Herb Lazarus

World Screen Weekly, January 4, 2007

President

Carsey-Werner International

With a career spanning several decades, Herb Lazarus is not only one of the most experienced international distribution executives, he is among the most respected and well liked.

Early in his career, he held senior executive positions at Columbia International Television Distribution and at Twentieth Century Fox TV International. Then for 16 years he served as president of the Silverbach-Lazarus Group, an independent distribution company. He currently oversees all distribution and marketing activities at Carsey-Werner International, which sells some of the most successful and innovative American sitcoms, including The Cosby Show, Roseanne, 3rd Rock from the Sun and That ’70s Show.

A year ago, Carsey-Werner announced it had acquired the Stephen J. Cannell Television library, which includes very successful action series—shows like The Rockford Files, The A-Team, Hunter, Silk Stalkings and 21 Jump Street. “It’s absolutely the perfect fit with our library,” says Lazarus. “It’s one-hour action-adventure programming coupled with half-hour sitcoms.”

Action-adventure series sell well internationally, explains Lazarus—not only to broadcasters and cable and satellite channels, but also on DVD and VOD. And the Carsey-Werner comedies continue to be in demand. Even though the company is no longer producing new shows, its classic sitcoms repeatedly find homes internationally. “The library keeps turning over,” says Lazarus. “We’ve been selling [shows] for short-term license periods, as short as possible—two years, three years. When the licenses start running out, we start renewing the deals so it just keeps going on and on.”

New media is also starting to fit into Carsey-Werner International’s business, but as Lazarus explains, “We are doing it a step at a time.” He expects to define the company’s strategy with respect to mobile phones, video on demand and the rest of new media in the next few months. “For now, the little bit that we have done has been on a nonexclusive basis because we don’t know what the future is going to be, so we are just treading very lightly,” he says.

Through the years, Lazarus has honed his negotiating skills to be as sharp as his wit. He loves a good joke and has been known to relish playful pranks. “Speaking personally, I think the business was more fun 20 to 25 years ago because I was 20 to 25 years younger!” he says. “But certainly from the standpoint of owning content, it’s never been better than it is today. To have television series, particularly long-running television series as we have, [is very valuable]. These shows have multiple opportunities to be aired on free television, pay tele�vision and on the numerous digital channels that have been starting up around the world—especially the new comedy channels that have been starting up to handle specifically sitcoms. Video on demand is another area for us, and I must say DVD has been very good, too. It’s never been better.”

Most of all, Lazarus just loves the distribution business. “I love coming to work every day. It’s the deal-making that goes on. It’s working not only with the people we have here based in Los Angeles, but also with the people in the Singapore office, the Miami office and the London office. They are a great group of people. There is something happening every single day. Decisions need to be made, strategy needs to be planned, and that’s very stimulating.”