and money laundering. He is forced to escape from Los Angeles to Mexico, where he undertakes a new identity: Jorge Alfredo Vargas, a mariachi.

True Love

Temple Street Productions • Orphan Black • The Next Step • Recipe to Riches Excitement, mystery and action are the core ingredients in Temple Street Productions’ Orphan Black, a ten-episode drama that is produced in association with SPACE and BBC America. The show focuses on a woman who discovers that she has taken on the identity of her clone. “Orphan Black has a unique sci-fi element at its core with surprising twists, which is a popular genre for international territories,” says John Young, the managing director of Temple Street Productions. “The compelling story lines and strong characters provide the added support in creating this must-see series.” Temple Street Productions is also behind The Next Step, a serialized reality-style drama about a group of aspiring dancers, and Recipe to Riches, a competitive cooking reality series.

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“We are in the business making content that isn’t singling out any one genre.”

—John Young

Orphan Black

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Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution • Witches of East End • Graceland • The Americans The best-selling novel Witches of East End by Melissa de la Cruz has been adapted for TV by Fox 21 and 3 Arts Entertainment. The series, on offer from Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, features a woman and her two daughters, both of whom are unknowingly their family’s next generation of witches. Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution is also going to be talking to buyers about Graceland, from Jeff Eastin, the creator of the hit USA Network show White Collar. The ensemble drama follows a group of FBI, DEA and U.S. Customs agents who live together undercover in a beach house. From creator Joe Weisberg (Falling Skies, Damages) comes The Americans, which stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as married KGB spies living in suburban America.

Witches of East End

Venevision International • Lucia’s Secrets • Rosario • My Life in Sayulita The action series Lucia’s Secrets was primarily shot on location throughout Caracas,Venezuela, and Miami, Florida. From Venevision Productions comes the telenovela Rosario, starring Guy Ecker, Itahisa Machado and Lorena Rojas. Both titles are being offered up by Venevision International in Cannes, along with the teen reality series My Life in Sayulita, which is filmed in a beautiful beach town in northern Mexico. Cesar Diaz, the VP of sales at Venevision International, says of My Life in Sayulita: “We are certain that this type of program will cater to younger audiences and be ideal for teenoriented broadcasters. This is only a sample of things to come as a result of our focus on increasing the diversity of our programming catalogue.”

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“All of the dramatic series from our production companies are conceptually envisioned with an international appeal.”

—Cesar Diaz

Lucia’s Secrets

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Warner Bros. International Television Production • The Bachelor • Gossip Girl Acapulco The teen drama Gossip Girl became a pop-culture hit in the U.S., where it ran on The CW for six successful seasons. Now the show is set to take Mexico by storm with a brand-new 25-episode version being shot in Acapulco. Produced

by El Mall, Gossip Girl Acapulco was commissioned by Televisa from Warner Bros. International Television Production. Andrew Zein, the senior VP of creative, format development and sales at Warner Bros.

International Television Production, says that building on the success with scripted-format deals in Latin America is a top priority for MIPTV. He mentions placing ER as well as some of the hit comedies from the Warner Bros. catalogue in the region. Zein also says he’d like to get The Bachelor going in more Asian territories.

“[We want] buyers to recognize that the Warner Bros. format catalogue is amongst the strongest in the market.”

—Andrew Zein

Gossip Girl Acapulco

WWE • Raw • SmackDown • WWE Main Event The weekly episodic flagship programs Raw and SmackDown have been mainstays of the WWE catalogue for a long while.The company is now presenting its newest franchise show, WWE Main Event. The program offers viewers a chance to see their favorite WWE Superstars from both Raw and SmackDown in a onehour program with original story lines that has new episodes 52 weeks a year. “As the preeminent pay-perview (PPV) company in the world, we will also feature 12 PPV titles for the 2013 calendar year, including the pop-culture extravaganza WrestleMania,” says Ed Wells, the senior VP and managing director of international operations at WWE. “And, on the digital front, we will be presenting a range of long- and short-form content for syndication across wireless web devices.”

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“WWE’s core story line is based on the age-old story of good versus evil.”

—Ed Wells

WWE Main Event

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The Walking Dead’s

ANDREW LINCOLN

By Mansha Daswani Andrew Lincoln is calling from a small town in the southern state of Georgia where the cell-phone reception, apparently, is unreliable. “I moved an inch to the left and I lost you,” he says after our call is interrupted. “We’re in the wilderness here.” The wilderness Lincoln is referring to is Senoia, Georgia, where much of AMC’s rule-breaking hit series The Walking Dead, in which he stars as Rick Grimes, is filmed. The show certainly has flown in the face of conventional television wisdom. It’s based on a critically acclaimed yet (formerly) little known graphic novel. It features zombies in prime time. Its cast, when first assembled, was an ensemble of character actors who were recognizable by face, less so by name. And it has consistently shocked audiences by killing off much-loved characters. Indeed, during a zombie apocalypse, no one is safe.

The series has broken basic-cable viewing records for AMC, beating out the broadcast networks in the key 18-to-49 demo, and has found a loyal international following thanks to a global rollout by FOX International Channels. Lincoln, a British actor whose TV and film credits include Channel 4’s Teachers and the Richard Curtis romantic comedy Love Actually, tells World Screen about the challenges, and joys, of leading a band of survivors against a never-ending assault by the dead.

WS: Tell us about this journey that Rick Grimes has been on since season one, when he woke up from a coma to be greeted by a zombie apocalypse.

LINCOLN: It was always the intention of Robert Kirkman, who wrote the original comic book, Frank [Darabont, showrunner of season one], Gale [Anne Hurd, executive producer] and AMC to have this extraordinary world with ordinary people in it and [explore] how this world changes them. In the space of three seasons Rick has been on this tumultuous journey. He begins as a man awakening into this new world and discovering it. He is the eyes and the ears of the audience—you discover this new hell along with him. Being reunited with his family gave him a stronger impetus to survive.And then season two was about a man struggling for his ideology. Can you retain your humanity in this new world? Or will pragmatism win the day? With season three…I made the fatal error of going into the writers’ room and saying to them, where do you think Rick’s breaking point is? And they wrote it. Losing his wife [Lori, played by Sarah Wayne Callies] has seriously pushed him into a place that he’s never been before. It’s a very terrifying place and I’m not sure he’s out of it yet.

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Arresting viewers: With its ratings consistently rising since its 2010 debut, The Walking Dead, sold by Entertainment One, has been greenlit for a fourth season

by AMC and FIC.

WS: In the second half of season three you’re dealing with a new baby and being a single father. What are the challenges of portraying Rick in this situation, especially given that you yourself are a father?

LINCOLN: That was one of the things that I loved about Rick Grimes—he’s not the man with no name, he’s not the stranger that walks into the town and has no emotional ties.

He’s a family man, he’s a husband and he’s a father. Of course every character I play, I have to bring a part of me to it. I draw on a lot of experiences being a father. And certainly when I lost my wife in the series, you try and imagine what that may be like.

WS: I interviewed Sarah Wayne Callies a week before the

broadcast of the episode in which her character dies. She didn’t let on at all that she had met a horrific on-screen fate!

LINCOLN: [Laughs] She is a consummate professional and she’s been the greatest leading lady. We email one another as TV Husband and TV Wife, TVW and TVH, and now it’s DTVW. She is a phenomenal actress, but she also has that incredible emotional intelligence, which I think is probably why a lot of women are watching the show. That is a remarkable achievement for this genre.

But then, it was never pitched to me as a genre show. It was pitched to me as a character-driven show.

WS: Did you have any idea early on that the show was

producer], Robert Kirkman, AMC, all the development people there—had the courage to say, let’s try and make a family drama set in hell.The zombies sort of become incidental to a lot of the character scenes, which is brilliant, because character should always drive plot.

Midway through filming of the pilot episode—I spent most of it with my ass out in a medical robe.This was apparently my breakthrough role in America and I spent most of it in boxer shorts. [Laughs] I was doing the scenes when I was waking up from a coma.We had shot out of sequence in the first episode and I remember Frank Darabont sliding over to me, he’d seen about two weeks of the rushes, and he said, I think we might have something special here.When someone that experienced, that talented, with The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, etc., whispers something like that in your ear, your heart misses a beat.

WS: The show has been praised for taking risks— including killing off popular characters. How does that character turnover affect this small, close-knit cast?

LINCOLN: It’s very hard. It’s the one downside to this glorious job. We’ve become [very close] by virtue of the subject matter, how we work, where we work—it’s our own little bubble in the South, in Senoia, away from lots of cell phones; they don’t work there, everybody just has to learn their lines and fight zombies! It’s a unique experience. The crew is magnificent. And everybody fights for each other and works for each other. It really is the greatest family I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. So when we lose a family member, we have a death dinner. And no one stops being in The Walking Dead family. It’s a very moving thing. Everyone knows when we’re wrapping seasons, and you get e-mails from [former cast members] wishing love and luck and congratulations to the crew and cast.The beauty of it is it’s almost like we’re a moving target—the show keeps changing, it keeps evolving. It’s not like a procedural drama. It keeps moving forward. While a death irrecoverably changes the group dynamic, other characters come forward. New characters, new blood, new ideas, they keep regenerating the show. I hope that will be the enduring strength of the series.

going to become this pop-culture phenomenon?

LINCOLN: When my agent sent me the script, this is what

WS: You spent many years working in British televi-

happened: it said, AMC, and I was like, Woo! Because I love the channel, I love Breaking Bad and Mad Men. And then it said Frank Darabont and I was like, Oh my lord!

And then it said Gale Anne Hurd, and I was like, Holy crap!

And then it said The Walking Dead, and I said,What a title!

And then it said zombie, survival, horror. And that’s when I called my agent and said, Really? It’s zombies now? I’ve been working for 19 years and we’re doing zombies? Then I read the pilot episode and it was remarkable—spare, almost a distillation of humanity, it was an extraordinary thing. I’d never read anything quite like it. That’s when I started to get incredibly excited. Frank Darabont and this extraordinary team—Gale, Greg Nicotero [co-executive

sion, where they have shorter-run seasons. How do you train to keep up with these 16-episode seasons? Your role seems quite physically taxing!

LINCOLN: I’m coming up to my 40th year, the naughty 40s, and I’ve realized that zombie slaying is a terrific way to keep fit! I’m not really good at doing other jobs [in between seasons], just because it’s such a long gig now. With press and publicity and with the two mini-seasons [every year], it has become an all-around, year-long job. I don’t begrudge that—I think this is a high-class problem. I love it. If they keep pushing my character in the way they have over the last three years, in new directions, I’ll be more than happy. It’s like a marathon race; you have to pace yourself.

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One of most popular heroes-turned-villains in television history, the character of Walter White in AMC’s Breaking Bad has been crafted by Bryan Cranston over the course of five seasons. The actor has earned a slew of accolades along the way, including three consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. (He also recently co-starred in the Ben Affleck blockbuster Argo, which took home this year’s Oscar for best picture.)

Cranston’s ability to embrace Walt’s dark side is but one part of the indescribable alchemy that has made Breaking Bad such a success with audiences and critics alike. It is also much to the credit of the creative (and twisted!) vision of Vince Gilligan, the show’s creator and executive producer.

Cranston shares with World Screen his feelings about ending the series, which only has eight more episodes to air this summer before Walt’s story comes to a close.

me! I’m one of those riders on the rollercoaster, but it’s his ride. I’m grateful to be in that front seat. My arms are raised above my head, flailing and screaming all the while as well.

By Kristin Brzoznowski

WS: How did your creative relationship with Gilligan come about?

CRANSTON: It started about 15 years ago, when I was able to land a guest-starring role on an episode of The X-Files that he wrote. He had written a character who was despicable, a horrible person, a real son of a bitch.

And yet he felt that it was necessary to write [the character] that way and still try to elicit sympathy from the people who were watching. The reason he did that is an insight to his multilayered storytelling.

In this instance in The X-Files, David Duchovny and I are in a car for most of the time.There’s something wrong

Breaking Bad’s

BryanCranston WS: When you’re in production, do you try to always

keep yourself in the mindset of Walter White?

CRANSTON: Oh God, no! I don’t want to take him home with me. When people watch the show—and more and more people are telling me that they watch it in chunks, so they’ll watch two or three episodes at a time or have marathon weekends—it’s like you’re overdosing on a medication. But for me, I’m taking Walter White in very small increments. When I do a scene, it takes 14 hours in a day, and it takes eight days minimum to do one episode, so it’s spaced out.

At the end of each day [of shooting] I have a ritual that I follow: I go into the hair and makeup trailer and I use the makeup remover on my head and on my face, then I wrap my entire face and head in big hot towels. Then I just sit there, and I let the heat pull out all the grime and dirt and tension and anxiety and all of the garbage and karma that is so awful, dark and foreboding. It just lifts off of me. I wipe my face clean, put some lotion on, take off Walter’s clothes, put on mine, and I go home as me.

WS: How much input have you had into the course

your character has taken?

CRANSTON: This is Vince’s baby. He is the one who

thought of the rollercoaster; he went to the drafting table and designed the intricacies of how the thrill ride will carry out.Then he created the people who will ride on it; that’s

with my character; he has a brain issue where if the car stops his head will explode. So, Duchovny’s character needs to drive in order to keep my character alive. If Vince wrote my character as a sympathetic nice guy, of course Duchovny’s character and the audience would want to save him.That’s what most people would write. But he wrote me as an asshole, and by doing that, he made the audience feel this split of, God this guy is a jerk, I would just pull over and let him die. He made the audience invest in the story.

He put a moral dilemma in the core of his lead character: is this man worth saving simply because he is a human being?

That is beautiful! He made his lead character struggle with that.And yet we learn about the human fiber of David’s character that he just couldn’t [let the villain die].That was the genesis of the character of Walter White.

In the history of television it has always been about stasis, things staying the same. And Vince thought, What if I change it? What if I try to change a character from good to bad? What if we got a character like the guy I wrote in The X-Files, where he does despicable things, yet you still sympathize with him? From that he thought of me, because I had played that guy. After reading the pilot episode of Breaking Bad I thought, This is brilliant, I have to be a part of this! So I came in [to meet with Vince] and was loaded with all kinds of suggestions and ideas—how much the character should weigh, how he should walk, he should be depressed—and I was pas4/13 World Screen 83

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WS: Details about the finale are mum, but is there some kind of redemption for Walter White in the end?

CRANSTON: Firstly, what’s interesting is that because of the nature of what Vince has attempted and succeeded at here—to transform television by taking a character from good to bad, it is called Breaking Bad, after all—he’s not going to let up and go, OK, he did some bad things, but he’s not a bad guy after all. He’s not going to go there. Secondly, and more pragmatically, I don’t know! I have never asked and I don’t yet know what’s going to happen in the last two episodes. I don’t know how exactly Vince is going to tie it together. I have no idea. I don’t want to know, either. I want to be able to read it and have it have an effect on me.

WS: Has that always been your

Crime kingpins: One of AMC’s highest-rated shows, Breaking Bad comes to an end this year after five critically acclaimed seasons.

sionate about him. All these things made sense to Vince and we just played tennis with these ideas back and forth and back and forth. By the time I left that first meeting I really felt that he was going to be my champion to get this role, and he was.

WS: How has the success of Breaking Bad had an impact on the rest of your professional career?

CRANSTON: It has altered the landscape of my professional opportunities completely. There would have been no Argo without Breaking Bad. When you go into this profession as an artist, as an actor, as a writer, the only thing you are truly hoping for is not to have someone hand you a job, but to give you an opportunity. Opportunity is the only thing you want: “Give me a chance to show you what I can do.” “Give me a chance to play in this playground.” Then, you better be able to deliver.

I have been given this opportunity by Vince and it has been a life-altering experience, professionally, artistically, emotionally, physically—I’ve seen my body transform, with the weight loss and going through the harsh deserts. I look back at some of the scenes that were filmed six years ago and I think, Wow, that guy is different. I don’t even know who that guy is anymore! It’s been so transformative.

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approach with the show?

CRANSTON: Yes.When I started the first season I was reading a couple [of episode scripts ahead] here and there. I started to get confused because of the twists and turns that Walter White took. We were shooting episode two, but I had read three, four and five, and then I [had to remember], Wait, I don’t know that yet, not at this point. I had to erase what I knew so that I wouldn’t misinform what I was acting on that particular episode. It didn’t help me in any way. So I thought, this is such a journey for this character, why don’t I just go for the ride. As opposed to getting on the rollercoaster and knowing exactly where the twists and turns were going, I decided to not know, just like everybody else. It’s been the ride of my life.

WS: How do you feel about the show coming to an end?

CRANSTON: I think it’s time. What makes me feel that

more than anything is that Vince feels it’s time. He’s the deep well of structure and story and he’s coming down to the bottom of the well. I’d rather leave on time than leave the game too late. It’s like those bad dinner guests who won’t leave your house even though you’re yawning and looking at your watch.You don’t want that. We want people to look at Breaking Bad and say, “Wow, I miss that show,” as opposed to saying, “Breaking Bad— that show is still on?”

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rmed with a killer smile and roguish charm, Dennis Quaid broke out in Hollywood in the ’80s with the films The Right Stuff, in which he played the real-life astronaut Gordon Cooper, and The Big Easy, where he was cast as a fictional Louisiana detective. After playing a wide variety of roles, from the iconic Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire!, Doc Holliday in Wyatt Earp and President Bill Clinton in HBO’s The Special Relationship to conflicted characters, such as the closeted homosexual family man in Far from Heaven and the middle-aged baseball player in The Rookie, Quaid now stars in his first TV series, Vegas. He once again steps into the role of a real person and a law enforcer, this time Sheriff Ralph Lamb, a rancher who was called upon to preserve law and order in the booming Las Vegas of the ’60s. Quaid, as Sheriff Lamb, soon clashes with Chicago mobster Vincent Savino, played by Michael Chiklis, who manages the swankiest hotel on the Strip, as they battle for control of Las Vegas.

WS: What appealed to you about Vegas?

QUAID: What drew me to it was, first, Nick Pileggi,

the co-creator of Vegas [with Greg Walker], had written the feature films Goodfellas and Casino, and had a good pedigree. Second, the people who were involved, Cathy Konrad, James Mangold and Arthur Sarkissian, wanted to bring cable television to network television by way of doing a hybrid show that was not a straight procedural show, but one that would more and more be based on character and good story.

WS: Vegas in the ’60s is a fascinating backdrop.

QUAID: Yes, it is, and added to that, what was the kicker

for me was that my character is based on the true story of Ralph Lamb, who was sheriff of Las Vegas from 1960 to 1978. He’s still alive. He lives in LasVegas and we’ve come to have a relationship.That adds some authenticity to it as well.

And during the ’60s Las Vegas went from basically a onehorse town to the fastest-growing city in the U.S. It became a huge city during that time, and along with that came a lot of money from a lot of places! That was when organized crime came in and tried to take over Vegas and they bumped up against the locals who were there. The story came down to gangsters versus cowboys, which are two American icons that are set against each other.

WS: Is it easier to play a flawed character like the gangster

Vincent Savino because there are so many more facets to him, than it is to play a good guy like Sheriff Lamb?

QUAID: Yes and no.With Ralph Lamb, we always thought that he would start out as the traditional hero set against Michael Chiklis’s character Savino, who is trying to become more of a legitimate businessman in his world.What hap86 World Screen 4/13

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DENNIS QUAID INVegas pens with Ralph is that he was a rancher and sort of a purist in his way of living, you might say. Being the sheriff of Las Vegas at the time was the most powerful position in Nevada, more powerful than being the governor because you controlled all the liquor licenses and dog licenses, any license, and any time you wanted to do anything, you had to come to the sheriff ’s office and with that comes power.

The question becomes: does power corrupt? And you can already feel a little bit of that in the other characters, like my brother the deputy sheriff, Jason O’Mara’s character, who has stepped across the line by having a relationship with Mia [the daughter of a mobster], which is not to the letter of the law.The question over time is how power does corrupt.You have this line drawn between right and wrong and once the line starts moving into gray areas, how does that affect one’s character?

WS: How has the real-life Ralph Lamb helped you prepare for the role?

QUAID: He’s still very much a person of that era in the way he talks and his personality. He’s kind of a combination between John Wayne and Chuck Yeager, a bigger-than-life type of figure. He handled things his own way back then, which I guess today you’d be brought up on charges [laughs] for the way he got things done! But he did get things done for the right reasons, although according to today’s laws and mores that might not be the right way.

WS: Is it more challenging to play somebody who did exist than someone who is the creation of a writer’s imagination?

QUAID: I’ve played a lot of real-life characters and you always take what you can and I try to capture the spirit of that person. At the same time, you have to follow the script. A lot of real-life stories are a great resource, but at the same time you do have an interpretation of the character, so it is a blend.

I played Jerry Lee Lewis [Great Balls of Fire!]. I played Gordon Cooper, one of the first astronauts [The Right Stuff], I played Bill Clinton [The Special Relationship]. I played Doc Holliday [Wyatt Earp]. The challenge is there even more when it’s someone who is alive and who is a really wellknown figure.A lot of people don’t know what Ralph looks like or sounds like, so I haven’t tried to do an impression of him, but I have taken certain character traits he has.

WS: Do you feel Vegas has been able to bring a cable

show to broadcast television?

QUAID: Oh, absolutely. We set out to really make a hybrid and in the beginning of the series the focus was a little bit more on the procedural because you didn’t really know the characters yet, but as you get to know the characters and the story progresses the characters become more of an integral part of the procedural. I think we’ve been successful in getting that hybrid we’ve been after.

WS: Do you enjoy doing a period drama?

QUAID: Yeah, I seem to fit well into that era. I grew up

during that era! So the clothes and the attitudes and what was going on back then [are familiar to me]. It was a very robust time in America; the country was really exploding on so many fronts, economically [and technologically]. The Cold War was still going on. There was the Civil Rights movement. It was a very sexy time as well.There was a lot of cultural upheaval during that time, which makes it an interesting period.

WS: How is playing a lead in a television series differ-

ent from playing one in a movie?

QUAID: One of the things I like about TV is the ability

to unfold the story of a character and of a certain world over a long period of time—hopefully we’ll get several years to do this! I do like that part.You can take your time in doing that. A one-hour drama is tough to do, but I like the work and I like working in town [Los Angeles]. In movies, [the actors and crew] become a family, but you really become a family during a television show. We’re a close-knit group.

WS: What is the atmosphere on the set?

QUAID: It starts from the top down, it always does.

Everyone really pulls his or her weight. My responsibility, when I walk on the set, is to leave my life behind and really create a positive atmosphere so everybody enjoys coming to work. And everybody feels like they are part of the show. Luckily, we have Michael Chiklis, who takes up quite a bit of the slack. He is such a great actor, and he knows how to do this, and Jason O’Mara and Carrie-Anne Moss and Taylor Handley— everyone pulls their weight.

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By Anna Carugati

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milestones

WS: MarVista is celebrating its tenth anniversary. What were your goals when you launched the company?

SZEW: We launched MarVista in September of 2003 with a vision to become a worldwide distribution company with vast territorial reach and a primary focus on the children’s and family space. We started the company with Whamo Entertainment’s program catalogue, which was my father’s company, and consisted of some 40 animated specials that we were selling well in home entertainment, and we were exploring the demand for them in broadcast. The goal was to understand the broadcast partners that we had access to and be able to source programming that could better serve their audiences across different time slots.

I had joined my father at Whamo in late 1999, so I had about three years under my belt scoping the landscape, and we became very focused on adding new quality programs, forming strategic alliances with different producers and talking to networks in an effort to bring fresh content to the market. We wanted to get involved in the development process of programming earlier so we could influence what we were setting up in the distribution pipeline. From a business perspective, we wanted to establish an asset base, a growing library that we could monetize down the line so we could be able to better capitalize ourselves.

Ten Years of MarVista

Fernando Szew

By Anna Carugati

Fernando Szew is the first to admit that the ten years since 2003, when MarVista Entertainment was founded, have gone by very, very quickly. What has contributed to making the decade such a whirlwind have been the unimaginable advances in technology, subsequent changes in viewing habits and economic crises of varying degrees in different areas around the world. As CEO, Szew is proud that his company has been able to weather it all, and at the same time become a leading supplier of TV movies, children’s and family fare and significantly grow the company. He shares with World Screen MarVista’s accomplishments and his vision for the future.

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WS: Fast-forward to today; have you reached those goals or exceeded them?

SZEW: Yes, I’d say we exceeded our goals. We had to learn, grow and adapt. We raced off the starting line— four guys [Szew, his father Joseph, George Port and Michael Jacobs] who got together with an entrepreneurial spirit—but we quickly began to see huge market changes, and everything we thought we knew was not necessarily true! So ten years later, I can say we’ve lived through, survived and thrived through economic crises in various parts of the globe—and the last crisis, in 2009, hit nearly every established market. Clearly, there have been, and continue to be, unforeseen changes in technology and in audience and consumer habits, but we are still forging strategic relationships and acquiring and distributing programming. We’ve positioned ourselves very well in the world of television movies, and our relationship with Saban Brands has placed us very uniquely in the kids’ space. Having said all that, I firmly believe that we still have plenty of room to further expand.

WS: Have there been times in the past decade that you

had to take a big risk, but it paid off?

SZEW: As an entrepreneurial company, we take risks all

the time. Top of mind as a defining risky move that gave us lots of credibility once it paid off was with our first series, Beyond the Break. The series was conceived and developed by one of our founding partners, Michael Jacobs, and our partners on that project, Sean McNamara

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Suited up: Through its deal with Saban Brands, MarVista handles the international distribution rights to the popular Power Rangers franchise.

and David Brookwell.

We had sold the series to MTV Networks in the U.S. as a co-production and we needed to come up with our part of the financing, which was in the millions of dollars. There was a moment in time when things were getting to the end line and everything was aligning perfectly with creative, budgets, network, etc., but we didn’t yet have our Girls just want to have fun: Expanding its catalogue to include reality programming, part of the financing. MarVista has taken on the rights to The Shores.

We could’ve called it quits, but we knew that we really had to take the risk.

WS: You have always stayed close to your buyers and We had to get the financing and we did. Everything responded to the feedback they give you. worked out very nicely. Creatively, the story had to be set SZEW: We developed an early knack for pitching on in a tropical location, and Hawaii was the place everythe spot and following up with relevant material. We body wanted. Hawaii also offered the right tax credit often conceive of ideas when we sit with buyers, and incentive program that helped us to finance our piece.We we’ve been fortunate enough to develop those types of were able to work with good partners to raise the funding. relationships. I’ve always trained our sales teams that it’s MarVista did well with Beyond the Break internationally, not just about selling, it’s about understanding buyers’ first pre-selling some key territories and demonstrating needs. This is part of our culture and it’s something we a track record and then selling the show to major play- have ingrained in the sales team and now also in our growing development and production teams: listen, ers around the world. understand what the buyers want, pick up on trends, what are the key words being used, what are the demographics of the channel, and from there make things happen. Easier said than done, obviously, but it is part of our culture now. And the trick is having the persistence and perseverance to keep pushing projects along, and to have the wherewithal to make quality programming.

We’ve been able to do that. We’ve delivered hundreds of hours to a “who’s who” of broadcasters and digital partners around the world.Ten years ago, when we started selling animated specials, I would have only dreamt of being able to license to some of these broadcasters!

WS: What is MarVista’s reputation in the creative community, with writers, talent and producers?

SZEW: In the last few years we’ve really grown our inhouse development and production staff, lead by Robyn Snyder and Sharon Bordas, and we really have a very good team. Within the creative community, we have always been very equitable. We’re conscious of being very clear in our communication and giving creative voices a chance to shine. Within our system of production, we know what it is that we are doing, and we have developed a spirit of partnership with creative forces we bring on. A testament to our reputation is the repeat 90 World Screen 4/13

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and growing business that we have, not just with certain production entities, but also with writers, directors and talent. I believe that speaks for itself. With the producers that we represent we have a very strong reputation for being a dependable distribution partner. We are very clear about telling people up front what our expectations are.We don’t promise more than we think we can achieve. We just work very, very hard and demonstrate particular care for each property we represent.

WS: How have you complemented the movies you pro-

duce with acquired product?

SZEW: We try to think of how broadcasters program

our movies and shows. From the early days, we have talked not just to the broadcast buyers, but also to the programming and the scheduling teams of the top networks that we work with.We think in terms of slots and we try to complement what we have with the product that we acquire. We try to make the job of that buyer and that programmer easier and for them to know that

we understand their challenges and that they can rely on us. It really has worked out very nicely.

WS: Looking at children’s and family programming, what has given MarVista an edge in this competitive business?

SZEW: It’s extremely competitive, but children’s and family programming is in our roots—this is our passion. Four of us came together in 2003: my father and I had been in the kids’ animated specials business; George Port, who had launched Thomas the Tank Engine in the U.S.—one of the most successful properties ever—and Michael Jacobs, who was at PorchLight Entertainment, which was very well known as a family and kids’ company at the time, making great strides with Jay Jay the Jetplane. It’s how we formed MarVista, but we understood how competitive the landscape is, and we’ve seen a lot of companies come and go.

We understood that in order to create successful properties, we needed to [make an] impact via a 360-degree property.

For that, we needed to be extremely well capitalized, and we weren’t. So, we were very selective in the programming that we got involved with.We know what buyers are looking for, and more importantly, we try to know what they don’t want, and we really respect those guidelines that we hear.

Ultimately, today we are very well positioned because we are working with the best: Haim Saban and his team can certainly drive the 360-degree approach to the children’s business. When the opportunity came up to work with Haim and Elie [Dekel, the president of Saban Brands] to handle the international TV distribution rights to their brands, we jumped at it, and it’s proven to be beneficial for both parties. We have been very successful with Power Rangers Samurai and Super Samurai, and now, in the midst of celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Power Rangers brand, we are launching Power Rangers Megaforce. We were also proud to have been appointed the international distributor for Saban’s preschool series, Julius Jr. from the iconic Paul Frank brand—which took the number one spot at last year’s MIP Junior screening requests—as well as now handling the distribution to the reinvigorated Digimon franchise along with the Digimon classics.

WS: In what areas do you see growth in 2013 and 2014?

SZEW: Content will drive the market, and that’s where

Down below: MarVista’s deep portfolio of TV movies includes Syfy’s Super Eruption.

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we will see our growth.We started as a distribution company and that is still core to our competitiveness, but we have created quite a vast development and production department.We are already seeing, in what we’ll be launching in 2013 and what we are planning for 2014, great growth in our core business of TV movies.We’re taking an introspective look at making some new hires and moving with a real focus on series, in particular in the tween, teen and young adult genre, because it’s an area that we know very well.We have a lot of experience and relationships due to the many TV movies we are involved in [for] that target audience, so it is a natural progression for us, both from a creative and a business perspective.

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SOME ARGENTINES WILL FAIL NEXT YEAR. WE KNOW YOU WILL NOT BE ONE OF THEM, FERNANDO. YOUR BFF (BRAZILIAN FOOTBALL FANATIC)

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spotlight

Since the 1980s, Tom Fontana has been changing television.

The medical drama St. Elsewhere, one of the first ensemble series, destroyed the concept that doctors are infallible. Oz, with its gritty depiction of prison life and its flawed characters, was HBO’s first original series. Borgia and Copper, Fontana’s current shows, represent new models of international co-production.

WS: When you created Oz for HBO, you met Chris Albrecht. He was an executive of a different type, wasn’t he?

FONTANA: Very, very different. It was a network that had no rules and didn’t really have any clear sense of how they would define themselves. They were doing some things very successfully: documentaries, sports—and comedy, because Chris’s background was running an improv club where comedians got their start. And when HBO was casting about for an hour-long drama, they wanted to go as far away from anything you could watch on network television as possible. Now that seems so simple, but at the time, it was just so revolutionary. So what could be further away from Touched by an Angel than Oz? And that’s not taking anything away from Touched by an Angel, but Touched by an Angel was on CBS, we were on HBO. So it was a little like being a crack addict and being told you can do as much crack as you want and nothing will happen! You can’t get arrested and you can’t hurt your health.You just are going to feel good! It was just a tremendous experience for me.

WS: You changed your storytelling methods with

Oz, right?

FONTANA: I did. First of all, there were no commercials,

and [as a weekly series] what I thought would be interesting would be a series of short stories about individual prisoners. Some weeks the stories would last 20 minutes, and some weeks that character’s story would last two minutes.

And things didn’t necessarily have to follow; you didn’t have to find a story that was going to bring you through the whole hour. One of the most difficult things about writing an hour drama on a week-to-week basis is every week you have to have a central story that drives the action, so that whatever else is happening, it’s pushing you through and you go back to it constantly. So to be free of that was an extraordinary gift, and a lot of fun to write it and for the actors to play it, because [each] character’s story was all together, it wasn’t spread out over the whole hour.

WS: Did you feel a certain responsibility that if you

messed up HBO’s first original series, they wouldn’t do any more?

FONTANA: That’s absolutely true. Being given the extraordinary freedom that I had been given, I felt enormously responsible to whoever—and at that point there was nobody on the playing field but me—was going to come next. I thought to myself, if I screw this up, the next guy who comes in here is going to say,

Tom Fontana give me the creative freedom, and Chris is going to say, “I gave it to Fontana and he fucked me! [Laughs] So I’m not giving you the creative freedom.” I did seriously worry about that, because you don’t want to be the guy who created the problem. In this business, we all spend our time paying for the sins of someone else. For example, a studio has gone into production on a series where the showrunner went way over budget.You’re the next showrunner the studio works with and they say, “Look, this is the way it is, you’re not spending a dime over that.” Or the network gets in trouble because some public-interest group starts a letter campaign about somebody else’s show and suddenly, “Look, we tried to do that, we tried to do abortion on such and such, and we don’t want to [now].” You end up paying for the other people’s sins. So I didn’t want anyone to pay for my sins. I feel very proud of the fact that HBO has had such a great run of hour-long dramas. None of them were like Oz, so it wasn’t like David Chase came and said, I’m going to do another one of what Tom did. He had his own vision in the way that I had my own vision, as did Alan Ball and David Simon and David Milch.

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By Anna Carugati

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FONTANA: I think it’s another possibility in the same

Talent management: Fontana is the creator and showrunner of Cineflix Studios’ Copper, whichs stars Tom Weston-Jones.

All that happened with Oz was that it made HBO be OK to take huge risks, to trust the talent. Trust the writer and something good will come.

WS: And what’s been your experience with Borgia?

FONTANA: I was thinking about what I wanted to

do next when Chris Albrecht, who was now gone from HBO, and Anne Thomopoulos, who I had worked with at HBO, called me and said, “Canal+ in France wants to do a TV series about the Borgia family, and they want an American showrunner, they want to do the American model.” They knew that I loved the popes, that I think it’s such rich storytelling, and that I’m a big history freak anyway, and so they asked if I was interested. I said, “I’m definitely interested.” I met with the studio and the network, and I said, “Don’t just say you want the American model and then try to turn it into the European model. You either have to say, yes, Tom is the guy, or I don’t want to do this.” And to their credit, they were like HBO, they said, “OK, we will trust you.” What we’ve been trying to do is create a model for European writers to become showrunners. So now I was potentially going to screw an entire generation of European writers on top of American showrunners! [Laughs] It didn’t make me do anything differently than I would have done, but I did have this thing in the back of my head going [I’d better not mess this up].

WS: Given the success of Borgia, is this a model that will

be repeated?

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way that Netflix is now another possibility. I don’t think there has to be one model over the other. I will say the upside of it is that we did not have to deal with an American entity, and so Borgia never had to carry the weight of any of the American preconceived notions of what the show would be. That being said, the downside of it is that when you have this patchwork quilt of a German studio, a German network, a French studio, a French network, an Italian network, a Spanish network, and then 55 other people, you do start to feel like you’re trying to get something past the United States Congress!

I’m not talking creatively, because creatively they handled it really well. They gave very few notes and they gave them very respectfully. And nine times out of ten they were terrific notes. What I’m talking about is the financial aspect, getting the show picked up. It was such a hit after the first season and it took so long to get the pickup for the second season. In America the show would have been picked up two episodes in, if not after the first episode. So I don’t think they’re quite as comfortable with this co-production. I jokingly say, now having spent two years with the French and the Germans, I know why there were two world wars! Not that they are enemies, but there’s a lot of positioning going on. I so respect all the players, and the truth of it is that they all are coming from the right place. It’s not like they’re behaving badly. They’re just behaving the way that they behave, because they’re all used to being the boss and now they have to share.

WS: They have the baggage of the “Euro-pudding,” the co-production formula used in the ’90s: we need a French director, a German actor, a British writer, and the creative was the last consideration.

FONTANA: Yes, which is interesting because there was none of that in Borgia. I would potentially have used more American directors, and the only reason that I wanted to use some American actors is there are a lot of actors that I love that I would just have loved to put in the show. But the counterpoint to that, and I’m going to get myself in a huge amount of trouble right now, is the Canadian model, which is the opposite of that: 92.7 percent has to be Canadian. I find that the rules for Canadian content were totally justified because Canadians have been taken advantage of by American companies time and time again. But it’s restrictive creatively.There are so many talented people in Canada, but [one should not] be forced to use somebody as opposed to being able to say, I want the best person. Sometimes the best person is Canadian, sometimes the second-best person is Canadian.That’s when you start to think,“Oh, Jesus, this is not the best that we could do.” And that’s been very frustrating for me. I’m very proud of Copper, but I think that we have had to cut corners some places to fit this Canadian content model that I feel like was not set up by people who actually work in the industry.

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AMERICAN

DREAM The development process, pilots and production schedules used by American cable and broadcast networks consistently yield some of the best programming in the world.

By Elizabeth Guider 98 World Screen 4/13

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uirky, all-consuming and outrageously expensive—and that’s before anything actually gets on the air.

The broadcast-network development season in the U.S. is a phenomenon unique in global media, and despite its oddities and excesses, not likely to be abandoned anytime soon. From the frenzy of pilot shoots to the wackiness of writers’ rooms, no country creates television shows in quite the same manic yet miraculous fashion as the U.S. “It’s nuts—but somehow we all get in line and do it,” says Betsy Beers, the executive producer on Scandal as well as on Grey’s Anatomy, both for ABC and both with producing partner Shonda Rhimes.

“The challenge is everyone’s doing it at the same time—competing for the same writers, scrambling for cast, crew and a city to shoot in and racing against the clock.”

In describing her experience of the ordeal, though, Beers sounds more exhilarated than aggravated.

Ditto several others.

Robert Doherty, an executive producer of CBS’s Elementary, comments, “The development season? A free-for-all. Art colliding with commerce is rarely pretty. But having come all the way through the machine, I get why it works.”

In fact, it’s hard to find a producer with a series on broadcast TV who wouldn’t jump through such hoops again for the privilege of appearing in prime time.

Despite the toll the game takes—especially on those whose projects get the ax at a stage too early to monetize their efforts—the procedures and processes put in place decades ago show little sign of disintegrating. What has happened is that the system has been chipped away at, filed down and/or smoothed out to blanket the entire calendar year.

“Inertia and familiarity” will probably keep the basic structure intact, opines the producer David Zucker, who is the president of Scott Free Television, the company behind the fourth-year drama The Good Wife for CBS. What has changed, Zucker points out, is that nowadays there are new outlets to pitch to, new formats to play with

and new funding sources to tap.

That makes creating content a broader, more flexible, more inclusive game. Like so many other creative outfits around town, Scott Free Television also produces for a variety of cable outlets and for upstart Internet players.

BACK TO BASICS

However much cable networks and Internet upstarts are perceived to be sexier and more forward-looking, though, broadcast TV series are still what attract the most eyeballs and the biggest bucks from stations around the world.

“OK, Girls is hot, but at best that HBO show attracts 700,000 viewers. The Big Bang Theory: we’re talking 19 million; NCIS: 22 million and counting, and that’s week in and week out over ten years,” says one veteran media observer.

“What we saw at the recent Golden Globes awards show was instructive,” says Sandra Stern, Lionsgate Television’s COO. “TV was holding its head up high, unapologetically, next to all those film people.” Not that anyone can be complacent, she adds, “but if you ask me if programming is in peril, I’d say no. Rather, TV itself needs to be redefined to include all the new ways and new devices we have for making and viewing content.”

Stern thinks the biggest challenge is figuring out how to maintain the economic basis of the business as viewing becomes ever more fragmentary and individualized. But that doesn’t mean avoiding the biggest sandbox on the playground: after a decade of providing edgy or offbeat projects to cable (hits like Weeds and Mad Men among them), the minimajor has scored with the broadcast series Nashville, a nighttime sudser for ABC that is lathered with country music.

“We wanted to take a few more risks,” Stern says in explaining the rationale behind Lionsgate’s plunge into broadcast waters, “but we only did so when we could play with the house’s money, as it were.” She also points to the incentives that Tennessee dangled for filming in Nashville itself, as well as the nice bit of change coming in from sales of the series’ soundtrack. (Alongside its hit on

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ABC, Lionsgate is moving into the digital space, producing Orange Is the New Black for Netflix.)

Another rising indie supplier, Canada’s Entertainment One (eOne), also takes a strategic approach to pitching to broadcast.

Last year the company got the goahead for a straight-to-series version of John Grisham’s The Firm for NBC, which did not go beyond 13 episodes. This goround eOne is spearheading a British-originated cop show called Rogue, the first original fiction series commissioned by the satellite platform DIRECTV. INDEPENDENT SPIRIT

“As an indie, you’re looking for where the holes are in the TV firmament and in our case partnering on projects to limit our exposure,” says John Morayniss, the Los Angeles–based CEO of eOne Television. “Fortunately,” he adds, “there are many more outlets to pitch to and these buyers are placing hybrid orders.” Rogue, which stars Thandie Newton, has wrapped 10 episodes in Vancouver and will go on air in April.

Scott Free Television is partnering with eOne to produce the miniseries Klondike, about the Gold Rush, for the Discovery Channel.

“Nonfiction content will always remain at Discovery’s core, but we also see the value in commissioning scripted programming events that complement our nonfiction series and are on brand for our networks,” says David Zaslav, the president and CEO of Discovery Communications. “Klondike, for example, is a perfect complement to [our factual shows] Gold Rush, Yukon Men and Bering Sea Gold.”

So what does it take to get a show up and running in prime time on one of the Big Five broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX or The CW? A lot of hurry up and wait, an intense effort to corral talent, and an amount of money that makes producers wince when asked about it. A few drama pilots have been nudging the $6-million mark, though no single studio executive will cop to such for any particular series. All they will say is that money on the screen is part of the promotional push to get to a series pick-

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Sharper edge: ABC’s Once Upon a Time, now in its second season, is consistently among the top ten shows in the crucial 18-to-49 demographic.

up, and that puny pilots are apt to get passed over.

Best estimates from several in-theknow executives are that the overall cost of making pilots for each season ranges between $80 million and $100 million. Generally, some three dozen get the thumbs-up from among the Big Five; roughly twice that number get sent packing.

FLY WITHOUT A PILOT?

Nevertheless, many executives consider pilots indispensable, despite the cost. “As much as it’s tempting not to make a pilot because it looks better economically to forego the added expense and the potential loss implied by making a pilot and not picking it up, I really think the only way to achieve the quality level that we aspire to is to make pilots,” says John Landgraf, the president and general manager of FX Networks.

“Pilots are a necessary step because it’s just so hard, particularly when you are trying to make a show that is excellent and has a different tone and a point of view that hasn’t been seen on television before; it takes great precision and effort to get it right,” continues Landgraf. “And having that opportunity to stop and shut down production and cut something together, look at it, look at it again, and really talk about it, and ultimately benefit from what you learned from making that pilot before you move forward on the production of the first season of the series, is really vital from my viewpoint.”

Of course, not all pilots get picked up. Andrew Kreisberg is an executive producer on the CW freshman hit Arrow. Like practically every producer in town, he’s had projects rejected at one stage or

another, including a script called Halley’s Comet, which intrigued David E. Kelley enough for him to shoot a pilot. “In this business there’s a lot of failure—but also so much success to be extracted from it. So many random good things came out of that situation: Kelley eventually hired me to work on Boston Legal, I’m still close to some of the writers, and an actress on that pilot just auditioned with us.”

In short, producers tend to do what the song calls for: they pick themselves up, dust themselves off and start all over again.

SWEEPING CHANGES

“On the face of it, the pilot season and the sweeps don’t make any sense,” says Brad Adgate, the senior VP and director of research at Horizon Media. “Broadcasters are slow to adopt changes, for whatever rea-

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son, cost or habit, and cable has taken advantage of what’s calcified in the system.” Still, Adgate goes on to say, the machine has chugged along since the early 1960s, when ABC, an upstart at the time, first held an upfront, intended to get its shows out in front of advertisers during one intense week. (NBC and CBS soon followed suit.) Nowadays the new upstarts, Hulu, Netflix, Yahoo et al., are holding their own “infronts” for advertisers. Estimates suggest they’ll pull in a respectable $4 billion for their efforts this spring.

Obviously, Hollywood studio and network executives see the development season differently and are quick to point out that commissioning and launching shows, fiction as well as reality, is now a year-round affair.

CBS, for example, is banking on a high-profile fiction project for the

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Crime pays: Warner Bros. Television’s The Following, starring Kevin Bacon as an ex-FBI agent and James Purefoy as the serial killer he is chasing, airs on FOX, which has already renewed the show for a second season.

summer called Under the Dome, from the pen of Stephen King and the producing prowess of Steven Spielberg.

Neal Baer, its executive producer, says, “Not only is the thinking at CBS (and elsewhere) becoming more flexible, but given the auspices of [Spielberg and King] they’ve commissioned us to go ahead without a pilot.The business is, of course, still a lot about trust.” (Baer was working on John Wells’s ER back when CBS’s current entertainment president, Nina Tassler, was an executive at Warner Bros. His year-old company, Baer Bones, is set up on the CBS lot.)

Relationships still explain a lot about who works with whom in the town.

Over at Twentieth Century Fox, production executives increasingly pride themselves on being a yearround shop with a mandate to take risks, its sibling broadcast network, FOX, having traditionally zigged (most notably in January with its American Idol juggernaut as a leadin) when the Big Three, ABC, CBS and NBC, zagged.

“If a great idea comes in at whatever time, we’re conditioned to look

for the next window of opportunity, or if we have something in the hopper, we’re just as apt to wait until the right slot on the schedule opens up,” says Twentieth Century Fox Television’s executiveVP of comedy development and animation, Jonathan Davis. “It’s a hell of a lot more work, but our approach often pays off.”

COMIC TIMING

Davis argues that mainstream comedy has found its footing once again on broadcast television. For one thing, he notes, the diversity and variety in the culture helps.

“Families, friendships, marriage, all look different and less predictable today than ever before. Our aim is to be broad and irreverent and reflect these changes in society.”

He points to an upcoming project called Dads, which Seth MacFarlane is involved with, as a series that promises to tap into the current zeitgeist.

And not everything costs an arm and a leg, Davis emphasizes. Take Modern Family, which Twentieth Century Fox makes for ABC. “We

don’t overcook it. We get the funny and get out of there.” While Davis wouldn’t be drawn into money details, comedies traditionally cost considerably less than hour-long dramas, especially since so many of the latter now ape the look of feature films.

Once a pilot has been picked up to series, generally in the second week of May, things only become more intense. Producers have to hustle a second time to assemble their teams and get ready to shoot in the middle of the summer.

A ROOM OF THEIR OWN

Revving up a writers’ room to flesh out the plotlines and to speak with a unified, coherent voice is the next big challenge. What executive producers and showrunners—be they writers themselves or not—must manage to do is put their imprimatur on the material without tamping down the creativity in the room. Equally as important, they must be able to handle the onslaught of notes from different quarters, taking onboard the

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helpful ones and quietly putting aside those that aren’t.

Each does it differently. Scandal’s Beers says about her process, “Shonda and I both came from movies, and over the years we gathered a trusted group of collaborators. We think of ourselves as cheerleaders, facilitators and sometimes gladiators.’’ Although the cliché is that networks just want clones of the hits they’re already airing, Beers insists that ABC encourages its producers to break the mold.

For one thing, Scandal features Kerry Washington as the first black female lead in a broadcast series since Diahann Carroll in Julia 40 years ago, though the series is deftly postracial in its approach.The character Washington portrays is complex, defying conventional portrayals of minorities.

“Shonda and I believe stories should reflect the world we live in and characters should be interesting, flawed, complicated people.”

Arrow’s Kreisberg adds, about the comic book-inspired show he’s working on alongside Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim, “It sort of does work, all the notes and advice

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Hungry for more: The legendary French studio Gaumont has made itself a player in the American TV business; Gaumont International Television is behind Hannibal, which launched on NBC in the spring.

you get. The stronger your idea and the sturdier the structure of your pilot, the more the series can withstand myriad notes. In fact, they then become additive rather than destructive.” On Arrow, in fact, the input of executives and writers from DC Comics is helping to shape the characters, Kreisberg says.

Just getting a disparate group of writers into gear is a challenge, especially since the first few episodes can make or break a series in terms of ratings.

Doherty, who along with Carl Beverly is the executive producer of the first-year detective drama Elementary for CBS, says, “We started out with a proven commodity, Sherlock Holmes, but nonetheless once we got the call, celebration quickly gave way to panic. As the showrunner, I had to start over selling things to the network. So many opinions have to be factored in. Admittedly, we were gummed up in the beginning.” Doherty runs a room of seven writers, while his partner in crime, Beverly, oversees the actual shoot in New York.

When Jane Tranter, the former controller of fiction at the BBC, crossed the pond to become the head of BBC Worldwide Productions in Los Angeles, she thought she knew a lot about how American television worked, but there

were striking discoveries to be made once she was in Hollywood.

In the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, a single writer often toils alone and uninterrupted on a script and shows are often commissioned based on an instinctive response to the material. “I knew the spec for Life on Mars needed work to get from A to G, say, but nonetheless we just went for it,” she remembers. In America, on the other hand, “everything is assessed meticulously from every angle before a step is taken. Nothing is done precipitously; rather, patterns and routines are respected.”

From Tranter’s perspective, that tendency to quantify and calibrate is not only about the vast sums at stake with each project, but also about a more consciously egalitarian approach to decision-making. “Collaboration is key to the American method of creation,” she points out.

Tranter, who has been based in the U.S. for the last four years, also thinks that writers’ rooms are “a brilliant construct” for launching and keeping a long-running series fresh.

STAYING ON TRACK

Indeed, once a series becomes a hit, challenges do not recede. How to keep a show fresh and the characters interesting is arguably harder than getting the plot going.

Gary Glasberg, an executive producer of the CBS megahit

NCIS, says he wanted this season “to rattle the cages a little bit.”

The deaths of two recurring characters—of all things, in the middle of the season—is how he and his team did it. “Just when viewers are lulled into a false sense of security we shook things up.” Now in his fourth year on the CBS procedural, Glasberg points out that NCIS doesn’t utilize a writers’ room per se. “I just traipse from one office to another, each writer having a board, and we talk. Others may walk in. The important thing is that with such terrific writers and cast, we’re still scratching the surface as to who the characters are.

Their lives are as important as the crimes that get solved.”

As for extracting the best work from the disparate members of a writers’ room, experience helps, but so does experimentation.

RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

Coming off his long stints first with John Wells (China Beach, ER) and then with Dick Wolf Productions (on Law & Order: SVU), Under the Dome’s Baer describes his role as analogous to that of a conductor or a chef. “You can’t do it yourself.

Everybody puts in their ingredients and if you mix it well, season it well, a gourmet meal is cooked up.”

The team Baer has assembled for Under the Dome means he’s now ful-

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filled what he calls “a long-time dream.” Everyone in there is a collaborator, some more experienced than others, plus, for the first time, he has a former investigative journalist in the mix. “I believe in research, and having someone so adept and quick to resolve questions that come up as we develop the story is ideal. It’s also a marvelous use of the Internet.”

The premise of the piece is that an invisible force field has settled over an unsuspecting town in New England.

With a 13-episode order, the series premieres June 24 on CBS. Baer Bones has three other pilots in contention for the fall.

“I love the idea of a series for the summer, and hopefully for more than one summer! If all goes well, we’d be freed up to tackle something for fall launch,” Baer says. “I like that rhythm.”

Finally, one thing producers relish, nail-biting though it can be, is shooting while the show is airing so that they can see what characters are standing out, which plot lines are resonating, and which ones aren’t.

Kreisberg, for example, says the writers’ room on Arrow is “totally attuned” to the Twitter-verse as well as to the reactions of family and friends. In fact, one of the series’s characters, Felicity Smoak, has had her role enhanced by the writers partially because of reactions from viewers.

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CONGRATULATES

ON ITS

50th ANNIVERSARY

World Screen has been a proud partner of Reed MIDEM since 1986.

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JON FELTHEIMER

LIONSGATE

syndication deal with Netflix. Most people don’t realize that Mad Men will generate approximately $150 million in home-entertainment revenue alone. The new paradigm in today’s entertainment marketplace is being innovative in extracting maximum value from audiences that are divided into smaller and smaller market segments but generate greater revenue overall as demand for content continues to grow.

WS: How have you

Among its numerous critically acclaimed series, Lionsgate produces the multi-Emmy Awardwinning Mad Men, the show that ushered in a new standard for stylish, sexy and provocative drama series. The studio, headed by co-chairman and CEO Jon Feltheimer, has also created some of the most creative business models in the TV industry.

WS: What innovative ways did you use to

piece together various business partners to finance Mad Men? FELTHEIMER: We focused on cable programming from our inception because this was a growing market that was relatively underserved by the major studios. Cable audiences are typically smaller than broadcast audiences, so, in order to build a more profitable business model, we aggregated eyeballs across multiple platforms and orchestrated windows that served the needs of all of our partners.

As part of this process, we’ve been aggressive about identifying windows on digital and traditional platforms alike. Our economic calculus on Mad Men includes not only a very generous license fee from AMC but revenue from international sales, DVD, on-demand platforms like iTunes and Amazon and a unique

been improving your TV financing model?

FELTHEIMER: We’ve been diversifying our model as we create and deliver programming to a growing spectrum of traditional and digital buyers. For example, we’re partnered with ABC to mitigate risk in producing Nashville, but in success the upside will include music revenue from soundtracks, concert tours and merchandising. Digital tracks from the show have already sold nearly 1.5 million downloads to date.

We’ve pioneered a different approach for shows incorporating our 10+90 model, where networks pay slightly lower license fees while we achieve the benefits of unprecedented orders of 100 episodes up front and an accelerated path to syndication. A show starring George Lopez and another show with the “odd couple” pairing of Martin Lawrence and Kelsey Grammer are next up in our pipeline of programming using the 10+90 model.

We have still another business model for Orange Is the New Black that we’re producing for Netflix, which needs to create unique windows for its domestic and international audiences and will make all 13 episodes of the first season available simultaneously in the spring.

Our approach to cable shows like Mad Men, Weeds and Nurse Jackie is to build a 106 World Screen 4/13

“Our approach to cable shows...is to build a profitable business model by aggregating eyeballs across multiple platforms.” profitable business model by aggregating eyeballs across multiple platforms.

The common thread is that we’re always focused on mitigating risk while positioning ourselves to capitalize on upside in success, and we’re always looking for ways to monetize our content on emerging platforms. In other words, we take the risk out of the financial side so we can be more daring on the creative side.

WS: Tell us about Lionsgate’s relationship with Charlie Sheen.

FELTHEIMER: Charlie Sheen is one of the comedy superstars of our generation and his track record over ten years of shows like Two and a Half Men and Spin City speaks for itself.

Anger Management is an example of our willingness to take a little more overall risk for what we consider to be significant upside.

In terms of finding the right vehicle for Charlie, all the pieces came together. We had longstanding relationships with [the producer] Joe Roth, and Charlie’s manager, Mark Burg. Bruce Helford is a great showrunner.We loved the Anger Management concept, and it was tailor made for our 10+90 business model. Finally, we found the ideal network partner in FX. Bringing Charlie on board was a collaborative effort involving Kevin Beggs and Sandra Stern, who run our TV group, Ira Bernstein and Mort Marcus at Debmar-Mercury, and me. I met with Charlie and told him about the concept and his response was, “Dude, it’s already been done. It was a movie.” When I explained to him that we wanted to do a TV series, he loved the idea.

For more from Jon Feltheimer, see page 221.

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HOWARD GORDON HOMELAND

criteria, you can’t predict success, but you know that you are going for something and even if it takes you 30 drafts and you have to recast, you understand the target you are trying to hit, the emotion you are trying to create and what kind of contract you are establishing with the audience.

WS: Many say 24 was

Howard Gordon worked on a number of innovative series, including Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but he grabbed the TV industry’s attention as executive producer of the award-winning series The X-Files. He was the showrunner on 24, a groundbreaking series that changed traditional storytelling methods. He then co-created Homeland, the series on Showtime about terrorism and espionage that has won multiple awards and that viewers and critics just can’t stop talking about.

WS: When starting a project like Homeland, are you able to sense that a show will be successful?

GORDON: You have to be humble enough to recognize that success is a bit of a lightning-ina-bottle thing.You have to have a sense, not of a show’s success, but of something that is really exciting and interests you as a writer and as a producer.When you get that sense it certainly makes it easier to [go through] what turns out to be a very long and challenging process on so many levels: from selling the idea to creating a script to casting and [dealing with] all the people who weigh in on these decisions. But if you have a strong sense and an excitement about a project, and Homeland certainly fit that

one of the series that raised the level of quality dramas.

GORDON: 24 is part of a number of shows that can be pointed to as watermark shows. 24 was a show that aspired to be as good as we could make it. In other words, no one looked at the prospect of doing 24 episodes in real time and said, “Well, it’s an impossible thing to do,” which in retrospect it was! I don’t know quite how we did what we did, but everyone took it very seriously and aspired to make it really exciting and good. In all of these processes you bring your judgment and your taste to bear at every step of the way, but all of that doesn’t guarantee you anything.You still have to get lucky. For example, Kiefer Sutherland was cast instead of Jeff Goldblum, who was also in consideration— you could say it was the road not taken.You have to realize that that casting decision and other very lucky things happened to make the show work.

As far as being part of a legacy of the improved television landscape [goes], 24 also benefitted immensely from something that turned out to be a harbinger of the kind of television we are talking about, which is the serialized story.When we started out on 24 we were in no uncertain terms told to make every episode standalone just to keep ourselves on the air, because the traditional model was that audiences don’t watch every episode. In a way, people were programming shows defensively, 108 World Screen 4/13

“To grab an audience is probably about as satisfying for a dramatic storyteller as it is for a comedian to make the audience laugh.” anticipating that people would miss a couple of episodes along the way rather than feel compelled, and hopefully even addicted, to watching every single moment of every single episode. So our [goal was to] get people; grab them by the neck and never let go. I always say the contract with the audience on 24 was adrenaline. Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran, who created the show, and all of us—I was lucky enough to be there at the very beginning of the process, so I considered myself not a creator but a midwife of the show—were [focused on making the show compelling]. In a way, we benefitted from a technology that allowed serialization.The DVD really hit its stride around the time of 24, and the foreign market as well really allowed 24 to stay on the air when it had less-than-spectacular ratings.

WS: Homeland exists in a completely different

TV landscape; there are myriad ways of watching and catching up with shows. It has an addictive quality that is not seen in too many other shows.

GORDON: It is very gratifying to see how seriously people take Homeland. To grab an audience is probably about as satisfying for a dramatic storyteller as it is for a comedian to make the audience laugh. I love watching my wife or my kids watching the show; they are my first test audience. But then to hear the critics, who very intelligently reflect back what we have tried to do and have judged us largely successful; and then to hear the audience and the accolades, it’s all terrific. I do think we are beneficiaries of these different platforms that have sprouted, and their accessibility and user-friendliness, to reach a wider group.

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Twentieth Century Fox’s Homeland.

WS: Take us inside Homeland’s writers’ room. Is

WS: Is it fair to say that producing 12 or 13

the level of decision-making and debate just as passionate as the discussions viewers have about the show?

GORDON: It is, and there is not enough that can be said by Alex Gansa [Homeland’s showrunner] and me about our colleagues, all [of whom] are extremely talented. I don’t know who coined this, but someone called it the murderer’s row of writers. Everybody has either created or run shows in the past.

Everybody is a veteran of the business, roughly Alex’s and my vintage, so the good news is that there is a level of discourse and collaboration that is completely extraordinary. It reminds me of a band of very experienced musicians who can riff off each other.

Also, one of the benefits of having some experience and being a little bit older is that some of the ego and insecurity that is a corollary of [being younger] wears off. And by lowering the temperature of that discourse and keeping it about the work, which everyone manages to do beautifully, the result is a product that is all-around great. Alex runs the show, so when [there] is some sort of disagreement that needs to be settled, Alex can certainly make that decision, but it is largely a consensus-built and -driven show. The writers’ room is its own living, breathing thing. Sometimes all the writers are in there and sometimes three writers are in there, but you enter the room and it is kind of a sacred space where the story gets told, sometimes in very large, seismic jumps and sometimes in beautifully observed detail of a character. But it is largely a consensus process among very, very smart, talented people.

episodes is more freeing in terms of storytelling than churning out 22 or 24 episodes for broadcast?

GORDON: It’s more than fair, it’s just a fact that time [helps the storytelling process]. Not only is the time we allow ourselves to tell the stories in a season longer, but so is the refractory period between seasons. I remember on 24, wrapping the last episode in May and prepping the next season three weeks later. So you had to get off of one season, and before you have the chance to catch your breath and rest, you’re back at it—and then do that for eight seasons. Fortunately at the time, we were interrupted by the writers’ strike; without it, I don’t know if we would have gotten through those eight seasons!

Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Homeland or Mad Men—it’s not an accident that those shows have 10- to 12-episode orders.

WS: When creating a show, do you map out all

the episodes in advance, or do you let some of the plot unfold along the way?

GORDON: It’s a bit of both.You want to know enough not to get lost.You want to map out some of the big moves and even the small moments, but you also want to keep loose enough. By overprogramming and overoutlining a season, you can cut off some of the invention that a really great story needs to have, the elasticity and the discovery that comes from digging into a scene and figuring it out. But you also don’t want to not know anything about what will happen, so it’s a fine line.

WS: Tell us about your collaboration and friendships with Alex Gansa and Gideon Raff.

They have been very fruitful.

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GORDON: They really have been, and it’s like marriage or friendship—not everybody works well with everybody else. Alex and I were friends. We went to Princeton together and forged a relationship out of a mutual love of Saul Bellow. We work really well together and we split up for 15 years before we came together when Alex joined me on 24 for season seven. I was lucky enough to be smart enough to reunite with someone who a) is a friend, and b) is as talented as Alex [is]. Both of us have matured to a point where that initial impulse to collaborate really found a wonderful target in Homeland.

And with Gideon, the project Hatufim [Prisoners of War, the Israeli show upon which Homeland is based] was brought to me by my agent, who also represents Gideon. Gideon is a little bit younger than me, so I enjoy being more of a mentor, and it’s been terrific. The moment Gideon pitched Tyrant [a new show about an American family drawn into the turbulence of a Middle Eastern country] to me I felt connected to it and had that feeling that this could be something very special. It’s interesting how, even when you have that very primitive impulse—before you have broken the story, before you have even gotten through what turns out to be dozens of drafts, often very, very different drafts—the same sense of excitement and of possibility informs every one of those drafts. So you may not have a perfect map on how to get to it but you understand the destination. And with Tyrant I have that feeling and we are very excited about what the show can be. Of course, I know a thousand things can go wrong, and it just takes one of them to go wrong to mess up the whole enterprise, but at this point it remains pristine and promising.

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DAVID ZASLAV DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS

When Discovery launched in the U.S., in 1982, it created a destination for factual programming that didn’t already exist in television. Today, Discovery Communications operates more than 155 networks worldwide. Since becoming president and CEO, in 2007, David Zaslav has strengthened Discovery’s brands, launched new ones, and nearly doubled the company’s investment in original programming.

WS: How has the factual programming on

Discovery and TLC evolved?

ZASLAV: Discovery was founded with a simple mission: to create great high-quality content that ignites curiosity and delivers the thrill of discovery by introducing viewers to people, places and ideas that they wouldn’t otherwise experience. That is still the mission that drives us today, and the fundamentals haven’t changed. Great storytelling and compelling characters will always find an audience.

WS: Discovery recently commissioned its

first scripted series, Klondike. What are your plans for scripted programming?

ZASLAV: Nonfiction content will always remain at Discovery’s core, but we also see the

value in commissioning scripted programming events that complement our nonfiction series and are on brand for our networks. Klondike, for example, is a perfect complement to Gold Rush, Yukon Men and Bering Sea Gold that have been the most-watched shows in all of TV (broadcast and cable) in the U.S. on the nights they air.

Internationally as well, nonfiction remains our core, but we will continue to take advantage of opportunities to diversify our portfolio in additional genres (including kids, scripted entertainment and sports), on a market-by-market basis, where we have a more limited presence and where it enables us to see more advertisers across a wider range of demographics, as well as to take advantage of a larger market share. In addition to growing organically through gaining more subscribers, we see this as an opportunity to grow by building our portfolio and genres.

WS: What have you learned about the first years of a channel on its way to breaking even?

ZASLAV: The main lesson is that it takes time for a new network to find its voice and find its audience.Viewers only have eight to ten channels that they regularly tune in to and it takes time for a new channel to break into that rotation. Investigation Discovery is the exception to the rule, and I have never seen anything like it, growing to become a top 15 network in less than five years. Generally, however, you have to be patient and listen to the audience. If you do that and focus on creating great content, the audience will find you.We are seeing this now with OWN in the U.S.

“Linear channels need to give viewers more reasons to tune in live. That can be through social media...or creating must-see ‘events.’”

ZASLAV: We fully expect the network to be

cash-flow positive by the end of this year.

OWN grew both prime time and total day delivery by double digits in all key demographics in 2012, and that has continued in 2013. Oprah’s Next Chapter was the number one program on cable with women 25 to 54 seven times last year, and the network has established a roster of series that are resonating with viewers.

WS: What must linear channels do to main-

tain their relevance?

ZASLAV: Viewers are watching content on more screens, but the “big” screen, the TV, still remains the go-to place for the most immersive and compelling viewing experience.This is especially true with Discovery’s content, which looks so good in HD on a big screen.

Viewers want to experience programming like Planet Earth and the upcoming North America on TV to get the full experience. As long as Discovery continues to produce that kind of high-quality content, people will want to tune in to the channel.

With regard to time-shifting, linear channels need to give viewers more reasons to tune in live. That can be through social media—creating a virtual “living room couch” where viewers interact with each other as they watch—or creating must-see “events,” such as Discovery is doing with Gold Rush Live, a live version of our number one series, or Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Lance Armstrong, which drove record live tune-in around the world.You can’t wait three days to find out what Lance told Oprah, you have to watch it live.

WS: Are you still expecting OWN to break

even by the end of this year?

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For more from David Zaslav, see page 298.

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ABBE RAVEN A+E NETWORKS

most pay markets around the world. Shows like Duck Dynasty, Pawn Stars and even Dance Moms on Lifetime have strong characters at their core with great family relationships playing out on screen. These stories are universal, and people can relate to that wherever they live in the world.

WS: 2012 was the most-

A+E Networks operates a portfolio of channels centered on bringing human stories to life.

Whether depicting well-known characters and events from history or the struggles and quirks of ordinary people, the original storytelling of brands like A&E, HISTORY, BIO and Lifetime has cultivated vast, loyal audiences. Nobody knows this better than its president and CEO, Abbe Raven, who has been with the company since its earliest days.

WS: You were involved in the launch of

HISTORY and in the reinvention of A&E. What have you learned about the power of character-driven factual programming?

RAVEN: Probably the most important thing I learned was that brands need to evolve to survive as viewer tastes and habits change. Big characters are essential in good emotional storytelling, whether you are talking about real-life series or original scripted dramas.

WS: What kind of appetite is there for this type of programming?

RAVEN: Character-driven factual programming is very popular in the U.S. and around the world right now. A&E and HISTORY are both top-five brands in the U.S. and in

watched year in the history of A+E Networks.

What factors contributed to this success?

RAVEN: We had a great year. HISTORY is now the number one factual brand in the world, surpassing all its rivals in the genre by far. It has many imitators, but HISTORY has its own unique voice and quality that others can’t compete with. A&E and Lifetime also have their own unique voice in the marketplace, and we are seeing double-digit growth in the U.S. and around the world with other great brands like Crime & Investigation Network and BIO. WS: Did you expect Hatfields & McCoys on HISTORY to be as huge of a hit as it was?

RAVEN: We knew it was great storytelling with a great cast, but we never expected it would be the first cable program to beat all the broadcast networks in the U.S. It really made history. Kevin Costner and the entire cast and crew deserved all the accolades they received because they did an outstanding job on the film. It was the HISTORY team’s first scripted mini-series and they really hit the ball out of the park. I am excited for Vikings and The Bible.

WS: Tell us about the reinvention of Lifetime.

RAVEN: Lifetime has been the number one

brand for women for a long time. It needed to be refreshed. And we have done that by capitalizing on its brand strength for the 112 World Screen 4/13

“Big characters are essential in good emotional storytelling, whether you are talking about real-life series or original scripted dramas.” modern woman. We have big hits already with Dance Moms and Army Wives. Lifetime has and will continue to have a great portfolio of great nonfiction series, combined with great scripted series and original movies like the award-winning Steel Magnolias we did [in 2012] with Queen Latifah.We are excited to roll Lifetime out around the world and we have a lot of A-list Hollywood talent on board with projects in the dramatic series and movie genres.

WS: A+E Networks is moving toward

owning all of its content.What are the benefits of that strategy?

RAVEN: In the U.S., we have become almost 100-percent original content on our schedule across all our brands and we own a good percent of that. As a global company owning your content is critical so you can expand your brands internationally and across every platform and device. It is all about controlling your own destiny.

WS: With so many developments in the media

business, what are you keeping your eye on?

RAVEN: The big issue facing every media

company is being able to monetize content on every new platform, and that requires a universal system of measurement. Hopefully, Nielsen has that in the works already.We have great content and we just want to make sure we are able to protect our business model.

We are looking at growing our portfolio with new brands like H2...and new digital opportunities to continue building on our success.

For more from Abbe Raven, see page 300.

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DAVID STAPF CBS TELEVISION STUDIOS

middle and end of every single episode. And the cases are really interesting and oftentimes topical, but I don’t know that America would say,That’s a procedural. To me all that “procedural” really means is there is a franchise behind it, and [that] in each episode there is a job involved and that something gets resolved—it doesn’t have to completely get resolved—but there is a beginning, middle and end to every episode.

WS: Are there lessons

CBS Television Studios produces the mostwatched drama on American television, NCIS, its hit spin-off NCIS: Los Angeles, the popular CSI franchise and the critically acclaimed The Good Wife, as well as Elementary and Vegas, two of the most-watched new shows of the 2012 –13 season. As the president of the studio, David Stapf heads what many showrunners consider to be the best home for innovative procedurals.

WS: What makes the procedural such a

popular genre? As viewers’ tastes evolve, will the procedural genre have to evolve?

STAPF: Good question, and it’s a complicated question because I’ve never looked at the procedural as purely formulaic, uninteresting, or overly plot driven. All of our procedurals that have worked have worked because of the characters and because of the evolution, however fast or slow, of those characters. People still talk about Grissom and Sarah on CSI, even though Billy Petersen, who played Grissom, has been off the show for four years.

Every show evolves naturally in its storytelling, just like human stories evolve. Look at The Good Wife. Is The Good Wife a procedural?

Sure, there is case and there’s a beginning,

“We don’t feel the need to make our shows edgier or resemble cable; that’s doing a disservice to the actual show that we are producing.” bringing back for the summer. I don’t know that I would say that we have moved into an era of year-round development, but we are not just looking at the fall to premiere shows. Ultimately, we are in the content business. I’m on the side that produces the shows, so when we make them matters less.

What matters is making the shows as good as we possibly can.

that broadcast networks can learn from cable?

STAPF: There are lessons that definitely can be learned from cable.

One of the things that I take away from cable is in a land where there are so many choices, I think it’s incumbent upon every show to “eventize” itself—become an event. How do you make noise? How do you stand out?

Some of the cable properties have done that well. That’s a lesson to be taken away, but you have to decide which game you are in. When we are producing for broadcast networks, it’s a bigger, more global, broader universe. There is nothing wrong with that at all. We don’t feel the need to make our shows edgier or resemble cable; that’s doing a disservice to the actual show that we are producing. It should be true to whatever the story is you’re telling, otherwise you impose something on the show that it isn’t.

lot of flawed characters on television. Do you think it is more difficult to present to the audience one who is more “normal”?

STAPF: I don’t know. Mark Harmon is on NCIS, the number one show on television.

Is his character flawed? A little bit. I think if a character is authentic and real, that’s what matters more. I don’t think there is a person alive that doesn’t have some chinks in the armor.What people respond to is authenticity and the ability to ask, Do I see myself there? How much you can relate to the characters is more important than someone who has a gigantic flaw, or particular baggage. One of the reasons The Sopranos worked so well was that Tony was a fully developed, 360-degree character. It was a guy who loved his family deeply, but was conflicted all over the place!

WS: There has been more year-round devel-

WS: You mentioned NCIS—I love that

opment and premiering of shows as opposed to premiering all new shows in the fall.

STAPF: We’re launching two scripted shows in the summer: Under the Dome, from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and Stephen King, and Unforgettable, which is a show we had on last season and we are 114 World Screen 4/13

WS: Since The Sopranos, there have been a

show. What’s been the secret to its success?

STAPF: I won’t pretend to know what the

secret is. I’m a fan of the show as well, and what I love about it is what you love about it: I love those characters, I love the humor, I love the play-along mystery part. America fell in love with those characters years ago and

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CBS’s NCIS: Los Angeles.

thankfully our writers, producers and actors have continued to grow those characters and surprise us and allow us to fall in love with them. They figured out that balance [between character relationships and crime solving].

Everything always boils down to good writing, good directing and good producing, and fantastic acting.

to series, you don’t have time in between the first episode—or what would have been the pilot episode—and the next episode. If you are doing a pilot and essentially shooting it in April, and then not airing it until September, it gives you a lot of time to make adjustments if necessary.

writers want to be in premium cable because they can do edgier stuff. That may be the case with some people, but I think the question for each show is, where does this story belong? If you look at Masters of Sex, for example, the Masters and Johnson show for Showtime, for that story to be true to itself, it really needs to be done on premium cable.

WS: Your studio has been primarily producWS: Why is a pilot so important when you

ing for CBS, but also for cable networks.

are developing a show, and what are the advantages to having one as opposed to going straight to series?

STAPF: You learn a lot through a pilot. If you look at a pilot, much like we do, as a little bit of a road map, a little bit of a litmus test, there is nothing better than seeing something on its feet to learn what you need to know to make a good series.

It’s a big leap to go straight to series. So much of art is subjective and intangible, so the more tangible you can make it, the better. A pilot affords you the ability to see it and test it and then to make adjustments. Oftentimes when you go straight

STAPF: Yes, we are. We have a new series

starring Jon Tenney and Rebecca Romijn for TNT that we are very excited about.

And we are absolutely looking to produce smartly for both premium cable and basic cable. Again, we’re in the content business, so we are looking to produce everywhere.

WS: What different creative freedoms does Showtime offer compared to ad-supported networks?

STAPF: Just the obvious language and nudity; the edges are further out in premium cable, but that isn’t necessarily the reason you produce for them. There is a misconception that a lot of 116 World Screen 4/13

WS: Are you in contact with Armando Nuñez, the president and CEO of the CBS Global Distribution Group, when you are developing shows?

STAPF: Constantly. He and I are very good friends, which makes it a lot easier to be in business. I seek his counsel a lot: Is this a show that is going to be easier or harder to sell? It doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t do a show if he says, “Oh, this is going to be a hard one to sell.” We just know it’s going to be a little more challenging to work with. I consult with him a lot. But if you asked him the question, What are you looking for, he’d say, “I just want it to be good; give me a good show.”

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PAUL LEE ABC ENTERTAINMENT GROUP

WS: What considera-

After founding BBC America and making ABC Family a prime destination for Millennials, Paul Lee was appointed president of the ABC Entertainment Group where, among other responsibilities, he shepherds some of broadcast television’s biggest hits: the long-running Grey’s Anatomy; the comedy that revitalized its genre, Modern Family; the juicy drama Scandal, and the fairy tale Once Upon a Time.

WS: How would you describe the ABC brand?

LEE: The ABC brand is clearly defined for the U.S. audience. The wonderful thing is that it comes out as the number one brand in the U.S. for the 18-to-49 audience. That is because we do great storytelling that is smart but has a huge amount of heart. And the shows that we make are always imbued with quality, with character and with great storytelling. We also do shows that become buzz-worthy. We do shows that are noticed by the culture, shows like Modern Family or Grey’s Anatomy or Once Upon a Time, shows that are really discussed, and that is one of the reasons why it’s such a valuable brand for our advertisers.

tions, whether the idea, pedigree of the show runner, time slot, or target audience, go into greenlighting a show?

LEE: First of all we need to find shows that move you.We used a tagline for one of our campaigns at our last Upfront, which was, “Why just watch when you can feel?”

There is no question that moving you—either to laughter or tears—is always at the top of our list. We look, of course, at the pedigree of the showrunner.The auspices are tremendously important, and you want to find a show that is going to run hopefully five or six years and hundreds of episodes. You look for something that’s going to fit the brand but is also going to break the mold. That sounds contradictory, but effectively, the shows we select need to sit on ABC, they need to fulfill the brand promise that we give our audience, but they also want to be different enough to become hits. Nobody thought that fairy tales could work in prime time, and one of the reasons that Once Upon a Time broke out is that nobody had tried. The other reason is that the showrunners are such huge talents—Adam [Horowitz] and Eddie [Kitsis], who run it, are superb. So, we look at the showrunners, we look at the show, we look at the emotion and we look at the brand.

WS: What factors go into deciding whether to

keep or cancel a show?

LEE: That’s a really good question, because

you almost have two contradictory forces at play. On the one hand you have tremendously complicated ratings data streams coming in and it takes time to figure out who the audience is, on what platforms they are watching the show and how passionate they are. Our shows have a bigger C3 and C7 bump than 118 World Screen 4/13

“[ABC shows] need to fulfill the brand promise that we give our audience, but they also want to be different enough to become hits.” other shows because they are definitely appointment television, and that drives up the viewing. On the other hand, there are even more pressures in a supercompetitive environment to do something about a show that is under-performing. So those two forces make that decision more difficult.

This is what we do: if we believe in the show, even if it starts out a little bit weaker, and we believe it’s got long-term value in terms of its creativity, and we believe in the cast and the showrunners, then we will stick by it. Scandal had an OK launch last year. Now it is a big hit for us because it’s really found its feet. Kerry Washington [in the lead role of Olivia Pope] is superb and Shonda Rhimes is knocking it out of the park. We gave Scandal time to find itself and find an audience, and now it really has.

WS: When you find talented showrunners like Shonda Rhimes, how do you give them enough creative freedom to follow their vision while making sure they deliver a show that fits the ABC brand?

LEE: It’s a conversation. I used to be a showrunner. When I took this job I felt very strongly that we should create a very showrunner-friendly culture because we want to get that balance right. The truth is that Shonda understands the ABC brand and we gave her a huge amount of creative freedom. We like to think that ABC is a place where great voices can be heard and can fulfill their visions. There is no question that we do that with Shonda, we do that with Adam and Eddie, we do that with Steven [Levitan] and Chris [Lloyd] on Modern Family. They know, as does our audience, the strength of the ABC brand,

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ABC’s Scandal.

WS: Modern Family not only brought back comedy to television in a big way, but it redefined the sitcom. Are you planning to build more comedy into your schedule?

LEE: We are extraordinarily proud of Modern Family. It has redefined comedy and it does have a spectacular balance of creativity, a totally fresh view of the world, extreme relatability, it’s hilarious and it’s very moving.This year we have multicamera [sitcoms] on Fridays.We are looking to build comedy and some of it is single-camera sophisticated comedy like Modern Family and some are the multicameras that we do on Friday.

LEE: Social media is absolutely critical to the entire conversation and buzz that surround a show. We do what we call “viral storming” when we launch a show.

We’ll not only pre-sample it, we’ll have a huge amount of activity with the showrunners and stars on Facebook pages, on Twitter, on every single platform. The truth is, with a great show it gains a life of its own. If you look at a show like Scandal, I think it is the number one highest social metric show on broadcast television. We did a spectacular job of listening to, reaching out to and connecting with our audience on Scandal, and that audience is now so passionate and so vocal about what they think of the show. And by the way Shonda has a fantastic Twitter feed—that helps. The show has gained a life of its own and honestly, it’s impossible to imagine what it was like before social media.

WS: Is it harder to get a comedy right than

WS: With so much time-shifted or on-

a drama?

LEE: They are all tremendously hard, but yes, I think comedies are especially hard. Dramas are rational; there is something irrational and unpredictable about a comedy. Comedies are an act of faith and drama is an act of reason, and that makes it particularly difficult to get the chemistry right in comedies. And if a comedy doesn’t work, it’s much harder to solve. But when it works, it’s just so sweet!

demand viewing, what does the industry need to do to provide reliable ratings data?

LEE: We are half way through this revolution.

It’s a wonderful thing that we have C3 ratings but we really want to get to a point where all our audiences on all platforms, whether digital or linear, are fully counted and we get to see exactly who’s watching what, where, when, and how.When we get to that point we can really serve up more detailed information to our advertisers. And the step beyond that is addressable advertising, where not only do we know where everybody is, but we can address advertising to them.

and they will play into that. If you look at Modern Family, it’s an amazing comedy but it’s also a tremendously emotional and relatable show, and the characters are perhaps the strongest on television. And that is very much the heart of our brand, so we give the best showrunners a lot of space.

WS: How are social media helping to create

awareness of shows and providing fans with a stronger connection with their favorite shows?

120 World Screen 4/13

WS: You have worked in the U.K., on a

Globo telenovela, and you have written, produced and directed TV movies. What are the strengths of the American system of developing and creating prime-time shows?

LEE: I’m a Brit and I am tremendously proud of the storytelling that England has done in my lifetime, not just on television but also in movies. It’s storytelling that is exported around the world and continues to be incredibly creative and fertile. Nobody, however, matches the broad reach and ability to tell five or six seasons of 22 to 24 episodes of storytelling like the American system: the writing rooms, the ability to sustain a time slot in the network and market it in the U.S. and internationally. I loved working in England and I think it’s a huge privilege to be at the heart of American storytelling.

WS: Can America learn from the British and European way of producing shows?

LEE: America is already in a “mixed economy,” where we can continue to make amazing storytelling like One Upon a Time, Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and syndicate them in the U.S. and around the world.

There is no business model that matches that. At the same time, there are plenty of limited series now on both cable and broadcast and starting on Netflix and Amazon, which can really help define a brand. So I believe that the future is going to have a mixed economy of both long-running, sustained American storytelling and defining, high-profile, high-quality series.

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TIM KRING TOUCH

Writer and creator Tim Kring has often tackled innovative and ambitious TV concepts: the Emmy Award–winning Heroes featured people discovering they had superpowers; Touch blends science, suspense, mysticism and an autistic boy’s extraordinary gift for identifying patterns in numbers that connect people’s lives.

Kring has also embraced working with brands and producing for the web.

WS: When Touch first premiered you mentioned the importance of balancing selfcontained episodes against weaving certain mythologies throughout the season. How did you do that in season one, and what have you learned that you applied to season two?

KRING: It’s a very interesting question, because [since the series premiered] viewing habits have changed considerably. The reason why we tried to create a show that had a stand-alone quality at first was because the network felt that there would always be new viewers coming on board, especially in the first six or so episodes.

They had done research and [had seen the] sampling of any new show, and [realized] that each week you could expect to have

more and more viewers. So by wrapping each episode up into a neat bow, it would mean that people didn’t feel that they were alienated for not having watched the week before. We very slowly started to introduce a serialized story underneath, so that by about six episodes into the first season, those nagging questions [about the serialized story] were keeping viewers coming back. The episode questions would get wrapped up, but the season-long arc questions would start to elevate, so that by the end of the season we did a two-part season finale that was almost entirely a serialized engine.

When we started the second season, we hit the ground with an episode that was basically the third part of [the first season’s finale]. Viewers were very much thrown right back into a story that they needed to have watched. I don’t feel as much obligation to the audience knowing things as I used to because there are ways now for the audience to find out what happened. They can always go online and watch episodes from before. They can go to chat rooms and fan sites and find out things. In a way it’s up to the audience to catch up, but more importantly, even though we’re still a broadcast model that has to air once a week, the truth is, the modern way of watching television for so many people is to watch outside of that model—to watch episodes through downloads, or buying a DVD, or renting on iTunes, or streaming live, or streaming on Netflix. And because of that, those questions of backstory are not really that relevant to them. They’re watching a show 122 World Screen 4/13

“These new distribution platforms that are allowing people to ‘binge’ watch are changing the nature of what these shows are.” in a weekend or over two weeks. So we’re now making the story more for that kind of modern form of viewing.

WS: Is this new form of viewing freeing up the storytelling?

KRING: Yes, it’s keeping us from having to repeat things. The loyal viewers always feel like, Well why aren’t I being rewarded for being loyal? Why do I have to hear that again? I already know that. And what’s really fascinating is, these new distribution platforms that are allowing people to “binge” watch are changing the nature of what these shows are. They’re changing the format, in a way. We used to think of 22 hours of television per season. Well, we’re starting to see that most of these series that are binge watched have fewer episodes. They’re the cable model, the 10-, 12-, 13-episode run.

We’re starting to see that the audience is getting used to that size as a way of watching a season of TV. And in the same way that there is an optimum length for a song on the radio (a nine-minute song just doesn’t work) and an optimum length for a book (a 1,000-page book doesn’t work) and a four-hour movie doesn’t work, there’s an optimum length for these series that the audience ends up dictating a little bit to you. What seem to be really working are these 10-, 12-, 13-episode seasons.

WS: At the end of season one of Touch, you

produced Daybreak, which was a web series.

KRING: Yes, we launched it off of the season

finale of Touch and it was just the smallest little tangent off of the show, just enough to have a tie-in with the series.

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Twentieth Century Fox’s Touch.

WS: What were the creative challenges of

telling a story in mini episodes?

KRING: It was 50 minutes of content, about nine to ten minutes apiece. In a way it was very similar to writing a pilot for regular television and we approached it that way. It had five acts. We shot it like a pilot. We used my crew from Touch and it very much had the production values of a big broadcast television show.

WS: AT&T was involved in Daybreak. How was that collaboration?

KRING: I had been approached by AT&T through the agency BBDO, who had had this idea of doing a multiplatform story.

When they pitched me the story, I said, it’s very interesting because it feels like it fits with the ethos of Touch, and perhaps we could tie those two things together. What was really fascinating was that I went to the AT&T labs in New Jersey and got to go behind the scenes and sign all the releases that said I wasn’t going to steal anything from them! I saw stuff that’s two years out, three years out, five years out.

They have this lab full of scientists who just think about the future and come up with weird apps and strange things that may or may not even make it to market. So many ideas just started going off in my head about how to tell stories utilizing these little apps that they had. So we put together a suite of AT&T apps that all were housed under one thing that you can

download, and it ran in conjunction with the show.You could aim your phone at the [computer] screen and it would sense things.

It was a very cool little app that downloaded onto your telephone.

But working with a big brand like AT&T is a really interesting experience because I was used to the network model of working with development executives. Daybreak didn’t have any of that. All they really needed was for the brand to be treated in the proper way and to let me tell an interesting story.

So it was very exciting and I think that storytellers, nowadays especially, have to think about what technology can do for them as storytellers in reaching an audience where they live. We’re all carrying around these mobile devices all day long, we’re on the Internet, and we’re on our iPads. All of these tools can be used for storytelling.

WS: Was it difficult for you to bring a brand into the storytelling? Could you see yourself doing that again?

KRING: I am very interested in it because we’re now at a time where these brands are seeing that the 30-second spot is a very difficult thing. Through the Internet and through mobile, brands now have the ability to have a direct relationship with their customers, I would call them the audience.

Brands can go directly to a storyteller, create a narrative and push it directly to people that they already know how to talk to.

Samsung, for example, has something like 50 4/13 World Screen 123

million people on their Facebook page and those people constitute an audience, a real audience that you could push content to. You could activate them to be engaged in a narrative, and have them engage with one another in the narrative and create content for each other. It’s an incredibly exciting time, and the truth is, we all grew up with television that was sponsored by advertisers: Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and the Texaco Star Theater and the Kraft Music Hall. Brands were right out in front, and I think that’s coming back now in a big way.

WS: I didn’t mind the 15-second bill-

board at the top of the show.

KRING: Exactly, as long as it doesn’t feel

that you are constantly being invaded by some product placement that is crass. But the brands that are really smart about this know that it’s the halo effect that they get from providing entertainment that people really like or find meaningful. They end up having a connection to the brand for having brought them that content and made that available. We all grow up knowing that things have to be paid for by somebody. We don’t belittle anybody for that. That’s not something we denigrate. We know that somebody has to pay for it, so if brands stay in the background, present it in a way that’s enjoyable and then allow you to know that they presented it, that’s a very good thing.

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DAVID NEVINS SHOWTIME NETWORKS

a long period of time. I want people to feel like the most creative, progressive, daring stuff is happening on Showtime.

WS: What are the differ-

Over the course of the last few years, the pay service Showtime has been boosting its production of original series with envelope-pushing dramas and comedies like Dexter, Weeds, Californication, House of Lies and, most recently, Homeland.

For David Nevins, the president of entertainment at Showtime Networks, shows must have an element of danger, surprise and, most important, cultural relevance.

WS: You’ve worked for both broadcast and pay-cable networks. What must a show have for you to believe that it can become a hit?

NEVINS: When I was [working] in network television, I was making shows that were challenging the limits for the medium. At Showtime, I’m at a place that really rewards coming up with the next new thing, while in broadcast television you sometimes get punished for being a couple of years ahead of the curve. I’m looking for depth and for themes that can last over time and will make me believe that I will want to watch not just one episode but also [all the way through to] the fourth season of this show. I’m also looking for a writer that has the ability to explore the themes in the pilot script in ways that are going to keep it interesting over

ent considerations that go into greenlighting a broadcast show and one for pay cable?

NEVINS: There are more constituencies in a broadcast environment.

You’ve got to worry about affiliates and advertisers as well as the audience. In pay cable, the big issue for me is what’s going to get attention.What is going to be somebody’s favorite show? What’s going to create the most attention for Showtime, what’s going to create the most buzz? Certainly in pay cable, the buzz that comes from having a show that appeals to influential adults—there’s a premium on that.

WS: How did Homeland come to Showtime?

I understand you had to move rather quickly when you heard about the show.

NEVINS: Homeland was originally developed partly with a mind towards broadcast television, so it was both about moving quickly and also about reimagining what the show could be in a pay-cable environment.That entailed making the characters a lot more ambiguous: making the good guys in the script less good and the bad guys less evil. And then moving very quickly in convincing Twentieth Century Fox [which would produce the show] why it was worth their while to come to Showtime. And convincing the producers why it was worth their while to come to Showtime and also showing that we had a good broadcast plan for their show. I knew exactly where I was going to put it, and from the very beginning I told them that the show would air in the fall of 2011, playing with Dexter on the 124 World Screen 4/13

“In pay cable, the buzz that comes from having a show that appeals to influential adults—there’s a premium on that.” tenth anniversary of 9/11. That was influential for them when they had choices of where to take it.

WS: Why do you think it struck such a chord

with viewers?

NEVINS: You want to be the show that peo-

ple are talking about. That’s important to us because we need to keep Showtime top of mind so people feel it’s a service they have to subscribe to. You never know [if a show is] going to be a big hit. I knew it was going to hit some hot buttons and it was going to be controversial. I also knew there were lots of things that were going to make journalists want to write about it—it was very topical. And then, in the way that only television can, deep engagement with characters over a long period of time really cemented it and great execution by the producers and director and actors made it even better. But I always knew that some of the ideas in the script were going to make people want to write about our country’s relationship with the world, the effects of terrorism on us ten years after 9/11, some of the mental health issues that are in the show and the national security issues. All of those were great press pegs.

WS: So much is written nowadays about tele-

vision shows. Do you pay attention to what’s being written, and does it affect your programming decisions?

NEVINS: I read it all. I follow the critics. I think the state of television criticism is really good right now. It’s incredibly robust. There are smart people writing a lot of words about television shows and it’s being taken seriously. Television criti-

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Showtime’s Shameless.

cism today is what literary criticism was in the ’60s and movie criticism was in the ’70s, so I pay attention to it all. I try not to be overly reactive to it and I particularly try to make sure that our writers are not overly reactive to it. When smart people write nuanced analyses, I try hard to pay attention.

WS: The writers of Homeland were in the middle of season two when you announced the renewal for season three. Does that have a big impact on the development of the rest of the current season?

NEVINS: Maybe as you start to get to the end of a show, you’ll write a show differently [because] you are writing toward a definite end. Television is generally written open ended until you get to the very end of a run. [A big part of it] is faith: I greenlight a season on faith because I believe that the writers will be able to do something interesting for next year. Actors sign up on faith; an actor may commit to a five-year deal based just on a pilot script.

And the audience starts watching without any guarantee and that is one of the things that is very exciting about television: it’s fundamentally open-ended nature.

WS: How do you balance giving show -

runners as much freedom as possible

against giving them notes about the shows they are producing?

NEVINS: I believe in deep engagement with the shows. I was a producer. I still try to operate like a supportive producer. So my job, like any good producer, is to try to challenge people to do their best work and the top creative people generally like to be challenged and like to be doing their best work. I don’t want anybody to ever play it safe. I try to encourage a creative environment where people feel like they can take creative risks and try to maintain execution at a high level—that makes it an exciting place to work. I feel like there are no limits on what we can do and so it’s very important to me to make Showtime the most creatively exciting place in the television business.

And you do that not by doing nothing, but by giving a lot of encouragement and deep creative engagement.

WS: A lot of people are saying that cable

shows are taking the place of independent films in exploring certain topics and providing intelligent programming for adults.

NEVINS: The great benefit of television is sustained engagement over time for one character, and that can be a very exciting thing for a writer or an actor. We’re still in 4/13 World Screen 125

the business of appealing to adults, which is not fundamentally what drives the movie business anymore, and that leads to satisfying and creative work for these actors, writers and directors. All of them are playing in both worlds, our writers are also writing movies, our actors are also starring in movies. Don Cheadle made three movies between season one and season two of House of Lies, but I think he was very happy to come back and play Marty Kaan because he finds it a rich and varied experience on a daily basis! And more and more people are knocking on our door.

WS: What upcoming shows would you like to highlight?

NEVINS: There is significant buzz starting to build around the crime drama Ray Donovan with Liev Schreiber, which is going to premiere in June right after Dexter and I think it’s going to be an incredibly watchable television show. And starting in September airing after Homeland will be Masters of Sex, a drama series based on William Masters and Virginia Johnson and their groundbreaking partnership and the study of human sexuality. That stars Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan. They are both going to be exciting and unexpected television.

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JOHN LANDGRAF FX NETWORKS

Since premiering The Shield in 2002, FX has presented original series that are different and often offer a darker, grittier view of life than other shows on television. John Landgraf, the president and general manager of FX Networks, is constantly on the lookout for showrunners with daring, distinctive voices and innovative ways of telling stories.

WS: What has been FX’s programming philosophy?

LANDGRAF: I would say that most brands are top-down-managed processes where a brand defines itself with a certain number of characteristics and then essentially imposes those characteristics on the product that it makes and the way it markets that product. I look at our brand more as a top-up brand in which certainly there are common characteristics amongst our shows: they tend to be adult, they tend to be very original, quite bold.They tend to be excellent; virtually all of them are very critically acclaimed. But when you get past those obvious correlations, what you find is that our brand is really an aggregate of a whole series of sub-brands and the sub-brands are really the shows themselves: Louie, Justified,

American Horror Story, Sons of Anarchy, Wilfred and Archer. And that goes all the way back to The Shield, Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me.We try to find people with a really bold original vision—creators, writers, producers, showrunners and directors— then we build around that vision. We do give a lot of notes, but we give them from inside the vision. We’ve never fired a showrunner or creator off any of our shows in the more than a decade that we have been doing this. All of the advertising for each of our shows is highly individualistic. We’re intensely supportive of original creative visions.We have built our entire organization from the ground up around creative people and around how to be excellent at identifying really talented people and then supporting their vision.

WS: When greenlighting shows, which

considerations are content-driven and which are marketing-driven?

LANDGRAF: I’d say they are somewhat related. We are most successful from a marketing standpoint when we put a show on the air that is not on the air. In other words, we live in a very crowded marketplace.

There were 143 scripted original television series that aired on premium and basic cable last year (that doesn’t include broadcast) and there are 100 commercially measured channels.When we put something on the air that the audience can sit up and say, “Hey, wait a minute, that’s different, that’s like nothing I’ve seen before,” that’s when we do best.

Within that difference, there has to be some kind of appeal, and that’s where characters come in. What we are constantly looking for, in both our comedies and dramas, are character points of view that are very orig126 World Screen 4/13

“We have built our entire organization from the ground up around...identifying really talented people and then supporting their vision.” inal and sometimes very challenging, but are very emotionally resonant and accessible character points of view. In Louie, Louis C.K.’s point of view is pretty challenging, and yet as a newly single father, sharing custody of his two daughters and parenting in Manhattan, even in the midst of that bracingly original vision, there is a point of view that people can relate to. Or take The Americans. American audiences have never been exposed to the point of view of undercover KGB agents working [in the U.S.] against America in the past. But the point of view of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, the two main characters, is just a very universally resonant point of view. It’s that unique combination of something that is different, very different, sometimes challengingly different, but has these universal access points, as opposed to many other channels that are looking first and foremost for those universal access points and then maybe a little bit of differentiation. We start from the other direction, which is, how can we find something that is really distinctive and original, and then how can we work with the creators really, really hard on the execution to find those universal access points in terms of character and the emotional resonance of the leads of the show?

WS: Will you be doing more limited series

like American Horror Story?

LANDGRAF: Yes. In general we just want to

do more original series. We’ve been expanding pretty consistently during the time I’ve been at the channel. When I arrived we had two original series on the air. Today we have 13 original series on the air, and over the next

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several years we will probably double that output again, so we’ll be close to 25. Part of it is pushing into other genres. But part of it is that I get really excited about American Horror Story and the iterations that Ryan Murphy has created with the notion of an anthological series. It is really a new original mini-series that is marketed under the same title, but each year it goes to a new location with a new cast and is an entirely new self-contained FX’s American Horror Story: Asylum. story. I thought that was a really interesting idea and an innovation that I think is going to be followed.There hours. So, for example, we’ve made a deal for is a series HBO is making called True Detective a show called The Strain with noted director that is patterned on the model put forth by Guillermo del Toro.When Guillermo came in American Horror Story. But more than that, part and pitched it, it was based on a trilogy of of what I realized is that when you look at the books that he and his co-author Chuck explosion of quality programming that has Hogan had written. As he said, this will either come out of America in the past decade, par- be three, four or five seasons, but it won’t be ticularly since The Sopranos initially premiered two and it won’t be six or seven. It will be on HBO, and then a couple of years later, somewhere between 39 and 65 episodes. when The Shield premiered on FX, we really When I read the books I thought, He’s defiliberated storytellers. Before that, storytellers nitely right, we’d have to compact it to do either had to fit their ideas into a two- or fewer and we’d have to stretch it to do more. three-hour film, or had to make a series that So part of what we realized is we really need would go 22 episodes a year and hopefully to figure out how to adapt our business modmake well in excess of 100 episodes. That els to create even more flexibility in terms of really limited the number of subjects and the types of choices that storytellers make.The types of approaches one could take to a series. more we can figure out the business model When The Sopranos came along, all of a sud- around a story that is good, the better the conden you could do a 13-episode-a-year series tent that we are going to get. that had continuity and was essentially a 90hour movie told over seven years. It just WS: What do linear channels have to do to exploded and opened a massive door to qual- maintain their relevance when people are ity. I could name so many amazing series that viewing so much on screens other than the came out of that. While we absolutely are still TV set? going to continue to make what I call these LANDGRAF: I continue to think that brands 90-hour movies that are essentially 7-year and are a very helpful filter for consumers.

13-episode television series (and hopefully Imagine what it would be like if you Justified will go the distance and Sons of Anarchy walked into a grocery store to shop for will go the distance and The Americans will go food and household products and there many years), I really believe there are all kinds were no brands. Imagine how difficult and of great stories that we are not telling that disorganized the experience of choosing optimally should be told, not in 2 hours and products would be. So I tend to look at not in 90 hours but in 10 or 20 hours or 30 channels as the equivalent of brands in that 4/13 World Screen 127

they do seem relevant to the consumer; they provide some hallmark of quality and a sense of, if you’ve liked the programming that a certain channel or certain brand has had in the past, you will come back to it.

There is also the factor that people really do spend a lot of time watching television passively, even though the bulk of the press goes to what you’d call “active viewing” [watching a show while tweeting or chatting about it or searching for more information about the show online] surrounding live sporting events or live award shows or reality programming or the kind of scripted programs that inspire live television viewing. The truth of the matter is that when you actually look at the number of hours spent watching television, all forms of active viewing account for less than 20 percent of all television viewing, closer to 10 percent; 80 to 90 percent of it is essentially lean-back viewing—that is to say, passive viewing. The overwhelming number of viewers subscribe to cable and use channels for passive viewing. It’s not that I’m not concerned about it, because certainly I am.We talk every day about how to maintain promotional power and relevance.

While there are other businesses like Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu that are becoming an important part of the ecosystem, the bulk of the ecosystem still surrounds linear television, which is very much trying to provide consumers with more of what they want.

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CHARLIECOLLIER AMC

“Unexpected,” “unconventional” and “uncompromising” are the three words Charlie Collier, the president and general manager of AMC, uses to describe his network’s critically acclaimed series. They have been responsible for what is arguably the most unprecedented makeover in the history of American television, one that turned AMC from a niche movie channel into a must-watch cable network.

WS: How did original programming transform AMC from a movie channel into the home of some of the best series on television?

COLLIER: It all came out of a desire to make programming that was distinctive and of prestige for our cable partners and, obviously, for the marketplaces that we served.

That was always the goal, the thought being that we had the most widely distributed movie network in the country. And when we looked around [we decided we wanted to be] a premium television network on basic cable. Our very first original was actually a mini-series, Broken Trail, with Robert Duvall. One of the things we were really good at was serving passionate fans of Westerns.The theory was to take an iconic movie

star, Robert Duvall, and create an original program that really served that audience well. So that month we took some of the best films in the Western genre and curated them in a way that I thought was particularly AMC, and then served that audience a like-minded original that really super-served that specific passionate audience.

If you fast-forward to our original scripted programming and you look at Mad Men or Breaking Bad, we used the same strategy, which was to curate a group of movies that really served a passionate audience and then try to serve them the type of original programming that you would have seen paired with great movies on the premium networks.

WS: And today The Walking Dead is a top-

rated show in the 18-to-49 demographic.

COLLIER: That came out of the same thing.

Fearfest is a multi-week horror film festival and it’s been on AMC every October for the last 16 years. Just as we did with Westerns, we served a passionate audience with Fearfest.

For years we were looking for an original programming opportunity that served that audience. When we saw Robert Kirkman’s great work in the graphic novel The Walking Dead, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to do just that. It was the biggest show of the fall season, not just cable but broadcast as well in the 18-to-49 demo.

That speaks to the fact that we super-serve that core audience and also made the show relatable to broader audiences.

“We really want...to be giving you a little something more than you expect, and something more than you might get elsewhere.”

COLLIER: “Story matters here” came about at a moment in time when we wanted to say we are about the stories we tell. And, like I said, that was a certain type of premium storytelling that we were going to try to do on basic cable in a way no one else had. In terms of a filter that informs the stories that we select, we use three words: “unexpected,” “unconventional” and “uncompromising.” If you look at Mad Men, a period piece was pretty unexpected and unconventional for television. In fact, we had a lot of people who told us a period piece wouldn’t work in series television. Breaking Bad, here’s a show about a lead character who completely undergoes a metamorphosis around some very difficult and often reprehensible choices.

And a show that is set in a zombie apocalypse like The Walking Dead, certainly all of those are unexpected, unconventional and uncompromising.

A lot of networks, once they do one show, they tend to do the next show that looks just like it. And we’ve gone the other way, a much more premium way, and in a lot of ways a more difficult way, which is to say, once you do a show the next one is almost unexpectedly not like it: so Mad Men to Breaking Bad to The Walking Dead to Hell on Wheels. The common theme is that we really want an AMC show to be giving you a little something more than you expect, and something more than you might get elsewhere on television.

WS: Do you most often produce pilots or

WS: AMC’s tagline is “Story matters here.”

How does that shape your decision-making process when you are greenlighting projects?

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do you also go straight to series? What is the ratio between pilots that you order and series that go to air?

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AMC’s Hell on Wheels.

COLLIER: We’ve always taken pilots very seriously. We are very deliberate in our development process, and when we greenlight scripts to pilot, we really picture the pilot as the first episode of the series. And to date that has worked. When we make a pilot we try to go in thinking this could very well be the first episode of a series we plan to make.And I hope when people bring us their projects, they see that at AMC, because we are so thoughtful about the development process, by the time we are making a pilot we are really hoping to bring it to series.That said, we’ve [also] gone straight to series. The Walking Dead was one that we went straight to six episodes, but it’s not a model that we are going to continue to roll out, it was just the right opportunity for such an epic story line that also had a built-in arc from the graphic novel [it was based on].

WS: What have you found to be the best ways to serve today’s superviewers, who will “binge watch” their favorite show online while waiting for the new season to premiere on the network?

COLLIER: I’m still a huge believer in watercooler television. In February we premiered [the second half of the third season] of The Walking Dead and it had its largest audience ever. We had 12 million viewers on premiere night and then added another 2.5 million to 3 million within the next three days [from DVR viewing]. And all of that to me is an example of serving the viewer with watercooler events. By the way, our traditional scheduling methods on the channel of marathons and catch-ups are time-proven devices that allow people to stay in tune with the content if they missed it and come back to the watercooler event.

I have a real belief in the cable ecosystem and what’s been great is that over the years technology has changed and added ways to catch up and keep people engaged. Binge viewing is another way that seems to be driving viewers back to the network and back to that watercooler event.You’ve got a show like Mad Men that has grown five years in a row. Breaking Bad has done the same, it has grown each year it’s been on the air, and 4/13 World Screen 129

now The Walking Dead is doing the same.

I’m confident that, a) the television event is still an event, and b) all the ways that passionate viewers are staying engaged and not just catching up but also getting more deeply involved is helping to drive back to that watercooler event.

WS: I marked my calendar early so I

wouldn’t miss the premiere of Mad Men’s new season! That reminds me of the ’70s when we planned our week’s social activities around the shows we didn’t want to miss because we had no way to watch them if we missed the live broadcast.

COLLIER: That’s a great point you make.We do a lot to send out the premiere date and let people know when the event is coming. February 10 for The Walking Dead or April 7 for Mad Men, I think those dates still matter and people still like the notion of watching a show when it is an event, so they can drive social activity around it, and get more deeply involved with the product and with everything from the creators to the actors and the characters.

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JEFF WACHTEL USA NETWORK

USA Network was one of the very first cable channels to venture into original productions.

The strategy of using cost-effective production models, developing shows that offer an optimistic take on life and marketing them under the now famous “Characters welcome” tagline, has paid off. As Jeff Wachtel, one of the network’s co-presidents, explains, USA has been the number one network in all of basic cable for seven consecutive years.

WS: How did “Characters welcome” come about?

WACHTEL: When Bonnie [Hammer, today the chairman of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group] came on board, she felt very strongly about networks having a brand. Chris McCumber [the other copresident of USA Network] and I joined the company at about the same time.We had been making shows and marketing them individually and Bonnie said,We really need an umbrella for this place to give it a handle for our affiliates, for our advertising clients and also for the creative community. We were lucky that, unlike some other people, who need to make up a brand out of thin

air, we had already started finding some success with character-centric, lighter drama, which we had done because the world had put out endlessly grim pieces. We thought, we don’t have more money, but we have a unique vision. So how can we tailor that unique vision and bring in a unique audience?

The “Characters” brand evolved from that. Now, interestingly, it’s been feeding the programming strategy and the programming mix. So we are lucky that we have a brand that is not like most—an imprint or a label—it is actually something that informs both the way we make shows and the way we market them.

“We need to remind ourselves to take risks and push out and to still have that start-up mentality that made us successful.”

WS: Are you moving toward edgier content in part because there are many other players in the cable world that are producing character-driven shows?

WACHTEL: I think it’s just come about because our programming has worked really well and we don’t want to be only one note.

Our challenge right now is pushing ourselves out of any sense of complacency, and we’ve already done it and succeeded. We need to remind ourselves to take risks and push out and to still have that start-up mentality that made us successful.

WS: In 2008 Bonnie told me how USA had

WS: How does that brand filter guide you in

deciding which shows fit the network?

WACHTEL: Like anything, it’s a dance. In the early [years], when we really had the field more or less to ourselves, [we looked for] more upbeat, aspirational, blue-sky types of dramas. It was kind of easy. We thought, OK, we know what to do and people know what to bring us. It was really about making the best possible version of whatever was working in the brand. Now that we’ve been market leaders for seven years—we’ve been number one—we need to push [the brand] out and the dance changes a little bit. We are very, very aware of our contract with the audience: bringing them the best programming that is more on the lighter side—it might even have some escapist elements in one sense, but at least it has a more upbeat view of the world and the world’s possibilities. That’s something that we are still very serious about, even as we move our brand toward what might be more edgy content.

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created a production model that allowed the shows to have as much quality as possible on the screen but cost less than broadcast shows. Is that still the area you want to be in?

WACHTEL: Very much. Our shows probably cost 30 percent to 35 percent less than similar shows on broadcast, and maybe 50 percent less than a show on pay cable. It’s not easy to sustain, especially given our success, but it’s also really important in the cable world that you keep the economics of each show manageable so that you can allow your showrunners the creative freedom that you promised them, and that you can give them a certain amount of flexibility. Part of it is, the more shows you make, the cheaper it gets per unit.

If you go to Kinko’s and make 1,000 copies, it costs less [per copy] than making one copy.

The same thing is true with series. We are more careful about our production model and we don’t do 22 or 24 episodes a year. That is one of the reasons that allow us to keep the quality high—we don’t do quite as many episodes in a year. It allows the original

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USA’s Suits.

showrunner to stay on board as that special and unique voice. One of the things we take most pride in is that with very, very few exceptions, the person who came in on the original pitch of the idea is the person who writes the last episode.That was true on Monk and is true on Burn Notice and Psych, and our producers on Covert Affairs are going into their fourth season and they are the same.

WS: Yes, I’ve read there is tremendous loyalty among your showrunners. What creative environment do you provide them with?

WACHTEL: We are a collective of producers here and I will say immodestly that this is the best creative team in the business. It very much views the work like a producer.That enables us to bring people into the mix who may not have as much showrunning experience, but who have a really strong and distinct vision and we can be their backup as a production entity.

So it’s a win-win. It allows newer voices to learn the trade and become showrunners and it invests our creative executives more fully.

WS: NCIS has been a huge success for you.

Will you continue to acquire network shows to help fill out USA’s schedule?

WACHTEL: Very much so.The biggest thing in 2013 for us, in addition to all the original programming, is that Modern Family is coming on line in the fall. And we are treating that like we would treat the launch of an original.

It’s that important to us and I think it’s going to be that important and that much fun to our audience, to have that show available with that frequency. It’s one of the very few shows that the networks have launched in the last few years that still has that incredible mass appeal and really plays to our audience.

WS: What are some of the originals coming up this year?

WACHTEL: We’re doing a show called Graceland from the creator of White Collar, Jeff Eastin.

While it has a gorgeous Southern California setting, it goes to a deeper and darker theme than we have previously done. Graceland is based on a true story. The DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency] busted a drug lord and one of his principal assets was this beautiful house in Redondo Beach. The DEA took it over and instead of putting it on the market, they said this would be a great safe house for our agents. DEA, the LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department], U.S. Customs all use it 4/13 World Screen 131

as their cover house and create this very interesting community of undercover agents, who, when they leave the house, are engaged in some of the darkest and most complicated crime solving, but when they come home they have this sanctuary. Maybe the title Graceland has connotations to a certain rock and roll figure in the ’60s, but for us it’s about sanctuary. It’s a beautiful show and Jeff is about as fun, smart and witty a writer as there is.

And then we are doing new stuff. We have a couple of comedy pilots we are looking at right now, one of them stars Annie Potts, from Designing Women, as the mother of two young doctors. It’s a fun piece that we think might be a great companion to Modern Family. The other one is a little edgier. Denis Leary and Bob Fisher are producing it. Bob wrote Wedding Crashers.

We love that we are playing in the comedy world now and the other big thing is reality.

It’s a genre that we feel we really need to join the party and we have a couple of shows we are launching in the spring. One is called The Moment and the other is The Choir. They are both upbeat and somewhat aspirational, but we also think they are very entertaining life journeys.

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MICHAELWRIGHT TNT, TBS, TCM

Since The Closer launched, in 2005, and became a hit for TNT, the basic-cable network has been aggressively increasing its original productions. Michael Wright, the president and head of programming for TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies (TCM), wants to provide the audience with sophisticated, fun storytelling and complex characters that respect viewers’ intelligence.

WS: How important has it been for TNT

to have a strong brand identity?

WRIGHT: It’s vital today. My own personal

belief is that people tend to turn on a television show looking for an emotional experience. In that context, for a network to be very clear about what it stands for and the kind of experience it intends to deliver to the viewer, a brand is incredibly important. People have 250 channels available on their televisions.

They’ve got an endless supply of options available to them: the Internet, DVDs and their DVR.With that many choices you’d better be really clear to the viewer about the sort of experience you intend to deliver.That’s where brand becomes really, really important.

There are brands within brands. TNT is the drama network, but there is a brand

within that brand, in terms of people coming to TNT for original programming. Internally we use the phrase “smart popcorn,” smart escapism. We are going to show you a good time. Whether you are coming to TNT to watch a crime drama, an action-adventure series, a science-fiction series, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Whether it’s Falling Skies or Major Crimes or some of the new shows that we are putting out, they are all designed to take viewers away from the troubles of the day, take them on a great ride and land them safely at the end. That’s our brand at TNT. That specificity really helps us.

WS: Does a clearly defined brand also help creators who come pitch shows to you?

WRIGHT: Yes. People throw around Brandon Tartikoff ’s name. I was really blessed to have met him toward the end of his life and I had a series of lunches with him. I asked him a lot of questions and one of the most earnest questions I ever asked was, “If you could tell me one thing that networks have to do to be successful, what would it be?”And he said,“There are two things: first, you have to create an environment where talent comes to you first.” The logic being any idiot should be able to put together a partially successful lineup if the most talented people in the business are bringing their wares to you first. Conversely, if they are coming to you last, you’d better be a genius, because a lot of the good stuff is gone by then! So having a creative environment where they come to you first is rule number one. But rule number two informs number one. He said, in order to make them come to you first, you have to create an environment where the talent fundamentally understands that they are going to be cre132 World Screen 4/13

“You have to create an environment where the talent...understands that they are going to be creatively and commercially supported.” atively and commercially supported. Commercially supported means we schedule you thoughtfully, we market you enthusiastically and we stick by you, win or lose. But being creatively supportive comes from that first meeting when you are sitting down with a showrunner or creator. If you spend a lot of time upfront describing the network and the brand and the kind of shows you are looking for; if you know which writers, and this is key, [write in a] voice...appropriate to your brand; and if you and the writer both agree, this is the kind of show we’re trying to make. If you do those three things, then you get out of their way. If you’ve communicated really well, then there is no confusion going forward.

WS: Are cable networks more willing to take risks than broadcast networks?

WRIGHT: There are cable networks that play it safe and there are cable networks that take huge risks. There are certain networks that one would look at and say, boy, that network sure is playing it safe. But I would counter and say, no, they’re not, they’ve identified the audience that likes that kind of programming.A network that has cultivated a certain kind of brand and delivers programming that someone might objectively look at and say, that’s pretty downthe-middle programming, isn’t necessarily riskaverse. They might be running a very smart business because they’ve identified an audience, branded themselves for that audience and are programming to it. On the other hand, there are other networks that have branded themselves as risk-taking, darker, more provocative, which is good for them because I personally believe that the great thing about cable is that there is something for everybody.

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one-on-one

o millions of viewers around the world, Ryan Seacrest is known in connection with American Idol. Yes, he is the host of what is arguably the most successful talent competition on television, but he is so much more: presenter, producer, philanthropist, entrepreneur and one of the main arbiters of popular culture in the U.S. After all, he is the one who discovered the Kardashians and propelled them to international notoriety!

As a young boy growing up in Georgia, Seacrest set his sights on a career in entertainment and vowed to follow in the steps of two broadcasting legends, who later became his mentors: the radio and TV personality Dick Clark, host of American Bandstand, and the television host and media entrepreneur Merv Griffin.

Seacrest has remained true to his goals. Today, besides American Idol, which he has been with since the show’s launch, in 2002, he is the host and executive producer of Dick

Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest, which airs on ABC. He also has a wide-ranging deal with NBCUniversal that includes on-air and producing duties at NBC and E! On the radio, Seacrest hosts On Air with Ryan Seacrest, the nationally syndicated Los Angeles morning drive-time show for Clear Channel’s 102.7 KIIS-FM, as well as the nationally syndicated American Top 40 radio show.

Seacrest is equally active, if not more so, behind the scenes. He set up Ryan Seacrest Productions (RSP) in 2006. It produces unscripted, scripted and digital programming, including Keeping Up with the Kardashians on E! and its spin-offs Kourtney & Kim Take Miami and Khloé & Lamar, as well as Married to Jonas on E! and Shahs of Sunset on Bravo. It also produced Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on ABC. As an entrepreneur, Seacrest has recently made a number of investments in media and entertainment companies, including the marketing services concern Civic Entertainment Group and Mark Cuban’s cable channel, AXS TV. He also has partnerships with top brands such as Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Ford.

As busy as he is hosting, executive producing and expanding his company, Seacrest always finds time for his Ryan Seacrest Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of seriously ill and injured children.

Behind the familiar face and voice is a driving ambition and relentless work ethic.

Seacrest shares with World Screen his passion for his work and his vision for building what many are calling a modern-day media empire.

RYAN SEACREST

WS: You are widely credited with having been a constant, stabilizing presence through the years—and different judges—on American Idol. What has American Idol meant to your career?

SEACREST: American Idol is such a huge part of my life now—after 12 seasons, though, you start losing track of all the time that has passed. But I can’t really imagine my days without it.

I suppose that I’ve been one of the constants on the show, since there have been [different] judges and format adjustments along the way. However, there are countless other people involved with the show.

The people behind the scenes that have been with Idol from the start—passionate producers, crew, and FOX executives— 4/13 World Screen 181

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really deserve most of the credit for its perennial success.

WS: How has American Idol

changed television in America?

SEACREST: That’s an interesting

question. For one thing, other than American Bandstand, I don’t believe there has been any other program that has sparked the careers of major stars such as Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Phillip Phillips and so many others. But the other thing the show has done is to push

the popularity of the music competition format around the world, which is evidenced by all the other shows on the air now, although none have quite reached the audience and success of Idol.

WS: How have you been able to

keep your finger so securely on the pulse of popular culture in this country?

SEACREST: I began my career in radio at a very young age, and I think it’s always been a source of

inspiration. Music is an incredibly accurate reflection of what’s going on in our culture, and with the increasing onset of technology and various distribution platforms, music’s influence travels faster and farther than ever before.

My local and national radio shows keep me in touch with what’s going on in the world of music but also in the world at large.

Music encourages such an intimate connection to listeners. They really share and interact with us honestly

and openly, telling us what they are interested in, what their concerns are in their interpersonal relationships, what they are passionate about, including everything from movies to fashion to issues to politics. It’s a fascinating daily lens.

WS: When considering personalities,

such as the Kardashians or Melissa Rycroft, or show concepts like Shahs of Sunset, what elements does a show have to have for you to think it has potential to succeed?

SEACREST: Any honest producer would tell you that success in television is a bit of mystery and a little bit of luck. More seriously speaking, it’s hard to describe a specific winning combination. But I do think we just try to tell interesting and relatable stories with strong characters that stand out. We also try to give audiences something they haven’t seen before.

WS: What plans do you have for

branching out into other types of programming—dramas, comedies or movies?

SEACREST: I’m super excited about our expansion into scripted programming. We brought in an extremely talented, experienced executive, Nina Wass, to run that division, and she has already hit the ground running. We have several shows in development—both dramas and comedies—and one pilot at ABC. And we also have two movies in development—one at Universal and the other at Paramount.

WS: You have made radio and

Rising to the top: Kourtney & Kim Take Miami, from Ryan Seacrest Productions, airing on E!, is part of the hugely popular stable of TV series about the Kardashian family.

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television the centerpieces of your business. Why have you bet so strongly on “traditional” media like radio and television, even while digital platforms continue to grow in popularity?

SEACREST: Our radio and TV businesses are the backbone of our company; that goes without saying. But I don’t think we’ve ever ignored emerging platforms. We’re currently stepping up production

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Talent scouts: While there have been changes in the judging panel lineup over the years, Seacrest has been the host of American Idol—which is still the top-rated show on FOX among viewers 18 to 49, and a staple on networks worldwide—since its inception.

of original online programming because the distribution platforms have evolved considerably, but our core business remains in focus— we’re in the entertainment content business.

We use digital and social media platforms to support both radio and TV programs that I’m involved with on air or producing at RSP. We have amassed large followings on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as we view these platforms as authentic extensions of my voice or important amplifications of our radio and TV shows, so we can connect with the fans more directly.

My website, RyanSeacrest.com, and YouTube channel are also major platforms for us.

We try new entries into the digital space early on to see if it can augment our content and communication in interesting ways. Pinterest is something we got involved in early on, and had a lot of fun with it. I found it so interesting that I’ve made an investment in it.

I plan to be making more investments in technology, as I believe entertainment and technology are more interconnected than ever before, and I want to make sure that we are on the front lines of this progression.

WS: What plans do you have for the channel AXS, formerly HDNet? SEACREST: I am strictly an investor. Mark Cuban is really the visionary at AXS. That said, I can share that this year AXS TV is positioned to bring even more live music events with in-depth coverage and music.They have more live concerts than any other network, and have brought viewers events from 3 Doors Down and Daughtry, Incubus and Linkin Park, Aerosmith, R. Kelly, Sara Evans, Pitbull and many more.

WS: You recently acquired a majority stake in the marketingservices agency Civic Entertainment Group. What appealed to you about the company? How does it fit into your portfolio of businesses? What plans do you have for creating events?

SEACREST: I’m very excited that Seacrest Global Group acquired Civic Entertainment Group (CEG) as it complements our existing businesses quite well. CEG co-founders and CEOs Stuart Ruderfer and David Cohn have a terrific combination of business acumen and creativity. They’ve worked [with] major brands in the entertain-

On the scene: Ryan Seacrest, together with Giuliana Rancic, helms all of E!’s live red-carpet coverage from the biggest events in Hollywood, including the Oscars and the Emmys.

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Lifestyles of the rich and famous: Ryan Seacrest Productions’ expanding slate of reality programming for the NBCUniversal family includes an upcoming series about the British band The Wanted for E!, called The Wanted Life (left), and Shahs of Sunset for Bravo (right).

“ENTERTAINMENT AND TECHNOLOGY ARE MORE INTERCONNECTED THAN EVER BEFORE, AND I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE ARE ON THE FRONT LINES OF THIS PROGRESSION.”

ment, sports, communications, banking and travel sectors, including HBO, NFL, ESPN, NBCUniversal, Turner (TNT, CNN), HISTORY, A&E, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, among many others.

Having CEG as part of our portfolio brings together content creation with emerging media/tech platforms and integrated marketing services. Many have talked about connecting content, clients and brand activation across media. Our combination can achieve that vision, offering something genuinely unique. For example, CEG is already working on an activation for American Idol for FOX, and will likely be working with Ford, one of my brand partners.

WS: The Comcast takeover of NBCUniversal has opened up new opportunities for you as a special correspondent on Today and with NBC’s coverage of the Olympic games. What other opportunities do you want to pursue at NBC? SEACREST: Right now I just want to keep doing what I am doing at NBCUniversal. They gave me a tremendous opportunity to explore some different things. I’m working with NBC News and the Today show. I worked with NBC Sports on the Olympics, which was an incredible experience. I also continue to work with E! News on their red-carpet events and other news specials.

WS: You’ve said that Dick Clark

WS: You have secured a $300-

million investment commitment from Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners. Are you looking to make more media acquisitions?

SEACREST: The commitment that these private-equity firms made for investments with us is focused on large-scale targets worth about $300 million or more from around the world.We did participate in the auction surrounding the sale of Dick Clark Productions last year, but we ultimately withdrew. Seacrest Global Group is really the entity that is focused on more modest investments to help build our portfolio of existing assets strategically.

and Merv Griffin have been mentors for you. What did you learn from them?

SEACREST: What I learned from both of them was that business was just as important as being on camera, and I have followed that model in my own professional life. They both had interesting and successful careers that were extremely diverse, and I’ve tried to emulate that strategy as much as possible.

WS: You’ve made a strong commitment to giving back. Tell us about the Ryan Seacrest Foundation (RSF) and its initiatives. Why are they important?

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SEACREST: Yes, I think creating RSF was the most important thing I’ve ever done. Throughout my life I’ve visited numerous hospitals across the country that have the weighty task of caring for children facing life-threatening illness or injury. As a result of my experiences at these hospitals, I wanted to have a more lasting impact on children’s lives. Over a dinner with my family, I decided to create a foundation that would lift the spirits of hospitalized kids.

Along with my parents and my sister, I created a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring today’s youth through entertainment and education-focused initiatives. Our foundation’s first initiative is to build broadcast media centers, named Seacrest Studios, in children’s hospitals across the country, allowing for patients to interact with a stateof-the-art radio/TV studio and meet some of the biggest stars in entertainment.

The aim of Seacrest Studios is to contribute positively to the healing process. I’ve heard from many families that the studios are an uplifting distraction, and I’m so thrilled to see how positively they have been received. We currently have studios in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Dallas, with more planned to open in Orange County, California; Charlotte; Cincinnati; and Boston, among others.

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on the record

s co-chairman and CEO of Lionsgate, Jon Feltheimer has never shied away from taking calculated risks and new approaches to the film and television industries. He has combined the nimble, quick-decision-making entrepreneurship of an independent with his years of experience, first at New World Entertainment and then at Sony Pictures Entertainment, in managing talent and building international channel and distribution businesses.

His vision has paid off. Lionsgate has emerged as a leading independent, known for pioneering innovative business models and adapting to changing viewing habits by creating new windows and pricing strategies fit for today’s digital world.

In shaping Lionsgate’s film division, Feltheimer at first identified underserved audience niches—young, urban, Hispanic, and fans of the horror genre—and provided them with movies that they couldn’t find elsewhere. In 2012, after the acquisition of Summit Entertainment and the huge popularity of the Hunger Games and Twilight franchises, Lionsgate grossed more than $1.2 billion at the domestic box office—the first time an independent broke the

billion-dollar mark at the domestic box office in a single calendar year—and an additional $1.2 billion at the international box office.

Feltheimer slowly built Lionsgate Television, in the beginning by making shows for the U.S. cable networks just as they were stepping up production of original series, from The Dead Zone and Weeds to Mad Men and Nurse Jackie, to then branching out to broadcast networks with Nashville, and forging an accelerated path to syndication with the 10+90 model (developed by Lionsgate’s Debmar-Mercury and used for Anger Management). Along the way Lionsgate has earned 19 Emmys in the past five years.

Lionsgate’s 15,000-title library drives a healthy international-distribution business. It also serves as the engine behind nine branded channels around the world, which Lionsgate operates in partnership with other major media companies: the FEARnet horror and thriller channel, launched in 2006 by Lionsgate, Sony and Comcast; TV Guide network and TVGuide.com, in partnership with JPMorgan’s One Equity Partners; EPIX, with Viacom and MGM; and Celestial Tiger Entertainment, which encompasses six branded channels in 11 Asian territories, operated in partnership with Saban Capital Group and Astro’s Celestial Pictures.

Feltheimer says in jest that he is never satisfied—he is always looking for ways to expand his businesses and scout for new opportunities to produce and distribute quality content.

JON FELTHEIMER Lionsgate

WS: Tell us about the Summit Enter-

tainment acquisition and what it brings to Lionsgate.

FELTHEIMER: 2012 was a transformative year for Lionsgate as we acquired Summit and launched the Hunger Games franchise within a few months of each other.

The acquisition of Summit gave us the critical mass to negotiate higher settlement rates with our exhibition partners, structure output deals around the world for our films, negotiate a new domestic distribution agreement for our DVD releases and achieve greater efficiencies in our media buying.

In the past six months, we’ve created our own global distribution infrastructure by establishing output deals with blue-chip partners covering 80 percent of the world’s moviegoing population outside India and China, substantially mitigating our risk and increasing our long-term visibility in our international theatrical business.

Our integration of Lionsgate and Summit is substantially complete, and we have proven executives like Rob Friedman, Patrick Wachsberger and Erik Feig, 4/13 World Screen 221

all originally from Summit, leading our film business.

We structured the deal on financial terms that the Street found very attractive, and we paid down the $500 million Summit term loan more than two years early, underscoring our ability to rapidly deliver our balance sheet with the Hunger Games and Twilight cash flows. Overall, we’ve generated approximately $75 million to $100 million in annual margin and cost savings from our integration synergies.

WS: When you greenlit The Hunger

Games, did you imagine it would perform as well as it did?

FELTHEIMER: We bought The Hunger Games when only 150,000 copies of the first book were in print. There was no way we could anticipate that there would be over 50 million copies of the books in print today or that the first Hunger Games film would gross over $400 million domestically, becoming the 13th-highest-grossing film of all time.

The film clearly struck a resonant chord in our popular culture, but much of its suc-

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library product in Latin America.

With distribution partners like IDC, Televisa and Netflix for our content, we’re now generating revenue and profit from Latin America several orders of magnitude greater than we did just a couple years ago.

Hungry for more: Catching Fire, slated for a November 2013 theatrical release, is the highly anticipated sequel to The Hunger Games, which was a key contributor to Lionsgate’s box-office intake in 2012.

cess was attributable to careful execution. We had a great cast, beginning with Jennifer Lawrence, and an innovative marketing campaign that included over 300 digital partners and made unprecedented use of social media.

We’ve been focused on building strong brands and franchises from our inception—Saw, Tyler Perry, Dirty Dancing, Mad Men—repeatable brands that can be marketed costeffectively. If you cultivate your brands carefully, sooner or later some of them will break out on a worldwide level.

I like what one of our analysts said— we’re an overnight sensation that was 12 years in the making.

We’re focused on maintaining our leadership in the young adult space by cultivating new brands like Ender’s Game and Divergent, which will be opening in the Hunger Games slot in March 2014.

WS: What is fueling the strong performance of Lionsgate’s featurefilm business?

FELTHEIMER: We continue to take a portfolio approach to our feature-film business. Our slate is driven by a combination of tentpole franchises, strong brands with worldwide commercial potential and critically exciting, daring films.

Although The Hunger Games and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn— Part 2 drove our worldwide box office of more than $2.5 billion last

year, a total of eight films contributed to our success with more than $40 million apiece at the domestic box office, including The Expendables 2, Sinister, The Possession, Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection, What to Expect When You’re Expecting and The Cabin in the Woods. Another two films, The Impossible and Step Up Revolution, each grossed more than $100 million worldwide.We’re continuing our momentum early in 2013 by achieving box-office success with Warm Bodies and Texas Chainsaw 3D, reflecting our leadership in the young adult and horror genres.

We keep costs low, but the primary financial metric we look at is “the gap” on each film—production capital at risk after international presales and before our marketing spend.The average “gap” on each of our films this year is approximately $15 million, only slightly higher than what it’s been the past several years, even with The Hunger Games and Twilight: Breaking Dawn—Part 2 included.

WS: Tell us about Pantelion and its

plans for film and television product for the U.S. Hispanic market.

FELTHEIMER: We believe that there is a great opportunity for films and television shows with Hispanic elements aimed at the more than 50 million Latino consumers in the U.S. This is the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. moviegoing population and TV audience, and we

have the perfect partner in Televisa to help reach them.

We formed Pantelion two years ago to bring a full slate of Englishand Spanish-language films to the marketplace on a consistent basis.

Although it takes time to build a brand and an audience, we’ve already released successful films like From Prada to Nada, which we’re also developing as a TV series, and Casa de mi padre. Our efforts have been successful enough to expand our alliance with Televisa into our South Shore television partnership, where we’re developing TV series like Terminales for ABC Family.

We believe there is a tremendous appetite for content in the Hispanic market not only in the U.S. but throughout Latin America as well.

Latin America has become a major market for us.We recently expanded our partnership with IDC, a company in which we have a 50-percent investment, to encompass both Lionsgate and Summit content in the region. IDC did a great job distributing Twilight: Breaking Dawn—Part 2, which grossed $125 million at the Latin American box office, the best performance ever outside the traditional major studios, and The Impossible has been a hit for us in Latin America as well.

We also recently signed a pay-TV agreement with Netflix for future Hunger Games installments, other upcoming Lionsgate releases and

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WS: Tell us about Orange Is the New Black, an upcoming original series for Netflix.

FELTHEIMER: This is basically a traditional cable deal with a nontraditional partner. The show, about a young PR executive whose past comes back to haunt her, is being created by Jenji Kohan, with whom we’ve had a very successful eightyear collaboration on Weeds. Netflix is paying us a generous license fee, and their plan is to make all 13 episodes available to their subscribers simultaneously in the spring. This is another example of new consumption patterns like “binge viewing” driving demand, and we’re capitalizing on the opportunity to create and distribute programming that is custom-tailored to the way people watch TV today.We’ve been a leader in supplying programming to new and emerging cable channels, and by continuing to think outside the box, we expect to be a leader in delivering content to digital platforms as well.

WS: What should the TV industry be doing to provide better data about what viewers are watching?

FELTHEIMER: We’re operating in another golden age of appointment television, but this time around consumers are making all the appointments. When Anger Management had its initial ten-episode run last summer, it was one of the most DVRed shows on television. Nashville is one of the most DVRed shows today.

Nielsen is heading in the right direction in incorporating C3 and C7 ratings, an initiative that needs to extend into measuring PC and mobile audiences as well in order to build new programming and advertising models.

I wear several hats on this subject—content creator, distributor and

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also media buyer. We want the success of our TV shows to be measured by the entire universe of viewers watching them across multiple platforms, not just traditional overnight ratings. But as a media buyer, if I’m buying ad time on a show that has its live airing on Wednesday night but will generate much of its viewership after one of our films has opened on Friday, this needs to be factored into the cost equation as well.

WS: How should U.S. cable opera-

tors improve their VOD services and addressable advertising capabilities?

FELTHEIMER: We’re all adapting to shifting consumer tastes. Cable operators worked closely with us in refining a specialty theatrical/VOD day-and-date model that created a market for films like Margin Call and Arbitrage, which we released through our Roadside Attractions platform.

Arbitrage grossed nearly $8 million at the box office and generated nearly $14 million in consumer VOD spend—an unprecedented VOD-tobox-office ratio—and neither window cannibalized the other.

Clearly, cable operators need a better user interface. [I was] disappointed by the performance of our film What to Expect When You’re Expecting on VOD. Our head of distribution pointed out to me that the title started with a “W,” and the film underperformed simply because online consumers don’t bother to scroll all the way down to the W’s. With 20/20 hindsight, we should have released the film on VOD as “A Movie About What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” But we certainly learned our lesson…our next VOD release was Arbitrage, and look how it did.

The moral of the story is that we need to work together to create a better system than allowing the consumer to express his programming preferences for titles according to the alphabetical order in which they’re presented.

We need to be more proactive about dynamic ad insertion as well.

Our FEARnet channel has 30 million online subscribers, but without

effective dynamic ad insertion we can’t monetize them. Our advertising models need to keep pace with the evolution of our content businesses in a digital environment.

WS: How are Lionsgate’s film and television DVD titles faring?

FELTHEIMER: We look at all facets of our home-entertainment business as an integrated whole— packaged media, on-demand and digital. This business is growing overall, and we see increasing evidence that digital revenues will be incremental in terms of revenue and, even more importantly, margin.

Industry-wide, packaged media is stabilizing, VOD continues to grow and electronic sell-through, driven in part by UltraViolet, is finally beginning to take off.

Our own home-entertainment business is being driven by our strong content on several fronts.We had two of the top four DVD titles in 2012 with The Hunger Games and Twilight: Breaking Dawn—Part 1 and they performed well not only in packaged media but on digital and on-demand platforms as well.

At the same time, our managedbrands business, led by our leadership in fitness, children’s and direct-toDVD titles, has quietly grown into a $250-million-a-year business.

We’re continuing to lead the industry in DVD-to-box-office conversion rates, and we’re focused on translating this leadership into VOD-to-box-office and digital-tobox-office conversion rates as well.

Our library has achieved seven straight years of growth, and it’s interesting to see how the composition of library sales has changed during that time. Five years ago, packaged media accounted for 70 percent of our library revenue.

Today it accounts for 38 percent of our library sales. As packaged media levels off, digital, television and international are driving library growth and significantly increasing our margins in the process.

As we look for the right balance among the packaged media, on

Talking TV: Lionsgate’s television production group is behind an array of successful shows in both broadcast and cable, including, from top to bottom, Nashville on ABC, Mad Men on AMC, Anger Management on FX and Nurse Jackie on Showtime.

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demand and digital components of our home-entertainment business, we’ll continue to explore innovative windowing and pricing strategies like day-and-date theatrical/VOD releases and early EST windows.

WS: Tell us about Lionsgate’s port-

folio of channels.

FELTHEIMER: Our boutique port-

folio comprises branded channels targeted at demographics we know well and operated with strong partners.

EPIX brings together a mix of traditional MSOs and digital players, reaches 10 million subscribers, attracts an average subscriber a decade younger than its competitors due to its technological leadership and generates approximately $75 million in annual EBITDA. We believe the breadth and depth of our content will further enhance the value proposition we offer to the remaining MSOs who don’t carry us, as well as additional digital partners.

We’re very pleased with the performance of our Celestial Tiger Entertainment (CTE) platform in Asia, where we’re partnered with Saban Capital and Astro’s Celestial Pictures. We operate a total of six

branded channels on 26 platforms in 11 Asian territories. CTE gives us valuable real estate in Asia, with proximity to the China market and the $25 billion Asian pay-TV business.

FEARnet is a leading VOD and Internet platform and is beginning to gain traction as a linear channel as well. TV Guide Network continues its transformation from a navigation device to an entertainment channel.

It has achieved full-screen penetration in 83 percent of its households and extended its distribution footprint, and we just gave it a rebranding tweak to accelerate its evolution into an entertainment destination with its own distinct identity.

WS: What are the best ways to nav-

igate the evolving media landscape?

FELTHEIMER: Viewers are offered

unprecedented choice today, and they appear to be taking advantage of it. This isn’t an either-or scenario.

Audiences are still consuming their content traditionally on the communal family TV sets as well as adopting new viewing habits tailored to PCs, laptops and mobile platforms.

Consumers want to take advantage of the full palette of choices

Taking a dip: Youth-targeted genre movies are integral to Lionsgate’s theatrical business, with recent successes that include the zombie comedy Warm Bodies.

Sensing a hit: Through its acquisition of Summit Entertainment, Lionsgate brought to its slate the mega-hit Twilight franchise, which ended in 2012 with Breaking Dawn—Part 2.

available to them so, although we’ve seen some cord shaving and new consumption patterns that could be considered cord rewiring, we haven’t seen rampant cord cutting.The subscriber bases of most of the major pay-TV channels are increasing, and the number of viewers actually cancelling their pay-TV subscriptions remains a small minority.

In terms of navigating a marketplace that is being reshaped by disruptive technologies, we believe this plays to our strength. Change is part of our corporate DNA. We’ve embraced disruptive technologies from our inception and we like to think of ourselves as a disruptive company.

Here are a few specific examples: We’ve embraced social media in our marketing campaigns from Saw to Hunger Games, and we tapped our base of 200 million Facebook friends in marketing our TV series Nashville last fall and opening our feature film Warm Bodies.

We have a long history of creating content for new and emerging platforms, first in the cable world and more recently in the digital marketplace. We’re producing Orange Is the New Black for Netflix, and you can expect to see more of these partnerships in the future.

We will continue to be first movers in creating new business models to capitalize on a fast-changing marketplace—launching channels like EPIX, and our BeFiT fitness channel on YouTube… developing new windowing strategies like our day-and-date theatrical/VOD releases… and generating incremental revenue through partnerships like our multifaceted rela-

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tionship with Netflix in the U.S., the U.K. and Latin America.

WS: In which areas do you see potential for growth in Lionsgate’s international businesses?

FELTHEIMER: We’re focused on three specific growth opportunities internationally.

The emergence of digital platforms like Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and Xbox is helping to drive international growth and creating competition for content in many markets where little or no competition previously existed. We’ve structured multiplatform deals with these digital players for all types of content— films, TV programming and library product. Our recent international digital licensing deals will add tens of millions of dollars of incremental EBITDA to our bottom line.

New territories like Russia and Latin America have been breakout markets for us, and we believe that China has the potential to follow suit.

With our release of The Hunger Games and our content licensing deals, we generated several million dollars from China this year compared to pennies just a few years ago.

We expect this trend to continue, and we’re also looking at India, another vast, underserved market.

We’re starting to achieve significant benefits from self-distribution in the U.K. Lionsgate U.K. has had a record year in box office and market share and will generate nearly $150 million in revenue this year, driven by a combination of Lionsgate blockbusters, homegrown Lionsgate U.K. hits and third-party acquisitions. [It] also has a great pay-TV deal with Netflix.

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in conversation

erhard Zeiler, the president of Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) International, is no stranger to the channel business. For 13 years at the RTL Group, first at the helm of the flagship German station, RTL Television, and then as CEO of the entire group, Zeiler championed the concept of “families of channels.” In an increasingly crowded TV landscape, having only one channel in a given region was not enough to ensure a leading market share, but several channels, each targeting a different segment of the audience, and together aggregating large numbers of viewers, was the key to the RTL Group’s success in major markets across Europe.

Today, at Turner, Zeiler oversees a global portfolio of branded TV networks and their related businesses outside North America: more than 130 channels in 30-plus languages in some 200 countries. They include versions of

TBS’s core brands—CNN, TNT, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies—as well as region-specific channels, such as POGO! in India and Boing in France, Italy and Spain.

Although based in London, Zeiler has spent the majority of his first year on the job traveling around the world, familiarizing himself with TBS’s operations in Europe, Latin America and Asia. He is focused on building on the strengths of the Turner brands, while looking for opportunities to launch new ones, and he does not exclude acquisitions. He believes that in order for a company like TBS to be successful in today’s ever-changing media world, it needs a balance of pay-TV and free-TV holdings.

Zeiler recently announced a restructuring of the Turner EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) group, which calls for a 30-percent reduction in staff, and appointed Giorgio Stock, formerly with The Walt Disney Company, to head up the EMEA operations.

Zeiler, who kept the RTL Group’s stations on course during several economic ups and downs, most notably the 2009 crisis, is well known for keeping costs in check, while never sacrificing a channel’s most valuable asset— its must-watch shows. Programming, in fact, has always been his passion, and relevant, quality programming, offered to consumers in a convenient, accessible way across multiple platforms, is the key to the success of the TBS International channels as well.

GERHARD ZEILER

Turner Broadcasting System International

WS: After 13 years at the RTL Group, what appealed to you about the offer to work at Turner Broadcasting?

ZEILER: First of all, I am a strong believer in change. After 13 years at the RTL Group, where I was CEO for nine years, I was thinking that it was time to once more do something new.The second reason was that Turner is even more international than the RTL Group. And third, it was always a dream of mine to work for a big American media company.

WS: At RTL you had a European broad-

casting business and a global content business, FremantleMedia.

ZEILER: Yes, and here I am responsible for all the Turner channels outside the U.S. and Canada. Asia is a new experience for me, as is Latin America.

WS: In the months that you’ve spent evaluating the Turner operations, what have you found to be its main strengths?

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The doctor is in: TNT’s U.S. originals, such as David E. Kelley’s new series Monday Mornings, are being used to help build the channel brand in international markets, with the service having rolled out in Europe and Latin America.

“IN THE FUTURE, A TV COMPANY THAT IS NOT A SATELLITE PLATFORM OR A CABLE OPERATOR SHOULD BE INVESTED IN CONTENT, IN PAY TV, AND ALSO IN FREE TO AIR.”

ZEILER: One of the main strengths is the powerful global brands, whether it’s CNN International, Cartoon Network or TNT. Especially in a world that is increasingly fragmented, having strong brands is a great advantage. Another strength is the size and success of our Latin American operation. Turner invested at the right time, and today it’s a huge business with a substantial growth perspective.

Turner therefore is positioned to harness a robust upside in the region. That includes Brazil, the world’s most dynamic pay-TV market, that’s adding hundreds of thousands of new customers every month to the current 16 million customers—which is just 27-percent penetration—and is forecast to add another 10 million households by 2017.

WS: For years at the RTL Group you oversaw stations that were predominantly financed by advertising.

Now you have a bouquet of channels that have a dual revenue stream.

Is pay TV better positioned to face the economic ups and downs in a continually fragmenting world?

ZEILER: The less dependent you are on one revenue stream, the bet-

ter. And I strongly believe that in the future, a TV company that is not a satellite platform or a cable operator should be invested in content, in pay TV, and also in free to air. If you own significant rights, and make both subscription and advertising money, you have the right mix to balance any volatility in the markets.

WS: Are you looking to add channels to the Turner portfolio?

ZEILER: One of the reasons I wanted this job is that at Turner there is one clear objective set by the shareholders, and that is growth. We will grow organically, for sure. But we also will grow by acquisitions. If we want to grow internationally, we have to do both: launch new products, new channels, new brands, but also acquire.

That is what we will do, but as you can imagine, I cannot speculate right now about what we will do in the future.

WS: But you will tell me first

when the time comes!

ZEILER: Yes, of course!

WS: You oversee a portfolio of international brands, including

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CNN, Cartoon Network, TNT and Turner Classic Movies. How important is it to make these brands feel local, both from a content point of view and from a management point of view?

ZEILER: I’ve always had a strong conviction that our industry is a local industry.Yes, you have a lot of global products, programs and brands, but most of the success factors are local ones. Whether it’s how we develop the brands, how we market the programs, how we schedule—all of these measures have strong local success factors.

And that’s the reason why I have this saying: You have to be British in the U.K., French in France, Brazilian in Brazil and Indian in India. So the local aspect is really important. It is not only true for free to air—there it is obvious—it’s also true for pay TV. The stronger the pay-TV industry becomes, the more local you have to go. We at Turner will invest more in local productions to increase the local relevance. That is also one of the main principles that guided us during our restructuring process in Europe, to decentralize and give more responsibility, more decisionmaking power, to the local markets.

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WS: The figure that was reported

in the press, the 30-percent reduction in staff across Turner EMEA. Will that be done over time?

ZEILER: The 30-percent reduction in positions will take place in two stages: the first stage is a restructuring process, which is taking place in the first months of this year.The second stage is the outsourcing of certain functions, which will be implemented over time.

WS: We live in a world where viewers don’t only watch television. They watch the content but they watch it on whatever screen they prefer.What are the challenges and opportunities of making Turner’s brands relevant on all screens?

ZEILER: There are huge opportunities because the more comfortable, the more convenient it is for consumers to watch our channels and our programs, the more eyeballs, attention and success we will have, the more buzz we create, the more advertising revenues we will

News of the world: The world’s most widely distributed news network, CNN International reaches more than 265 million households outside the U.S.

get. These are huge opportunities.

Yes, it’s a complex process because we have to go forward together with our partners, the platforms.

But that is not all we need: there

must also be a superior technological solution. And contrary to the U.S., internationally we face the complexity of different languages.

But we share the same goals: to be

on as many devices and on as many platforms as possible; to be where the consumer wants us with our brands and with our channels. We need to secure rights, we must provide consumer-orientated technological solutions and we will get the right marketing.

WS: As you see it now, is nonlinear

viewing—online, on tablets and other devices—incremental to linear channel viewing?

ZEILER: The big fear of the industry, let’s say five years ago, was that nonlinear viewing would detract from linear so it would only cannibalize viewing taking place on the channels. Looking at the facts today, we see now that this is not the case. Nonlinear is mostly incremental, but of course not only.

What we see today is that more and more people watch our branded programs on devices that are not being measured, and therefore we have to get the ratings measurement system right.

The fixers: Turner has developed a very successful business in Latin America with a large slate of channels delivering locally developed and imported content, among them Infinito, which airs a regional version of Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

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WS: That must be complicated because there are different research companies in different countries.

ZEILER: It is very complicated, but it is mostly a technological

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process, and I am therefore optimistic that it will be sorted out.

WS: With all this viewing being

done online and on multiple devices, do you believe that linear channels will remain relevant?

ZEILER: Oh, of course, 100 percent.

The huge majority of viewing is still on linear channels. It will remain so also in the future, as long as these channels really come up with programs people want to watch live. All kinds of programs that have the characteristics of a live event, you don’t want to watch them the day after your friends watched them. On the fiction side it’s a little bit different, but still, if you have a must-see program, people want to watch it as soon as possible.

WS: Tell us about CNN International. Unlike CNN in the U.S., which has been struggling in the

ratings, CNN International is well respected by governments and business leaders.

ZEILER: CNN International is the strongest international news brand that exists.We find this in every single survey that we’ve done. I have not met anyone who doesn’t know CNN. What is this brand about?

Three qualities: First, it’s about news—if you really want to know something, it’s on CNN. Second, it’s about trustworthiness and independence. CNN International is neither right wing nor left wing, it’s not pro government or against government. Viewers trust CNN because it’s impartial. The third thing is, if something really important happens, that’s where you go.

It’s great to have this brand in the family. Sometimes it’s not always very easy to fulfill the promises, but as you will see,

whenever something happens, whether it’s Fukushima or the Arab Spring or Hurricane Sandy, people turn to CNN. WS: And how about Cartoon Network? The children’s market is competitive most everywhere. But Cartoon Network has carved out a niche for itself; it has a voice now.

ZEILER: Yes, it has a voice. It is very clearly positioned and it is more about boys. Boys love us almost everywhere in the world. Additionally,Turner developed a few local kids’ brands, like POGO! in India. And we also started free-to-air channels, like Boing, a joint venture with Mediaset in Italy and in Spain. And last but not least, don’t forget Boomerang and Cartoonito. The first one is a more family-oriented channel, with the second being the younger brother of Cartoon Network.

WS: You lived through and

Boys’ club: Cartoon Network Latin America is enhancing its bond with viewers with original programming like La CQ, a co-production with Televisa.

survived the annus horribilis 2009! Did you learn any lessons during that difficult year that you can now apply to the TBS International portfolio?

ZEILER: There are a few lessons. When a crisis like the one in 2009 hits, you really have to look at what is necessary and what is not. That leads you to analyze your organization, your structure and the core factors of your success. And you take out whatever is not absolutely necessary. Beyond these priorities, you have to keep in mind in a crisis that it is not all about savings.

You also need to improve efficiency, erase duplication and reduce internal bureaucracy. There is a phrase that applies to all this: Don’t waste a good crisis to improve your business. And last but not least, the third lesson is: don’t lose your competitive position in a crisis.Yes, you have to reduce costs, but don’t underinvest compared to your competition.

Hold on to your competitive posi-

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Sweet treats: Chhota Bheem airs on POGO! in India, one of Turner’s local kids’ brands around the world.

tion and, if possible, even increase it.

These are the three lessons I learned in 2009. And that is how I think you adapt in a crisis.

WS: I know each market is differ-

ent, but is the situation in Europe today as grim as it was in 2009?

ZEILER: It’s not like that, but Western Europe is a region where there is not a lot of growth and that also has an impact on the pay-TV industry.

You don’t find a lot of markets in Europe where pay-TV penetration is growing significantly. In some countries, pay TV is even losing subscribers due to the poor market conditions, especially in Southern Europe. Additionally, 2012 was also a hard year for all players regarding the advertising side of the business.

While the situation is definitely not as bad as 2009, it’s not great, either.

WS: Can social media sites be

friends of linear channels, or are they foes?

ZEILER: They can be friends, and they are. It’s a fantastic marketing tool. The only thing I would say is, they have to respect copyright laws.

WS: Is piracy still a big issue?

ZEILER: It’s an issue for the whole

creative industry, and we should not give up on really doing everything we can in order to prevent it. And there are several things we can do— offer our brands and content on as many devices as possible and have services which are comfortable to handle, to name only two. But we also have to remind our partners to comply with the law.

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advertisers in conversation index

4K Media 247 9 Story Entertainment 249 A+E Networks 281, 286 ABC Commercial 317 AFL Productions 307, 389 ALL TV 377 ALL3MEDIA International 61 AMC/Sundance Channel Global 103 American Cinema International 73 American Greetings Properties 243 APT Worldwide 306 Argentina Audiovisual 115 Armoza Formats 188, 189, 199, 201 ARTE 293 Artear 159 Artist View Entertainment 14, 15 Audio Network 157 Audiovisual from Spain 113 Azteca 51 BabyTV 275 Banijay International 211 BBC Worldwide 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 Beyond Distribution 59 BoPaul Media Worldwide (BMW) 40, 41 Brand Licensing Europe 393 Breakthrough Entertainment 245, 282, 283 Brightcove 338, 339 CAKE 236, 238, 240, 242 Canamedia 301 Canitec 383 Caracol Televisi贸n 163 Carsey-Werner Television 67 Cartoon Network 361 CBS Studios International 101, 331 CDC United Network 387 Cineflix Rights 31, 32, 33 Construir TV 375 Content Television 79, 169 Cyber Group Studios 226, 227, 270, 276 Daro Film Distribution 65 Deutsche Welle/DW Transtel 85 DreamWorks Classics 228, 229, 230, 231, 235 Eccho Rights 186, 187 Echo Bridge Entertainment 16, 17 Entertainment One Television International 1 Exim Licensing Group 263 Eyeworks International Distribution 206 FINAS 321 Foothill Entertainment 259 FOX International Channels 325 FremantleMedia 185, 194, 220, 333 FremantleMedia International 133, 136, 233, 313, 315, 337, 341 FremantleMedia Latin America 359 Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment 91, 251, 297 Gaumont International TV 53 GCMA 321 Global Agency 28, 29, 134, 135, 190, 191, 192, 193, 284, 285 Globosat 369 GMA Worldwide 111, 335 Goldstein Douglas Entertainment 36, 37 GRB Entertainment 72, 74, 76, 77 Guru Studio 267 HBO Latin America 367 Imagina International Sales 357 Incendo 69 International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences 119, 351

ITV-Inter Medya 18, 19 ITV Studios Global Entertainment 10, 11, 45, 207 Jonathan M. Shiff Productions 177 KBS 107 Keshet International 213 Ledafilms 94 Licensing Expo 121 Mannam Media 314 MarVista Entertainment 4, 5 Mediatoon 260, 262 Miramax 49 Mission Pictures International 73 Modern Videofilm 93 Mondo TV S.p.A. 225, 272, 349 Motion Picture Corporation of America (MPCA) 55 Multicom Entertainment Group 63 MultiVisionnaire Pictures 117 National Geographic Channels 47, 173, 312 NATPE 385, 420 NBCUniversal 327 Nerd Corps Entertainment 239 Nickelodeon 93 Nottingham Forest 257 Novovision-MEG 305 ORF-Enterprise 81 Palatin Media 23 Passion Distribution 287 Playboy Plus Entertainment 75 Power 35 RCN Televisi贸n 155, 261 Record TV Network 345, 353 Red Arrow International 43, 215 Rive Gauche Television 197 Russia Television & Radio/SOVTELEEXPORT 143 Saban Brands 89, 237 Scripps Networks International 319, 425 Shine International 137, 139, 141, 209 Sky Vision 57 SLR Productions 177 Smithsonian Channel 167 Splash News 97 Starz Worldwide Distribution 24, 25 Studio 100 Media 241 Sullivan Entertainment 12, 13 Technicolor Digital Productions 255 Telefe International 343, 373 Telefilms 354 Telepool 175 Telescreen 253 Televisa Internacional 153, 219, 336, 352, 388 Televisa Networks 161 Temple Street Productions 265 Terranoa 289 The Funny Shorts Company 303 TM International 149, 171, 291 Tricon Films & Television 299 Turner Broadcasting 39 TV5MONDE 151 TVE 180 TVN Chile 381 Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution 27 twofour54 20, 21, 340 Venevision International 179 Warner Bros. International Television 426 WWE 71, 371 ZDF Enterprises 147

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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 Seth MacFarlane make fun of me?

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.

The editors of WS recognize that these little pearls of random fore-

Charlie Sheen

Ashton Kutcher

Seth MacFarlane

Global distinction: Erratic actor.

Sign: Virgo (b. September 3, 1965) Significant date: March 13, 2013 Noteworthy activity: The Anger Management star’s

Global distinction: Family Guy creator.

Sign: Scorpio (b. October 26, 1973) Significant date: February 24, 2013 Noteworthy activity: Known for his bold and often-

daughter is allegedly being bullied at school, a situation he feels the institution has ignored. Sheen makes a Twitter request for his followers to throw rotten eggs, toilet paper rolls or dog feces at the school. “We will not tolerate this level of abhorrent disrespect towards the child of your favorite Warlock,” he tweeted.

Horoscope: “Today’s planetary alignment may cause you to overreact…. If you can avoid being too extreme, this would help matters enormously.You don’t want to make a fool of yourself and lose out altogether.” (glo.msn.com)

times offensive sense of humor, MacFarlane ruffles quite a few feathers when hosting the 85th Academy Awards ceremony. Many critics blast the director of Ted for making a number of racist and sexist jokes that they felt were not appropriate for the high-profile event. Despite the backlash, the ratings for this year’s Oscars were still higher than the 2012 broadcast.

Horoscope: “Weigh your words well now, as some people close to you could take offense.” (indastro.com)

Jennifer Love Hewitt Ashton Kutcher

But rather than poring over charts

Global distinction: Former cougar boy-toy.

Sign: Aquarius (b. February 7, 1978) Significant date: March 7, 2013 Noteworthy activity: Months after Kutcher files for

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 significant days, they could have avoided a few surprises.

Jennifer Love Hewitt

Charlie Sheen

sight occasionally prove prophetic.

of the zodiac to predict world events,

Oprah Winfrey

divorce from Demi Moore, the 50-year-old actress responds with a request for spousal support from the Two and a Half Men star, who is estimated to have earned $24 million between May 2011 and May 2012, according to Forbes.The pair split up more than a year ago, with rumors circulating that Kutcher cheated on Moore with a younger woman.

Horoscope: “There may be some tense undercurrents or conflicts over money or values that disrupt a friendship this year.” (cafeastrology.com)

Oprah Winfrey Global distinction: Media mogul.

Sign: Aquarius (b. January 29, 1954) Significant date: March 15, 2013 Noteworthy activity: Winfrey’s new movie has her

filming some steamy love scenes with Terrence Howard.

The actor is discussing the project in an interview, when he says it was wonderful “to have love scenes with her and those tig ol’ bitties.” Rather than being offended,Winfrey later responds by saying:“Well, I do have big breasteses!”

Horoscope: “Maintaining a good sense of humor enables you to turn this into a socially successful day.” (alldailyhoroscope.com) 424 World Screen 4/13

Global distinction: Buxom brunette TV star.

Sign: Pisces (b. February 21, 1979) Significant date: March 10, 2013 Noteworthy activity: In an interview with USA Today,

The Client List star is asked if she would ever consider insuring her breasts. JLove responds:“I need, like, an insurance invitation. If somebody was like, ‘Hey, you know what? We would like to insure your boobs for $2.5 million,’ I’d be like, Do it. Love it! Why not? These things right here are worth $5 million!”

Horoscope: “Congratulations Pisces for defining yourself by your true gifts. When you know your worth, you know your power.” (demeterclarc.com)

Courteney Cox Global distinction: Television Cougar.

Sign: Gemini (b. June 15, 1964) Significant date: March 15, 2013 Noteworthy activity: Cox is attending a gala held in

honor of Al Gore when the former Friends star has a mini-meltdown on the red carpet. A reporter asks the 48-year-old actress if she is excited to meet the former vice president, when she snarls back, “I will be when you stop wasting my time and let me get to my event.”A source told The National Enquirer, “She made such a scene that everyone was shocked and disgusted with her.”

Horoscope: “You should act polished in public, keep your hands to yourself, and take out your best manners.” (horoscope.zodiaczoners.com)

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