Keynote: Radial Entertainment’s Garson Foos

On the heels of Shout! Studios’ merger with FilmRise, Garson Foos, CEO of Radial Entertainment, weighed in on digital distribution opportunities for the combined independent outfit as day two of the FAST Festival wrapped today.

Funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management acquired FilmRise and merged it with Shout! Studios to create Radial Entertainment earlier this month. Foos, in his keynote chat with World Screen’s Mansha Daswani that you can watch here, discussed how Radial is positioning its newly combined library of 70,000 movies and episodes.

On the heels of Oaktree’s investment in Shout! in 2023, the distributor acquired several libraries and quickly identified FilmRise as being a target for acquisition. “FilmRise is the leader in the FAST and performance-based business in the U.S. and growing considerably internationally as well,” Foos said. “Shout! has a good business in those categories, but we also have a strong content licensing business out to broadcasters and SVOD and a good transactional business and still have a good physical business, which was the legacy of the company. Now, we can have all the bases covered with this combination in the biggest and best way.”

In FAST, Radial will be looking to capitalize on the combination of FilmRise’s extensive TV slate, including a wealth of factual shows, and Shout!’s valuable film and scripted library, Garson said. “It allows us to combine these libraries for increased channel possibilities. It improves the offering in terms of existing channels. It also helps us on the international side. Now, we have a large library of international rights and are going to be able to launch a lot more channels internationally.”

On the approach to windowing as the company monetizes its library, Foos noted, “FilmRise didn’t really window. It was AVOD and FAST first. I love the simplicity of that business. I think [with] the majority of what we do, that will continue to be the case. Shout!, with more top-tier films and a new film business, allows for more windowing and strategically benefits from more windowing. We just got the Golden Princess library, the early John Woo films. We’re giving those a two-month transactional window, and then we’re going out wide to AVOD and FAST. That will continue, but the vast majority of the business is still going to be streaming in FAST and will not require windowing.”

Stunting on the channels has been key to creating visibility, Foos noted, as well as direct relationships with the platforms for promotion opportunities. “We work the library on a very specific, targeted level to be able to market. We see that continuing as we go forward.”

FilmRise has been making headway with creator economy content, Foos said, with Shout! also having entered that space recently. “FilmRise is continuing to sign up creators, and we’re getting rights largely for off-YouTube channels and putting it together into longer-form programming blocks to put up on AVOD and FAST. It’s a fast-growing part of the business. And we’re definitely looking to invest in it further and give it a lot of priority and weight at the company.”

With the combined library, the company will also be leveraging its access to data and analytics to “inform our content valuation going forward. So, now, when we’re evaluating new deals, we’re going to have that much more data to inform our projections. We feel like it’s going to increase our accuracy as far as estimating what performance will be and in targeting content to the platforms.”

Being independent at this time has been extremely beneficial, Foos noted. “Thank god for the AVOD business—it allowed companies like ours that have deep libraries to be able to monetize them with so many outlets. We feel like we’re in a great position in the business and see no reason why it won’t keep growing. Internationally, the surface is just being scratched in terms of the AVOD and FAST businesses. We see huge opportunity. There aren’t companies out there with libraries like we have that emphasize the streaming business like we do. That really gives us quite a strategic advantage.”

For the year ahead, Foos sees an opportunity to acquire more libraries as well as other assets, including channels and indie producers, namely in factual and genre films. “We’re open-minded and interested in growing through M&A as well as growing organically.”

Foos expects continued gains in the AVOD space given the economic climate. “People are going to be culling their subscriptions and they’ll be watching more content on the ad-based channels. Also, the subscription channels are taking less and less library. So, consumers aren’t going to find a lot of their favorite movies from even five years ago and back ten years ago on the subscription channels. They’re going to be looking for them on AVOD and FAST.”

Foos also stressed that Shout! and FilmRise will continue as stand-alone brands going forward underneath Radial.