Exclusive Interview: VIMN’s Robert Bakish

PREMIUM: Robert Bakish, the president and CEO of Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN), tells World Screen that he sees plenty of opportunities, across a number of businesses: successful formats, linear channels, apps and digital assets, consumer properties and more.

WS: VIMN airs award shows on a number of channels. Do live events boost viewing on linear channels?
BAKISH: Live events are a very important part of our business and are valuable as a social currency to our young viewers, who might be Nickelodeon viewers, MTV viewers, Comedy Central or BET viewers. For kids we have a franchise called KCA, the Kids' Choice Awards. We've done it in different ways. In the current version it's an event held in the U.S., but consistent with this “glocal” model, we add key local components to it. In 2013, we had 15 localized voting sites. We sent crews to Los Angeles from most of our Nickelodeon channels around the world, where we shot local awards, and international fans could vote in some 22 local categories. There were local winners that we then integrated into the U.S. show. That gave a little localization for our international channels that aired the show. KCA is great for our consumers, it's great for advertisers and it’s an example of the power of that kind of programming.

On MTV, beside the EMAs [Europe Music Awards], we also do events year round. We tend to air them under our World Stage banner—there are things like Isle of MTV Malta, World Stage Malaysia, World Stage Mexico, and so on. We say that in this digitally connected world there is no substitute for live; we see that passion on fans' faces as they are having this communal experience with other fans listening to great music. Events are a very important part of what we do and will continue to be in the future.

WS: How have you been rolling out Comedy Central and BET internationally?
BAKISH: About two years ago, we looked at Comedy Central. It was a U.S. and European brand, and we decided it needed to be a global brand. We went on an aggressive expansion program where we lit up Africa, all of Latin America, more of CEE and launched in Asia. In the last 18 to 24 months its distribution has doubled in size—we have some 28 Comedy Central channels and it has become the only global comedy network.

In operating it we pursue the same “glocal” philosophy as our other brands. We take global hits, which in Comedy Central’s case tend to be off-network product, shows like Two and a Half Men and Anger Management, and we supplement it with our own product. On the local level Comedy Central is a significant player in stand up. We have also been developing made-for-Comedy Central international product. We had a show Threesome last year that worked very well. We have Popoz (which is a translation of Cops), a Dutch show that is working for us, and we have a series of shows at the pilot stage that we are looking to launch later in the year, both scripted and unscripted.

Comedy Central has plenty of room ahead of it and we will continue to build it out. It also helps us in the advertising space because it gives us exposure to the adult market—as opposed to the youth and kids’ market—which is a place where we have very low share and therefore plenty of opportunity.

BET is also an expansion network. Last year, to complete our U.K. distribution, we did a key deal with Virgin, and now, with either the Virgin or Sky EPGs you get BET. On the back of that we have seen extremely healthy ratings growth. We are also in Africa in a variety in countries. We are about to launch in France where we’ve had a block on MTV and that will be expanding on a different frequency to a 24-hour service.

After Comedy Central the next big brand is going to be Paramount Channel. We launched in Spain first, then in France at the end of September. We had major launches in February in Russia and in Hungary. It is an ad-supported film channel and relies heavily on the Paramount library, but in the case of Spain, we have a whole bunch of local titles there. That channel continues to grow audience share month on month and has proven to be very successful.

WS: Nickelodeon is a very strong brand, but it is present in some very crowded markets—the U.K. comes to mind. What is giving it its competitive edge?
BAKISH: Nick is a great contemporary kids’ entertainment brand. Its success is due in large part to its significant and growing pipeline of both live-action and animated content, both of which travel well. SpongeBob SquarePants has been a hit everywhere in the world, including in China on CCTV. Today Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which the Nick crew has reinvented for today's kids, is doing very well and there is also a feature film coming. Our live-action show Sam & Cat is a hit all over the world.

The success of Nickelodeon starts with our shared global pipeline that emanates from the U.S., and like other services, we supplement that. We’ve done formats like House of Anubis, which was a show originally created in the Netherlands where it did very well. We then did a German version that did very well. Then, in partnership with Nickelodeon U.S., we did an English-language version for the world, which was shot in the U.K. but had some U.S. talent in front of and behind the screen and it did well around the world. We supplement Nickelodeon with shared international programming as well as relevant local product like Olive the Ostrich in the U.K. or Camp Orange in Australia. Then we have events like KCA that is the signature event.

Globally, Nickelodeon is one of the most recognized and widely distributed multimedia brands for kids and families. We reach 350 million homes in about 110 countries with about 75 channels. And it's not only the core Nick channel; we also have Nick Jr., and Nicktoons in the U.K., and that allows us to super-serve segments of the kids’ audience.

WS: Are you also serving children on screens other than the TV?
BAKISH: We're in the middle of rolling out a really cool Nick app. It's not the first app we've done, we've done a bunch of franchise-specific apps, like a SpongeBob game and they all do very well in the iTunes and Android stores. But the Nick app—that umbrella brand app—has some very cool-looking features, like this big button in the middle of the screen that says "Do Not Touch," and of course all kids touch! It's fun to play with. In the U.S. it's being rolled out as an authenticated device for cable subscribers. Internationally, we are looking at different models; in some cases we will do that, in some cases we might roll it out more on a standalone basis. We have rolled the Nick app out in the U.K. to great success, with more countries coming.

We've also done a cool new product called My Nick Jr., which is a multiplatform Nick Jr. channel that allows parents to become the programmers. You sign on as a parent and put in some parameters around your kids—age and what kind of shows and games you want them to focus on and how long you want them to use the device, etc.—and then the child plays on a customized version. If your child is watching on a TV and you say, "Oh I’ve got to run out to the grocery store to get some milk," no problem, you can press pause on the TV, pick up the tablet, hop in the car, press play and the show picks up where it left off. We want to make sure we're bringing innovative versions of Nick to today's kids to get the most out of this great programming lineup.

We also do a lot on the consumer-products side. The current big hit is Turtles; that business is growing like weeds! We have a feature film coming from Paramount. Nickelodeon has remained relevant, a great brand, great creative, a lot of hard work and a lot of great ideas.

WS: Most of the economies in Latin America are doing well. Is it a good market for you?
BAKISH: Absolutely, both Spanish speaking and Portuguese, very good markets. Sometimes people think of Latin America 20 years ago when the economies and the currencies were tougher, but it's been a great growth market; certainly for pay TV it's a great growth market. We have multiple brands active there: MTV, Nick, we launched Comedy Central both in Spanish and Portuguese. If you look at the development of the middle class, first they are buying pay television and then they are getting larger packages. That market has a long way ahead of it and we will be launching more brands, perhaps as soon as later this calendar year. The ad market continues to grow; the fundamentals of that continent are sound.

It's also a great place to do creative. We have a substantial facility in Buenos Aires where we do a lot of short-form content, and increasingly long-form production. We've done MTV novelas and Nick novelas and they have been great ratings generators. In fact, we recently took one of the Nickelodeon novelas called Grachi, we created an English-language version of it with our Miami team that debuted in the U.S. recently [Every Witch Way] and is performing extremely well. Latin America is not only a great market to serve; it's also a great market to create in. There is lot of excitement ahead, perhaps the most exciting is that we took back our MTV license [in Brazil] and launched an owned-and-operated service in October. It's off to a very strong start, with almost full distribution right out of the gate.

WS: And you also have a lot going on in India.
BAKISH: We have a 50-50 joint venture called Viacom18; our partner is Network18. Seven years ago, when I started, we had a 100-percent-owned operation in India. We had been there for a while, but we decided we wanted to be a more substantial player given the importance of the market. So we decided to make a major commitment there and thought it was relevant to bring in the right kind of local partner, so we created Viacom18. We went on to launch Colors, which is a true general-entertainment network—think CBS, if you will. That went on to re-write history in this space. We went from zero to number one in a very short period of time, something nobody thought could be done. And today there are four general-entertainment networks at the top of the ratings and we're always in that group.

Colors is an out and out hit. It has gone on to be exported all over the world. We have AAPKA Colors in the U.S. (for trademark reasons we call it AAPKA Colors in the U.S.) We have Colors in the U.K. and the Middle East and we have program sales all around the world. Colors has become this powerhouse Indian entertainment brand with all original programming created for the Indian consumer. The core is Bollywood novelas, serialized strips telling Indian stories that often involve a lot of music.

We also continue to operate MTV and are launching MTV Indies, which will have a different feel particularly on the music side. We operate a number of kids’ services—Nick, Nick Sonic—and we brought Comedy Central in as an English-language service. It is one of the top English-language services and features stand up and scripted comedies. And we're not done yet. You will see us make some moves in India in the not too distant future. It's great business and we’re thrilled with our partnership and with having a leading position in that market.

WS: What other geographic regions are you targeting for growth?
BAKISH: We're in most places where there is a semblance of an economy. It's easier to talk about where we're not! We’re not in North Korea. In general we have a pretty wide reach; however, the opportunity comes in increasing our participation in a market and that comes through either taking an MTV or Nick and adding localization, or more likely comes from adding a Comedy Channel or a Paramount Channel.

On the back of our success in India, we said we needed to deepen our participation in some of the less mature markets. We thought of doing more in Latin America, more in Brazil, more in Russia, and we are in the middle of bringing in another brand in some of the Eastern European markets.

There is certainly a broad palette of opportunities out there, and some of these higher-growth markets are important. We've had a lot of growth in Africa too, and are thrilled with our African business. Georgia Arnold, the head of social responsibility, was recently in Nigeria with Alex Okosi, who runs our business in Africa, because we created a franchise called Shuga that relates to our work fighting HIV and AIDS and the MTV Staying Alive Foundation. Shuga is now in its third season and is meant to educate in an entertaining way about fighting HIV and AIDS. We have several sponsors including the U.S government and the Gates Foundation. We're thrilled about that as well.

WS: Staying Alive is one of your major pro-social campaigns.
BAKISH: 2013 marked the 15th anniversary of Staying Alive. We work with the U.N. and we believe we've helped make a difference. Obviously, it's a large and complex issue and continues to be an area of importance to our audiences and therefore important to our brand. The MTV Staying Alive Foundation has handed out almost $5 million in grants in the last decade to fund local youth-led drives for HIV prevention all around the world and has helped raise several other million dollars for the same cause.

We have also been active in helping to fight human trafficking with our MTV Exit Foundation, mostly in Asia. All of this sits under an umbrella brand called MTV Voices, which is an on-going project of ours to allow youth all around the world to think about causes. We support it digitally and on air.

Finally, at Viacom, social responsibility is part of our corporate DNA. We have [an annual] Viacommunity Day when all our offices around the world participate in and support a range of causes: cleaning up a neighborhood, painting fences, sending packages to the troops. For one day a year in all of the offices, we help our employees give back. They can give back through one of our initiatives or if there is something else they want to do, they can do it. A bunch of people went down to help the Jersey Shore in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. We believe you do well by doing good and we need to reflect the fact that we have tremendous reach from our media assets and we should employ those to attempt to make a difference in the lives of our viewers and their families.

WS: MTV is one of the first brands that rolled out internationally. How has it been adapted to serve today’s young viewers?
BAKISH: MTV was always born with the idea that we wouldn't grow old with our audience. It's a “grow-through” brand, not a “grow-with” brand. As part of that, ongoing reinvention is imperative. The only constant is change. To ensure that we are evolving with our audiences and that we are accurately and credibly serving them, we do a ton of research. That's long been a hallmark of Viacom International Media Networks and it continues to be today. We spoke to more than 60,000 Millennials outside the U.S. last year. And, as a result, we continue to provide programming that reflects their lives and aspirations.

That research informs something that we talk about a lot, which is our “glocal” framework—part global, part local. If you look at the MTVs all around the world you will see that. We share programming, long-form entertainment hits and reality shows like Jersey Shore, which has spawned a whole set of local versions: Geordie Shore in the U.K., the highest-rated show in the history of MTV UK; Gandía Shore in Spain holds the record for the highest-rated digital terrestrial show in the 12-24 demo; and we just did Warsaw Shore in Poland. We are doing similar things with Catfish.

Another part of reflecting the lives and aspirations of today's audiences is that they don’t just watch linear TV, they consume entertainment on a multiplatform basis. They have their mobiles surgically attached to their hands! They still use the wired web and computers, so we provide entertainment product in that way.

In the music space, our signature event on MTV is the EMA. In 2013, we did the show in Amsterdam. We got about 55 million TV viewers globally, and we also had 10 million clips viewed online. We had 16 million social-media interactions around it, with people tweeting and we had many of the top-trending Twitter topics. Delivering product in this multiplatform way is what today's audience wants because it allows them access to additional information and it reinforces linear TV viewing as well.

Even after all this change, serving different consumers, and operating in a different delivery landscape, MTV is still the world's leading youth entertainment brand. We are available to view in more than 500 million homes outside the U.S. We are seeing very healthy ratings in many markets and even though it’s some 30 years later, we are still in a very good place.

WS: Is pay TV a healthy business and a good proposition for consumers?
BAKISH: The pay-TV business is fundamentally sound. Certainly we're coming out of a difficult 2013, not the best of economies, particularly in Southern Europe. But when you step back and look at it, pay TV is an incredible value proposition for the consumer. Look at what you get for your monthly subscription fee: you get access to probably the broadest range of content that has ever been in place, not only on a set of linear feeds, but also on demand. You might get a DVR. You might increasingly get access to TV Everywhere, which means you could watch programming not only on your television set but also on your tablet or your computer. We think that is very important and why in virtually all of our new pay-TV deals we are extending rights to TV Everywhere for our cable operators and distribution partners.

Another sign that the pay-TV business is healthy is the M&A [mergers and acquisitions] market. There is a lot of activity with people paying very high multiples for pay-TV distributors. And the reason they are doing so is this is some of the best distribution play in the world. They have solid business propositions and it's not only linear television, it’s also broadband, telephony and sometimes even mobile. In general, we continue to see subscriber growth and an excellent value proposition for the consumer, and we remain 100 percent committed to the pay-TV business.

When people talk about cord-cutting, they are typically talking about mature markets, but there are a lot of markets where pay TV growth is very vibrant. Look at Russia, for example, where penetration continues to be small, but growing very quickly. That is a place where not too long ago we just had imported feeds. Now, we run a local version of Nickelodeon, which is the number one kids’ pay-TV channel in the market. We run a local version of Comedy Central. We took back our MTV license and launched it as an owned-and-operated channel on pay TV in October 2013. There continues to be very good opportunity in the pay TV business, and we are fortunate to have strong partnerships with key distributors all around the world, and we look forward to continued growth.