Elizabeth Guider Reports: Studio Screenings Kick Off in L.A.

LOS ANGELES:  Eye-candy aplenty, bigwigs behind the camera and a tilt toward comedy await the phalanxes of foreign TV program buyers as they hit town this weekend for the annual L.A. Screenings.

The week-long viewing marathon is the first chance for foreign buyers to sift through—and in some cases sign on the dotted line for—new series greenlit for the five U.S. broadcast networks, and increasingly for high-profile series made for cable.

Stars like Maria Bello, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Rachel Bilson, Poppy Montgomery, Minka Kelly—and yes, he counts too—Ashton Kutcher will add sizzle to sitcoms and dramas alike, while heavy-hitters like Steven Spielberg, Robert De Niro, Susannah Grant, Kevin Williamson and Josh Schwartz are involved behind the scenes or in the writers room.

One big name sitting it out this go-round is über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, having seen two of his contenders this past season (Chase and The Whole Truth) fall to the ax and a pilot for ABC (Lost Girls) just miss the cut as a new TV regime took over at the Mouse House. Another prolific creator, J.J. Abrams, has, however, positioned two shows on the grid, Alcatraz for Fox and Person of Interest for CBS, both handled internationally by Warner Bros.

As for high-concept plots, there’s plenty of fantasy (Disney’s Once Upon a Time), NBCUni’s offbeat detective skein Grimm and Fox’s Inception-inspired psychological drama Awake. Thanks arguably to the impact of the stylish and stylized Mad Men, the early 1960s are back in vogue, as Fox frolics with a frothy concoction called The Playboy Club and Sony flies with Pan Am.

To assess these hopefuls and more, an estimated 1,250 execs from around the globe will literally traipse from one of the six major Hollywood studios to another during the week in what has become the single most crucial buying opportunity for overseas broadcasters big and small, new and established, to stock up on new American series. Many execs will also make time to hit the offices of other key distributors like HBO and Lionsgate, DreamWorks and MGM, as well as a potpourri of independent suppliers holed up in the Century Plaza hotel.

The foreign buyers’ aim: to come away with series that can boost or solidify their own homegrown skeds—and that means not being misled by hype, pretty faces or high concepts. Such a coup hasn’t really taken place since the first acquirers of an unheralded forensic procedural called CSI took it home and watched it grow into a global juggernaut. In the decade since, it’s been mostly the story of workhorses that have turned in better than expected races abroad, including NCIS, Desperate Housewives, Without a Trace, Bones, House and Glee.

The U.S. sellers’ aim: to keep the total revenues from international distribution deals inching upwards from their current $8 billion a year milestone.

This season, the field of new series entrants feels fairly diverse and diverting, though experienced foreign buyers rarely get carried away on viewing a single episode: They know that most series bite the dust in their first year, and the fewer of those they get saddled with, the better.

“I’m always looking for something that has legs, as it were,” one longtime buyer told World Screen Newsflash. “Not just a flash-in-the-pan that gets canceled after one season.” In that respect, several foreign buyers who had watched the upfront presentations to advertisers earlier this week gave a thumbs-up to CBS’s “consistency” of strong product and breathed a sigh of relief that NBC seemed poised under new leadership to build its way back to ratings strength.

Of the three-dozen or so primetime shows that are vying for buyer attention this week the preponderance are comedies, which as a general rule do not travel as consistently abroad as dramas—nor do they command the same hefty license fees for the sellers.

The trend is noticeable at Warner Bros., typically the top provider of dramas to the five U.S. networks and by extension to the international marketplace.

“Usually our proportion of dramas to sitcoms is 60/40 but this year it’s reversed,” said Jeffrey Schlesinger, president of Warner Bros. Intl. TV. He went on to point out, however, that two or three of his new laffers have managed excellent slots, including Suburgatory between The Middle and Modern Family on ABC.

Still, with so much new product having been picked up from its stable of producers, Warners will host day-long screening sessions Monday through Friday, with the two Abrams’ dramas being given pride of place on the daily schedule.

The only buyers who have to fork out for shows during the next few days are the Canadians, whose own schedules are set back home in just a few weeks. After a drastic round of consolidation, the three key commercial Canuck players are now under solid owners—Shaw, Bell and Rogers—which means their spending for U.S. product should return to healthy levels.

Already too, early-arriving customers are beginning to buzz about this or that, though some of the noise could be disinformation to mislead rivals.

Two Broke Girls, which will air on CBS but is distribbed by Warners, is attracting attention; as with CBS’s revamp of Hawaii Five-O last year, there is curiosity to see the reboot of Charlie’s Angels, which is licensed by Sony; others pointed to NBCUni’s Smash, now pushed to midseason, as the kind of “upbeat” fare they’re interested in.

On Thursday, Canadians and Australians hit the screening rooms at the Fox lot to preview an hour of the pilot of Spielberg’s time-travel epic Terra Nova, which had been beset with delays but which is now skedded to air Stateside in the fall.

“The first buyers really seemed to respond well,” said Marion Edwards, president of Twentieth Century Fox Intl. TV, who added that she felt her studio had a strong hand this time around. She pointed to Homeland starring Claire Danes, which is destined for pay cabler Showtime, as well as Finder and Awake as likely to pique buyer interest.
Edwards and other sellers are encouraged that the foreign markets have come back from the downdraft of the last three years.

“There is renewed optimism across Europe,” Sony Pictures TV’s president of international distribution, Keith LeGoy, said, pointing to rebounding ad markets and “a hunger for a hit U.S. show” among those buyers. Naturally, LeGoy hopes his studio, which is fielding its strongest slate in years, will have just the ticket. He’s particularly high on the three dramas on his plate: the afore-mentioned Pan Am, which he said contains “amazing, optimistic adventure stories, perfect for our time,” as well as Charlie’s Angels and Necessary Roughness for USA Network.

Increasingly, sellers make little distinction in speaking about shows that are made for cable and those made for broadcast network. In some cases, the former are beginning to command similarly healthy license fees and more critical plaudits than their network rivals.

Thus, mini-major Lionsgate, which made an international splash with Mad Men at last October’s MIPCOM market in Cannes, is hoping to entice buyers with its latest cable offering, Boss, starring Kelsey Grammer in his first dramatic role as a hard-driving Chicago politico, which will air on Starz. The series is directed by film auteur Gus Van Sant and the company is hosting a party this weekend to prime the pump.

“It’s like (HBO’s) Boardwalk Empire, but contemporary—plus there’s an unexpected twist to the plot,” said Lionsgate managing director of international television Peter Iacono.

And just in case a buyer doesn’t like that, Iacono’s got just the antidote: a nonfiction offering from producer SallyAnn Salsano. Called Nail Files, it’s an unvarnished look at a manicurist and her Sherman Oaks salon, which will be the first original Lionsgate series to air on the company’s own cabler, the TV Guide Channel. It might just do for foreigners’ perceptions of Los Angeles what Salsano’s Jersey Shore has done for the Garden State.

Elizabeth Guider is contributing editor of World Screen.