Granada’s Gyngell

May 2007

ITV in the U.K. has been
providing American TV audiences with quality programming for decades. From Brideshead
Revisited, The Avengers and Prime Suspect to Hell’s Kitchen and Nanny 911, British shows have reached American TV outlets thanks to Granada
International, ITV’s distribution arm. So lucrative is the U.S. that Granada
has set up local productions in New York and Los Angeles. David Gyngell, the
CEO of Granada America and Australia, is responsible for the acquisition,
development and production of movies and scripted and non-scripted series for
the U.S. networks and the international market. Gyngell was the CEO of Nine
Network in Australia before joining Granada America, and brings to his post a
unique perspective on the international market.

WS: What does
Granada America want to offer the U.S. market?

GYNGELL: We try
to provide a full service, like the studios do, from non-scripted and scripted
shows to participation and call-in TV shows, which are part of the ITV platform
in the U.K., to purchasing finished programs to redistribute to other parts of
the world.

Also, we have a number of
development teams in the non-scripted area. We have four pilots in play at the
moment. We’re also focusing on content for the AOLs, the MSNs and the Yahoo!s
of the world. We’re looking to provide them with extensions of our existing
brands as well as original content.

WS: Are you
developing and producing programming for both networks and cable television?

GYNGELL: We’re
looking to create original content. Obviously, it’s always the most gratifying,
emotionally and financially, when you produce for network television. But with
the explosion of digital channels, there are opportunities to redistribute all
forms of programming—even what we produce for cable networks.

After producing for the
U.S., you can maintain rights in your negotiations, and you can gain
profitability through exploitation in other markets. We’re set up to do that
through our distribution arm, Granada International. It’s the second-largest
distributor in Europe outside of the BBC. The issue isn’t that one of your
programs is being sold to a cable network. It’s ensuring that you’re focused on
your business affairs. You must be prepared to deficit-finance programs in order
to maintain rights to redistribute to other markets. You have to be just as
creative in the business deal as you are in the initial program.

WS: So the goal
is not just producing for the U.S. market, you also want to sell some of these
shows to other countries as well?

GYNGELL: Yes,
and we also look to develop original shows and take them to other countries
first and then bring them back to the U.S.

WS: What have
been some of the most recent successful shows that you’ve done?

GYNGELL: Hell’s
Kitchen has been extraordinarily
successful for FOX in the demographics [they target]. The First 48 has been a great success for A&E and they continue to order more
episodes. It’s one of the benchmark shows A&E talks about, along with Dog
the Bounty Hunter. Nanny 911 has been a very successful show. It continues to
perform well on FOX and is then sold to all territories around the world. It’s
a nice advantage to be able to originate shows out of the U.S. and then sell
them back to the U.K. and, obviously, to a lot of other markets, like Australia
and Europe.

We’re in a co-production
with Optomen and FOX for Ramsay’s
Kitchen Nightmares, which I
think is an outstanding format. It won an International Emmy for Non-Scripted
Entertainment. It is owned by Optomen, but we’re doing a joint venture with
them in the U.S. I’m excited about that. Kitchen Nightmares airs later this year on FOX. We have a number of
shows and we’ve also got a whole lot of remake movie rights, which we are in
the process of doing. We’re remaking The Boys from Brazil with New Line, and Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Red Dragon) is directing. There are another two to be announced soon. We’re also
doing The Prisoner with AMC. It
will be a limited-run series, with a very substantial budget. And we’ve got
fantastic support from AMC—both financially and editorially. We have a
huge library of programs that we’re mining and people are looking at.

WS: Are TV
movies still popular?

GYNGELL: We’re
finding that they’re coming back. We’ve had great success with The Fantasia
Barrino Story: Life is Not a
Fairy Tale and The Ron Clark
Story in the last 12 months. The
Ron Clark Story was TNT’s most
successful telemovie, and Fantasia
was the second-­most successful TV movie on Lifetime. The U.S.
networks aren’t doing Sunday night movies anymore, and a lot of that has to do
with football going on NBC. But you’re seeing the success the Hallmark Channel
has had with a couple of its recent movies. Oxygen is in the market to buy,
they’re looking for another six original movies. Lifetime is upping their
original movies. It’s a trend that goes in waves. Someone makes a statement at
a network and everyone thinks there will be a big change—it just doesn’t
happen that way. The performance of big event tele­vision, be
it movies or mini-series or short-run series, is working. The Tudors
has been doing outstanding numbers for Showtime. I think event television
continues, especially for the cable networks.

WS: How would
you summarize the differences between the Australian market and the U.S. market?

GYNGELL:
Australia is a melting pot of the U.K. and American programming. I ran a
network in Australia—Nine Network—and between 8:30 p.m. and 10:30
p.m. there is a huge reliance on U.S. content. Some of the original finished
U.K. programming, as well as local versions of U.K. formats, have aired in
Australia for a number of years, especially in the 7:30 p.m. weekly slot and
the 6:30 p.m. Sunday night slot. Australians are incredibly competitive and
aggressive and I think that the American market is like that as
well—probably a little bit more polite than the Australian market! I find
the creativity in America is incredibly stimulating. In the U.K. market the
business process is not nearly as aggressive or as dynamic as it is in the U.S.
That’s not a shot at the English process. It’s just that the dynamics of the
deal-making process in America are an eye-opener. It’s a free market here in
the U.S. Australia’s a protected market and the U.K. is a regulated market. In
Australia, commercially, there are a certain number of channels. And that’s the
reason there are only a certain number of original programs you can afford to
produce. Australian dramas are hard to make because you’re competing with the
big U.S. dramas and the U.K. dramas. But the U.S. is a completely free market
and the competitive nature, the business disciplines, the sales process reflect
that, and that’s what makes a major difference between Australia and America.

WS: What are your priorities for Granada America for
the next 12 to 18 months?

GYNGELL: To get
as many hit shows on the air as possible! It’s not a joke. In this business,
programs get you into trouble and programs get you out of trouble.