Ten Takeaways from the L.A. Screenings

They came, they saw, and they’re getting pickier. Some 1,800 international program buyers swept through the screening rooms of the major Hollywood studios over the past week to scour and, in some cases, circle shows they’d like to (or in other cases have to) secure for their own network schedules and platforms back home.

It’s become a truism that the quantity and the range of styles and subject matter of American TV programming has never been greater—but it’s equally true that not everything can be of the highest quality. It is television, after all, and the talent pool is only so deep. Nor can that content coming out of the U.S. satisfy all international buyers to the same degree.

“We made a strategic shift about five years ago when audience interest in U.S. shows started to wane,” says Anette Romer, the head of acquisitions and formats at Denmark’s TV 2. “We are focused now on creating local content, both original dramas and formatted material. While the Screenings are an opportunity to have meaningful and interesting conversations about where we are moving creatively and as an industry, there is not so much need to acquire. Still, there are a lot of shows to admire.”

Somewhat differently, Sarah Wright, the director of acquisitions at Sky, told World Screen Newsflash that her team was impressed by the “sheer variety” of the offerings from the Hollywood studios. “Comedy, drama—procedural, high-concept, character-driven. Lots of shows for all tastes and true diversity of voices.” That said, she went on, “it was slightly disappointing that there wasn’t anything from the big networks that looked truly different; rather, there were more variations on familiar themes.” She termed the overall offerings “solid.” (Sky, which beams not only throughout the U.K. but in Germany and Italy as well as other countries, does enjoy long-term output deals with both HBO and Showtime and brands that content as “best of the U.S.”)

In any case, the goal of overseas buyers is two-fold: figure out what might work for their fragmenting and yet ever more demanding audiences back home, and what will succeed well enough Stateside to merit the effort of buying and promoting those imported series.

Still, as is abundantly clear to Hollywood, the folks in the international market who license this expanding array of content—500 scripted properties per year and counting—play a central role in helping fund these assets. It’s a role that studio executives bank on to continue as the creative bar (and the costs) keep edging up. “We simply couldn’t do it without you,” Kevin Tsujihara, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros Entertainment, told assembled buyers during remarks on the studio’s lot earlier in the week.

Whether the deals with foreign programmers take place at the L.A. Screenings or in its wake is not the crucial factor: it’s whether linear and digital platforms around the world continue to proliferate, refine their brands and expand their audiences’ tastes for diverse American fare—and whether Hollywood sellers manage to window their product effectively through all of these outlets.

It’s not getting any easier because overseas players, too, are producing more of their own local fare. And balking at annual price lifts for U.S. product once considered routine.

When traipsing around this past week to the various Hollywood studios, it was evident that every executive on the sales side is having to focus, as Gina Brogi, president of global distribution at Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, put it, “like never before,” to make sure every asset gets proper exposure in front of prospective buyers and, if and when acquired, given all the marketing and promotional support possible.

Below are some of the things World Screen Newsflash picked up on in chats, emails or phone calls with four dozen buyers on the studio lots or in face-to-face interviews with the top distribution executives at all the studios:

1) HOT SHOTS Gone are the days when multiple bidders clamored for a single standout like Lost, Desperate Housewives, Glee, Breaking Bad or Homeland. However, major broadcast clients generally do coalesce around a half-dozen solid contenders which they believe might catch fire. Shows that got multiple compliments during the week include Warner Bros.’s Whiskey Cavalier and Manifest; CBS Studios International’s A Million Little Things and FBI, plus the Showtime shows City on a Hill and Escape to Dannemora; Disney Media Distribution’s The Kids Are Alright; Entertainment One’s The Rookie; NBCUniversal’s New Amsterdam; Twentieth Century Fox’s The Cool Kids; Sony Pictures Television’s L.A.’s Finest; and HBO’s Succession and Sharp Objects.

2) SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE Since platforms have proliferated as widely abroad as they have in the States and audiences have fragmented ever more thinly, it’s possible to find buyers enthused about even the most unlikely show for overseas consumption. Comedies of all sorts, from Fox’s laffer about geriatrics (The Cool Kids) to CBS’s riff on race distinctions with Cedric the Entertainer (The Neighborhood), found proponents. Jeffrey Schlesinger, president of Warner Bros. Worldwide Television Distribution, summed up the underlying shift in the biz, suggesting that audience tastes abroad have become more sophisticated, eclectic and more definable, at the same time platforms catering to them have popped up more widely and more quickly than ever before.

3) PROCEDURALS VS SERIALS Some studios heeded the call from key overseas clients and ditched darker, edgier fare in favor of closed-end dramas, or hybrids that are both procedural and serialized at the same time. Reboots and remakes also were in abundance, as were multi-camera comedies; superheroes took a welcome backseat. Nonetheless, at least one Nordic buyer thought the return to “generic procedurals” was disappointing. “This type of programming is way too predictable and formulaic for us,” said Sofie Schütt, head of acquisitions at Sweden’s TV4. “We are looking for character-driven, serialized drama, which there was a lack of.”

4) OUT WITH OUTPUT Deals that oblige clients to take voluminous amounts of IP each year are going the way of the dodo bird as more foreign broadcasters opt to limit the number of series they license from Hollywood and/or as the U.S. sellers themselves find it’s to their advantage to play the field. Opined one European buyer: “Soon every major territory will start to mirror the British market, where all the broadcasters cherry-pick from among the series on offer.” As Stuart Baxter, president of international distribution at Entertainment One, put it: “There are fewer output or volume deals in place now; more buyers are being freed up to select the two or three shows they really want. Of course, we, as a non-vertically-aligned distributor, have to have a show of exceptional quality (in order to compete with the majors).”

5) WARNING SIGNS Several buyers were put off by the level of casual violence in a number of the pilots, suggesting that Americans may be “inured” to it, but that Europeans as a general rule aren’t. Dermot Horan, director of co-productions and acquisitions at RTÉ, said, “It was disappointing to see so much violence and guns fired off in shows, even when not needed.” It’s a concern that “bubbles up occasionally across Europe,” another buyer remembered, referencing the hoopla over Miami Vice 30 years ago. He called it “unfortunate.” It doesn’t mean, he added, that the shows (he cited FBI, The Rookie, L.A.’s Finest and Magnum P.I., among them) aren’t good, but “I believe violence could be handled more effectively, and less graphically and gratuitously.”

6) OUT OF LEFT FIELD Although the focus of the Screenings was on the three-dozen pilots for the Big Five broadcasters, distribution chieftains increasingly screen material from their cable siblings or international outlets (especially when their broadcast offerings are scant). Several such titles caught buyers’ fancy: Harrow, ABC Studios International’s Australian drama; Deadly Class, a mystery serial based on a graphic novel for NBCUniversal’s SYFY channel; and What We Do in the Shadows, a campy comedy about vampires over at Fox’s FX outlet.

7) TOPICALITY CAN BE TOUGH Perhaps as a result of the divisiveness in America, and partly perhaps to remedy the same, a number of shows focused on hot-button issues, including the Time’s Up movement, Trumpisms of all sorts, and racial and sexual diversity. However, as Rüdiger Böss, executive VP of group programming acquisitions at ProSiebenSat.1 Group, opined: “Being at pains to address such issues doesn’t always have a direct or positive effect on the quality of a show.”

8) NO, NO, NOT THAT AGAIN After a week in darkened screening rooms, it was inevitable that buyers would tire of something there was too much of. Fatigue set in for what regards awkward attempts to emulate the emotional authenticity of This is Us (which airs on NBC but is distributed by Fox). “Earnestness can really be wearying,” lamented one buyer, who declined to be quoted by name or to finger the most egregious culprits. “Sappiness is not a substitute for authentic emotional resonance,” he pointed out.

9) MOVE OVER AMERICA Thanks to concerted efforts to improve the quality of co-productions on multiple fronts, there are now many good scripted projects being shot in English by producers and networks across Europe. And they are traveling across national borders on that Continent. Said RTÉ’s Horan, “U.S. shows are not the only possible English-lingo programming of choice. There is now a plethora of dramas shot in English by European partners that are very high quality, things like Killing Eve, The Night Manager and so on.”

10) MOST-TALKED-ABOUT DRAMA It wasn’t anything on-screen but rather all the maneuvering behind the scenes as every major studio in Hollywood is being rattled by merger mania: AT&T/Time Warner, CBS/Viacom, Fox/Disney or Fox/Comcast. These combos will unsettle not only every other player in Hollywood but also the relationships and deal structures with foreign TV partners. “To be clear, we come here to focus on our programming needs,” said one major buyer, “but we do have concerns about what’s happening, principally what the majors’ moves toward OTT platforms of their own will mean for our long-term deals with them.” Or, as ProSiebenSat.1’s Böss put it: “Less [as in fewer players, and fewer shows] can be good…but if we don’t find [continued creativity] on the U.S. market, we will end by producing more content by ourselves.”