Marco Bassetti

13-Marco-BassettiWhen the merger of Banijay and Zodiak Media was completed earlier this year, a new company, Banijay Group, was formed. It comprises production companies operating in 17 territories, active in entertainment, drama, factual, reality entertainment, docudrama, children’s and animation programming, as well as the international distribution arm, Zodiak Rights. The company is known for several formats and shows, including Versailles, The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds, Temptation Island, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, The Making of the Mob, Wolf Creek, Wife Swap, Wild Things, Location Location Location and Occupied. Banijay Group’s CEO, Marco Bassetti, has experienced the production and distribution business from the ground up. He began his career as an executive producer at Italy’s Mediaset, founded the indie producer La Italiana Produzioni and headed Grundy Italy and then Endemol Italy. Three years after exiting Endemol Italy he rejoined Endemol Group, serving as COO and then president. He joined Banijay in 2013. Bassetti talks to World Screen about the merger, managing producers and the creative process and the types of shows that are in demand today.

WS: How did you approach the merger of Zodiak Media and Banijay?
BASSETTI: The main reason for the merger was the fact that the two companies were complementary in terms of strength, culture, genre and geography. The benefit to the combined group is that we are now even stronger; there is more collaboration and a desire to work together that went beyond our expectations. At the outset, we talked about being more able to compete on the world stage, and that is the case. Every day we are seeing examples of how the merger has benefited both companies by maximizing our global footprint and optimizing business opportunities. The merging of the cultures—Banijay more focused on efficient operations and non-scripted and Zodiak on creativity and scripted—is a unique mix.

The merger helped our business geographically as well. We have both extended our footprint and reinforced it in some territories. The U.K., Benelux and India were new for Banijay, and Germany and Australia were new for Zodiak. In regions such as Scandinavia and France, where both companies were very strong, we are even stronger as we now create scripted and non-scripted and kids’ content.

Zodiak Rights, the distribution arm of Banijay Group, represents quality, excellence and experience in the business of television and ancillary sales across all platforms. We have experienced sales teams with offices in London, Paris and Copenhagen, offering multiplatform expertise and service across TV, digital and theatrical. With the group’s growing library of formats and programming, as well as third-party content, Zodiak Rights represents more than 20,000 hours of multi-genre programming, delivering more than 4,000 hours of scripted programming, including the big-budget Canal+ flagship drama Versailles, Wolf Creek, the award-winning Belgian drama Public Enemy and International Emmy Award winner The Returned. [There are also] highly successful non-scripted shows such as SAS: Who Dares Wins and The Secret Life of 4, 5, 6 Year Olds.

WS: What have you found to be the best ways to nurture creativity and help producers find the next good idea for a program?
BASSETTI: The producers we work with all thrive in a creative environment. It is exciting to see the energy that is produced when we all get together at events like MIPCOM or our creative retreats during the year. The aim of the merger was to increase the value of the group by building on its strengths and sharing ideas and ways of working across all our companies, both vertically and horizontally.

We have created a series of important incentives related to creativity and encouraged the independence of the managing directors of all our production companies by eliminating restrictions and barriers that make creativity difficult. So now we have a very dynamic group, and we don’t expect them to conform and work as if “painting by numbers.”

Our office in Paris is designed as a service for the benefit of the local operations and isn’t a bureaucratic, controlling entity like you sometimes see in big media groups.

WS: How are you encouraging the various production companies within the Banijay Group to share ideas and best practices?
BASSETTI: As I said, it is crucial for us to let each company drive its creativity and production business since they know their clients’ needs better than anyone else. An international hit always starts as a local success. That’s why our Creative Boards work together to share the group IP, especially the ideas we believe have the potential to travel worldwide. They are specifically not setting out to develop “international content.”

As creativity is a constant focus, we are very flexible when it comes to finding new tools and do everything we can at a group level to foster innovation and imagination. We have now put at the individual companies’ disposal a very substantial creative fund to support development. As it is also a business in which cultural affinities are key, we have just started to gather a Creative Hub dedicated to English-speaking territories.

WS: Undressed has been a breakout hit this year. The idea is innovative, the costs to produce the show are contained. Is this a trend you see in the format business—broadcasters looking for innovative and cost-efficient formats?
BASSETTI: Undressed is becoming an international prime-time hit. The format was originally created and produced by Magnolia Italy, a Banijay Group company, for the Italian youth channel Nove. After airing just four episodes, Nove recommissioned another series of 40 episodes. An instant hit, Undressed doubled its time slot’s average share in the commercial 15-to-44 demographic. It’s also in production in nine other territories, including the U.K. and the Netherlands. Zodiak Rights is selling the finished episodes of many of these series to other countries, making Undressed a very hard-working format. It is a hands-on social experiment that sees two complete strangers meeting for the very first time and undressing each other in a darkened bedroom. With just 30 minutes to get to know each other, there’s no time to lose. And you are right, there is a small set and not too many production elements. The concept of the show is the winning factor, which makes it a straightforward show to re-create in multiple territories and it is extremely cost-effective.

Broadcasters and platform owners are looking for shows that will help define their schedules and at the same time they need to operate cost-effectively. Undressed is a strong contender for many of them.

WS: Broadcasters need hits to attract viewers; for what types of shows are they willing to commit to high budgets?
BASSETTI: There is an extremely strong and persistent demand for big prime-time entertainment brands that channels can identify with. The almost desperate enthusiasm we were all part of around Rising Star a few MIPCOMs ago was the illustration of it.

We just aired a very innovative new prime-time live interactive entertainment series on Denmark’s pubcaster DR1 called All Against 1. It’s been a massive success, and we are confident it will soon sell in many territories. It is a guessing-game show in which a single contestant faces the entire nation. Viewers at home play against the contestant via an app. We believe we have found a new way of attracting the younger target groups, the 15-to-25 demographic. They are suddenly watching television again! Around
75 percent of people who were playing along decided to play all the way through the show. Meanwhile, 17 percent of people watching have downloaded the app. Usually, that figure is between 5 percent and 10 percent.

We produce Survivor in several territories, including France and Italy. This format is another good example of a well-known and extremely successful brand-defining show all channels are looking for. It is one of these very few appealing formats that conveys positive values of [overcoming challenges] and is a life-changing experiment with high-tension drama.

WS: What appealed to you about DRY, the newly established Italian production company, of which the Banijay Group has acquired a stake?
BASSETTI: We took a minority stake in DRY—an acronym for Don’t Repeat Yourself—formed by renowned Italian producers Fabrizio Ievolella, Danila Battaglini, Francesco Lauber and Leopoldo Gasparotto. DRY is going to take advantage of the combined experience of its partners in the production of successful formats such as MasterChef, The X Factor, Pechino Express, 4 Ristoranti and Undressed, and at the same time, create and develop brand-new, original formats for Italian and international markets for mainstream, pay, DTT and digital TV platforms.

Banijay Group is at the forefront of groundbreaking and original content production. The team at DRY is extremely experienced, but they are eager to move forward and break the mold and continue to create new and innovative content. We know there is an element of risk in this, but we have huge respect for the team and know that they will deliver formats that will work across all Banijay Group territories.

WS: Are you looking to invest in other production companies? Are there geographic territories where you would like the Banijay Group to have a bigger presence?
BASSETTI: Thanks to the merger, we now have a strong presence in all the key territories, and especially in the English-speaking territories—U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand—which was one of our key objectives. We are now focused on generating the most synergies in these territories, but of course, we are always on the lookout for talented and successful companies to invest in.

WS: The economy in Italy is in pretty bad shape. How is this impacting the Italian television market?
BASSETTI: Indeed, the Italian economy is having a very hard time. And I think the TV advertising market will never be able to get back to its past level. Additionally, the leading Italian broadcasters are risk-averse and are not renowned for being very creative, and there is no legislation to protect the IP generated locally. However, in these difficult circumstances, Banijay is doing very well in Italy. Magnolia is one of the three biggest companies in the market that launched extremely successful brands such as Survivor, L’Eredità, MasterChef and others. In Italy, we also have two other companies that are growing rapidly: Nonpanic managed by Filippo Cipriano and Aurora TV managed by Giannandrea Pecorelli.

WS: There is considerable demand for drama. How is the Banijay Group satisfying that demand?
BASSETTI: The demand for scripted programming has grown critically thanks to SVOD platforms willing to invest in fresh content, and the success of local dramas, which is great news for us.

It is a crowded market, and broadcasters need standout content. Our drama teams are creating programming that fits this criteria with the likes of Versailles and Occupied and our recent launch Wolf Creek, the first original production for Stan, the Australian OTT service, produced by Banijay Group’s Screentime. Wolf Creek has been very successful and has been licensed to North America, the U.K. and many other territories.

Stephen David Entertainment in the U.S. is a creator of hybrid programming that sits across both fact and fiction. We see an ever-increasing interest in this type of content and the company is producing many shows for broadcasters and platforms such as Netflix and Amazon.

WS: Are co-productions like Versailles a model for high-quality, high-budget scripted productions?
BASSETTI: The Canal+ Création Originale series Versailles, co-produced by Zodiak Fiction, has now been sold into more than 135 countries, with a second season currently in production.

The season one premiere of Versailles broke viewing figure records for Canal+ in France, making it the best performance for a Canal+ original drama since 2013. It did the same for BBC Two in the U.K., more than doubling its slot at launch.

Channel-defining drama such as this is truly in demand. And ambitious series can only be created through complex and coordinated multinational co-productions. Our drama teams and our partners have created a model that certainly works in the case of Versailles, and we expect to announce further similar projects in the coming months.

WS: Broadcasters everywhere are trying to reach elusive millennial viewers. Is the Banijay Group looking to produce short-form programming or other content for digital platforms?
BASSETTI: It is, of course, a subject we are looking at very closely. But we have decided to have our own approach toward digital and not to follow our competitors in huge investments. Substantial amounts of money have been unsuccessfully invested in this field—as opposed to the TV market—and we believe more in having a “last-mover advantage” to learn from what our competitors have done! That said, we do of course produce short-form programming—both scripted and non-scripted—for digital and we pay great attention to the monetization and digital extensions of our brands to generate money off air.