MTG’s Lina Brounéus

Lina Brounéus, the COO of content for MTG’s Nordic streaming service Viaplay and pay-TV platform Viasat, outlines the strategy for original productions.

It was only a short time ago that Viaplay began to commission original programming, yet its momentum has only continued to gather steam since. Now, the roster of originals on the MTG-owned service boasts projects from Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Sweden and other international partners, as it keeps an eye toward brand-defining programming.

WS: What led to Viaplay making a big push with original content?
BROUNÉUS: Viaplay has been around for quite some time now. We launched the first version back in 2007, and then the Viaplay as we know it came in 2011. We started out by taking all the rights we had for pay-TV platforms, sports content, movie content, kids’ content. We brought that over, and we started investing more in series, which turned out to be very successful. We put all of the owned-production series from our free-TV channels onto Viaplay. Then Netflix entered the market, and we grew a lot as well—we encourage competition, so we were happy about that. We came to the conclusion that we needed to find brand-defining content. We needed to find content that stands out in our markets, that can travel well across the world, and that can define Viaplay. That’s why we embarked on originals.

We started about two or three years ago with these efforts. The first original that we did was Swedish Dicks. I didn’t think that the first original we would do would be something containing the word “dicks” and also containing Peter Stormare and Keanu Reeves [laughs], but I’m so happy with the outcome! It was a unique situation for us because we also managed to partner with Lionsgate. Kevin Beggs and his team have been absolutely outstanding; their creative vision and the way that we’re working on a second season together for Pop has been outstanding. That’s where it all started.

Since then, we have been working hard to secure as much great content as we possibly can—including local assets, in drama, comedy and kids, as well as international hybrids, like Swedish Dicks; like Straight Forward, which is from New Zealand and Denmark; and like Embassy Down, which is in the making and is about an attack on the U.S. embassy on Danish soil.

WS: What are you looking for in a partner for Viaplay projects?
BROUNÉUS: We spend a lot of time on each project; it’s time-consuming, but it’s also necessary because you need it to turn out well. We don’t have a set framework of, “we need it to premiere like this and have these rights.” Every project is looked at individually.

We are looking for excellence in all of our partners. That means a range of different things. We are so happy that we partnered with Banijay and Jarowskij for Black Lake, which has also been sold to BBC and is doing amazingly well. Veni Vidi Vici, which we partnered with DRG on, has now been sold to Hulu. Working with Lionsgate on Swedish Dicks was like a match made in heaven; we really managed to get the most out of that [partnership], to an extraordinary extent.

We treat every project individually. We spend a lot of time analyzing and making sure it’s the right partner for us: do they share the same vision? Do they want the same result? We have taken our next steps into this by starting Atrium TV together with DRG. As a Nordic player, you have a certain territorial limitation—you have a certain footprint—so you can’t scale your content across the world. But what you can do is scale your content across the world together with other partners, and that’s what we are trying to do with Atrium TV. We’re looking at how we can work together with other SVOD players and telcos to create and commission strong content that can travel to many other territories.

WS: While having an eye to making these originals work in your local markets, is there also an international seed at the heart of each project?
BROUNÉUS: We want to create the best story. We certainly do consider whether or not the show could travel and if we could do something to enhance the potential of making it travel. For example, having big actors like Peter Stormare and Keanu Reeves in Swedish Dicks gives it a greater chance of traveling and getting more attention. We still want to make sure we stick to the story. How can we create an amazing story that will travel? In the end, good content wins. If you look at Black Lake, we have a great cast, but they’re not incredibly well-known, and it was in the local language. We believe in creating series that will generate a lot of value on our platforms and that we also think can travel.

The acceptance of foreign-language shows and subtitling has never been bigger. You see them on many different platforms. We do try to find ways to make the international appeal even bigger, but the main trigger to commission new programming is to continue developing unique content for our Nordic streaming service Viaplay.

WS: With these international partnerships, do you have to be incredibly flexible when it comes to rights and windows?
BROUNÉUS: Yes! When I started at MTG in 2008, we were in the middle of the booming “new-media rights.” So this has been part of my day-to-day business since I started. I have never been in an environment where you’d buy, say, seven runs in a square format. It’s more about, what rights are available, how do we chop that up? We closely analyze all of our data parameters, looking at what drives loyalty, what drives sales, what decreases churn, what drives stickiness, what’s the conversation, where do customers leave the episode, what device do they watch it on, at what time do they watch what content on what device? If someone picks up the iPad at 6 a.m. on Saturday, it’s quite likely that it’s for kids’ content. So how can we better present this to them? We do have a great amount of flexibility [when it comes to rights], but you have to nowadays. You have to look at how you create the best engagement from each asset and how you capture the best value from each partner that you align with as well.

WS: The current slate of originals has grown quite quickly. Are you looking to ramp up the number of hours each year?
BROUNÉUS: We want to build a large slate. We have an ambition to become the leading drama producer in the Nordics. That means producing Nordic content and international content. We are going to keep investing. We are going to keep growing the originals slate as much as we can. We also hope to be able to renew shows for more seasons, which we are doing now. Black Lake is coming back, and Swedish Dicks is coming back. We want to build our franchises.

Last year we did our first kids’ original, The Great Escape, which is now a big area for us. That show won the best kids’ show award at Kristallen (the Crystal gala), the most prestigious TV prize in Sweden. We were the first non-public broadcaster to win in that category, and definitely the first streaming platform to win it. So we are also looking into new areas.

WS: Why start with premium drama, which can be quite expensive to produce?
BROUNÉUS: You have to invest in what you believe in. We analyzed viewing patterns, looking at what people like, what they’re watching on our platform, what is trending outside of our platform, what is working on our competitors’ slates and what we believe will drive value for us, differentiation and sales. We analyze data every day, and we see how we should tweak things, so you have to be fast and flexible.

WS: What are your plans for Viaplay as you look at 2018?
BROUNÉUS: We are going to focus our energy in many different areas. We want to spread our investment across many genres, many languages. What’s going to keep it together is content that stands out, that defines Viaplay. That could be anything from a brand-defining new kids’ show or the next big Nordic noir or a female-skewing drama or edgy comedy. We are looking to invest in several different categories. We have the capability to do so because we work in a platform-agnostic way, across free TV, pay TV, SVOD, AVOD, TVOD, EST—we’re the only Nordic player that can cover all of those.

We have a massive audience to satisfy. And we want to keep growing and become even bigger.

WS: Tell us about Viaplay’s involvement with Atrium TV.
BROUNÉUS: Atrium is an interesting opportunity for us. It’s a global commissioning club that will create premium drama content for regional OTT services. Viaplay is a founding member. We put together all different SVOD platforms and telcos from around the world. We had an amazing pitch day [in Cannes]. I had really high hopes for the pitches, but they were even better than I could have imagined. Frank Doelger from Game of Thrones, for example, was there together with Charles Dance, who played Tywin Lannister. We’re now looking at how we can expand our slate of original productions also via the partnership with Atrium TV, how we can step into one of these big productions and move it forward.

All the members of Atrium TV have the same interests. We are all looking for that brand-defining, needle-moving content. If we’re working together to find it, that’s even better.