Greg Johnson

World Screen Weekly, December 20, 2007

VP of Sales

Disney-ABC International Television Asia Pacific

With offices in Hong Kong, Sydney, Seoul and Mumbai, Disney-ABC International Television (DAIT) Asia Pacific has made it a priority to be closer to its clients, especially following a strong few years for the studio that has seen hits like Lost, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy shore up a slate of terrestrial and cable-TV slots. As VP of sales and acting co-head of DAIT Asia Pacific, Greg Johnson is overseeing those distribution efforts across a range of platforms.

Johnson highlights the strength of the DAIT catalogue today across series and feature films, citing the studio’s ability to deliver “content that is not only working around the world, but also has proven success in Asia.”

The new American dramas Reaper and Dirty Sexy Money and the comedy Samantha Who? recently secured slots across the region, with Seven Network in Australia, TVNZ, Malaysia’s 8TV, Studio23 in the Philippines, Fiji TV, Channel 5 in Singapore and STAR World. Private Practice, meanwhile, went to Seven Network, TVNZ, Studio 23, Channel 5, Fiji TV, STAR World and Malaysia’s ntv7.

Johnson also cites the opportunities for DAIT to build its format business, which, he notes, “is part of our ongoing strategy to provide partners with localized content. We want to be as relevant as we can in the market. The Amazing Race Asia has been a very big success for us and for AXN. Extreme Makeover is one we have done in a couple of territories.”

Outside of formats, Johnson is exploring other opportunities for content localization, and at MIPCOM announced a deal with STAR Plus in India for the broadcast of Disney animated features, dubbed in Hindi by Bollywood stars. The first of these, The Incredibles, aired October 12 with a voice cast that included Shahrukh Khan.

Another fairly new area for DAIT is digital-media deals, including a recent agreement for the launch of a subscription video-on-demand movie service in Singapore. “We need to leverage new technology across many areas and many platforms in order to expand our distribution,” Johnson says. The key, he notes, is devising a market-by-market strategy, given the varying levels of new-media services in the region. “A market like Korea is [very] advanced in the capabilities that they have, compared to Vietnam, for instance. We really need to structure any deals that we’re looking at on the realities of the market now and where we want to be in the future.”

—By Mansha Daswani