Elizabeth Guider Reports: Takeaways from the L.A. Screenings

PREMIUM: Almost 2,000 acquisitions executives from abroad screened upwards of 100 TV shows during the week-long L.A. Screenings.

They came, they scoured, and, by and large, they went back home to finalize and find the financing for their shopping lists after viewing the 42 high-profile series contenders for broadcast networks in the States. Most of their time was spent in darkened theaters at the six Hollywood major studios, though many made side trips to HBO, Lionsgate, MGM, eOne, and Legendary to view disparate projects handled by these content providers.

Giddiness is not in the DNA of foreign program buyers, though most came away not unpleased with what they saw, and, in the case of those with ongoing supply arrangements, what they have to take.

Still, the pressures under which these folks operate has never been greater.

Traditional linear broadcasters are bleeding viewers in many places around the globe, Millennials are fickle and inexorably on to the next thing, piracy is a problem if Netflix and Amazon aren’t. Of late, there have been budget cutbacks, staff trims, management upheavals and/or generalized economic woes in a number of territories. Think Canada and Scandinavia, in particular.

“Cross-winds are fierce abroad. The marketplace is more competitive and chaotic than ever before and buyers’ search for that one or two or three impactful shows has intensified. While deals are complicated and often involve multiple windows, buyers don’t have the luxury of waiting too long because players like Netflix and Amazon are bringing new urgency to the game,” is how Sony Pictures Television’s president of international distribution, Keith Le Goy, described the whiplash.

And Stateside, it hasn’t been all hunky-dory. The just-concluded broadcast season was at best ho-hum, with only one (OK, maybe two) definable hits on the scripted side, Warner Bros.’s Blindspot (on NBC) and Disney’s Quantico (on ABC).

Andrew Shaw, TVNZ’s general manager of commissioning, production and acquisitions, said of how the threshold in America for what constitutes a ratings hit has shifted: “Good enough is the new great.” Direction: lower.

“A solid assortment,” RTE’s director of production and acquisitions, Dermot Horan, told World Screen Newsflash. “But nothing stood out the way series like Friends, ER or Lost did years ago.”

Arguably, that’s why reboots and remakes, spinoffs and sequels will dominate the U.S. schedules this fall: recognizable brands, in theory, tend to diminish the ratings risk.

However, Horan pointed out, that strategy has its own dangers, since movie originals boast bigger budgets and bigger stars than small-screen versions can muster. (Taken, with Ireland’s own Liam Neeson, for example, might be hard to emulate. He’ll see NBCUniversal’s remake on Fridays.)

Still, despite the contradictions and uncertainties, there was a sufficient amount to smile about this week—even some of the comedies, which are generally a harder sell abroad than dramas, scored well.

“Fortunately, there were fewer silly comedies,” opined Anette Romer, the head of acquisitions from Denmark’s TV2. “Nothing cringe-worthy,” another buyer, this one from Hong Kong, added.

Among half-hours that elicited chuckles from the overseas audience at different sessions: CBS’s The Great Indoors, Fox’s Son of Zorn, and NBCUniversal’s Great News.

Below are eight takeaways from the Screenings marathon, which wraps Friday.

• What Buyers Want: First off, there’s no such thing anymore as a representative foreign buyer, since the overseas business is as fragmented and as cluttered with outlets as it is Stateside. Nonetheless, what was heard most often from the veteran terrestrial players: “Give us a big, noisy, sexy, impactful series—preferably a procedural.”
• What Sellers Want: Most importantly, for prices to remain buoyant in a global market where disruption is upending all the traditional linear players. Most American shows are being (or already have been) pushed out of prime time on those networks and shifted over to young-skewing (and less lucrative) digital offshoots. Still, as every American seller says over and over: U.S. imports are vastly cheaper than local production, so they’re hardly likely to be dispensed with by foreign clients.
• What About the Deals? (1): Increasingly, foreign program buyers are wriggling out of volume deals with the Hollywood studios whereby they had to take a specified number of any given studio’s output each year, and opting instead to play the field. (Of course, there’s risk in that approach if they have to engage in a bidding war for something hot.)
• What About the Deals? (2): Increasingly, the Hollywood studios are warming to the idea of doing pan-regional or even global deals rather than tying up their product with individual clients in each territory. That’s what CBS did with sibling Showtime’s product recently, inking an output arrangement with Sky spanning the U.K., Germany/Austria and Italy that mirrors HBO’s deal with the satcaster.
• So, What is Hot?: Among the series for the five broadcast networks Stateside, high marks went to Fox’s This is Us, described astutely by one British buyer as “Thirtysomething crossed with Cold Feet.” Other good grades went to eOne’s Designated Survivor, Warner Bros.’s Lethal Weapon, CBSSI’s No Tomorrow, NBCUni’s Midnight, Texas and Sony’s Blacklist: Redemption.
• What about Edgy and Offbeat?: The ever-shifting bragging rights between HBO and Showtime tilted in the former’s favor this go-round: The Night Of purportedly blew some European buyers away. Based on a British series penned by Peter Moffat, the adaptation is directed by Steven Zaillian and toplines Riz Ahmed and John Turturro. Other unexpected titles that multiple buyers told World Screen Newsflash were pleasant surprises: My So-called Wife (on Bravo, licensed by NBCUniversal), Dirty Dancing (ABC, licensed by Lionsgate), Chance (Hulu, licensed by Fox).
• What Buyers Want More Of: They used to say “What a shame” when series came in at 6, 8 or 10 episodes; now they clamor for shorter runs, saying they feel less ham-strung with an X-Files, Under the Dome or American Crime or a European series like The Night Manager than with so many 22-episode series.
• Disappointments: Too many time-travel series and a stumble at Disney, which brought few TV titles to market. Also no big blow-out backlot party, and too fast a run on the hotdogs from Pink’s during CBS’s lunch breaks!