Exclusive Interview: Endemol Shine International’s Cathy Payne

PREMIUM: Cathy Payne, the CEO of Endemol Shine International, talks to World Screen about working with producers to help finance projects the company is developing to find the right homes for them among the dozens of linear channels and nonlinear services in numerous territories.

WS: What considerations go into selling a show?
PAYNE: When you review a new idea or a project in development or a show, you consider what is going to be the best route to market and who is going to be the primary commissioning broadcaster. With global streaming services, it’s become very interesting. Their appetite for product and budgets has seen them help finance many domestic productions that would have otherwise struggled to be financed. They, therefore, allow a level of production budgets that a domestic broadcaster couldn’t afford on its own. Previously, we’d seen co-productions with the likes of the HBOs of the world. But with the appetite of Netflix and Amazon, there have been greater opportunities to make a show at a much higher budget. You wouldn’t have heard a few years ago of making a show that cost £3 million an episode for the BBC. However, as those streaming services have become players in their own right and competitors to broadcasters in their markets, the linear broadcasters do want to focus on exclusivity. From the streamers’ perspective, [given the] rising contributions being asked of them and the debate over how to window in the domestic territory, the streamers can choose to go alone and commission production for global rights.

In terms of retaining exclusivity, one recent example is Bodyguard on BBC. Netflix picked it up outside of the U.K., but the BBC kept all rights in that territory, so they could have it exclusively available on iPlayer. Every linear broadcaster is looking at how they can expand their VOD offering in order to provide flexibility of viewing and a level of exclusivity for their viewers.

The streamers and the domestic linear broadcasters won’t say no to co-productions, however, in an increasingly competitive world, the focus for the domestic broadcasters has to be their home market, where for the streamers or any other multi-territory broadcaster, they will continue to evaluate commissioning more originals that they can own and control.

We do tend to discuss the streamers a lot. However, let us not forget all the linear broadcasters globally who all have programming needs and likewise are valued clients to all producers.

WS: Are linear broadcasters looking for exclusive content that can differentiate them from the competition?
PAYNE: All domestic broadcasters are playing to their domestic markets’ strengths, what works in their market. Look at the performance of Bodyguard—it was amazing! While made for a good production budget, it wasn’t one of the most expensive productions we have seen in the past 12 months. And it’s a reminder that the cost of producing a show does not always correlate with how many people watch it.

We have Deep Water from Kudos coming to ITV in the coming months. It’s adapted from the Windermere series of novels by Paula Daly. It’s a thriller with three female characters starring Anna Friel, Sinead Keenan and Rosalind Eleazar. Financing [came from] ITV, tax credits and Endemol Shine International. It was not a project that we expected to presell and its route to market could be a more territory-by-territory proposition as opposed to a global sale.

We also have Adult Material for Channel 4, which is produced by Patrick Spence at Fifty Fathoms. It’s the story of a woman, Jolene Dollar, who worked in the porn industry for many years before it was the huge industry it is now. Adult Material is about what happens when a younger porn actress comes on set—did she give consent or not? Was she manipulated? And it makes Jolene look at the porn business in a different way. It’s an interesting concept of consent and manipulation, written by Lucy Kirkwood.

WS: Is there a difference between the type of drama linear broadcasters and streamers want?
PAYNE: The streamers want to appeal to a global audience, so the domestic-focused product may not always be the right fit for them. Genre pieces have worked well for the streamers; examples such as Dark and Rain come to mind. An area that can be tricky for streamers is comedy, bearing in mind that a large amount of comedy is market-specific. Hulu has a lot of success with comedy, but that could correlate to Hulu being a U.S. service only. We have a variety of comedies on the streaming services that perform very well in their domestic markets but do not gain traction for the platforms outside of their home market.

WS: What have been some of the most significant changes in the distribution business in the last ten years?
PAYNE: You’ve got a lot of different rights to divide up and sell. Anyone who is commissioning a show wants to have the opportunity to offer it to their viewers so that they can consume it in many different ways—where they want to watch it and how they want to watch it. Everyone is chasing longer windows, additional VOD and more exclusivity. They want to own shows because exclusivity is so important for those premiere windows—it’s all about marketability and keeping those viewers on their channel or service.

The other point to reinforce is the importance of back catalog and how valuable that is for a streaming service. We were all interested to read the news on Netflix’s recent nonexclusive license of Friends; it is one of those titles that many viewers will always come back to and catch an episode. The availability of catalog will become tight as the studios roll out their own direct-to-consumer services—Disney+, WarnerMedia, CBS All Access, Comcast, etc. New players such as all the FAANGS will need to build their own catalogs and certainly, Netflix has led the way in driving original commissions.

WS: We’ve been talking about scripted, but you also have a lot of unscripted and factual programming. Does demand for those genres remain constant?
PAYNE: Yes, and the streamers are moving into that genre as well and actively looking for programs. Queer Eye is very well produced and a great example of a rebooted factual-entertainment series. Its proven very popular for Netflix and is now in its third run.

Like our very own MasterChef in the food area, the streamers are experimenting with formats where they can make shows for different markets and produce them out of a hub. That’s what they are currently exploring.

MasterChef leads our unscripted slate; the show has been adapted in more than 60 markets to date. It’s amazing; the latest local versions include MasterChef Myanmar, MasterChef Cambodia and MasterChef Maldives. The show is so local and culturally relevant—real people, real food.