Buyer Profile: BSkyB’s Sarah Wright

PREMIUM: As head of acquisitions for BSkyB in the U.K., Sarah Wright is on the lookout for a variety of genres to satisfy the programming needs of Sky1, Sky Living, Sky Atlantic and Sky Arts.

Besides offering subscribers the best in drama and comedy, Wright explains, “We have factual, factual entertainment and specialist factual and we commission across all the genres. Reality shows are of interest to us for both Sky1 and for Sky Living. We keep our finger on it all.”

Recently at the L.A. Screenings, Wright was looking for comedies and dramas mainly for Sky1, Sky Living and Sky Atlantic, which each have a distinct personality.

“Sky1 is big mainstream family viewing with shows like The Simpsons, Fringe, Lie to Me, Modern Family and The Middle,” explains Wright. Sky Living appeals to both men and women but is more of a female channel. “That’s where we play Bones, Criminal Minds, Nikita and Cougar Town,” she adds. “It’s viewing for women to sit back and really say, ‘This is my channel’.

“And Sky Atlantic is where we have our HBO content—shows like Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, but similarly we are talking about big epic storytelling, big pieces, which sit alongside shows like Blue Bloods, the CBS show that has done very well, and Curb Your Enthusiasm and that sort of smart comedy,” continues Wright. “It’s a great channel; it’s the home of HBO in the U.K. although two-thirds of the programming is non-HBO.”

After viewing the pilots of upcoming series, Wright felt, “There’s a good variety of genres: high-concept shows, procedurals, alternative reality pieces. I think these will travel well internationally. Fairytales seem to be a standout theme with Grimm [NBC Universal] and Once Upon A Time [Disney Media Distribution] and there is a great crop of comedies this year.”

She also liked Terra Nova from Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution. “It’s a big-budget extravaganza, which we really enjoyed. Disney had quite a lot of event pieces like Once Upon a Time and Revenge and The River, all of which were kind of good fun and risky, which we also quite liked.”

Wright notes that this year’s crop of pilots demonstrated that studios and networks seemed “more prepared to take risks and to go for event shows, shows with a different twist on them—fairytales like Grimm and Once Upon A Time, or alternate reality with Awake [Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution], or big-budget shows. There were procedurals and they were good, but there seemed to be a wide variety and I thought that was really quite promising.”

Wright notes that “the slates were all very good,” even though “there was one stand-out show that everybody is going to be bidding over.”

The Sky channels are not only acquiring shows, they are also quite busy commissioning programming. “In terms of spend, I think Sky1 this year spent more on commissioning than they did on acquired programs,” says Wright. “And Living is probably higher on acquired but has lots and lots of commissioning plans. The unifying theme across all of the channels is just bringing the best content to customers because they pay for their content. For pay TV it’s important that we give them shows that they think are worth their subscription. We’re not in the free-TV environment so that makes our model slightly different.”