Alison Rayson

World Screen Weekly, August 16, 2007

CEO

Target Entertainment

When Alison Rayson founded Target Entertainment in 1998 after stints at Itel and Mayfair Entertainment, she knew she wanted the distribution company to “champion the rights of independent producers.” At the time, Rayson notes, few British distributors were of that mindset, and one of those few was Minotaur International, which Target acquired last month from Virgin Media Television.

Rayson says that in the early days, as she was building her company off the back of the success of the Popstars format, “I never in my wildest dreams thought that nine years down the line we’d be acquiring a business that I greatly admired.”

The deal, Rayson says, was a pivotal one for Target in many ways. Minotaur “ticked all the boxes. Their catalogue is very similar to ours in terms of genre splits, with both a strong drama and factual library. The size of both businesses in terms of television distribution is also relatively similar. It just seemed to be a very good strategic fit, bringing more top-notch producers to our stable and a sound financial track record in terms of turnover and profitability.”

Rayson says she is particularly excited to be adding properties from Scottish Media Group (SMG) to the Target portfolio, which today consists of about 6,000 hours of content. “They’ve had phenomenal success with some of their big drama franchises, like Taggart and Rebus, and have an exciting development and production slate in the works notably through their ownership of [the production company] Ginger.”

Drama accounts for more than 40 percent of Target’s catalogue, with the balance made up of factual entertainment, children’s and comedy programming. Rayson says she is excited about the state of British drama today, and the growing international interest in the genre. “There’s been a massive change—when I started in the business [British drama] was very much seen as a poor relation to American drama, but formats such as Spooks and Footballers Wives have altered that perception.”

Rayson recalls hearing from buyers that drama out of the U.K. was problematic because of short seasons—often of only six episodes—and “slow pacing plus a perceived lack of gloss and parochial themes. What’s happened over the last nine years has been incredible. You’ve had companies like Shed Productions, Red, Ecosse, Kudos�change the formula of how British drama works.”

Furthermore, Rayson says, American broadcasters are building upon their fondness for British reality and game show formats by looking at scripted material out of the U.K. Target has already been a beneficiary of this, currently working with Lifetime on an American version of Mile High. “There’s definitely a huge affinity between the American and the British media communities at the moment,” Rayson says. “We are in vogue for now so we need to be cognizant of that!”

The U.S. will play a key role in Target’s plans to work with Virgin Media Television, an initiative announced as part of the Minotaur acquisition. Target will act as the preferred worldwide distribution partner for Virgin Media’s future commissioned content for its stable of channels, which includes the popular LIVING and Bravo and the upcoming Virgin 1. “They see the U.S. as being a really natural partner in terms of co-productions. That’s something that Target will very much be in the middle of, making sure that we help them broker the right relationships for their upcoming slate. Working closely with the commissioning team at Virgin is going to be very exciting.”

The Minotaur deal is part of Rayson’s broader strategy to expand Target as both a rights management and content ownership group. To assist these efforts, she recently brought in a private equity investor, Electra Quoted Management, who will own 40 percent of the combined Target/Minotaur entity. “Our plan is to build on existing core strengths through investing more in organic growth over the next three years, but at the same time continue to search for other relevant strategic acquisitions similar to Minotaur or in the production arena. Ultimately, as a rights business, we are only as strong as the content we secure.”

—By Mansha Daswani