Armando Nuñez & David Nevins

As president and CEO of CBS Global Distribution Group, Armando Nuñez can tap into a library of some 70,000 hours of programming that spans many genres, from top-rated procedurals such as the NCIS franchise, which sell so well around the world, to comedies, talk shows, news and films, as well as dramas from Showtime, including The Affair and Ray Donovan. Nuñez has been finding more and more outlets for premium content, and last year he crafted a long-term licensing and trademark agreement with Bell Media that brought the Showtime brand to the Canadian market. Nuñez has been working closely with David Nevins, the president and CEO of Showtime Networks, in distributing Showtime product around the world. Together, Nuñez and Nevins talk to World Screen about the growing demand for addictive, serialized, premium programming.

WS: Showtime’s slate of original series has been garnering critical acclaim, nominations and awards. What’s been the strategy behind the channel’s programming remit?
NEVINS: We’ve made a major investment in owned original programming these last several years. We’re up to ten series on the air, and I expect [that] to get a little bit bigger over time. The strategy is to be the home of the most cutting-edge, exciting, adult, sophisticated premium programming. It’s a good time at Showtime. Above all, we have more shows that matter right now. There’s broad diversity, from Ray Donovan to The Affair to Homeland; it’s a pretty rich assortment of shows, and that’s what drives our subscribership.

WS: Armando, what demand for this premium content are you seeing internationally?
NUÑEZ: To coincide with what David just said about a great time at Showtime, there couldn’t be a better time to have super, über-premium content in the marketplace. And there are a number of different reasons for that. One, obviously, is the proliferation of platforms. A number of years ago, you basically had monopolistic pay operators in different places around the world. We’d sell the little Showtime content we had, and we were happy to do that. But now, with the growth of digital, whether U.S.-based services, local services that have cropped up, or extensions of traditional platforms—either [on-demand] platforms or linear platforms—there are just so many places that have great demand for premium content that drives not only viewership but also the subscription business. It’s a great time in the history of Showtime, both in the creation and distribution of content.
NEVINS: The other thing that is [allowing] Armando and me to work together so much is we’re now in a place where 75, 80 percent of our programming is wholly owned. So it makes these kinds of output deals that seem to be stirring in the market right now much more possible. When I came [to Showtime], it was maybe 60 percent licensed content, 40 percent owned content. More and more, we’re trying to invest our capital in owning our shows. And it’s created a lot of opportunity. One of my frustrations over the years has been that in each territory, Dexter might be in one place and Homeland in another and Ray Donovan in another and Penny Dreadful, and what do all those shows have to do with each other? We’re very interested in trying to increase the attribution of those distinctive shows to our distinctive brand.
NUÑEZ: And the great thing—again, to expand on what David said—is that, while in previous years we just didn’t have the volume of content to be able to substantiate both the brand and the portfolio, now we do. And the first deal that we made, which was different than just licensing our content, was the deal with Bell Media in Canada. It really was the first next-generation, premium-pay deal that has linear and digital components. For us, it was a question of [saying to Bell Media], Take our content, take our brand, take our portfolio, and you figure out strategically what platform—whether digital or linear—is the best way to grow and expand both the Showtime brand and our content.

WS: David, you’ve overseen the development of some of the most critically acclaimed and highest-rated shows on broadcast television, including ER, The West Wing, 24 and Friday Night Lights. When you hear pitches for Showtime, what do you try to find that is different from a show that would air on broadcast?
NEVINS: As a producer, I always had the reputation of making shows that pushed the limits of the broadcast medium. 24 was one of the shows that eventually broke through and became a big hit. Friday Night Lights and Arrested Development never quite got mass success in their broadcast run, but they’ve had a lot of success in the aftermarket. The great thing is that now [Showtime is] the perfect platform for my taste and sensibility; I can make shows I want to watch. And we’re now able to monetize those shows in ways [we couldn’t] in the old days, in a purely broadcast environment. What those shows share in common is depth of character, an interesting psychology of the characters and authenticity to a subculture. Whether it’s Friday Night Lights or The West Wing or Ray Donovan or Penny Dreadful, each show has its own distinctive vibe and subculture. But it’s also about some of the basics: I want to make sophisticated programming for adults, which is rare these days, and I want things that are going to surprise me, make me feel something, entertain me. Those are basics people sometimes forget about, especially when you get into the fancy world of premium programming. I don’t want to do stuff that’s just arty or precious or too self-conscious; I’m very [aware] of trying to make programming that will be fun to watch, that has entertainment value. I want to challenge people, but I also want to give them entertainment for [the time] they’ve invested.

WS: Armando, European broadcasters are clamoring for procedurals, because they are easy to schedule. How are Showtime shows, which are serialized, selling internationally? And do these two groups of shows, serialized and procedurals, provide you with a great portfolio to offer?
NUÑEZ: Absolutely, without question. First off, CBS is best known for its legacy with procedural shows. We’ve had some of the best procedural shows in the history of television. We rolled out a brand-new one in Limitless, which has gotten off to a great start. I suspect that is yet another CBS show that will be around for a long time. It’s broad, mass-appeal content that works very well on traditional platforms.

Then you shift over to another silo of content, which is the premium content that we create at Showtime. That’s different; generally speaking, it’s not going to air at 9 p.m. for a mass audience. We’ve had some cases in which a show like Dexter has aired on terrestrial networks, but that’s more the exception to the rule. This is programming that, again, not only drives premium viewership but also is marketable and promotable and can grow subscriber levels. And it’s a different business model. We do both: we have the broad, mass-appeal content—the CBS and The CW content—and then the Showtime content. There’s very little of this type of content that will help drive subscriber growth.
NEVINS: The strength of the kind of programming that we do is its stickiness. It’s addictive. It’s not for everyone, but the people who want to watch, the people who love our shows, love it on a deep level and will pay for it on a monthly basis. So it drives subscriptions, and there’s a lot of activity in every territory in the world around subscriptions, whether it’s pay TV or an SVOD platform. It’s a new subscription model, driven by this addictive serialized TV, in which you want to gobble it up, you want to binge-watch it, and when you’re done, you want more. And hopefully you’ll remain a subscriber till the next season of Ray Donovan or Penny Dreadful comes around.
NUÑEZ: The number of people from all over the world at MIPCOM talking about the last episode of Ray Donovan was quite amazing!
NEVINS: Particularly [viewers from] the Catholic world!
NUÑEZ: It just shows how the market has shifted to try to get this content up on their platforms as soon as possible after the U.S. broadcast. There are two camps of people here: one that says, Oh my gosh, did you see the last episode of Ray Donovan? And another that says, Don’t tell me anything, I haven’t seen it yet!
NEVINS: We’re getting much better about going day-and-date worldwide. There’s a lot of focus on making sure there’s not a huge gap between a show’s availability in the U.S., when all the press is writing about it, and its availability in [for example] Portugal.
NUÑEZ: Our type of content has almost become a new form of movies. Years ago, people would see a movie on Showtime and talk about it, but the likelihood was that they had seen it on another platform someplace else. But it’s our content that people are really talking about now. In many ways, people view [these series] as long movies. And in catch-up form, they view them on a binge basis like long movies.
NEVINS: Armando screened the pilot for Billions—the new show starring Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis—back in May and there was a lot of talk about it coming out of the L.A. Screenings. So he said, should we do a screening at MIPCOM? We did. We offered the second episode of Billions, and 400-plus people show up at 8:30 in the morning to watch it! That’s the definition of addictive television. The buyers want to see it; hopefully viewers will want to see it. [Billions premieres January 17.]