Rob Clark

The ins and outs of the judging panel on American Idol have been making numerous headings for the last few weeks. Indeed, as the show gears up for its ninth season on FOX in January, it remains a formidable force in the pop-culture landscape. That’s good news for FremantleMedia, which continues to notch up deals on the hit talent format worldwide. There is, however, much more to FremantleMedia’s entertainment slate, beyond Idols. Rob Clark, the company’s recently promoted president of worldwide entertainment, is firmly focused on continuing to roll out FremantleMedia’s established format hits, taking on innovative ideas from the international market and helming a global development network that is tasked with coming up with breakthrough new concepts.

WS: What are some of your key strategies for FremantleMedia’s worldwide entertainment business?
CLARK: FremantleMedia’s global network is very cohesive, and it’s a very collaborative team internationally. So the important thing is to maintain that, and also to enhance it into any new territories that we may turn into production territories.
Another big thing for me is to maintain what I consider to be the highest production standards in the industry. And that’s a really big thing for me for two reasons; One, I am a producer by heart and always will be—so for me, making shows well is much more important than just making shows. And the second reason is that we have a very good re-commission rate on our programs, like for example Idols, Got Talent, X Factor, Farmer Wants a Wife, Hole in the Wall. From a business point of view, that means you’re not having to sell that slot again, it’s yours, and then you can build on that by getting other slots.
There are two other areas I think are key as well. One is the development internally within our organization. Over the last five years in particular, you’ve seen***America's Got Talent***FremantleMedia become a hugely confident production company. Even in territories where perhaps a few years ago they may have been somewhat nervous about doing one of our big cross-genre shows—they’re not anymore. So from a production point of view, we’re very confident, and from a development point of view, we’re becoming more so. That’s one area that I’d like to spend more time on—working with our lead development territories.
The other key point is that we have a very good record in acquiring the best. We have a great relationship with a lot of people—including people we’ve acquired from in the past or that we hope to acquire from in the future.
So the strategy is to keep producing fantastic shows, to find more fantastic shows, either from development or from acquisition, and to maintain the global network.

WS: What are some of things you look for in acquiring new product?
CLARK: I’m very instinctive about these things. My eyes tend to dilate, my nostrils flare! Sometimes I don’t know why I think it will work. I work with people who are also very instinctive but are very careful about what we acquire, and they have great contacts.
There are only so many shows that fit what we’re looking for. That’s not to say there are only so many good shows out there, because that’s not true. There are a lot of good shows, but not every show is a traveling format that has potential to sit either in prime time or in access prime as a strip. We have a really specific view on what we’re looking for.

WS: Can you tell me more about how FremantleMedia’s global entertainment network works?
CLARK: There are seven development territories: the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Holland, Australia and Denmark. They all have their own development teams and they’re charged with creating programs that have a national role to play and also programs that have international potential. That’s extremely important for us—the format mustn’t be culturally tied to one territory.
The global development teams are brought together in mini-workshops. They bring formats that they know are good ideas, and look to collaborate to enhance and develop them further. They may have a fantastic idea for their own market, or one that would work well in others.
Once you’ve got people that have bought into that idea, they will then be able to pitch that show in their own territory and may get it away. That’s actually what happened with Take Me Out, which is a French idea that was first produced in Australia, rather than in France. It’s now also in Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Spain, Indonesia and Finland, a pilot has been produced in the U.K, and we see a lot of potential for it in other markets in the future. It’s having that joined up development network, and then the joined up production network, that allows you to operate globally.

WS: What impact has the recession had on the demand for entertainment formats?
CLARK: Entertainment is a recessionary industry. In times when people don’t have a lot of money, they want very much what FremantleMedia gives them, which is these big family-friendly entertainment shows. It’s the four "F"s: Family-friendly, Fun, Familiar and Flexible on budgets. As long as you’ve got all four of those, then recession is not a bad time for entertainment. You can see that happening in two areas. One is if you look at the ratings that our shows have been getting this year, they’ve been phenomenal. Things like Got Talent and The Apprentice in the U.K., X Factor in Denmark and in Italy, all are way up. Idols in Germany and in France have also been up.
And we’ve sold a lot of programs this year. At MIPTV we took Let’s Dance to the market—we’ve had a sale in America with ABC, and we’ve got sales pending in most of the big European territories. We also took Risking It All, which is a Dutch game show, and we sold that in a few territories, including Spain as a daily strip.