FremantleMedia International’s Jens Richter

The CEO talks about the company’s strategy for further expanding its presence in the worldwide drama business.

Drama has been a key focus for FremantleMedia over the last year. The group made a string of investments in drama producers, among them Corona in the U.K. and Wildside in Italy, aligned itself with a range of indies and ramped up the scripted output from its bases around the world. With a slate that includes Starz’s upcoming American Gods, the critically acclaimed German period piece Deutschland 83 and the Scandi hit Modus, FremantleMedia International (FMI) has emerged as a leading distributor of drama series for broadcasters across the globe.

WS: Tell us about how FMI’s drama business has evolved.
RICHTER: Over the last year at FremantleMedia in general we had a huge push into drama. And you see it on various fronts. On one side we invested quite heavily into new drama production companies. We had new drama talent join the group, like Kate Harwood coming over from the BBC to revive Euston Films. The other thing is communication about drama within the group went up a lot. We work really closely with each other. We talk about pipeline development, we talk about who’s doing what, we are working on co-productions between various FM producers on ideas that can connect countries.

At the beginning of 2015 we launched The Returned from FremantleMedia North America (FMNA) and there was a global rollout with Netflix. You heard about the ratings for Deutschland 83 on Channel 4, which were amazing. With FMNA we’re in pre-production for American Gods. We work with Paul Abbott and AbbottVision—we launched No Offence, we have some great international partners on it, like France Télévisions, and we have a second season coming. We have from Scandinavia’s Miso Film Modus, Acquitted and Dicte. Modus is TV4’s highest-rated drama launch in two and a half years. Acquitted had huge ratings in Norway on TV2, and a second season is coming. We have in production now The Young Pope, from Wildside, starring Jude Law and Diane Keaton. We have Hard Sun written by Neil Cross, the guy behind Luther, for the BBC. We went out with Capital, produced by Kudos. We have another season of Wentworth coming from FremantleMedia Australia. We even had a local remake in Holland

WS: What are the biggest challenges in selling non-English-language drama?
RICHTER: The acceptance in the market, the perception. It starts from a practical point of view: if you have an English-language drama and you put that in front of a buyer, they just understand it, they get it, it’s what they’re used to buying. You come with a German or Italian show, they’re reading subtitles. It is a bigger hurdle. So the proposition you put in front of buyers has to be unique and really good. It doesn’t make sense to come around with non-English-language drama that is just OK. We launched Modus for instance at MIPCOM. It looks like Scandi noir, it fits that bill 100 percent, but it’s not a whodunit because we know in the first scene who did it. So it’s why did he do it? It’s a different perspective. He’s also the best-looking serial killer ever on television! Before going out to market with a non-English-language drama, you have to be even more careful about what the USP of the show is. Why should a broadcaster or platform take it on?

In general, SVOD platforms can play more with programming. On the one hand, they play it really safe because they need to have the mainstream shows, they have to have the big names. But they can take a part of their platform and turn it into a sandbox where they can try stuff. It’s very different from the linear world, where every time slot is a valuable piece of real estate. If your 8 p.m. time slot goes wrong, your whole audience flow for the evening is screwed up. If you put something out that you haven’t tried before on an SVOD platform, you get the numbers and you analyze the numbers, and if it works you can get more into it. Generation War was on Netflix in the U.S. and it did well for them, so by the time we spoke to SundanceTV [about Deutschland 83] we knew there was a market there in the U.S. for outstanding German drama, so why not try linear as well? To be frank, you have to run through the same kind of thought process and preparations when you go to market with an English-language drama. You just have to be even more careful with the non-English-language because it’s not your traditional product.

WS: How much have the SVOD platforms changed the way you invest in and distribute your dramas?
RICHTER: When it was only linear, the market was smaller, you had to play it a little safer maybe. Now you have new players in the market, new technology, the consumer behavior is changing territory by territory. There’s an opening for both serialized drama product and the closed-ended procedural product. So when you look at drama, especially drama series, you have a little bit of a divide. In the SVOD and pay-TV worlds that allow for binge-watching, the serialized product is really cool. In the traditional linear world, the procedurals, the story-of-the-week aspect, is still very important. The other aspect is English-language versus non-English-language—with the rise of SVOD there is more potential for non-English-language. However, there’s also more potential for non-English-language product in the linear world now. There were a lot of slots previously dominated by American drama series, procedural drama series. There are less of those coming out of America. Linear needs procedurals, so if they don’t come out of America, maybe they come from somewhere else. In general, there are more opportunities, it’s a changing world, and we need to think in terms of building a wider slate. However, we have to be very careful about how original the individual drama is, what the USP of that original drama is. You don’t want to be number five in line with the same kind of idea as other shows before you.