Elisabeth Murdoch

April 2008

After holding the position of managing director of Sky Networks, Elisabeth Murdoch set up her own production company, Shine Group, in 2001. She sought out the best talent the British market could offer. She acquired the drama producer Kudos, the entertainment specialist Princess Productions, and the factual program-maker Firefly. She then set her sights across the Atlantic, and recently acquired Reveille, founded by Ben Silverman.

WS: When you set up Shine, what did you want to offer viewers in the U.K.?

MURDOCH: It was a really interesting time, thinking back to 2001, which is when I set up Shine. We had an enormous, fantastic run at Sky and we had just launched Sky Digital. I was one of the biggest pay-TV buyers in the world for U.S. product and I was also one of the biggest commissioning editors for U.K. product. So, it gave me a really interesting vantage point of what was going on at the time in the U.K. There was a lot of U.S. product that was very, very popular: Friends and ER. The U.K. audience had an appetite for that slightly more aspirational, glossy, very high-quality entertainment. Telefónica [had just] bought into Endemol. Pop Idol came on our screens that year and you knew immediately it was an international hit. Spooks, from Kudos, had been commissioned that year, and from the minute it aired, it was clear the U.K. could make glossy, high-concept franchise drama series with multiple episodes. So, it was a heady time. Also, I am a natural entrepreneur. I saw what was happening in the marketplace. There was a lot of young talent coming out of the U.K. beginning to make product like this, and I thought there was an opportunity to create an independent that could bring that type of television to the U.K. audience. I wanted to be part of that.

WS: Many indies have started out as boutiques specializing in one genre, but from the beginning, Shine produced many genres.

MURDOCH: Yes, a much harder way to do it! And what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! Well, it made enormous sense in a way. In the U.S., most production outfits are set up by a hands-on producer who [achieves] great success with one show and then waits until that show is over and then makes another show. It becomes a sort of self-perpetuating cottage industry, which is fine in many ways, but I thought that there was an opportunity, partly because I didn’t come from an exec-producing background, to work with a stable of talent that would help each other through the ups and downs of audience tastes and network trends. It’s a business where scale and diversity of genres can really help you. Now, trying to do everything at once from scratch is hard, but I look at some of the big, world-famous independents—they’ve had a very hard time with a specialty in one area, be it entertainment or drama, and then trying to establish themselves in another. Let’s say you’re a drama producer. It is difficult to grow another genre from within.

WS: How have you been able to attract good talent to Shine? What atmosphere do you offer the people who work with you?

MURDOCH: Ultimately, it’s about what ethos holds the company together and what is at the heart of the company. For me, from the very beginning, it’s been about putting creativity into the core of the company. I found other like-minded creative entrepreneurs. When I built Shine, I looked for the best producers in their genre, who weren’t just the best producers, they were the best entrepreneurs. They ran very successful companies with [vast] outputs in their genre. Kudos, Princess Productions and Firefly all shared the same creative culture. We all shared a profound belief in and respect for the audience and respect for creating great content that resonates with the audience within any genre. We are also very ambitious entrepreneurs, who believe that there was so much more we could do together than we could do separately. That was an absolute key to it. But fundamentally, I think you need to have like-minded individuals who have the same values and share the same beliefs and have the same sense of how you run a creative culture, and within those organizations attract and retain talent and also develop new ideas organically. Each member of the group does that.

WS: What drove the decision to buy Reveille in the U.S.?

MURDOCH: Reveille really was a no-brainer for us. They have remained independent. They are multi-genre. They understand international distribution and the power of intellectual property. They were established and led by a team of entrepreneurs. Ben Silverman [currently the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios], who founded Reveille, spent many years here in the U.K. and understood the power of an independent production company. He was here exactly when I started Shine, so we had very similar seeds of influence, so to speak. We had talked about doing something together for quite a long time, and I think it’s important to remember that timing is everything in some of these deals. We had a group that had earned a reputation and had the financial wherewithal and the respect in the marketplace to do a deal like this. We had the strategic imperative to do it. I wanted to tackle the U.S. in a different way than other people had, which was to open up a satellite office and put products through. I wanted a U.S. office that could generate ideas, so that [projects] could travel both ways across the Atlantic. I also wanted a company that had hits in scripted content and in non-scripted. It was serendipitous, I suppose. It was a perfect coming together of strategic imperative and good timing.

WS: You have said that U.S. studios and networks are losing a portion of their international distribution revenue to independents.

MURDOCH: I don’t think they need to lose it, but studios are very, very good at distributing certain types of product and it’s usually packages led by films [along with] very big scripted network dramas that they put a lot of deficit into. Their deals around the world are structured to do that and they are big machines and they put big products through them. Where they’re notoriously not so good, and it’s purely a matter of economic realities, is in selling non-scripted fare and formats and getting them into production internationally. You need to be more nimble. Chris Grant, at Shine Reveille International, has done an amazing job, and Ben really started this with him. They not only sell their own products internationally, but also product from people like Mark Burnett, who is the undisputed king of U.S. prime-time reality network television. He chose them to distribute his product internationally. Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? was sold in 36 countries in a matter of days by Chris, because that’s what he’s good at. Shine Reveille International also sells product from Howard Schultz, who created Moment of Truth, which is another big network show on FOX. Strong producers will put their product where they know they’ll get the most return. I think that’s a huge testament to an independent distributor, who can be nimble and a superb salesman. It’s an alternative to the studios. You look at FremantleMedia or Endemol, and they’re making worldwide successes out of products from the U.K. that they own the IP to and distribute internationally. [The studios] can’t insulate [themselves] from the impact of that kind of producers’ economic success.

WS: What further growth do you see for Shine?

MURDOCH: The first thing is to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. We have a large new group. I think Shine Reveille is going to grow very fast with the coming together of all of the companies within the group. We are going to look to capitalize on Reveille’s incredible success—it has such a track record of hits at the moment—and the unique position that it has in the marketplace. In the U.S., if we want to look for growth, a lot will come from Reveille. We have organic growth coming from within each of the companies, and we are looking at international production partners to expand our network.