Editor’s Note: Today’s Two-Way Street

NEW YORK: Ahead of this year’s NATPE Budapest, Anna Carugati, World Screen’s group editorial director, looks at the importance of an ongoing exchange of ideas between Europe and the U.S.

There was a time when broadcasters around the world looked to the U.S. for the latest in programming developments, scheduling techniques and on-air promotion campaigns. I remember when buyers would flock to NATPE just to find out what was hot in the U.S. The thinking was that eventually those trends would travel to
other regions, first and foremost to Europe.

In the mid-’80s I was working at Fininvest, today known as Mediaset. I came there after working for three years at CBS in Chicago. One of my responsibilities at Fininvest was to manage a consulting agreement that was tucked away in a program-acquisition contract. There was a vague sentence, and here I am paraphrasing the legalese, that stated that CBS would make its employees available to Fininvest to consult and provide expertise as needed.

I built upon that sentence and set up an ongoing exchange: CBS executives in the areas of programming, on-air promotion, marketing and even sports and news coverage would come to Milan and hold workshops for Fininvest employees. And Fininvest execs would travel to New York and Los Angeles to see firsthand how CBS created its marketing and promotion campaigns, managed its sports department, or shot and edited a news report. I was the go-between and the experience was exhilarating. Even though I spent hours translating for the Amer­icans and Italians, I learned so much and I saw how quickly people in the same field loved to share knowledge and experience.

I remember one instance in particular. On-air promotion execs at CBS Sports were showing a video of a sleek-looking promo for a golf tournament on CBS. The white lettering with the day and time that the event would be broadcast appeared in front of a wavy, moving, stylish black background. After a lot of oohing and aahing, the CBS execs revealed that that promo was done very quickly and for very little money. The background that looked so glossy and stylized was actually a large black plastic garbage bag that had a fan blowing at it and a couple of lights shining on it. The Italians were amazed because they thought that CBS, a U.S. network, had tons of money to spend on lavish special effects. They were surprised to learn that the promo had been produced with an ordinary garbage bag. Even the “Tiffany Network” had to sometimes resort to resourcefulness.

It’s a bit mindboggling to consider how much the television industry has changed since the ’80s, and how that one-way street of knowledge and expertise flowing from the U.S. to Europe has now very much become a two-way street. For more than a decade, the U.S. has been open to, if not actively seeking, program ideas from Europe that can be adapted for American audiences. The resulting list of shows is long indeed: Survivor, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Big Brother were the first, followed by American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, The Office and The Voice, to mention a few.

American networks have also used the European concept of a limited series: 10 to 15 episodes, compared to 22 or 24, per season. The U.S. cable networks, with less abundant resources than the broadcast networks, have been working with the limited-series model for quite some time now. When the broadcast networks recently announced their fall schedules, shorter-run series were all over the place: ABC has Betrayal and Resurrection. CBS will air Intelligence and Jerry Bruckheimer’s Hostages. NBC has Crisis in addition to Dracula, produced by Carnival Films in the U.K., which also produces Downton Abbey. FOX is bringing back Jack Bauer in 24: Live Another Day and will also air Wayward Pines, from M. Night Shyamalan.

As I witnessed almost 30 years ago, collaboration and sharing experience and knowledge can yield extremely positive results. It’s true that the TV landscape has changed dramatically. Technology has revolutionized the business, and viewing habits today are a far cry from what they used to be; yesterday’s passive couch potatoes who watched shows placed in set schedules by TV networks have been replaced by active viewers who text and tweet and binge. Because change has occurred at such a rapid pace everywhere, it seems to me that the exchange of ideas and collaboration is more necessary now than ever. Indeed, when I spoke to Niall Curran, the president of Chellomedia, for the One-on-One interview in our June/July NATPE Budapest issue, he mentioned that on-demand, second-screen and social-media features are essential offerings for linear channels. Chellomedia is also partnering with a number of U.S. companies, including A+E Networks and CBS Studios International. That two-way street of transatlantic collaboration remains the key to success for many media companies.