Greg Phillips

President

Fireworks International

With so many executives in media business wondering what possible impact the global economic downturn will have on their businesses, Greg Phillips, the president of Fireworks International, is cautiously optimistic about the future. Certainly, the business-as-usual hustle and bustle at the Fireworks stand at MIPCOM gave Phillips good reason to believe that buyers will continue to look for quality programming.

"The atmosphere was great at MIPCOM and we had tons of meetings," says Phillips. "I think everybody is mindful of the situation and of the potential decrease in advertising revenues over the next period. But no one had been given instructions not to carry on business. Maybe the media business was already taking into account that there was a storm on the way. So just maybe we’ll be insulated, to some degree." While admitting that the television business will feel the impact of the global recession, Phillips feels Fireworks’ cautious way of doing business has positioned it to weather whatever may be ahead. "We are not doing anything as a company other than being our normal, prudent, cost-conscious, somewhat conservative selves, because for the last five to ten years, at least, that’s been the only sensible thing to do. You don’t [bet everything] on a single project or even a group of them because you do want to be around for a long time. So I don’t think this situation presages anything other than the same kind of common-sense attitude as has always been the case at Fireworks."

Phillips has noticed that buyers have altered their acquisitions habits. "The biggest change is that buyers, programmers and management buy for specific reasons and for specific slots with a great deal of focus on what they want," he explains. "And the timeline is dictated by them and not by, ‘I like this program so I’ll buy it.’ It’s dictated by half-a-dozen very solid reasons why the key you have will fit their lock."

The Fireworks catalogue has several "keys" that will fit into various broadcasters’ scheduling needs. The new drama The Wild Roses airing on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was one such show. It tells the dramatic story of love, lust, oil and betrayal as two rival families clash in an epic battle to save what they believe to be rightfully theirs—sprawling Alberta ranch land. "Plenty of people want to see that with its story premise being somewhat evocative of Dallas and Dynasty of times gone by," explains Phillips.

A popular genre with buyers is kids’ live-action programming, and Fireworks has two new series on offer. Family Biz is about the Keller kids, whose carefree days while their parents are at work are over when their corporate dad gets downsized and decides to set up his new home office in the attic. And Half Moon Investigations follows a 12-year-old investigator on undercover operations while he fights crime, corruption and general wrong doing in the school playground.

Earlier this year, Fireworks acquired the CBC’s international sales catalogue, which consisted of some 700 hours of programming. "I was particularly pleased about the reception to the new nonfiction programming," notes Phillips. "After the CBC catalogue acquisition, we decided that we really had to get into that market in a meaningful, ongoing way." The company, in fact, recently hired Robert Kennedy, previously with Alfred Haber Distribution, as its first executive VP of non-fiction programming.

And with non-fiction titles such as Secret Worlds, which unravels mysteries of civilization, and the survival reality series Special Ops Missions, along with CBC talk shows, afternoon fare and entertainment shows, Phillips feels Fireworks now has a big presence in the non-fiction genre. "That is one thing we definitely wanted to do and we’re very pleased with the response from buyers."

Phillips, a veteran of the TV business who has been at the helm of Fireworks since its inception almost ten years ago, has seen ups and downs in the market before. "People want to acquire shows, they want to get ratings and they want to please their advertisers and their audiences," he says. "People have constantly told me over the many years that I’ve been working in this industry that the business was dying and that the Internet would take over completely, and no one would ever buy a program again. But it ebbs and flows and changes. It doesn’t disappear at all."