Elizabeth Guider Reports: Indies at the L.A. Screenings

PREMIUM: To paraphrase what the English writer Samuel Johnson purportedly said about marriage, being an indie supplier in today’s international TV market is the triumph of hope over experience. These folks don’t get a lot of love from prospective customers, and even when they do close deals, it’s not generally for the money they might have wished.

If it was ever thus, a combination of factors has made indie efforts ever more glaringly difficult: an uncertain economic climate has put a damper on things; the escalating consolidation of programming assets in the hands of a few major players has deprived the unaffiliated of quality and quantity of content.

That is the impression from an afternoon walkabout Thursday at the Century Plaza Hotel during the annual L.A. Screenings. Now in its 50th year, the week-long bazaar now entices upwards of 1,500 foreign TV program buyers to Tinseltown right on the heels of the U.S. network upfront presentations to advertisers in New York.

Increasingly over the years though, those buyers have come to sample the new series for U.S. network prime-time on offer from the six major Hollywood studios, leaving little time or money left over to take a chance on alternative fare from indie suppliers.

“I feel I should pass by the suites,” one Latin American buyer, who was reluctant to give her name, tells World Screen Newsflash. “I have long-standing relationships with some of those people—plus, I’m actually looking for a couple of one-off specials, but there’s so little time, after Paramount, Lionsgate, Warner and so on.”

Making matters even more problematic for indie distributors, tight program acquisition budgets in recession-weary Europe mean that discretionary spending on oddball, untested or otherwise unexpected fare by those broadcasters has dried up.

“Admittedly it’s a little slow this year. The global economy is unpredictable so buyers aren’t giving [alternative] fare a shot,” opines Elart Coello, the president of L.A.-based movie outfit Laguna Films.

These dogged indie suppliers—the last of a breed that once prospered under the financial interest and syndication rules commonly known as fin-syn—pine after ever more elusive, BlackBerry-distracted buyers from their suites, waiting patiently to pitch their wares to those wearied customers on their way back from the Hollywood studio lots in the late afternoon.

On the other hand, a relatively healthy mini-market among the Latin American contingent, anchored by mega-distributors like Televisa Internacional and Venevision International, has sprung up at the hotel, giving the place a certain buoyancy. To that overlay have been added a few key European companies like ITV Studios Global Entertainment and FremantleMedia, who use the Screenings principally to pitch product and formats to Latin America.

In short, sometimes contradictory currents are at play among the Century Plaza coterie of 70-odd participating entities. The good news is that it’s a cost-effective exercise to set up shop for a few days, even if actual deals are few and far between.

“I’ve been in the business for 33 years and the main thing is you have to be flexible,” says Jose Pepe Echegaray, who used to handle Latin American rights from once prolific U.S. producer Carsey-Werner and currently reps product from Power. “The market is what it is and you have to adapt.”

Those who have managed that feat most successfully are undoubtedly those that have a consistent supply of a definable program niche or one single show that manages to create buzz.

Among the American contingent on hand Thursday, there are a few that seem to have managed the feat. MarVista Entertainment, for one, has carved out a niche with teen fare targeted for the likes of the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon Stateside.

“I’m finding it a positive market,” says the company’s director of international sales and distribution for Latin America, Ezequiel Olzanski, pointing to a poster for Nicky Deuce, a family TV movie which will air in the U.S. on Nick and which he is licensing for free TV in Latin America while at the Century Plaza. “In the States, the Hispanic market is growing by leaps and bounds with new or newly energized players like MundoFox and TeleFutura, so we have more places to pitch our product.”

Another player with a growing slate of product to pitch is Starz, which has recently stepped up its commitment to original fiction series. “The one-hour drama business is where we need to be,” says Alisha Serold, the VP of worldwide distribution at Starz Worldwide. “Things like Spartacus, Magic City and now our latest, The White Queen, which is our take on The War of the Roses.”

And in the current tough economic times, Serold points out, “Having less volume [than the majors typically have to offload on customers] is an advantage.”

Still, whatever face individual sellers put on it, the fact is there’s still a disparity, if not a disconnect, between the amount of content flooding the market and the amount of money new platform players are willing or able to spend for it.

Veteran supplier Tom Devlin, the president of international television for Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios, summed up the state of the biz most trenchantly: “Too much stuff, not enough time periods. New opportunities but still tiny money.”