RTÉ’s Dermot Horan on Smart Producing & Programming

As director of acquisitions and co-productions at the Irish public broadcaster RTÉ, Dermot Horan has extensive experience evaluating programming that will capture viewers’ attention in an increasingly fragmented market. He talks to World Screen about changing buying trends, containing rising production costs, the value of partnerships and providing audiences with quality programming.

WS: How do you view the acquisitions market?
HORAN: [Years ago,] if you were a relatively small- or medium-sized broadcaster like RTÉ, you could never commission the volume of scripted content, movies or high-end natural history that a larger broadcaster like BBC or ZDF could afford. You were always reliant on acquisitions. But what’s happening now is that even the bigger broadcasters in Europe, like the BBC, realize that audiences are watching more and more on their apps, or the BBC iPlayer, SVT Play, YLE Areena or RTÉ Player. And because of that, people are watching voraciously.

When we started in this business, people might have had to wait six, eight, ten or 12 weeks to watch a series because it was aired episodically. Now, in acquisition terms, almost everything we buy we drop immediately after the first episode as a box set on the Player. Therefore, a huge amount of the budget that has gone into [buying] a series is consumed in two or three nights. So, we need to give people more, and they want to refresh. We’re increasing the amount of scripted content we’re commissioning, but even that is not enough. So, we need to continue offering viewers new content. And, of course, the content is a bit different from the old days of linear because when you were filling a linear schedule, there was an appetite for routine. You could buy a U.S. series like CSI, or The Mentalist, or Desperate Housewives, and people were very happy to wait for 22 weeks to watch the entire series. That is no longer the case. It probably has to do with the streamers, social media or the fact that we don’t concentrate very long anymore. People want to watch shows more quickly and refresh. I remember some 20 or 25 years ago, people were saying, “Oh, if only the British, the Australians and the Irish had the money to make 22-part series like the Americans do, but they can only afford to produce six-parters.” Now, a six-part series is probably the sweet spot. Even eight is a little bit long. You can commission a six-parter—and streamers do this all the time—and viewers might watch it over three or four nights and then want something new. They absolutely want something new. So, whatever you commission, you will have to complement it with a lot of acquisitions.

Since Covid, American programming was not available for a while. We had to go to places like Australia that hadn’t [shut down production because of] Covid, and we started running Australian programming. People took to it and said, This is produced as well as anything we see from the States, Canada or the U.K., and we like it. Viewers are much more open to programming from all around the world. As an English-speaking country, in Ireland, we are remarkably lazy when it comes to non-English-language programming. We will watch non-English language, but we’d rather not if we didn’t have to. We will watch multi-lingual programming. For example, we commissioned a drama, and part of it is set in Belgium. When the Flemish are speaking to each other, they speak in Dutch, and we have subtitles. But most of our content is in English.

So, we like short-run series; we like lots of them, and there’s an opportunity to buy from all around the world. So, acquisitions are having a bit of a moment.

WS: Is there still a lot of risk aversion? Is it possible to get partners interested in new ideas, or do they still want to play it safe?
HORAN: Because of streaming, people are more open to dramas coming from different countries. America, though, has become quite risk averse and a little bit “America first.” Some of these shows work very well for me from an acquisition perspective, like Yellowstone. But I’ve seen a lot of programming that plays to Americana, with lots of guns, that reflects American culture. Therefore, we need to find alliances elsewhere. Also, America has been less open to co-producing in recent years because peak drama [is over]. The smaller and medium-sized streamers, who would have been the go-to partners for European broadcasters such as Hulu, MGM+, Sundance or AMC are doing fewer co-productions. They are doing some, but a lot less with European partners.
So, we’ve had to pivot to more co-funding with partners in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The good thing is that those partners tend to produce drama at roughly the same budget per hour as we are, so we complement each other. We’ve had a very successful two-part series, The Gone, set in New Zealand, about two twentysomethings who go to New Zealand and then go missing. There’s blood in their apartment, they’re presumed dead, but there’s potentially an Irish criminal involvement. That was all shot in New Zealand, but the lead characters were all Irish. The great thing is that the cost per hour and production values in New Zealand are almost the same as they are in Ireland.

We’re working closely with the Australians, Canadians and, of course, our nearest neighbor, the U.K. We’re working with the BBC on The Walsh Sisters, based on the Marian Keyes novels that have sold over 15 million copies. We recently ran that successfully, and the BBC will launch it in the new year. Drama is a key genre because not only does it work on linear, it works in spades on our Players.

WS: Are financing models changing because the market is different? And how are you handling the rising production costs?
HORAN: There are a couple of points here. Ireland is a bit different from the U.K. We never had the massive inflation that the U.K. had. I think that happened principally because the SVODs—Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+—came into the U.K., commissioned a lot and inflated the price of everything. They paid everybody, including crews, writers, producers and executive producer fees, more, and that meant the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV had to try to compete with that. They couldn’t compete with Netflix, but they had to maybe raise their fees. That meant that dramas became too expensive. It worked for a while during the peak drama [era], if we want to call it that, because there was generally the prospect of a U.S. presale that could fill a substantial chunk of that gap. We noticed a few years ago that U.S. presales were not going to happen. There may be a U.S. sale, but that would be an acquisition fee, not a co-pro fee, and it will be much more modest.

So, we talked to all the Irish production companies and said, How can we produce dramas that don’t involve a U.S. presale? How can we also work really hard to develop the shows so the scripts are absolutely spot-on before we go into production? Because it is so expensive once you go into production.

We haven’t had the same inflation as the U.K., but we have had inflation. An extra day of filming could cost $100,000 or more, particularly if there are special effects. We try to have a writer, or a couple of writers, and a director working together with a producer; that’s your most cost-effective way. Make sure [the script] is as right as it can be before you start your filming. Then be quite clever about your filming. We’ve had several dramas where we had a number of locations at the same time. We’ve got a new drama, These Sacred Vows, which will start in February. It is six one-hour episodes, distributed by Banijay. It’s about—to use the Irish phrase—the shenanigans that take place when an Irish wedding goes abroad.

We shot this in Tenerife; we found the resort. As part of the storyline, a couple of guys play golf, and so the resort we’re filming in has the golf course. They get married in a Catholic church, and the Catholic church is up the road. If it’s a rainy day, and it does rain in the Canaries, you can say, OK, we’ll go into the church and do that bit today. Clever producers can bring costs down without deteriorating the production values in any way. You can do great establishing shots these days with drones. In the old days, we had to use helicopters. There is inflation, but we need to be very clever about our development, the way we produce and keep producing. Because at the end of the day, Irish people want Irish stories, and the international market seems very happy to have good English-language content.

WS: Any other thoughts on the state of the market? You seem optimistic, which is rare these days!
HORAN: A note of caution in the acquisitions market: Consolidation is looming large. We’re hearing that Warner Bros. Discovery might be bought by Paramount. Or it might be bought by Netflix, or by somebody else. Comcast, which owns Sky, might be buying ITV. All of these things are leading to market consolidation, which may mean being excluded from their content because they may be holding it for themselves and their streamers. So, that’s why, as I say, the good thing is that people seem amenable to content from all around the world. The good thing is that public broadcasters across Europe are working very closely together. And there’s lots of good content coming out of those broadcasters. I’m a glass-half-full person anyway. But in terms of the scripted market, with my co-production hat on, you have to be optimistic because we’ve had a run of pretty strong hits. We’ve been able to greenlight projects and work with good partners, and you have to believe that there is an appetite for that content. But you just need to be careful that it’s not too expensive and you don’t have a whole lot of shows left in limbo, which has been the case recently in the U.K.

WS: The news is so horrifying these days. While I love mysteries and crime dramas, I’m tending toward feel-good shows right now.
HORAN: This is another trend. We’ve been looking at the appetite for the kinds of drama we commission. And our viewers have been telling us in focus groups that, notwithstanding that crime is the number one drama, if the crime is too ‘noir-ish,’ too dark, they feel it’s too close to the news they’ve been watching on their phones and on television. Quite frankly, the news is so terrible at the moment; it’s so disturbing and unsettling that when viewers have the time to sit on the sofa and watch something, they are looking for something escapist. That’s why we’ve commissioned this drama, These Sacred Vows, about an Irish wedding abroad, because it’s light, a bit fluffy; there’s stuff going on, but it’s fun. It’s character-based. There are no wars, no guns, no murders. In the same fashion, we’ve got a caper coming up as well. Our Marian Keyes drama, The Walsh Sisters, is about a family. Somebody’s drinking too much, and somebody’s taking some drugs. But again, it’s not about a war, it’s not about murders; it’s about a family, so people can relate to it. We are definitely seeing viewers wanting more escapist dramas.