Video Interview with Red Arrow’s Jan Frouman

NEW YORK: In this video interview, which is available with subtitles in Spanish, Mandarin and French, Jan Frouman, the CEO of Red Arrow Entertainment Group, talks about the company’s foray into U.S. drama and digital video.

For ProSiebenSat.1 Media, advertising revenues in the competitive yet lucrative German television market remain a key source of income, but the European behemoth has been diversifying for the last several years, most notably with its content-production-and-distribution arm. Created in 2010, Red Arrow Entertainment Group is today a significant growth engine for the company. It encompasses a diverse portfolio of production companies in key markets around the world, including Endor Productions and CPL Productions in the U.K., Sultan Sushi in the Netherlands, Scandinavian outfit Snowman Productions and, in the U.S., Kinetic Content and Half Yard Productions.

Through its ownership of 15 production companies in nine markets, as well as creative partnerships with the likes of STV and One Three Media, among others, Red Arrow has dramatically expanded the portfolio of content available through its content-sales arm, Red Arrow International. Once just the distributor of ProSiebenSat.1’s local productions, Red Arrow today represents a cross-genre slate of titles from around the world, with highlights that include Bosch, based on Michael Connelly’s books and recently greenlit to series by Amazon Studios; the Canadian medical drama Remedy; the Danish entertainment format Married at First Sight; Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, the American version of Red Arrow’s popular Dutch format Benidorm Bastards; ABC’s cooking competition series The Taste; and, from the U.K., the upcoming family film Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot, starring Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench, and the BBC One David Tennant drama The Escape Artist.

Expanding its presence in the fast-growing digital space, Red Arrow Entertainment Group recently picked up a 20-percent interest in Los Angeles-based Collective Digital Studio, a multichannel network that encompasses some 600 channels on YouTube, reaching more than 100 million subscribers.

Leading Red Arrow on this expansion path since its inception has been Frouman, who had spent six years within ProSiebenSat.1 Media before being tapped to lead the content-production-and-distribution division. As he tells World Screen in this interview, at the heart of his strategy has been a reasoned, step-by-step approach to expansion.