Beata Hegedus

TV Real Weekly, June 11, 2008

Managing Director

Debmar-Mercury International

Founded five years ago, Debmar-Mercury has become one of the leading syndication players in the U.S., with a catalogue that includes the Comedy Central hit South Park and TBS’s popular Tyler Perry’s House of Payne. Following its sale to Lionsgate, Debmar-Mercury set its sights on the international market, tapping formats veteran Beata Hegedus to run the new operation out of London.

As she develops and seeks out new properties, Hegedus has a firm eye on building and extending brands, as the company is doing in the case of Trivial Pursuit. Debmar-Mercury acquired the rights for a TV version of the classic board game, with plans to launch the show into the U.S. syndication market this fall. Hegedus has been busy lining up local versions of Trivial Pursuit: America Plays with international broadcasters. In Spain, Antena 3 has licensed 65 one-hour episodes of the game show, to be titled Trivial Pursuit: Spain Plays. The series will go into production in the summer and is set to air in September. And in Scandinavia, DMI has secured a cross-territory option deal with Metronome for the show for Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

Hegedus notes that the format’s interactive elements will be a strong selling point for broadcasters. “It’s a game between the public and the studio contestants.”

Debmar-Mercury is also rolling out the game-show format The Limit, from Scott Sternberg Productions. The show will be played in a studio with two contestants who will earn a chance of winning a cash prize by eliminating the other.

“We want to concentrate on two or three [projects] per year,” says Hegedus on Debmar-Mercury’s international strategy. “We are concentrating on game shows and reality.”

Hegedus has a long history in alternative entertainment. The Hungarian native worked on versions of Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! and Hollywood Squares for that market, before moving on to Distraction for a number of years. Hegedus then became the head of sales at iD Distribution, before landing at Fox Television Studios, where she ran acquisitions out of the U.K.

For Hegedus, having solid production experience was vital as she made the move into distribution. “You have to be a producer or have some kind of experience in production to sell really well,” especially in the formats business, she says. “When you are selling a format you are a kind of producer. You need to know [the broadcaster’s] schedule. You need to know exactly what’s missing [from the schedule]. You need to know how to present it so they will take it because it [fits] their style.”

The cross-cultural element of the formats business is particularly appealing to Hegedus. “I just love the idea of discussing with a Spanish producer how this show I have, which is American, would work in his country. I’ve developed [an understanding] for what would work in each country.”

—By Mansha Daswani