Granada’s Nohr

October 2007

By Anna Carugati

Granada International (GI)
is the commercial arm of ITV, the leading commercial broadcaster in the U.K.,
and is one of the largest television distributors in Europe. Its drama,
entertainment, kids, factual, wildlife and formatted programming comes not only
from ITV Productions but from leading independent producers as well. Nadine
Nohr, GI’s managing director, oversees an operation that distributes programs
to some 3,000 broadcasters and home-entertainment partners in more than 200
countries worldwide.

TV EUROPE:
British drama has always been a very strong part of your slate. You have also
started selling drama from outside the U.K.

NOHR: We’ve
made it a point to be creative and inventive in terms of where we source
material from generally, not just drama. But in the case of drama, we have a
French-language series. We had an African-originated live-action children’s
series. We have a children’s series that has only ever existed online, it’s
never existed as a television series. We make it our business to source good
programming from wherever it may come. We have Canadian and U.S. content that
we sell.

And now we have a French
series that ticks all the boxes. If a series ticks all the boxes in terms of
production value and content and pace and cast and story and all the various
things we look for, then we’ll consider it. We have a very rich and varied
slate. We have a 95-minute feature, which is an Ecosse/WGBH/Ingenious
Broadcasting co-production for ITV in association with Granada International,
called My Boy Jack. It’s the
story of Jack Kipling, who was Rudyard Kipling’s son. He is played by Daniel
Radcliffe [of the Harry Potter
film franchise] and Kim Cattrall [of Sex and the City] plays his mother. It’s a fantastic story about the
young Jack Kipling, his ambitions to join the army despite the fact that he
suffered from severe myopia, and his relationship with his father and mother.
It’s a fantastic cast and pedigree in terms of the producer. We work quite a
lot with independent producers as well as with our own ITV Productions.

We have a series from
Shaftesbury Films [in association with CHUM Television, Granada International
and UKTV], called The Murdoch Mysteries, which is a contemporary murder myster—very edgy—and that
is a 13-hour series.

And we have this French
series, which is called Scalp,
set in the greedy world of high finance in Paris. And that is made by 7ème
Apache Films for Canal+.

It’s because of our
relationship with Canal+ that they put us in touch with this producer and we
were able to source a different type of programming.

TV EUROPE:
While series like Prime Suspect
and Agatha Christie’s Poirot
have sold very well around the world, British drama can sometimes present some
challenges to a distributor, can’t it?

NOHR: The
way drama is commissioned and scheduled in the U.K. is different from many
other places in the world that are prominent producers of drama. We tend to
commission and schedule in short form. And if the U.K. is second only to the
U.S. in terms of program exports, we as a distributor are competing with
American companies and studios who produce [drama series] in minimum volumes of
13-plus and usually 22-plus. We don’t produce to that configuration in this
country. So it takes quite a few seasons to catch up. So you can see why, from
a buyer’s point of view, buying longer-running series represents a better
return on investment. Once you’ve launched a series and it’s on air, you’ve got
quite a few weeks for an audience to get used to it, and that then feeds your
DVD business because there is more exposure. Here we have quite short-run
series [or] mini-series. Even returning series are short run. But this has
nothing to do with the quality of the show. I think it’s a testimony to British
drama that it is often so strong that it sells despite its [shorter
configuration].

TV EUROPE: Granada International has a very good track record
working with independent producers. What can they expect from the company?

NOHR: We offer
them all sorts of things. As we move into an increasingly customized and
bespoke world, in terms of the way people consume content, we make it our
business to offer a very customized and bespoke service.

We offer that within the
context of a distributor of scale, so we give them the back-office support and
access to our contacts. But [at the same time] we offer a service that is
[tailored] to their particular needs, and different producers require different
things. Some might require financial help. Some might have particular ambitions
when it comes to new ways of exploiting some of their content. Some might have
challenges in particular territories. We’re able to do that, and because we
have a group of people who look after independent producers by genre, they are
genre specialists and have a real passion for the programming. That’s got to be
important to producers.