Q&A: Red Arrow’s Jan Frouman

With investments in TV production companies and partnerships with leading format creators, in a little more than a year, Red Arrow Entertainment Group has already offered a number of hit shows to the international market. As part of the ProSiebenSat.1 Group, Red Arrow also has access to stations across Europe and can benefit from SevenOne International’s distribution expertise. Jan Frouman, group managing director, talks about the growth strategy of his company.

TV FORMATS: For such a young company, Red Arrow is doing quite well.
FROUMAN: We are doing well, yes. We’re moving fast and furiously. I think in many respects, we accomplished more in terms of a build-out in 2010 than we had originally anticipated, which is exciting. But we’re also trying to do it in a disciplined way, finding partners, finding companies, finding startups that make sense for us and where we really feel like they are building blocks, as opposed to simply stepping into what, at times, is a prohibitively expensive discussion about what somebody has done in years past. From that respect, we’re pleased and we’re starting to see some real fruits from our efforts on the format and distribution fronts.

TV FORMATS: What has been your strategy for finding formats from many different territories?
FROUMAN: We tend to have three primary sources for formats. The first would be the production companies within our group. We have looked for partners and production companies where local development is very much a part of the company’s DNA. We are not simply interested in having an execution house in a territory that waits for new shows to get delivered. We want to see ideas come out of those companies as well.

My Man Can is a perfect example. It was created by our German production company, and it has now been sold to 20-plus countries, and we’re going into production in three of our own channel countries. When I say channel countries, I mean the ProSiebenSat.1 Group’s countries where a Red Arrow company will be producing the local version of My Man Can. So that’s a great rollout story for us, with its roots in the local development of a group production company.

The other place we’ve been sourcing product is with exclusive development deals, primarily the deal we did with Dick de Rijk [the creator of Deal or No Deal]. We’re finding creative partners who we believe can really put some gas in the tank. We’ve now sold the first of Dick’s latest creations to ABC in the States. And Kinetic Content [run by Chris Coelen], our company in the U.S., will produce it. So that’s great news for us. That’s a big step forward.

We also have a development partner in Israel, a very young, creative, comedy-focused executive named Omri Marcus, and we’re seeing that some of his formats are already generating discussions among our production companies—i.e., one or more of them is getting excited about them for their local territories. I expect to see his formats being taken to networks this year.

The third source is from third parties. Our distribution house has a nice footing in both camps. That is, formats that we own and control and then formats we represent. So, if I take something like Benidorm Bastards, it’s a Belgian show that was brought to our attention via our network in Belgium because it was airing against them on a competing network. And we got into a discussion with the producer and reached an arrangement to distribute the show around the world. That’s only possible if third-party producers know that they are going to be well treated within a distribution house. I think SevenOne International, under Jens [Richter]’s leadership, have been excellent at doing that. Producers don’t get buried in our catalogue. They’re taken care of in a proper way and they don’t bump into our agenda elsewhere, whether it be in the production space or the broadcast space.

TV FORMATS: The fact that you have a station group behind you on one hand and a distribution company already in place must be very convenient.
FROUMAN: Yes, they underpinned a lot of the strategic thinking from the get-go. When we launched the company, we said, we’re no longer just a German group. We’re a 12-country, 25-channel group. We are already in the distribution business. We are already, to a certain degree, in the production business. Does it not make sense to start making more strategic moves with respect to development, production and distribution?

And that’s why we set up Red Arrow. We basically took SevenOne and brought it into Red Arrow. It’s the sales house and the anchor for the group. We also took our existing production companies and brought them under the roof, and then started to build out. I would say we’ve built from the inside out. The inside being the channel territories and the outside being those territories that we really thought were must-have to put us on the map. So, the deal with Kinetic in the U.S.—great partner, great team, just the right point of time in its life in an absolutely must-have market. We’re going to do the same thing in the U.K. We’ve already partnered with two very seasoned executives there and we’re going to build out a non-scripted and scripted presence. That’s another territory where we really think we need to be active.

We did a co-production deal with Granada in Australia, a territory that we think is very important. In other territories, like Scandinavia, we’ve already launched, rolled out from Sweden into Denmark and then the next step would be to add Norway to the group’s footprint. But again, that’s channel territory and also a fantastically interesting creative territory.

As for other territories, we’re in “evaluation mode” in a number of countries. For instance, I think Israel is on a lot of people’s lists as a really interesting creative market. We see it from our development partner there and, who knows, maybe we’ll do something more substantial in that territory just because it’s so creatively vibrant.

TV FORMATS: Is it because those territories are relatively small—Holland, Scandinavia and Israel—that the broadcasters can take greater risks?
FROUMAN: It’s a very good question. I must say I don’t have the secret recipe. There does seem to be an edge and an outside-the-box thinking to Israel, in terms of the humor that catches hold. They’re willing to push things to a level that some larger established territories simply aren’t. Or their commissioners are asking for that. It can’t just be that the producer is saying, “Look at this great idea.” There’s got to be a programmer or a commissioner on the other side who’s saying “I’m ready to push the envelope.” A lot of that happens in the States, but I think most of it happens on the cable channels that are really pushing it a bit farther. The U.K. is pretty aggressive in terms of creative direction and formats. But I don’t know, I think a smaller territory starts to get on the map, catches hold a little bit or maybe some of the local creators get something sold in the States or in the U.K. and it starts to create some buzz. I must say, until Scandinavia was in our group—and maybe it’s my own fault—but it wasn’t totally on my radar screen. And now, when you spend some time there, you realize, my God, these guys do pretty great original stuff.

TV FORMATS: What would you say are the major challenges facing the format industry today?
FROUMAN: The challenges. There are so many—I don’t know where to start. [Laughs] It’s basically figuring out which developments to back and finding slots for them in the right launch territory. Our production companies tend to have two mindsets. One’s local and the other is international. You need to be able to know what local channels are looking for so you can generate enough volume and stay in business. The extension of that is, do any of the ideas that we’re developing have bigger potential on an international scale? I think our production companies have shown an ability to do both. That is, they really know their local market, have very good relationships with the local channels, but start to come up with ideas that have broader appeal.

The development deals are a little bit different because when we do a deal with a Dick de Rijk, we’re territorially neutral. In fact, a deal with someone like Dick is about finding international formats. We are not looking to do deals with someone of his caliber to place a show in one country only. We’re looking for 20, 30, 40 countries. So your ambitions can be a bit grander with a certain kind of development deal. A production company, that’s an operating business and they have to stay in business, so it’s a combination of the two. If Chris Coelen, at Kinetic, does some really great shows, let’s say for local cable channels, some of those may be local and a couple may fall into what is really an international format. So, we need him to do both. Or, you just won’t fill the slots.