How to Get a TV Buyer to Yes (When Budget is the Problem)
5 workarounds in a challenged market, as revealed by execs from Banijay, Fremantle and ITV Studios: 'Everybody's got to give'
Manori Ravindran covers international TV from London for Series Business. She recently wrote about brands funding unscripted shows, Ted Sarandos and Netflix’s impact on the U.K. as a production hub and what’s selling and who’s buying in the global TV market.
Hello Series Business readers! I’ve spent the majority of the week holed up in the British Film Institute’s Soho HQ as part of the London Film Festival’s best film jury, which includes Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard, Bob Marley: One Love) and documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe (The People vs. George Lucas, You Can Call Me Bill), screening the 11 films in competition. (My lips are sealed until Oct. 20.)
In a period where most studios are allergic to original ideas, these indie films provoke, inspire and make abundantly clear that somebody, somewhere, is willing to take a risk, and that — more often than not — it can pay off.
Halfway through jury duty, I realized the incongruity between this cinematic experience and recent conversations with top TV companies in the lead-up to next week’s international TV market, Mipcom. The whiplash is strong.
In just a few days, the great and the good of global television will descend on Cannes to buy and sell TV shows. There will be some new titles launched — a number of which you’ll see advertised on the side of the Grand Palais and “activated” by the Majestic hotel. But while an enterprising buyer in America, Europe or Asia may once have looked upon a hot, new drama as a chance to make a statement and put their channel on the map, that same executive will now see a big, fat risk, an untested title sorely lacking a track record.
Such risk aversion presents an uphill climb for the international TV companies funding and selling TV shows around the world. During the peak TV era, there were buyers aplenty — especially from the U.S. — eager to come in as co-production partners or acquire big British dramas. But now, even big players like Banijay, Fremantle and ITV Studios are feeling the squeeze of America’s challenged budgets.
“We’re probably in the most extreme situation the market has ever been in, with regards to how hard it can be to get shows financed,” Fremantle International boss Jens Richter tells me. “Because there’s less money to spend, people have to be less experimental.”
Of the major international players, Fremantle is the only company investing heavily in film, backing everything from Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness to the Daniel Craig-fronted Queer. But make no mistake, “we are very much still an entertainment production company,” says Richter, whose company controls the X Factor and Got Talent franchises.
Film may be the creative outlet for Fremantle executives to take riskier bets and vie for awards, but it’s the unscripted behemoths like Got Talent that sustain the business. Amid the ongoing market “reset,” as German executive Richter likes to call it, the onus is very much on safe, reliable returners — the more mainstream, the better.
“Now, it’s all about driving audiences,” says Richter, noting that the questions he’s getting are “‘What’s your audience for this show?’ ‘How much audience can you drive?’ That’s very much the focus with anything you want to bring to market.”
ITV Studios, the global TV company behind Love Island and which recently bought Sherlock producer Hartswood Films, is coming to Cannes with 20 returning dramas, including Vigil and Vera. But Ruth Berry, managing director of the studios’ global partnerships, echoes Fremantle’s Richter in saying that “it’s taking longer to sell big, new stuff because our buyers are being more considered.”
Both Berry and Richter’s comments speak to the immense pressures being heaped on their companies and the role they play in the TV ecosystem as distributors, financiers, creators and more. They’re being hit up from all angles by producers looking for financing — especially for big-budget dramas.
I spoke to these top executives at Fremantle and ITV Studios as well as Banijay Rights CEO Cathy Payne for a look at the creative solutions their companies are employing to make shows still happen, with the number one impediment involving — what else? — money, in advance of Mipcom.
In this issue, you’ll learn:
Why producers might need to defer their fees and share in profits afterwards
Clever ways to get brands to shoulder some of the cost of scripted productions
Why it’s taking longer for these TV players to recoup their investment
The race around the globe to find affordable, tax-friendly locales to produce English-language dramas
How European quotas for local content can be helpful
How broadcasters are meeting distributors halfway now around secondary rights
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