TV Europe October 2009

MIPCOM & SPORTEL

EDITION

European Drama

Sports Rights

The Dutch Media Market

ProSieben at 20

Five’s Dawn Airey

ITV Studios’ Lee Bartlettwww.tveurope.ws THE MAGAZINE OF EUROPEAN TELEVISION OCTOBER 2009

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Bavaria Media Television has more than 390 hours of newprogramming, headlined by Johan Falk, a Swedish-GermanTV movie collection.“A nicely balanced mix of investigativework with a solid dash of action, plus some insights into thebackground of the characters, the collection is offering a mixthat should sit very well with international buyers,” saysOliver Kreuter, the head of the company. Kreuter is alsoshowcasing the telenovela Lilly and the Girls; the TV moviesSt.Petersburg Romance and Lilly Schönauer 8:Confection of Love;plus the Spanish-language mini-series Connection. “BavariaMedia is lucky to have a strong parent in Bavaria Film,”Kreuter says.“In addition, [we have] forged strong relation-ships with various partners in all aspects of production, bothdomestically and internationally—and continue to do so.”

Highlights• Johan Falk• Lilly and the Girls• Connection• St. Petersburg Romance• Lilly Schönauer 8: Confection of Love

Johan Falk

Bavaria Media Televisionwww.bavaria-media.tv

“[Bavaria Media has] forgedstrong relationships with various partners in all aspectsof production, both domesticallyand internationally—andcontinue to do so.”

—Oliver Kreuter

According to managing director Louise Pedersen,ALL3MEDIA International has been faring well with itsdrama slate as of late thanks to the hits Midsomer Murders,Wild at Heart, Skins and Raw. “We are in a good positionto offer long-running quality drama series across a broadspectrum of taste and demographic appeal,” saysPedersen. But reality and factual entertainment also taketop billing on the slate. From Stephen Lambert comesUndercover Boss, a reality series that is being produced forChannel 4 in the U.K. and CBS in the U.S. The Cube isa new game-show format. Chopper Squad is an observa-tional documentary series produced for TV2 in NewZealand. Also on offer is Rachel Allen: Home Cooking.“Our factual-entertainment slate is going from strengthto strength, and we can offer [everything from] high-action to cookery programming,” Pedersen says.

Highlights• Undercover Boss• The Cube• Chopper Squad• Raw• Rachel Allen: Home Cooking

ALL3MEDIA Internationalwww.all3mediainternational.com

Raw

“Our factual-entertainmentslate is going from strength to strength, and we can offer [everythingfrom] high-action to cookery programming.”

—Louise Pedersen

5TV EUROPE

IN THIS ISSUE

High DramaThe demand for Europeandrama, from eventmovies to daily soaps,remains strong 20

Eye on the BallPrices for top sportingevents have been relatively immune to the downturn 30

Going DutchThe Netherlands’competitive market 36

ProSieben at 20Andreas Bartl and Thilo Proff on the broadcaster’s milestoneanniversary 40

InterviewsFive’s Dawn Airey 50ITV Studios’Lee Bartlett 54

Returning dramas factor heavily in BBC Worldwide’s plansfor MIPCOM, with new seasons of Doctor Who andTorchwood available.“We will be very focused on leveragingvalue from our key brands,”says Tim Mutimer,the senior VPof sales and distribution for Europe, the Middle East andAfrica.“We will achieve this by working hard to maximizethe windows that we license across both linear and on-demand platforms.” Other scripted titles include Married,Single,Other and Taking the Flak.“These programs have highproduction values, excellent casts and quality writing.” Inkids, the lead new series is Tronji. Mutimer says it is “aunique and innovative interactive children’s property for6- to 8-year-olds and is available across multiple platforms: aTV program, a website, as well as an online game.”

Highlights• Doctor Who• Torchwood• Married, Single, Other• Taking the Flak• Tronji

Doctor Who

BBC Worldwidewww.bbcworldwide.com

“We will be very focusedon leveraging value fromour key brands.”

—Tim Mutimer

Highlights• Profit at All Cost• Foresight• GLOBAL.ized• Morning OLI!

DW-Transtel

The distribution arm of Germany’s international broad-caster is promoting new series “that offer a little somethingfor everyone,” according to Petra Schneider, DeutscheWelle’s director of distribution. There are three factualseries—Profit at All Cost, Foresight and GLOBAL.ized—aswell as a kids’ show, Morning OLI! Schneider also highlightsa series of programs addressing this year’s 20th anniversary ofthe fall of the Berlin Wall. “We have developed a range ofprograms that focus on what life was like in this era,”Schneider says.

“Deutsche Welle has been known for its quality news andinfotainment for years.We have had a range of successful co-productions in the past and are looking to reach out to evenmore partners in the future.This includes not only Europe,but also regions like Asia where we would like to expand ourpalette to include programming with a focus on local issues.”

www.dw-transtel.de

Profit at All Cost

“We have had a range of successful co-productions inthe past and are looking to reach out to even morepartners in the future.”

—Petra Schneider

TV EUROPE6

Ricardo Seguin GuisePublisher

Anna CarugatiEditor

Mansha DaswaniExecutive Editor

Kristin BrzoznowskiManaging Editor

Lauren M. UdaProduction and Design

DirectorSimon Weaver

Online DirectorPhyllis Q. Busell

Art DirectorTatiana Rozza

Sales and MarketingDirector

Kelly QuirozSales and Marketing

ManagerRae Matthew

Business Affairs ManagerCesar Suero

Sales and MarketingAssistant

Ricardo Seguin GuisePresident

Anna CarugatiExecutive VP and

Group Editorial DirectorMansha Daswani

VP of Content Strategy

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For MIPCOM, Imagina International Sales is placing anemphasis on drama and factual fare, highlighted from thecompany’s broad and diverse slate from Spanish producers.“We have reality shows, game shows, entertainment pro-grams, documentaries, mini-series, feature films—we havequite a huge catalogue and a [varied] catalogue,” says thecompany’s sales director, Géraldine Gonard.

Top offerings include new seasons of the perioddrama The Red Eagle (Águila roja) and of the mystery seriesThe Boarding School (El Internado)—“that’s one of the mainstars of the catalogue,” Gonard says. In unscripted fare,meanwhile, Checkpoint Rock is a new 70-minute musicaldoc; Face to Face by Quintero (Entrevistas con Jesús Quintero)is an interview series; and Son and Moon (Diario de un astro-nauta) sees an astronaut attempting to maintain a relation-ship with his son over seven months in space.

Highlights• The Red Eagle • Checkpoint Rock• The Boarding School • Face to Face by Quintero • Son and Moon

Imagina International Saleswww.imaginasales.tv

David Ellender, the CEO of FremantleMedia Enterprises,refers to the company’s offerings for MIPCOM as one ofthe “savviest slates we’ve ever delivered.Obviously,we’re notout of these tough times,but we’ve designed our offering tocope with these challenges and we’re optimistic.”

A highlight of the catalogue is the Jamie Oliver portfoliowith Jamie’s American Road Trip, Jamie Does… and Jamie’sXmas. “All three are exciting new takes on what JamieOliver programs have always done—inspire, entertain andeducate.”Also new are the series Shark U and Swords:Life onthe Line from BermanBraun, as well as season six of ProjectRunway and the companion series Models of the Runway.Ellender also highlights Jesse James Is a Dead Man.“Not onlyare we introducing exciting new programming, but we alsohave a fantastic slate of returning series and franchises withproven appeal to lessen the risk for our clients.”

Highlights• Is She Really Going Out with Him?• Project Runway and Models of the Runway• Jesse James Is a Dead Man• Jamie Oliver Portfolio• BermanBraun Portfolio

FremantleMedia Enterprises

Jesse James Is aDead Man

“Not only are we introducingexciting new programming, butwe also have a fantastic slate ofreturning series and franchiseswith proven appeal to lessen therisk for our clients.”

—David Ellender

www.fremantlemedia.com

Face to Face by Quintero

“We have reality shows,game shows, entertainmentprograms, documentaries,mini-series, featurefilms—we have quite a huge and [varied] catalogue.”

—Géraldine Gonard

126 World Screen 10/09

TV EUROPE8


Following the strong debut of the drama Missing on theBBC earlier this year, Leopard International is excited to beoffering up the series to international buyers.“A great cast iscomplemented by iconic locations,making this a compellingdrama,” says Sarah Diggins, the company’s head of sales.

Leading off the factual-entertainment mix is HiddenPotential, a lifestyle show produced for HGTV. It has“been sold to around ten key territories across Asia,Europe, North America and Africa, and we will be takingnew episodes to the market,” Diggins notes. She alsospotlights Cash in the Attic, which, she says,“continues toprove a global seller and a very relevant show during thesefinancially straitened times”; and the BBC One seriesMissing Live. “We have a raft of different shows and for-mats which have already proved successful in theirdomestic markets but have a broader appeal to cross overinto the international marketplace.”

Highlights• Missing• Hidden Potential• Missing Live• Cash in the Attic

Leopard International

Missing Live

“We have a raft of differentshows and formats which havealready proved successful intheir domestic markets buthave a broader appeal to crossover into the internationalmarketplace.”

—Sarah Diggins

www.leopardinternational.com

On the heels of the successful rollout of its long-runningseries Regina and Gypsy Heart, MediaPro Distribution isexcited to be bringing the Romanian costume dramaAniela, produced for Acasa, to MIPCOM.“Aniela will showa world forgotten long ago, an elegant, educated, rich andromantic era in Romania’s history,” says Ruxandra Ion, theVP of MediaPro Pictures and managing director and gen-eral producer of Promance.“Elements that help to show amore faithful image of Bucharest in 1900 [have been con-structed]:over 1,000 costumes of the period,96 interior set-tings, makeup and hair specialists, a cast made up of greatand important Romanian actors.” Ion says that the show isPromance’s most expensive title thus far.The companyis throwing its promotional weight behind the launch,witha theatrical airing on the same night as the television pre-miere, plus an event featuring the cast.

Highlights• Aniela• State of Romania, Student at Sorbonne• Ho Ho Ho• Regina • Gypsy Heart

MediaPro Distribution

Aniela

“Aniela will show a worldforgotten long ago, anelegant, educated, rich andromantic era in Romania’shistory.”

—Ruxandra Ion

www.mediaprodistribution.com

TV EUROPE10


NordicWorld is bringing 15 to 20 new productions toMIPCOM, according to CEO Espen Huseby, spanningthe documentary, drama,kids’ and sports genres.A top pri-ority on the slate is the documentary Bernadotte: A RoyalFamily, a two-parter directed by Gregor Nowinski.There’salso a concert special, Alexander Rybak: Fairytale at theOpera; the William Shakespeare doc Sweet Swan of Avon;the one-hour special Dirty Cargo, about low-quality gaso-line being shipped to Africa; and Sarajevo Ricochet, whichconsist of two parts:“The U.S. Green Light” and “A TownBetrayed.” These productions, Huseby says, “represent abroad spectrum of documentaries and music.They repre-sent...the best from the Nordic region.”

He adds,“NordicWorld is expanding and we are gettingmore aggressive in acquiring new products and we haveestablished our own investment fund to make this happen.”

Highlights• Bernadotte:A Royal Family• Alexander Rybak: Fairytale at the Opera• Sweet Swan of Avon• Dirty Cargo• Sarajevo Ricochet

NordicWorldAlexander Rybak: Fairytale

at the Opera

“[Our programs] representa broad spectrum of documentaries andmusic. They represent...the best from the Nordicregion.”

—Espen Huseby

www.nordicworld.tv

Patricio Teubal,Mediaset Distribution’s head of sales, is opti-mistic about the slate of titles the company has chosen tohighlight at this market.“Mediaset’s production quality hasundoubtedly increased in the past years, and some of our[programs] are now [created] with an international flavorthat allows us to travel with them among various broadcast-ers in the most diverse markets.”Top product include thecrime series Antimafia Squad and the family drama Join theFamily. Mediaset is also offering the format rights toscripted series like About My Brother and My Daughters.

“We’re glad to have maintained the same ready-made-program rhythm that we had last year, and have increasednotably our new scripted-formats business. Three of ourseries have been adapted in European countries, and wehave lately closed options in six different countries (includ-ing France and the U.S.) for five of our recent productions.”

Highlights• Antimafia Squad• Join the Family• About My Brother• My Daughters• Family Storm

Mediaset Distributionwww.mediasetdistribution.com

Antimafia Squad

“We’re glad to have maintained the same ready-made-program rhythm that we had last year, and have increasednotably our new scripted-formats business.”

—Patricio Teubal

TV EUROPE12


The mini-series The Day of the Triffids, based on the JohnWyndham novel, is one of the most highly anticipatedproductions for BBC One this fall. It’s also Power’s leadtitle at MIPCOM.“This is one of our biggest-ever pro-ductions,” says Justin Bodle, Power’s CEO. Anothermajor-scale production from the company is Ice, whichBodle describes as a “massive, multimillion-dollar project.”Currently in preproduction is a mini-series adaptation ofAlistair MacLean’s Puppet on a Chain, set for delivery nextyear alongside another MacLean-based title, The DarkCrusader. The slate is rounded out by the Lifetime TVmovie Acceptance and the disaster mini-series The Storm.

“Power is renowned for big-budget drama, one of ourspecialties being disaster movies with big budgets andeven bigger special effects,” says Bodle. “These titles arealways in demand.”

Highlights• The Day of the Triffids• Ice• Alistair MacLean’s Puppet on a Chain• Acceptance• The Storm

Powerwww.powcorp.com

The German broadcaster ProSieben has carved a niche foritself in the broadcast of CGI-laden catastrophe mini-seriesand movies,many of which SevenOne International has beenbusily selling around the world.The newest is Sea of Death, a90-minute production that Jens Richter, the managing direc-tor of SevenOne, refers to as “the most brilliant, special-effects-loaded TV movie we have ever done for ProSieben.”

Also joining the company’s extensive TV-movie lineup isanother catastrophe feature, Factor 8; a host of romanticcomedies; and the mystery thriller Gonger II. The firstGonger, Richter says, sold into markets like Spain, Centraland Eastern Europe, and Latin America, so he has highhopes for the sequel. Rounding out SevenOne’s highlightsare the second season of the female-skewing dramedyS1NGLE and the reality series Cover Story, which is alsoavailable as a format.

Highlights• S1NGLE• Sea of Death• Factor 8• Gonger II• Cover Story

SevenOne International

S1NGLE

“[Sea of Death is going to be] the most brilliant,special-effects-loaded TVmovie we have ever done for ProSieben.”

—Jens Richter

www.71int.com

TV EUROPE1144

The Day of the Triffids

“Power is renowned for big-budget drama, one of ourspecialties being disastermovies with big budgets and even bigger specialeffects. These titles arealways in demand.”

—Justin Bodle


Telewizja Polska’s catalogue spans the documentary, dramaand kids’ genres. Szymon Pawlowski, the deputy director ofprogram acquisitions and sales in the international-affairsdepartment, says of the slate,“We are proud to offer goodquality films that have already achieved a spectacular successamong Polish and international audiences.We are offeringgood movies for the most acceptable price.”

There is the ten-part wildlife series The Saga of theAncient Forest; the action comedy The Last Action; the psy-chological family drama The Scratch; the animated PolishFairy Tales; and the three-part factual offering The Secretsof the Nile Valley.

Discussing his goals for MIPCOM, Pawlowski says,“Wehave high hopes for VOD distribution.We would also liketo extend our business in Eastern Europe, the Middle East,Asia,Africa and South America.”

Highlights• The Saga of the Ancient Forest• The Last Action• The Scratch• Polish Fairy Tales• The Secrets of the Nile Valley

Telewizja Polska (TVP)The Saga of theAncient Forest

“We are proud to offer good quality films that have already achieved a spectacular success among Polish and international audiences. We are offering good movies forthe most acceptable price.”

—Szymon Pawlowski

www.international.tvp.pl

For Bernhard Schwab, the sales director at Tandem, a keystrategy for riding through these challenging times hasbeen to “put a lot of effort into not only producing highquality, but also listening to the trends and the needs of ourinternational broadcasters.” Hearing a need for event pro-gramming that will guarantee audiences, Schwab is excitedto be showing buyers footage from the $40-million mini-series The Pillars of the Earth,based on the Ken Follett novel.“Sometimes you have the chance to come to a project thatdelivers on all aspects, and that’s Pillars of the Earth.”

Tandem is also bringing the Patricia Cornwell moviefranchise to the market. “Even before going into produc-tion, we were able to presell it into 40 territories,” saysSchwab. Other highlights include the Nora Roberts TVmovies, the mini-series Impact and three new action-adventure movies under the Action Pack(ed) banner.

Highlights• The Pillars of the Earth• Action Pack(ed)—Volume One• Patricia Cornwell Event Movie Franchise• The Nora Roberts Collection II• Impact

Tandem Communications

“[We] put a lot of effort into not onlyproducing high quality, but also listening to the trends and the needs of our international broadcasters.”

—Bernhard Schwab

www.tandemcom.de

Impact

TV EUROPE16

Big-budget literary adaptations take top billing forTMG International. On offer will be The Sea Wolf,which broadcasts on ZDF this fall, and from the sameteam, the upcoming Moby Dick. “We are delighted tohave signed up two such powerful, charismatic andversatile actors as William Hurt and Ethan Hawke forthe lead roles in Moby Dick,” says Herbert Kloiber,TMG’s chairman. “With Mike Barker we have adirector who stunningly confirmed his seaworthinessin the production of the The Sea Wolf. Through hisdirecting and Nigel Williams’s script, we are laying asolid foundation for a TV event that will captivateviewers all over the world.”

TMG is also continuing to roll out Rosamunde Pilcher’sFour Seasons Collection, a series of romance TV movies.“Those clearly have an enormous amount of repeatvalue and export value,” Kloiber states.

Highlights• Moby Dick• The Sea Wolf• Flashpoint• Rosamunde Pilcher’s Four Seasons Collection

TMG Internationalwww.tmg.de

Rosamunde Pilcher’s Four Seasons Collection

“We are delighted tohave signed up two suchpowerful, charismaticand versatile actors asWilliam Hurt and EthanHawke for the lead rolesin Moby Dick.”

—Herbert Kloiber

ZDF Enterprises’ range of programming for MIPCOMincludes its key strengths—drama, kids’ content and docu-mentaries.Topping the list of new dramas is the 240-episodeseries Alisa: Follow Your Heart, a lighthearted romance abouta woman who returns to her hometown and adoptive fam-ily to find work.“Audiences are looking for something thatlets them forget about the current crisis, that gives them abreak from the stress outside of the living room,” saysChristian Massmann, the head of sales.Also available is themini-series The Krupps: A Family Between War and Peace.Massmann also highlights the crime series The Protectors.“It’san action-driven crime series about a team of bodyguardsworking in a special unit fighting international terrorism.”

Massmann is confident that the company’s drama offer-ings will appeal to a wide cross-section of buyers.“There’s abig demand for feel-good series and movies and for action-packed cop shows and thrillers,” he says.

Highlights• Alisa: Follow Your Heart• The Krupps:A Family Between War and Peace• Marie Brand Collection• The Protectors

ZDF Enterprises

Alisa: Follow Your Heart

www.zdf-enterprises.de

“Audiences are lookingfor something that letsthem forget about thecurrent crisis, that gives them a break from the stress outsideof the living room.”

—Christian Massmann

TV EUROPE18


On Europe’s television screens, locally produced drama hasbeen taking on imported American network series fordecades.This summer, there was an entirely new field onwhich that battle was fought—the United States. NBC airedthe BBC One commission Merlin, acquired from Fremantle-Media Enterprises, while ABC scooped up the sci-fi mini-series Impact from Germany’s Tandem Communications.Andon the heels of becoming a Twitter sensation after its Comic-Conpanel,Torchwood:Children of Earth, from BBC Worldwide, gaveBBC America its best-ever ratings.

The opening of the U.S. as a new market for Europeanfiction imports is good news for an industry facing heavypressures on budgets. It has been well documented that sev-eral commercial broadcasters, reeling from a depressed ad

market, are turning more to lower-cost reality and enter-tainment fare. Nonetheless, delivering mass viewership isstill a priority, and big-budget event productions areknown as a go-to source for luring advertisers.

“High-concept big budget is definitely still workingand better value than shows that are less interesting toadvertisers and audiences alike,” says Justin Bodle, thechairman and CEO of Power.

“It’s in times like this that you are even more careful in howyou develop your events—you want to hit male and femaleaudiences, you want to hit the commercial audience, youwant to get as wide a reach as you can,” notes Jens Richter,the managing director of SevenOne International. “Ofcourse, channels want to save money, but they also want toavoid risk.”

GERMAN GIANTSSevenOne has a steady supply of event mini-series andTV movies to offer up, thanks to ProSieben and Sat.1’scontinued investment in the genre. On the slate isProSieben’s Sea of Death, an action catastrophe film, theupcoming Sat.1 mini-series The Frontier and the recentlybroadcast Crash Point: Berlin.

ProSieben is also a major client for Tandem Com-munications, which is co-producing The Pillars of the Earthwith the German broadcaster.The mini-series, based on KenFollett’s best-selling thriller, features an international cast thatincludes Ian McShane, Donald Sutherland and Rufus Sewell.Tandem is expecting its latest production to fare as well onthe international market as its previous big-budget eventsImpact and Lost City Raiders.“Lost City Raiders has been soldin 160 countries so far, Impact in 170,” says Bernhard Schwab,the director of sales at Tandem.“It’s really important to us thatwe have a title that travels worldwide.That’s the number onepoint for us.When we get involved in a project, we alwaysneed to make sure that it fits the international market.”

It’s not just the commercial broadcasters in Germany thatare faring well with one-off fiction.ZDF Enterprises is bring-ing to MIPCOM The Krupps:A Family Between War and Peace,a three-part historical drama based on the real-life family ofa German steel baron.“It’s a glamorous, dramatic mini-serieswith really good production values, a big-screen look and afascinating cast,” says Christian Massmann, ZDF Enterprises’head of sales.“It was a big hit in Germany, so we’re looking


Ti

From big-budget event productions to long-runningvolume series, broadcasters are continuing to seek

out top-quality drama from Europe.

20 TV EUROPE

FremantleMedia Enterprises’Abroad.

HighDrama

By Mansha Daswani

forward to distributing it worldwide. [Broadcasters] need eventprograms that are image building. In times when TV broad-casters are not only fighting against other television competi-tors but also against VOD platforms and so on, awareness is areally big issue. If you want to increase your awareness, youneed those event programs in order to build up a certain imageand position yourself as someone people love to watch.”

Another major player in Germany’s busy event-productionsector is Tele München Group (TMG), whose The Sea Wolfmini-series is slated to air on ZDF later this year.TMG is fol-lowing that up with Moby Dick,which began production in Sep-tember.“The RTL Group and the ProSiebenSat.1 Group aretightening their belts,” concedes Herbert Kloiber,TMG’s chair-man.“But they do engage in three or four of these prestige proj-ects,and we like to have our hands in at least one or two of them.Christmas, Easter, or whenever days are dark, it’s always good tohave one or two of these bigger productions.”

TMG’s slate of what Kloiber refers to as “lavish” eventsincludes its series of TV movies based on Rosumunde Pilcher’sbestselling novels,called the Four Seasons Collection.“We did Com-ing Home with Vanessa Redgrave.Those clearly have an enor-mous amount of export value and repeat value—even in theirsecond or third run they will deliver a solid number.”

SHOW ME THE MONEYFinancing these titles, however, has never been morechallenging than it is today.“Fiction is still under attackbecause of its high cost,” Kloiber notes, citing MobyDick’s €16 million budget as an example.Securing co-financing partners on the two-parter, which starsWilliam Hurt and Ethan Hawke, will be TMG’s pri-ority for MIPCOM. RTL, ORF and RHI Entertain-ment are already on board.

The international market is integral to gettingmany of these productions off the ground.Therefore,at ProSiebenSat.1 Media, SevenOne is consulted earlyon in the development process.“When there is thefirst outline, the first idea of a potential future eventmovie coming up, that’s when we become involved,”Richter says.“With a very specific project which hasa specific genre, addressing a very specific audienceprofile, you can immediately think of certain poten-

tial channel partners who match that profile.That’s the moment you bring them on board.”

Power, similarly, has built a strong productionpipeline by securing advance presales of its eventproductions, among them The Day of the Triffids.Based on John Wyndham’s bestselling apocalypticnovel and commissioned by BBC One, the two-part drama starring Dougray Scott,Vanessa Red-grave, Eddie Izzard and Jason Priestley, amongothers, presold to 150 territories. Power is also inproduction on Ice, a disaster feature, and in pre-production on mini-series based on AlistairMacLean’s bestselling novels Puppet on a Chainand The Dark Crusader.

“The enormous production values, big-namecast and extensive special effects that are an inte-gral part of Power’s brand mean that budgets arehigh,” says Bodle.“We handle this by sticking toour ambition, and trying to generate as much

upfront support as we can.We have a huge client base—the 200 orso broadcasters are immensely supportive,and that continued helpkeeps our shows being made at the right level of budget, scaleand ambition.Without this,we would definitely find it hard.”

THE RIGHT FORMULACo-productions with partners from multiple territories, how-ever, can be a challenge to execute.As Richter notes,“Whatwe had years ago, the ‘Euro pudding,’ no one wants that any-more.There needs to be a clear lead in the production andthere needs to be close cooperation between the co-financing,co-production partners.”

“It’s extremely important when working on a co-productionthat you pick the right partners for the project,”Bodle asserts.“It must be a shared vision.”

In this changing economy, it’s not just the event minis andTV movies that are structured as multipartner co-productions.Producers and broadcasters across the board are seeking outnew models for keeping a supply of longer-running serieson-screen.

“There’s no doubt that the drama budgets have beenreduced,” says Emmanuelle Namiech, the director of acqui-


TV EUROPE22

A day at the beach: Bavaria Media isoffering a mix of long-running seriesand event specials,like the hit mini-seriesBuddenbrooks.

Taking aim: Power’s XIII fared so well as a mini-series, the company isnow producing a full 13-part series.

BavariaMTV WorldScreen 24 13x33 02 JohanFalk indd 1 09 09 2009 18:01:57 Uhr

sitions and co-productions at ITV Studios Global Entertain-ment. Now, she says,“there is more reliance on deficit fund-ing either through co-production or through distributionadvance or a combination of both.”

ITV Studios is a volume provider of drama,which for yearshas dominated the British content-export market.The com-pany is heading to MIPCOM with a mixed array, includingthe ITV1 commission Identity, a contemporary crime drama,as well as new seasons of the Inspector Lewis, A Touch of Frost,Miss Marple and Poirot franchises.“The thing we are reallyseeing is the demand for high-volume series,” says Namiech.“We are trying to have a complete mix. Channels have verydifferent needs.Action, disasters, event television, are still indemand, as well as long-running series with established char-acters and strong production values.”

NEW HORIZONSITV Studios’ own production output is a primary source forthe company’s worldwide distribution slate, but Namiechpoints to the increasing diversification of its content supply.“We work with ITV Studios, we work with a number ofindependent producers through first-look deals or exclusiveoutput deals, and we also work with international producerson a project-by-project basis. We are certainly looking[beyond] the traditional set of suppliers in the U.K.”

For example, ITV Studios contributed to the funding onthe Sky1 commission The Take—based on a Martina Colenovel—which was co-financed with the Irish DevelopmentBoard. It has also taken on the rights to a Canadian drama,Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, from Shaftesbury Films.

BBC Worldwide has dipped its toes outside of the U.K.pool, as well, representing the rights to the Canadian dramedyBeing Erica. Nonetheless, the commercial arm of the Britishpublic broadcaster still does its biggest scripted business onprime-time, U.K.-originated dramas.

“Our latest top-selling dramas are Doctor Who, Spooks andPrimeval,” says Sarah Doole, the director of drama and comedyfor content and production at BBC Worldwide.“Doctor Whohas been a phenomenal international success that willundoubtedly continue with the new Doctor. Spooks also has

great international appeal as it hasbeen sold to 74 broadcasters inmore than 50 territories. Primevalalso sells well on the internationalmarket with 47 broadcasters inmore than 41 territories pickingup the hit sci-fi series.”

Joining those returning titles onthe MIPCOM slate are in-houseproductions such as the BBC Oneperiod drama Emma, as well as inde-pendently produced fare: the five-part crime thriller Paradox for BBCOne and Left Bank Pictures’ ITVcommission Married Single Other.

“BBC Worldwide is not immunefrom the economic downturn, sowe understand the challenges thatare facing broadcasters and produc-ers around the world,” Doole notes.“We are always adapting to chang-

ing circumstances and are looking into new and more creativedeals that will benefit our clients as well as our business.”

INDEPENDENTS DAYAnother U.K.-based company, FremantleMedia Enterprises(FME), has been ramping up its drama portfolio, announcinga slew of first-look deals with independent producers atMIPTV this year.“There is no doubt about it that advertis-ing is down and audiences are fragmenting, so there is lessmoney for drama,” says Mark Gray, FME’s VP of program-ming.“While there are fewer slots and lower budgets, thedemand is still there, so opportunities for innovative and flex-ible producers still very much exist.”

One of FME’s biggest drama titles thus far has been TheAdventures of Merlin, which has already sold to more than50 broadcasters in 180-plus countries and has been greenlit


Masked avenger: Imagina is showcasing the second season ofits period drama The Red Eagle, which was a hit for Spain’s TVE.

Breaking through:The sci-fi seriesPrimeval has been oneof BBC Worldwide’sbest-selling dramasthis year.

TV EUROPE24

for a second season. New on FME’s MIPCOM drama portfo-lio is the eight-part Trinity, set against the backdrop of an Eng-lish university where something seems amiss. “It has darkcomedic undertones, and there are a wide range of charactersthat will appeal to a fairly broad viewing public,” Gray says.

Also on offer are talkbackTHAMES’7x1-hour Monday Mon-day and the two-hour British/Canadian co-production Abroad.“It’s based on the true story of writer Leah McLaren, whosechronicles of her dating experiences in London ended up as acontroversial and widely read cover story in The Spectator aboutthe failures of the modern English male. It’s definitely a comedicdrama but it gets to the core of some universal men/womenissues, which will translate in any territory.”

Another important distribution partner for the U.K.’s largecommunity of independent producers is ALL3MEDIA Inter-national, which represents sister companies under theALL3MEDIA umbrella as well as third-party entities.Thecompany’s top drama exports include the hit mystery seriesMidsomer Murders—produced for ITV1, the show has aired inmore than 200 markets—and the family drama Wild at Heart.

“Producers are coming to distributors at an earlier stagewith the requirement to gauge the international marketplacefor presales and gain higher development advances,” saysLouise Pedersen, ALL3MEDIA International’s managingdirector, on the impact of the downturn on the British drama-production landscape.

At MIPCOM, the company will be looking for presales onthe second six-part season of Raw, set in the restaurant busi-ness, and on the whopping 13th season of Midsomer Murders.“There’s security in proven long-running drama, and stilldemand for new crime/thriller mini-series,” says Pedersen.

CONTINENTAL TASTEWhile Britain is certainly a dominant force in the export ofEuropean dramas, several territories on the Continent are far-ing just as well. Germany, for example, has for years beenchurning out hit police series that have made their way acrossthe globe.“The classic ZDF crime shows, such as Derrick, havesold and broadcast in more than 130 territories worldwide,”

says ZDF Enterprises’ Massmann.“We have a cou-ple of ongoing, traditional crime series with highvolumes, more than 350 to 400 episodes.This is agenre of programming that broadcasters are stilllooking for.”

ZDF will have more crime dramas to showcaseat the market, Massmann adds. “There are newyoung,urban crime series such as Leipzig Homicideand Cologne P.D.We distribute a couple of veryinteresting Scandinavian crime series, such as Ver-dict Revised and now The Protectors.”

There will also be some lighter fare, like thefemale-skewing romance series Alisa: Follow YourHeart, with some 240 episodes available for broad-casters in need of a volume buy.“Audiences arelooking for something that gives them a break fromthe stress outside of the living room,” Massmanncontinues.“They are looking for something thatlets them relax.There’s a big demand for feel-goodseries and movies.”

This is a sentiment shared by Richter atSevenOne, which is bringing a slate of romantic-

comedy TV movies to market, plus family-entertainment fea-tures and a range of mystery thrillers.“Romantic comedies,escapism,good feelings—those are the buzz words ringing somebells at the moment,” Richter says. On the series front, mean-while, SevenOne has the hit telenovela Anna to offer.

A ROMANCE A DAYBavaria Media Television is another major player in the Euro-pean telenovela market, with a slate that includes the hit Stormof Love.The show, says Oliver Kreuter, the head of BavariaMedia Television, is the company’s top-selling drama.“Solidlyestablished in 20 territories, the telenovela has taken on the roleof the ‘must-have’ programming mainstay for many broadcast-ers and their schedulers.We have received the confirmation to


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Nature calls:ALL3MEDIA International is currently presellingthe fifth season of the successful familydrama Wild at Heart.

Taking a spin: Girlfriends is one of the new Italian series thatMediaset Distribution is bringing to MIPCOM.

produce 200 additional episodes, which will bring the seriesto an impressive total of 1,270 episodes available by 2010.”

Kreuter expects the French novela Second Chance to be sim-ilarly successful, and Bavaria is launching the 100x25-minutetelenovela Lilly and the Girls at MIPCOM.

Also a headline property for Bavaria this year is theSwedish-German crime TV-movie collection Johan Falk.“Anicely balanced mix of investigative work with a solid dashof action, plus some insights into the background of the char-acters, the collection is offering a mix that should sit very wellwith international buyers,” Kreuter says.“Solidly producedcrime stories are definitely in demand.The upswing of the‘Scandi-Crime’ genre is a clear indicator that broadcasters areincreasingly willing to take a truly international approach whenit comes to crime stories.”

CRIME PAYSPolice dramas feature prominently for Mediaset Distribu-tion, but the Italian distributor has shored up slots for a vari-ety of productions this year, according to Patricio Teubal, thehead of sales.Top sellers have included PoliceDistrict, Corleone and Elisa. Propertieslaunching at MIPCOM include the crimeseries Antimafia Squad, the mini-series TheCourage of a Princess and 55 Ways to Death,the TV movie Follow Your Dreams and thecomedy Girlfriends.

Teubal says that Mediaset will also bepushing its scripted format slate at the mar-ket. “We have closed options for some ofour scripted formats, such as Maternity Wardin Portugal and Poland; Family Storm inGreece;The Mall in Poland, and we’re nego-tiating two others in the U.S.”

Imagina International Sales is also see-ing strong demand for its Spanish fiction-formats portfolio,notably The Boarding School,an Antena 3 series that is in its third season.“It’s a mix of mystery and drama,” says Geral-dine Gonard, the company’s sales director.

“We have sold it in several territories.That’sone of the main stars of the catalogue.”

Another highlight for Imagina is theperiod drama The Red Eagle, which scoreda 25-percent share when broadcast on theSpanish public broadcaster TVE.“We’ll goto MIPCOM with two seasons, which isgreat,” Gonard notes.“Most channels wantto buy a series when it is at least two sea-sons in.”

Similarly, France’s AB InternationalDistribution is eager to be offering up athird season of Mafiosa. “It’s sold in 61countries,” says Julien Leroux, interna-tional sales manager at the company.“Theeight episodes of the second season haveattracted nearly 1 million viewers eachweek on Canal+.The third season willstart shooting in October for a Novem-ber 2010 broadcast and Canal+ hasalready commissioned the writing of a

fourth season for November 2011.”On AB’s slate, Mafiosa joins a crop of other hit series, includ-

ing the dramedy The Rookies and the eight-part thriller The Avi-gnon Prophecy, as well as a host of TV movies:Hit and Run,MontBlanc Mystery, Lady in Chief, The Salengro Case and Ella’s Band.

Whatever the genre, producers are learning how to domore with less.“Simply put, producers are cutting costs andbeing a lot more realistic about what they have to workwith,” says FME’s Gray.“Whereas producers may have lookedfor extra budget to achieve something in days past, they’reincreasingly looking at original and creative ways to deliverquality on a smaller budget and, of course, at different waysof sharing production costs.”

“Budget pressure has been a constant factor for as longas I remember,” says Bavaria’s Kreuter.“However, acquiredprogramming is still a relatively economic way to procurecontent.And when it comes to production, many Europeanproducers have become quite adept at making due with whatis available. Although broadcasters should always keep inmind:‘You get what you pay for.’”


Ready for battle:Tandem is doing amajor push on its big-budget event mini-series The Pillars of the Earth.

Problem-solvers: Crime dramas remain a key element of ZDF Enterprises’ portfolio,with new series like Stuttgart Homicide available.

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The sports-programming sector, like any other, is feeling theeffects of the economic downturn, but not with equal force.Probably more than any other genre, sports programming hasstrategic potential.At the top end,the competition for individualproperties is not only about ratings but about corporate success,and that makes properties like the American big leagues and topEuropean football leagues relatively immune to the crisis.

“Some broadcasters are struggling in terms of advertisingand sponsorship,” says Ian Holmes, the head of television dis-tribution for Formula One Management, which is currentlyin renewal discussions with networks around the world.“Most of our conversations are with commercial free-to-airbroadcasters, and they are the ones feeling the pinch.We arefortunate in that Formula 1 is generally perceived as some-thing they must have. We are not necessarily expectingincreases.Things have flattened out a little bit.”

The sports market basically has three tiers. One of thebiggest differences between the distribution of sports andother programming is that a lot of sports programming belowthe top two tiers does not obtain rights fees from broadcasters.Rights holders are happy to get their events on the air with-

out being paid by TV because their revenue comes from thesponsors and TV gives the exposure the sponsors want. Inmany cases, the sports even pay the broadcasters to get onthe air by buying the time.

THE MUST-HAVESThe top tier includes most of the big football leagues, all ofwhich are on pay TV first and foremost and are thus protectedfrom any advertising downturn. Formula 1 and the Champi-ons League also sit in this tier as must-haves.The Olympicsand FIFA World Cup are, of course, in this tier but they donot take place every year and they negotiate well in advance,so they are not constrained to make deals in today’s poor climate.

“The middle tier is where they are feeling the pressure,”Holmes says.“These are events that broadcasters pay rightsfees for.They are things broadcasters would like to have butdon’t need to have. Networks need to identify what’s impor-tant in terms of audiences and targets and what really worksfor them, and sometimes these properties struggle.”

Then there’s that third tier.These are the sports propertiesthat have not been getting rights fees anyway. Broadcastersstill have airtime to fill. If anything, these sports might even bein a better position in today’s climate.

“We are especially seeing the impact of the downturn inEastern Europe, where the demand and price picture has

30

By Jay Stuart


TV EUROPE

Masters Tournament 2008 on Viasat Golf.

Eye on the BallTop sporting events are proving to be less sensitive

to the current economic crunch.

changed,”says Jonas Persson,the chief executive of the Stockholm-based IEC in Sports, the world’s biggest tennis distributorwith about 25 men’s ATP (Association of Tennis Profession-als) and 20 WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) events, as wellas Olympic sports such as badminton, table tennis, swimmingand gymnastics.“Premium properties are still selling, but eventhey are seeing some impact in a market like the Ukraine.It’s worst for the next tier down.”

Asia is holding up well, with the exception of Japan,according to Persson.“There is generally still a good appetitefor sports,” he says.“Sports programming has a big advantagein the current environment because it has the live element.It has something to offer that other programming does not.For the right programming, rights fees can even go up.”

PASSING THE PUCKAn example of that occurred recently in Sweden, where theprice of the Swedish Ice Hockey Association rose by 20 per-cent to 25 percent recently when Canal+ Sport renewed therights with its cousin TV4 taking over the free-to-air rights tothe playoffs from TV5.

IEC is a subsidiary of Lagardère Sports, as are World SportGroup and Sportfive.The International Olympic Committee(IOC) has chosen Sportfive to handle distribution of the 2014and 2016 Olympics broadcasting rights for Europe on a country-by-country basis, ending a 50-year partnership with the Euro-pean Broadcasting Union (EBU).The IOC rejected a globalbid from the EBU last year.The EBU paid about $740 millionfor the 2010 and 2012 Games package.For the IOC, the deci-sion to switch partners was not only a matter of price.

The IOC view for the Vancouver and London Games wasthat it had long-term partners and would rely on them to redis-tribute rights to new-media outlets.That was convenient becauseit meant one deal per territory.But Timo Lumme, the managingdirector of IOC Television & Marketing Services,realized that justas it was not always enough to leave all the relationships withone broadcasting union to handle countries X,Y and Z and notworry about it, it did not necessarily make sense to rely on thebroadcaster in a country to handle broadband,mobile or pay TV.

Sportfive has thus acquired the rights to the Olympicsacross all media platforms in 40 countries in Europe, exclud-ing the five biggest markets plus Turkey.The rights for Italy(SKY Italia) and Turkey (Fox Turkey) have already been sold,while the IOC will negotiate directly in France, Germany,Spain and the U.K.

“For the big sports, life carries on regardless,” says RichardBunn, the former controller of sports of the European Broad-casting Union,whose consultancy,RBI Network,advises manyinternational governing bodies.“They are essentially safe.Weare actually seeing increases in rights fees in some cases.Theyare not going down.What matters is whether there is compe-tition.Where there is competition, fees continue to rise.For theother sports, things are more difficult, for two reasons. One isthat broadcasters sometimes overpaid in the past.Two is thetechnological change that has taken place with audiencesdeclining and young people watching less television.”

Bunn continues,“The same thing is happening in sport asin many other businesses.Companies are using the crisis as anexcuse to make up for past mistakes. Sometimes they didn’tthink carefully enough before making deals. Now a cleans-ing is taking place.” But, he adds,“You really cannot com-

pare the current crisis with the last one at the time of theInternet bubble. Broadband has grown enormously.”

“There is much more drive for value for money,” says Mur-ray Barnett, the VP of sports channels and syndication forEurope, the Middle East and Africa at Disney-ABC-ESPN Tele-vision.“In late 2008 and early 2009 there was a very nervousmentality in the market,and operators just did not want to incurany costs.They were not signing deals at all. Now people haveaccepted that they need content,and channels are acquiring pro-gramming without being as free-spending. So we are engagingwith our partners but there is some hard bargaining.”

FIRST FOOT FORWARDBarnett has been in the middle of probably the biggest storyin the sports market lately—the startup of ESPN’s newBritish service on August 3 in the wake of the collapse ofSetanta Sports.This is ESPN’s first fully localized service inEurope, with a full lineup of specific British content—meaning loads of football—and just a nod to Americansports.The schedule will include England’s Barclays Pre-mier League, Scottish Premier League (SPL), Germany’sBundesliga and the Dutch, Portuguese and Russian leagues.The new service will be a premium pay channel on Sky,Virgin Media and Top Up TV and in a package on BT’sdigital platform. ESPN previously had two channels in theU.K.: ESPN America covering American sports (originallyNorth American Sports Network) and ESPN Classicshowing archived action.

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Fancy footwork: ESPN has ramped upits profile in the U.K.

with its acquisition of lucrative Barclays

Premier Leaguematches, which

air on its new premium channel.

PREMIER TIESHaving a powerful single property can get a new channel,even a new platform, off the ground, as the Premier Leagueproved for Sky in the U.K. in the 1990s. Setanta was hop-ing to repeat that success story. But of course one marqueeproperty is no guarantee of success unless other pieces are inplace. Before going bust in the U.K., Setanta was losing anestimated £100 million a year.The service reached only1.2 million subscribers, well short of a 1.9 million break-even target.

“Setanta’s business model could neverwork,” Bunn says.“You cannot get people topay for an offer that includes only one quar-ter of the product.A pay-TV sports producthas to cover everything.”

ESPN will show 46 live Premier Leaguefootball games that were to have been shownby Setanta and will pay £159 million perseason until 2013—the same terms asSetanta had.

Entry into the British market has been onthe drawing board for ESPN for some time.The U.S.-based company was a partner inthe original Screensport, which was takenover by Eurosport in the early 1990s. ESPNhad bid for a piece of the new PremierLeague deal, which will run from 2010 to2013, but lost out when Sky won five of thepackages and Setanta got the other one.

ESPN and Sky also picked up the rightsto Scotland’s SPL for five years for an esti-mated £13 million a season, a bit less than

Setanta was paying. However, the SPL has lost out on a new£125-million package agreed to by Setanta until 2014.

Being both a channel operator and a programmingprovider, ESPN needs a balance in its distribution approach.“The National Hockey League (NHL) is a good example ofthe situation,” says Barnett.“It’s shown on ESPN America inScandinavia, where ice hockey is very popular. But we alsosublicense to local terrestrial channels for additional revenueand exposure. So there is a trade-off to analyze between pro-gram sales and channel distribution. In many cases, discussionsstraddle both areas. It depends on the operator. If you takeViasat in Scandinavia, they are a platform operator with chan-nels and they have their own sports channels, so it’s easy tohave a joined-up discussion. In these cases, if you talk to asenior-enough person, it’s a single discussion.”

He adds,“At the end of the day we are working together.So often the program and channel providers are seen as beingon the opposite side of the table from the platform opera-tors. I don’t see it that way.We need to achieve a better levelof cooperation to maximize value. It’s all very well to put abig number on the table and see if somebody will swallowit, but if it’s not a win-win situation it probably won’t helpbuild a good long-term partnership.”

The need for more cooperation also extends to the rela-tionship between media companies and the sports them-selves, according to Bunn.“There will always be an audiencefor sport,” he says.“The question is, how much will mediacompanies pay? There needs to be more intelligent coopera-tion between rights owners and television partners.To a largeextent, that means sports need to adapt their mindset. I havebeen in negotiations where a sport requests a rights fee andI’ve asked where they came up with the number and theanswer has been that the amount is what it takes for them torun their sport.And I’ve had to point out that the issue underdiscussion is putting a value on television rights; the broad-caster is only interested in what your television rights areworth, not the funding of your organization.”

Cooperation is not just a matter of prices for rights, but alsocompetition rules and scheduling.“Sky Germany has a much


Full speed ahead: Formula 1 remains a must-have sporting event for manycommercial broadcasters.

Revving up: Viasat’sportfolio of acquiredsports rights includesthe MotoGP WorldChampionship GrandPrix on Viasat MotorChannel.

TV EUROPE32

better shot at succeeding now that the Bundesliga has agreedto change kickoff times to accommodate television,” Bunnsays.“That factor has been absolutely fundamental to the suc-cess of Sky in the U.K., where Sky now has football on fourdays a week on multiple pay channels.”

It is no coincidence that the new German approach has comenow that News Corporation has made Premiere (in Austria aswell as Germany) part of the Sky-branded European pay-TVempire.The new Sky Fußball Bundesliga will feature six differ-ent kickoff times, all five kickoffs from the first Bundesliga and aMonday game from the second division, 2.Bundesliga.Thatmeans more than 20 hours of live action every weekend.

GLOBAL REACHReaching an international audience is the goal for any sportsproperty.The media planning group Initiative, part of theInterpublic Group, has pointed out that when numbers ofviewers are measured, the top 10 percent of television mar-kets in terms of audience typically deliver 90 percent of thetotal audience. Indeed, for most events, if they were broadcastin only 30 countries instead of 200, it would make almost nodifference to the total audience. Only for events of true globalappeal does this 90/10 rule not apply.They are the ones forwhich the difference between the potential global audienceand the actual audience is not so great.

These events are the Olympic Games, the FIFA WorldCup, the UEFA European Football Championships, theUEFA Champions League and Formula 1. The NationalFootball League’s Super Bowl is one of the biggest events inglobal viewing without being a global event.This is becausethe Super Bowl generates a huge audience in one very largemarket, its home market of the U.S.

While broadcast television remains at the heart of the mediastrategy for all sports, the new-media environment offers anunprecedented opportunity to reach a global audience.YouTubehas particular importance. Last year, the IOC started usingYouTube during the Beijing Summer Olympic Games in terri-tories where broadcast rights were not sold, and in Korea.Afterthe Games, that content became available almost everywhereoutside the U.S.

Even though the barriers to entry may belower than in the broadcast sector, having abroadband-video presence costs money, andcan still be out of reach for smaller rights own-ers. But imaginations are working overtime.

An unlikely pair of allies has emerged in theonline betting industry.The International HockeyFederation (FIH), the world governing body ofthe Olympic sport of field hockey, has pioneeredthe use of a betting partner in order to underpinnew-media distribution.The FIH sold Internetrights to the Vienna-based Bwin via the com-pany’s media-distribution partner SportsmanMedia Group. The deal for live streaming ofmatches on Bwin’s website runs until the end of2010 and the bookmaker is already asking torenew.The arrangement is effectively just like anyother media deal, but it does contain specificclauses to protect integrity, including blockingthe IP addresses at the venues where events areheld and within the world of hockey more gen-

erally.Bwin is also contracted to inform the FIH of any integrityissues that arise.The International Volleyball Federation has asimilar deal with Bwin.

BETTING BIGThe betting area is also emerging as a new way to monetizecontent for channel operators. Eurosport recently launchedthe online bookmaker EurosportBET in the U.K. and plansto roll the service out in other countries as regulatory con-ditions permit.

In the U.K., Sky Bet, the betting subsidiary of BSkyB,expects that the connection between sports content and sportsbetting may develop more strongly in the online market than ithas in television, and it expects to follow the lead of otheronline betting providers in streaming more live sports contenton its own website, while continuing to promote its offerlinked to live events on Sky Sports on broadband.

More futuristically, a whole new potential market dimen-sion is opening in the virtual world. Infront Sports & Mediahas launched Empire of Sports, an online gaming environ-ment designed to provide an experience as close as possible toreal sports. It offers competition in football, tennis, basketballand skiing. Players compete against one another via broad-band. Infront, whose portfolio of media rights includes mostof the Winter Olympic sports federations (such as the gov-erning bodies of skiing and ice hockey), FIFA World Cupfootball in Asia and the Superbike World Championship, isthe 60-percent owner of the venture, with a French tech-nology and design partner, F4, holding the rest.

The Empire of Sports world includes virtual rooms, withpartners such as the Spanish soccer giant FC Barcelona andthe French sports newspaper L’Équipe.The new platformalso potentially offers the opportunity to bet on “real”events.The in-game browser can show new-media coverageof an event as a virtual public viewing. For example, a playercould be standing in a virtual square, while up on the bigscreen a live football match or tennis event is being streamed,so players would be able to talk about the event while theiravatars see it. For the sports market of tomorrow, it’s a realcase of “watch this space.”


TV EUROPE34

Race to the finish:Ratings for this year’sTour de France wereup in a number of territories.

The comment one hears again and again from professionals inthe Dutch market is that the Netherlands is a small country.Whether it’s added explicitly or not, the second part of therefrain is that there are too many channels to support. Dutchbroadcasters are looking to new media to change the pic-ture, not with fewer channels but with more ways to generaterevenue from their content.

The Dutch television market may be the most competi-tive in Europe, not only in terms of free-TV channels chasing15 million potential viewers aged 6-plus, or pay programmersseeking subscribers, but also in terms of competing mediaplatforms.And there is a full raft of those with cable, IPTV,digital terrestrial (DTT), DTH satellite and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) providers trying to enlist customers for triple-play packages (including TV, broadband and telephone).

The Netherlands became the first nation in the world toswitch off free-to-air (FTA) analogue signals, at the end of2006. But the reality is that even then it was already a digitalmarket. Fewer than 75,000 households depended on FTAantennae in order to watch TV.

The fragmentation of the free-TV audience is pronounced,with no fewer than 11 different channels achieving audienceshares of 2 percent or more in all homes during July 2009.That far exceeds the fragmentation in neighboring Flandersor any of the five biggest Western European markets.

The public channel Nederland 1 was the comfortable mar-ket leader with a 22-percent share, followed by RTL 4 at 12.4percent and SBS 6 at 10.5 percent, according to the nationalaudience-research group SKO (Stichting Kijk Onederzoek).

The others were the public channels Nederland 2 (6.2 percent)and Nederland 3 (5.7 percent), followed by Net 5 (4.8 percent),RTL 7 (4.5 percent), RTL 5 (3.7 percent),Veronica (3.3 per-cent),Nickelodeon (2.4 percent) and ORN TV (2.1 percent).

For the three public channels, the Netherlands continues tooperate a unique democratic public-broadcasting system inwhich air time is allocated to more than a dozen different groupsnominally representing segments of society (such as churchgroups).The future of this setup is always under discussion, butthere are no signs that it will fundamentally change. A differentallocation of participating organizations is pending with a coupleof new ones coming into the picture, and perhaps others drop-ping out.The government is likely to decide on the new lineupof public-broadcasting organizations by the end of this year.

The public broadcaster holding the system together isNOS (Nederlandse Omroep Stichting), which makes newsand sports programs for the public channels.

THE COMPETITORSDespite the presence of so many channels, the jumble of con-tenders for Dutch television advertising is slightly misleading.In fact, competition in the free-TV market is between threebig broadcast players—public television; the Luxembourg-based RTL; and Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1,which completedthe acquisition of SBS Broadcasting in 2007 along with itsthree Dutch stations, SBS6, Net 5 and Veronica (they remainunder the SBS banner).


New-media platforms are providing players in thealready crowded Dutch TV market more ways to

reach consumers and generate revenues.

36 TV EUROPE

GoingDutch By Jay Stuart

Fobiac on Veronica.

The upshot of the situation is that com-petition is between groups of broadcastchannels rather than individual channels—Nederland 1/2/3 versus RTL 4/5/7/8versus SBS6/Veronica/Net 5.

“We have four channels that are fully com-plementary and enable us to reach all the rele-vant commercial target groups,” says RTLNederland’s CEO, Bert Habets.“Last year weworked hard at positioning our stations.Theprofiles are clearer and we have invested in pro-grams that are characteristic for the specificchannels. RTL 4, for example, is our flagshipand targets consumers aged 20 to 49. It is ourfamily-oriented station and known for the bestentertainment and strong thematic evenings ontopics such as cooking, lifestyle and spirituality.RTL 5 is our younger and more edgy stationtargeting the 20-to-34 age group.”

GOOD SPORTSIn years with major events, sports program-ming tends to dominate Dutch broadcast rat-ings.The European Football Championshipson Ned 1 accounted for 16 of the top 20shows in 2008 and more than half of the top 50. Holland’sown special national sport, speed skating, also appeared sev-eral times in the top 50, also on Ned 1.

Take away sports and Ned 1 still took 14 of the top 20places and 47 of the top 70.The top program last year was atrue-crime special, Peter R. DeVries Crime Reporter, on SBS6,which placed four shows in the top 20. RTL 4 made it oncewith an episode of the music competition Idols.Those threechannels accounted for all the programs in the top 70 withthe lone exception of a music show on Ned 3.

Television advertising revenue in the Netherlands in 2008amounted to €856 million, up only 0.7 percent from 2007.That performance was very weak compared with other Euro-pean markets, including neighboring Belgium, which wasup 6.4 percent.

In the fourth quarter of last year, ad revenue plummetedby 7.4 percent, again worse than elsewhere. In 2009, TVadvertising is expected to be completely flat, according tothe World Advertising Research Centre, while ZenithOpti-media has forecast 2.8-percent growth.

NEW ATTITUDESWith the advertising market dropping, the broadcast net-works have opened their vision up to other platforms.

Public television, which considers offering more digitalchoice as part of its remit, launched HD in 2006 and alreadyhas about 20 digital channels. Now for the first time a com-mercial broadcaster, RTL, has teamed up with a cable com-pany, UPC, to launch new digital channels—an RTL HDchannel plus on-demand and thematic channels. SBS has notmoved yet, but the smart money says that that will happen toobefore the end of the year.The commercial broadcasters havewaited to make this digital push and it has come in the tougheconomic climate as ad sales have shrunk.

“There has been a shift of attitude,” says Paul van Niekerk,the managing director of the television advertising association

SPOT (Stichting ter Promotie en Optimalisatie van Tele-visiereclame), which represents all broadcasters.“Instead offearing new media, they are seeing it as the area where theyare strongest, because of all the content they have.They nolonger see a challenge but a big opportunity.”

The broadcasters are looking to high-definition televisionto give a value-adding big push to their move into new plat-forms. RTL Nederland plans to launch four HD channels(high-def versions of its current portfolio) later this year.Because of the cost of the upgrade, RTL expects competingplatforms to pay for the HD signals. SBS has indicated that itwill charge as well when it rolls out its HD offer.The threemain Dutch public channels became available in HD in July.

The new channels are usually part of cable packages thatrequire additional money from the consumer, and so poten-tially they can generate revenue. In this way, some of the costburden is being shifted from the advertising market as pro-grammers start to charge distribution partners for their con-tent.The advent of high definition is helping the push inthat direction.

In terms of how consumers receive their television con-tent, the Dutch market is a platform jungle. Ziggo, the largestDutch cable provider,was formed by a merger between Mul-tikabel, @Home Network, and Casema that was completedlast year.Ziggo has nearly 1.2 million subs,while number twoUPC Nederland sits at about 670,000. UPC is part of theU.S. group Liberty Global, which also owns ChellomediaBenelux, the dominant pay-TV company in the market.

Canal Digitaal is the national DTH satellite provider.TheDTH market is still small, but it has a new vitality. Origi-nally DTH was viewed as a platform for people outsideurban areas who could not get cable—a rural option. Nowthat has begun to change somewhat as more people see itas an alternative to other platforms. But penetration is stillonly 7 percent to 8 percent. DTH may have reached aplateau and could even recede.

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Ti

A Dutch welcome: John de Mol’s

Talpa produces Ik hou van Holland

for RTL 4.

Cable will no doubt continue to lose share, but it has a longway to go from its current 90 percent of homes.“The realityis that for years people had no practical alternative,” saysJeroen Bergman, the managing director of Chello Beneluxand managing director of programming for UPC Broadbandacross Europe.“Now there is DTT for half the price.Thereis satellite for people who want loads more channels, includ-ing German channels.And there is IPTV for the technology-minded who want more interactivity.”

The jury is out as to whether IPTV growth will come viaDSL or fiber-to-the-home, the latest contender in the plat-form market. FTTH is not an adaptation of cable or DSL but acompletely different network.The service is presold to con-sumers in an area or building development. If sales hit a 60-percent or 65-percent threshold, then the system is laid in.

FTTH was pioneered by the construction entrepreneurDick Wessels.He sold a minority stake to KPN last year. Sincethe financial crisis hit, building has slowed.Tele2 started therollout of FTTH last year.

PAID DEVELOPMENTSChellomedia has both a pan-European and a localized pres-ence. In Holland, pan-European channels are offered inDutch. Chello Benelux serves the rest of the Netherlandsand Flanders. Chello has five channels plus an HD channel.In 2008, it launched a subscription VOD service on theUPC platform.

Chello has about 350,000 subs at present.That is doublethe 175,000 level it had in February 2006, at the time of the

Canal Plus takeover. But it is still only about 5-percent pen-etration in a market of 6.5 million to 7 million homes.

The biggest development in pay TV and the television-channel market in general has come from elsewhere—thelaunch of a new pay football channel by the Dutch league inpartnership with Endemol called Eredivisie Live (the Eredi-visie is the national Premier League).This is distributed on awholesale basis to all platforms. It’s the first time a league haslaunched its own channel as the exclusive live window,though the same idea has been talked about for several yearsin various countries. Highlights are still on NOS.

The football rights used to belong to Chellomedia, whichacquired the Dutch version of Canal Plus in 2005 and after thathad a monopoly on the pay scene.The football rights still belongedto Canal Plus when Chello took over.Then they moved to Tele2,which was launching a DSL platform.Originally the football wassupposed to be platform-exclusive. First a deal was done withCanal Digitaal for DTH and then cable was added.That changedin August 2008,with the launch of Eredivisie Live.

But Chello is still alone in pay movies.“The competitionfor us is with free-to-air TV,” says Bergman.“In addition toabout ten commercial broadcast channels, there are two morefrom Flanders. On any given night there are four or five filmsin the Dutch language on at the same time.”

CONTENT ONLINEFor the free-to-air broadcasters, the most important develop-ment is probably the growth of online video.“Broadcasters arein a very good position to be big players in this area and they arealready using online to improve their overall market share,” saysSPOT’s van Niekerk.“Online gives broadcasters the potential tosell across platforms, offering advertisers mass reach throughtheir main networks, experiential reach through sponsorship ofprograms and one-to-one contact through online content.”

In the past year, RTL has embraced new media with suchenthusiasm that it has also launched three mobile websites and acooking portal and revamped its catch-up TV website with a

doubling of the video streams.The company haseven launched an online gaming platform calledSpelsalon.nl.

“Making programs for conventional televi-sion is not the same discipline as making them for

new media that offer interactivity,” says GeertPaul Slee, the former managing director of

the Hilversum-based production housePresteigne Charter, who is launching his

own company, Broadcast Rental.“Ofcourse you can distribute any pro-gram on new media, but in order tobe a real new-media product youneed interactivity.The creation oftelevision programming that is trulydigital in the sense of being right forconventional viewing,as well as inter-activity,may be an emerging trend.”

As to the transition the Dutchmarket has been undergoing, he

adds,“A lot of the time we are firstwith innovations in Holland, but

Dutch people tend not to want to payfor things.”


The yes men: Publicbroadcaster Ned 3recently launched Sorry Minister, its version of the classic BBC satire Yes, Minister.

TV EUROPE38

During the 1980s, the winds of deregulation swept throughEurope. Major TV markets like Germany, France, Italy andSpain, which had been dominated by public broadcasters, wereseeing the emergence of privately owned commercial channels.

While they provided more programming options for viewersand greater inventory for advertisers, these first commercialnetworks were merely new-and-improved versions of the pub-casters, offering similar general-entertainment schedules that

appealed to the broadest audience possible. That is, untilProSieben launched in Germany in 1989. It was the first stationto target its program offering and its audience—feature filmsfor the young demo. Viewers’ positive response was immediate,and ProSieben forged a solid bond with the 14-to-29 set—a rela-tionship that has lasted two decades.

This year marks ProSieben’s 20th anniversary, and the channelhas much to celebrate. It is the most profitable of the stations inProSiebenSat.1 Group’s stable of free-to-air channels, which alsoincludes Sat.1, kabel eins and N24. And it continues to attract thoseotherwise easily distracted young viewers with a mix of movies, thebest of U.S. series, and hit entertainment shows, many of whichare offered on demand, online, as well as on the linear channel.

Andreas Bartl, the managing director for German free TV atProSiebenSat.1 since 2008, has been with the group since 1991.In 2005 he became the managing director of ProSieben, where heoversaw the launch of some the country’s most successful enter-tainment shows, including Germany’s Next Topmodel—by HeidiKlum and Beat Your Host!

When Bartl was promoted last year, Thilo Proff took his place asmanaging director. He joined the group in 1998 and had been deputymanaging director at the channel since 2006, where his responsibil-ities included its programming strategy.

Together they talk to TV Europe about the reasons forProSieben’s continued success and discuss what the channel mustdo to maintain its relevance in the digital age.


TV EUROPE40

By Anna Carugati

20ProSieben at

ProSieben’s Red! Stars,Lifestyle & More.

Glückwünsche an ProSieben zu Ihrem zwanzigsten Jubiläum.

Congratulations to ProSieben on your Twentieth Anniversary.

From your friends at

www.CBSSI.com

©20

09CBSStudiosInc.

TV EUROPE: Twenty years ago, when ProSieben launched, whatwas the TV landscape in Germany, and what did ProSieben want tooffer viewers that they couldn’t get from other channels?BARTL: The landscape was much different.There were the pub-casters,ARD and ZDF, and all their regional channels.There wereonly two commercial channels, RTL and Sat.1 in 1989, but theirtechnical reach could not be compared to the 100-percent coverageof today. But still, it was an evolving market that was very interest-ing financially.

When ProSieben launched, managing director Georg Kofler’sidea—and it was a good one, among others—was to have a channelwhose positioning was unique and different from RTL and Sat.1,which started as general-entertainment channels offering all programgenres possible, reaching for the broadest audience. RTL and Sat.1[skewed] younger and were simply more modern versions of thepubcasters.Kofler said,“We need to be different.We need to position

ourselves as a quality channel for young audiences,and the best way to do this is to be a feature-filmchannel.” So when ProSieben started, it was mainly afeature-film channel, but it was a hit because therewere not a lot of feature films that you could watchon TV in Germany at that time.

But the market back then was very, very differ-ent, compared to the overcrowded and fragmentedmarket we have today. And for the last couple ofyears,we’ve been heading more and more into beinga market that is similar to the U.S.

TV EUROPE: Are there specific competitive chal-lenges that ProSieben is facing today? And how is itmaintaining its market share?

PROFF: The challenge for ProSieben today is being and remainingcompetitive among a very young and demanding audience. ProSieben,by far, [skews] the youngest of all the free-TV stations.We have almosta 12-percent market share among the audience [most coveted by adver-tisers],which is 14 to 49.We are number two within this age group, butwe are still number one in the younger demographic of 14 to 29, withan 18-percent share.We are very focused on that target group.And theyounger the audience is, the more it demands new programs and high-lights every day.That, indeed, is the challenge—to find programs thatare long-running enough to be economically reasonable, while at thesame time being the talk of the town and reaching your audience.

TV EUROPE: ProSieben originally focused on feature films. Howdid the strategy for original productions come about?BARTL: It all began in the early ’90s when we launched a talk showcalled Arabella.At the time, RTL and Sat.1 dominated the talk-show

42 TV EUROPE

To our dear friends and partners at ProSieben

You’ve come a long way, evolving and growing and entertaining every step of the way.

It’s been great to be a part of it with you.

Congratulations from your friends at Tandem Communications

20 YEARS OF ENTERTAINING YOU

AND LOVING IT

“For ProSieben, whichbecame a very strongand popular brandamong young people, U.S. licensedproduct has alwaysbeen essential. ”

— Andreas Bartl,ProSiebenSat.1 Media

genre and ProSieben made its version for the young genera-tion and it was very successful. So our original productionsstarted with Arabella and then we had a daily news show that isstill on the air called Taff. It’s more of a [tabloid] news show—the kind of news you find in People magazine.We wanted tooffer a broader portfolio of programming in order to attractmore viewers.After being on the air for a few years, we knewthat we had found all the movie fans in Germany and they werewatching the channel, so our original productions were aboutfurther growth to reach new audiences.And also it had some-thing to do with getting [carriage on] the then publicly ownedcable operators because only if you had a variety of programsand offered news were you able to be on every cable provider.So it was also about gaining technical reach.PROFF: Out of this obligation, we created one of the strongpoints of our schedule.With our original programming weare offering something for everybody.Andreas mentionedTaff, which is a little more female-oriented with its content.We also have Galileo, our dailyscience show, which is for every-body—males watch it as well asfemales, younger viewers as wellas older viewers, and a lot offamilies sit in front of the TVwhen Galileo is on.We also havea weekly [tabloid] magazinecalled Red! Stars, Lifestyle & More,which airs after Germany’s NextTopmodel and is quite an impor-tant show for us. We also havePopstars, so there is a wholebunch of factual and entertain-ment programming that livesbeside the original marketing coreof U.S. Hollywood productions.BARTL: Today it’s really a mixand you can say that the originalproductions are at least as impor-tant as the licensed programscoming from the U.S., whichare still very important for the

ProSieben brand. Even today, the Hollywoodblockbusters get very good ratings, as do the stand-out series Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy.But the channel is also made up of popular origi-nal programming like the shows with Stefan Raab,who is ProSieben’s number one host; Germany’sNext Topmodel and Popstars.

The channel has changed a lot but its position-ing among its core demographic has stayed very,very stable.PROFF: From a demographic standpoint,ProSiebenhas remained in the same spot for almost 20 years now.BARTL: And that is amazing.

TV EUROPE: You mentioned American imports.You have always been quite open to them andthey’ve played an important role on the channel.BARTL: True.This is another element that distin-guished ProSieben from RTL and Sat.1, whointroduced U.S. series in prime time long after

ProSieben did. In the ’90s, U.S. series in prime time wererather rare. ProSieben was the first channel to start this withER and The X-Files.The only other channel that had U.S.series was RTL, but they aired them after 10 p.m. and it wasonly one program and it ran seemingly forever—almost 15years, and that was Quincy, M.E. And that was it—a situationtotally different compared to today. So for ProSieben’s brand,which became a very strong and popular brand among youngpeople, U.S. licensed product has always been essential.

TV EUROPE: ProSieben is also known for high-qualitymini-series and event movies. Do those continue to beimportant, or because of the advertising decline, is it hardernow to finance big-budget shows?PROFF: No,not really, those highlight event programs are stillvery important for the ProSieben brand because, as I men-tioned, the younger audiences demand programs like these.On Mondays, we have been running a strand called Thrill

TV EUROPE44

On the catwalk: Germany’s Next Top-model—by Heidi Klumis based on a U.S. format from CBSStudios International.


Just the facts: One of ProSieben’s most popular series is the daily science show Galileo,which attracts a broad viewership base.

Time, which offers a lot of German TV movies of very highquality, like Töte mich, wenn du kannst.These movies havebudgets that exceed $1 million, which is quite a lot for theGerman market.They look really good and are successful.We always get between a 15- and 25-percent market sharewith these kinds of programs, so we will continue to do themand will offer them in 2010 as well.

On the international co-production side, we will offermajor events as we have in the past, and the next big co-production will be Ben Hur.BARTL: There is an economic crisis, but our viewers don’twant to see the crisis on-screen.They expect us to continueto offer strong programming and we cannot disappoint them.Therefore,even facing a crisis,we are producing TV events thatdraw automatic attention from the audiences because we can-not let go of these programs.

TV EUROPE: More and more people are deciding how andwhen to watch movies and TV programs “anytime, any-where.”Tell us about maxdome, the on-demand broadbandportal, and what you are learning about how your viewerswant to see their programs and films.BARTL: TV on demand is a very important trend among view-ers and will continue to be so over the next years. It’s not asbig in Germany yet as it is in the U.S.But viewers,and especially young viewers,have grown up withthe Internet and have become accustomed tohaving what they want immediately, anytime andanyplace.This is also something we are dealingwith and will continue to do so in the future.Weare anticipating this trend, and we are actuallypushing it.Maxdome is number one in video viewsonline by far, and we call this concept TV 3.0,which means that TV content will be watchedon three screens: the big TV screen, the laptopscreen and also, and this will be very importantvery soon, the mobile screen on smart phones likethe iPhone.

We are ready for this development, and we takeit very seriously.And as a TV group, we see it as achance to grab some share of the online advertis-ing business by [extending] our core business,which is showing movies and programming [tothe online and mobile worlds].PROFF: Speaking about ProSieben and TV 3.0,we labeled it internally “everytainment,” which is

to offer our programs anytime and anywhere.To give you anexample, we started [streaming] video on the Internet about 18months ago and it was a huge success right from the beginning.We started with Germany’s Next Topmodel and about 20 percentof the total views of the program are online video views, so thisis quite a lot, about one-fifth.And we also are usually numbertwo or three among the top five mobile podcasts,with our com-edy programs and with the science show Galileo. ProSieben isthe number-one-rated station in the ProSiebenSat.1 Groupamong young viewers.We can consider the different ways theyounger audiences view programming either as a threat or wecan view it as a huge chance to convince younger viewers towatch our programs on every platform.

TV EUROPE: Are distributors and the studios willing to giveyou VOD rights and Internet rights to movies and shows?BARTL: It’s a new business for everyone.When we talk to thestudios, we agree on being eager to [pursue VOD and newmedia],but as we cannot really know what the size of the businessis, the discussion sometimes becomes a negotiation. But theystarted with Gossip Girl on prosieben.de and it was a great success.PROFF: Yes, quite good. It actually did better on the Internetpercentage-wise than it did on the air.That’s because GossipGirl attracts a very, very young audience, as it does in America.The younger the viewers, the more they turn to differentplatforms, and as long as we can push these platforms as well,then the business stays in hand, and that is what we are talk-ing about with the major U.S. studios.

TV EUROPE: How does Prosieben’s programming complementthe offering of the other channels in the ProSiebenSat.1 group?BARTL: The complementary nature of our brands and of theirschedules is part of the recent success of our German free-TVchannels, which have been dynamically growing their ratingsthis year.And it partly comes, from my point of view, from thefact that the general managers of the channels are working closertogether than they have in the past.We have a much highercoordination of our strategy in our programming, and manydepartments are centralized now,so we are working much more


TV EUROPE46

On the scene: One of ProSieben’s longest-running original productions is the entertainment magazine show Taff.

Host with the most:Stefan Raab, one ofProSieben’s best-known personalities,hosts TV Total, a weekly entertainmentseries.

like a team. So it’s much easier now to bring the brands on tothe screen in a complementary manner.PROFF: If you could see us now sitting together, you wouldsee that we are sitting in Andreas’s office, which is right nextto the office of Jürgen Hörner, who is the managing direc-tor of kabel eins.The next office is my office, the managingdirector of ProSieben, and in the next office is Guido Bolten,the managing director of Sat.1.Also, all the programmingplanning people are sitting right around us. So even in timesof e-mail communications and BlackBerrys, nothing can beatthe geographical proximity of people.BARTL: It makes life much easier, I’m telling you!

TV EUROPE: It’s a very tough ad market everywhere.Whatare the forecasts for the German market this year? Somechannels have been offering discounted advertising rates. Hassome of the discounting bottomed out or is it necessary giventhe tough market now?BARTL: The ad market will decline as the whole Germaneconomy will decline.TV is holding stronger than print,but TVwill also decline this year. It’s a sign of a crisis and the pressure

that comes with it that prices sharply go down. But thereis the common-sense element in our business that wewant to sell our advertising at prices that are fair and rea-sonable. Plus, our product hasn’t become less valuable. Soour strategy is to keep the prices constant.

TV EUROPE: Let’s look into the future.What will bethe key to ProSieben’s success in coming years, even asthe market changes because of technology and the waysviewers want to watch their content?BARTL: If we imagine that the market in the future willhave more possibilities than today, and that technologywill offer many platforms that will be used more thanthey are today—like online and mobile, as well as hybridTV sets that are able to receive broadband signals so you

can see online content on your TV screen—there will bemany more possibilities to see TV content than only on lin-ear channels. And with ProSieben being the number onechannel for the under-30 audience in Germany, it is thechannel that is best prepared for the future.

If we are able to stick to our brand proposition—which hasremained attractive for 20 years, and I think will be attractivefor the next 20 years because there will always be a need fora young channel that is different from broad generalist chan-nels like RTL and Sat.1—then ProSieben will be fine.We alsoneed to be able to have enough ownership of content andbe present with our content on the several platforms we justtalked about—TV 3.0.This will be decisive, but in my fore-cast, ProSieben will still be around in 20 years.PROFF: In the future, in order to be seen, you will need toshine brighter with your brand than today.The success for-mula for ProSieben should be: being sexy and providing the-talk-of-the-town formats. [If we do that, we will be able tomeet whatever challenges the future will bring.] And if ourprograms, our highlights and our events are on every plat-form, I’m sure we’ll succeed.


TV EUROPE48

1989ProSieben launches on January 1 with feature filmsand international series

1990Is the first TV station in Germany with 24-hour pro-gramming

1991Adds news to the schedule with Tagesbilder

1992Launches the first series produced by ProSieben,Glückliche Reise, and the first prime-time maga-zine, Die Reporter

1993ProSieben’s second original series is Liebe istPrivatsache

1994New shows include the talk show Arabella, the maga-zine series Liebe Sünde and U.S. import The X-Files

1995More magazine series with the magazines Taff andSAM and the launch of the American drama ER

1996Milestones include the rollouts of the sciencemagazine Welt der Wunder and the comedy seriesComedy Factory. The ProSieben Group launchesits first website, www.pro-sieben.de. It is themost extensive web destination for a Germanchannel

1997The feature film Jurassic Park attracts 9 millionviewers; new shows include Quatsch Comedy Club,Bullyparade and Switch

1998The first daily science magazine, Galileo, launcheswith host Aiman Abdallah

1999Entertainer Stefan Raab joins ProSieben with the newweekly entertainment show TV Total

2001Sex and the City premieres on the channel

2002Seven million tune in for the blockbuster feature StarWars: Episode I—Die dunkle Bedrohung

2003Unveils the charity event Red Nose Day and the newentertainment show Wok-WM, created by Stefan Raab

2004The TV premiere of Der Schuh des Manitu—ExtraLarge delivers 12 million viewers; the new comedyStromberg launches

2005Hit ABC series Lost and Desperate Housewivesmake their German debuts

2006ProSieben’s new entertainment slate includesGermany’s Next Topmodel—by Heidi Klum, Starson Ice, hosted by Katarina Witt, and Schlag denRaab, created by Stefan Raab

2008The Next Uri Geller—Unglaubliche Phänomene Livelaunches on the channel

2009Germany’s Next Topmodel—by Heidi Klum has itsbest season ever with a 24.2-percent share of viewersaged 14 to 49; Fringe—Grenzfälle des FBI launches

“The success formulafor ProSieben shouldbe: being sexy and providing the talk-of-the-town formats.”

— Thilo Proff,ProSieben

A History of ProSieben

In the spring of 2008, Dawn Airey surprised the British mediaindustry by quitting her job as managing director of global con-tent at ITV and returning to Five, the channel she had helpedlaunch in 1997, as chair and chief executive. It was during herfirst tenure at Five that she established her reputation as a topmedia executive. She famously described Five’s remit as “thethree Fs: football, films and f***ing.” Airey is outspoken, oftencontroversial, and unfailingly passionate about the televisionbusiness and Five’s future, even in today’s challenging economy.

TV EUROPE: The Five you returned to was quite differentfrom the Five you left.AIREY: I left Five when it was seven years old... I did leaveit as a quite noisy child, with a boisterous personality.When Igot back I thought it had got middle-aged very quickly. It hadn’thad its teenage years and fun twenties and thirties or forties,and that is one of the challenges that I have.To a degree,channels always take on a bit of the personality of the direc-tors of programs in particular, and possibly of the chief exec-utive. So after I left and then the directors of programschanged, Five went down a different route.

We were very deliberately a noisy brand when we startedout, partly out of necessity, but also because of a very inten-tional positioning.We wanted to do things differently; weneeded to be different because we had a fraction of anybodyelse’s budget and it had to work effectively for us.And then

a new management came in and theywanted to take it a different way and thatwas supported. But I think Five lost its waya little bit because it tried to be whateveryone else was doing rather thanremember what it was very good at.That’swhy it went from being a very needy, loud,demanding child you couldn’t ignore tosomething that was very comfortable, very,very safe, but a bit boring.

TV EUROPE: And what have you done toturn it around?AIREY: We brought in a new creativeteam. Richard Woolfe has joined us fromSky1, and I lured Jeff Ford back fromChannel 4 to manage acquisitions and thedigital channels.We’ve also got a string ofnew creative appointments in the program-ming department.

Those appointments have already started tobear pretty good fruit.We’ve been commis-sioning a lot of fast-turnaround documen-taries, which get us noticed and make a lot ofnoise fast.And we’ve announced a whole hostof key entertainment and talent announce-ments, whether it’s Paul Merton doing a newseries,or Robson Green or Louise Redknapp,Justin Lee Collins, Zoë Ball, Jamie Theakston,

Ian Wright,Melinda Messenger or Kate Walsh.We just recently bought what I hope to be the hit U.S.

show, which is FlashForward.We have also commissioned bigentertainment formats that will feature in the autumn schedule.

We have launched an early evening entertainment maga-zine between 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m,Live from Studio Five. It’sa new-style news-and-entertainment format.We’ve got highhopes for it.

And we’ve done all of that against the backdrop of the worstentertainment economy that I have seen in my 25 years ofwork in broadcasting.This year I’m looking at revenues beingdown 20-plus percent.Not surprisingly,when I joined,most ofthe channel’s programming money was committed to 2009,so we had to take an aggressive review of the overhead, a con-sequence of which was losing 25 percent of the staff—a painfulbut essential outcome.We’ve also had to substantially reducethe program budget, but we’ve done that through renegotiat-ing the contracts, and taking money out of non-key areas of theschedule and focusing it on prime time.We’ve done all thatand, interestingly, the results are quite spectacular.We are theonly family of channels to have grown its share of viewingyear to date. So I’m pretty pleased with our performance.

TV EUROPE: Despite the fact that your budget has beenreduced for obvious reasons, are U.S. shows still important toyour family of channels?AIREY: Oh, God, they are really important! Five has alwayshad, right from the beginning, really good U.S. series andfilms.We’re changing the structure of the schedule so it goesback to being slightly more stripped and stranded so it’s easierto navigate. From the autumn, we will be almost exclusivelynarrative on the main channel from between 9 p.m.and 11 p.m.,


TV EUROPE50

Frank and Forthright

Five’s Dawn Airey

By Anna Carugati

and we will do that with U.S. series and movies.We’ve gotthe top-rated U.S. series in the U.K.: the CSI franchise,NCIS and The Mentalist, which is a huge hit, and I men-tioned FlashForward. So we will continue with our preemi-nence of U.S. product.

And Five US, the digital channel, which we rebranded ear-lier this year as Five USA, that little “A” made all the differ-ence.That is exclusively devoted to U.S. programming and itplays a key role in our overall performance. Actually, U.S.acquisitions are important for Fiver as well. Fiver and FiveUSA are delivering year-on-year growth figures and aredoing spectacularly well.

I am sure we will continue to be the home of U.S. drama,although some of our detractors say,“You’re overly relianton CSI.”Well, CSI accounts for 5 percent of our ratings.Coronation Street accounts for 10 percent of ITV’s ratings.Dealor No Deal on Channel 4 accounts for 10 percent of theirratings. So we’re not overly reliant on any one specific series,but they are an important part of the mix.We are very happyand proud to have the best of the U.S. on the channel.

TV EUROPE: The British government released its DigitalBritain report, which outlines its vision for ensuring thatthe U.K. is at the forefront of the global digital economy.

One of the issues the report addressed is the future ofChannel 4, which faces a substantial funding gap. Is theprospect of a merger between you and Channel 4 com-pletely off the table?AIREY: It is for the moment.Digital Britain wasn’t just aboutthe broadcast landscape—it was about the broadband land-scape, too.The government and Ofcom asked us to come upwith a solution for the funding problems that Channel 4 pre-sented.And we did. But ultimately they didn’t go with us fora number of reasons, primarily political.They were opposedto the idea of a state-owned asset, like Channel 4, becoming apublic-private partnership, which it would have done withRTL [Group, the parent company of Five].

Channel 4 felt that philosophically we were in very differ-ent places and didn’t quite see how the partnership wouldwork. But I think it’s quite ironic that one of the things thatDigital Britain set out to do was to solve the funding problemsof Channel 4.And it actually hasn’t proffered any solution.There may be a deal with BBC Worldwide, I don’t know.

I think it would have been a really good solution for public-service broadcasting because the synergies of putting Chan-nel 4 and Five together were so significant that it would havemore than dealt with the funding gap that Channel 4 stated ithas, and it would have resulted in more programming in keypublic-service interest areas.

TV EUROPE: Do you see Five remaining a stand-alonechannel?AIREY: I sit at my desk with a big crystal ball on it! We’vealways said, and I do believe, that consolidation is going tohappen.And if consolidation happens, the smaller playerstend to consolidate, and we are a smaller player, so yes, I

think we will consolidate.When, where and who with,I cannot say.

TV EUROPE: Well, more importantly, are you stillhaving fun?AIREY: I come to work every day never quiteknowing what’s going to happen; the only thingI know is that it’s going to be fun, exhilaratingand exciting. I work with a really lovely team ofpeople.And I’m in a very fortunate position.Weare not a plc. Our finances don’t bear the scrutinyon a daily and monthly basis as a plc’s does—as,for example, at ITV. And I have an incrediblysupportive shareholder in the RTL Group. Idon’t want to be anywhere else; I am veryhappy at Five. I wouldn’t have gone throughthe pain of exiting ITV to come back here ifI wasn’t really, really clear that this is where Iwanted to be.

I never thought in a month of Sundays—and this is the joyous thing about life—that I would

end up back at Five. But I am, and I’m very, very happyto be dealing with an interesting set of commercial and

creative challenges, with people I admire and whosecompany I enjoy, with a fabulous supportive share-

holder. I have every confidence in the team’sability to put Five back on track as a fun,

entertaining, challenging brand that isadmired and successful.


Loud and clear: Withits new leadership inplace, Five has begunto refresh its gridwith a slate featuring the dailymagazine-style seriesLive from Studio Five.

TV EUROPE52

Lee Bartlett joined ITV from FOX Broadcasting last year, andas managing director of ITV Studios he is in charge of all of thebroadcasting group’s British and international production-and-distribution businesses. In this very difficult economy, Bartlett’sdivisions are considered growth areas that can generate rev-enues to offset ITV’s decline in advertising.

TV EUROPE: You have said that ITV needs to monetize itsbig brands better and make them more relevant. How haveyou done that?BARTLETT: We’ve made a lot of progress in this area.We havea successful daytime show called This Morning, which has beenon the air for many years. It has a very loyal audience and had alot of potential for the network, which we hadn’t developedbefore.It hadn’t had a revamp in a long time,so we re-created theshow.We brought in a new presenter and divided it up into seg-ments.We changed the graphics and made the look and feel a lit-tle lighter. It now has a very strong nonlinear presence and thewebsite is very relevant to the show. Let’s say there is a gardeneron,you see him working in a garden,you can go onto the web-site and find out how you can save this plant, what are the bestseeds, and if you want the seeds, click here and you can buythem. It’s not rocket science, but we made the brand more rele-vant and more practical to the people who watch it.

It’s not so much revamping the show that is important,the brand extensions are. So it’s taking a well-known brandthat we had only exploited in one form and are nowexploiting it in three or four other ways.We also did thisto drive revenue because, when I put my plc hat on, I knowa plc needs to earn revenues from more than just advertis-ing, it needs revenues from many other sources in order tostay alive.

Another brand we’ve worked on is Coronation Street, whichis one of our biggest. It now has one of the best websites ofany show in the U.K.We are producing special [content] forDVD: a 90-minute movie where the story line is set upwithin the show and then you can go buy the DVD or youcan download the movie.

We have a lunchtime program called Loose Women.Wecreated a version for the German market, which just got anorder for 30 episodes.That is really quite remarkable to takea brand that is so domestic and be able to create instantinternational value out of it.

Among our international brands, we looked at shows thatwe’ve had some success selling internationally and wechanged the way we sold them.We put a lot of effort behindthem and I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! is really a goodexample. It has been on the air in the U.K. for eight sea-sons. It’s always done really well, but it hadn’t been particu-larly exploited internationally except in Germany on RTL.So we made a concerted effort and we are currently shoot-ing I’m a Celebrity India for Sony, I’m a Celebrity Sweden iscoming soon, and of course the U.S. commission on NBC,which is now airing around the world as a finished series.In fact, in one of President Obama’s speeches, when he wasreferring to Arnold Schwarzenegger, he used the phrase,“I’ma celebrity, get me out of here!”That’s manna from Heaven!

TV EUROPE: You’ve made partnership deals with Shine and19 Entertainment. Can you tell us about the projects you areworking on with them? BARTLETT: Absolutely not! But I can tell you there is oneproject from the Shine deal that we are really keen on andthere is another one we are really keen on with 19.What isinteresting is how we did it.We took a couple of develop-ment people from Shine and a couple of people from ITVand we put them in a room.And over a period of time, theycame up with a number of ideas that were truly developedjointly.That’s different from the way joint ventures normallywork—it’s usually one party or the other coming up withideas. Obviously, I’m only going to be happy if they are suc-cessful, but I think the formula is new.

TV EUROPE: Are you looking to make more partnerships? BARTLETT: The short answer is yes. I don’t believe thatany one company, no matter what its reputation or howcreative it is, can have a lock on creative talent. I am inter-ested in creative talent, and as long as it makes financialsense, whether it’s through partnerships, joint ventures,housekeeping deals, any name you want to put to it, I wantto have people present ideas that we can then turn aroundand develop and produce. I don’t care where they comefrom. And I’m not a big believer in having a giant staff ofcreative people, because I think creativity is best done insmall groups.

TV EUROPE54

By Anna Carugati

Creating Relevant Brands

ITV’s Lee Bartlett


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