David Ellender

This interview originally appeared in the MIPTV 2010 issue of TV Europe.

 

With some 20,000 hours of programming in its catalogue, encompassing entertainment, factual, drama, comedy and lifestyle, FremantleMedia Enterprises (FME) has something for just about any channel and any time slot. As viewers increasingly choose to watch shows on demand, FME is also finding opportunities in new media. But CEO David Ellender believes in the strength of broadcast TV.

 

TV EUROPE: Are certain types of programming experienced better by watching them live on broadcast TV than watching on-demand?

ELLENDER: Yes, live sporting events, big news and current- affairs events, but also entertainment shows like Idols and The X Factor. Clearly it’s not feasible to make these shows available in the on-demand world, because of the huge audiences that are being generated. Here in the U.K., the finale of The X Factor was seen by about 19.1 million people—that’s 62 percent of the viewing audience.

 

Now, there isn’t a bandwidth on another medium able to get that much viewership. It would bring the system crashing down. So I think technology has got some way to go before you could even contemplate putting some of these big shows [on demand], even if it were feasible to cover the cost, and that model would look very different.

The cost of broadcast distribution is going to remain flat almost regardless of the number of viewers that an event attracts, but the cost on broadband actually increases per viewer. Even if the technology improves, the financial model at the moment doesn’t allow for these other platforms to supersede broadcast TV.

 

TV EUROPE: How important have social-networking sites been as promotional tools?

ELLENDER: Social-networking sites have really been a fantastic promotional vehicle for our shows. Susan Boyle in Britain’s Got Talent didn’t become a phenomenon just on YouTube, she really became a phenomenon through a combination of YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and Facebook. Through social networks we have started to dialogue with that fan base in a way that we weren’t able to before. And that gives us the ability to cross-promote our shows. We’ve done this recently with a dating show in the U.K. on ITV1 called Take Me Out and also with The X Factor last year, which is also on ITV. These efforts have helped reach excellent numbers for the show in our demographic targets. The audience can watch the show but then immerse themselves in it online and with their friends. So we’ve seen a great opportunity to widen the experience beyond just the television broadcast.

 

As much as we deplore and combat piracy on the Internet, the fan activity online around our programs has really worked well. I mentioned the Susan Boyle clip, which, interestingly, was started by a fan uploading the clip on YouTube, and that took the program and the format worldwide instantly. It wasn’t us that did it; this was a fan that did it.

 

And we’ve got other examples—for instance, in Australia, Neighbours is our daily soap on Network Ten. Fans uploaded a video of the characters Declan and Bridget’s wedding, and they become popular in online forum chats. It is amazing that there is a community chatting up two characters in Australia getting married. People from different parts of the world were participating, and the only way they could see and know about the show was through friends sharing content online.

We’ve also done online forum chats for the American Idol auditions, and once again that has provided a fantastic platform for the visibility of our programs. And we have also found this is the case for some of the smaller niche programs as well. We own 75 percent of Original Productions, and they make Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch and Ax Men. They’ve got fiercely loyal online fan bases. And this just helped to make the brands stronger on a global basis—and not just for big entertainment shows, even niche shows with more targeted audiences.

 

TV EUROPE: Are the opportunities presented by the online world something to be feared or embraced?

ELLENDER: We took a look at the horizon about three years ago. We saw what happened to the music business and we were looking at the ubiquity of content. The many platforms that make content available led to fragmentation in the linear world, and we asked ourselves, How do we prepare for this evolutionary change to the TV business?

To some degree the recession has deflected people a little bit. The challenges we face are not about the recession, they are about this evolution, and it’s driven by digital ubiquity. We are seeing polarization already—big brand, big franchise, big event, live TV on one end or niche programming on the other. And everything else in between is struggling for a model.

So for us it’s a case of embracing the change, and we’ve got some strategies in place that we think will put us in a better position than other people.