Making Ideas Travel

April 2008

WANTED, FLYING PRODUCER:

Studio seeks experienced television production executive to assist broadcasters worldwide, and their production arms, adapt and launch program formats in genres including sitcoms, dramas, game shows, reality shows and telenovelas. Must be simultaneously facilitator, enforcer and diplomat, aware of cultures and customs in countries from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, willing to travel, preferably multilingual. People skills, energy, patience, resourcefulness required.

The job described is that of consulting producer, sometimes called flying producer for the amount of travel the job entails to all parts of the world. These producers work for companies like the Dutch-based Endemol, FremantleMedia in the U.K., Distraction in Canada and multinationals like Sony Pictures Television International (SPTI), all of which do strong business in exporting formats of their shows.

“It’s a very difficult job,” says FremantleMedia’s CEO, Tony Cohen, “because it needs experience, it needs authority, but you’ve got to be a great diplomat at the same time, with a lot of tact and a lot of stamina, because you are working with a lot of different countries and a lot of different producers and a lot of different broadcasters.”

The reason they’re in demand right now is that format sales continues to be a growing segment of the television business, especially in the game and talent/variety genres, and both buyers and sellers understand the challenges of adapting a show to a new territory.

FremantleMedia, which sells such popular formats as the Idols talent search and the game shows Family Feud and The Price is Right, was an early advocate of flying producers, Cohen says. “That team of flying producers has been at the heart of the FremantleMedia international model for many years. It consists of very experienced entertainment producers. They have all got track records in their own right and they have many years of experience. They all specialize in particular shows or genres. What is special about them is their experience and their authority and their ability to work with so many people.”

The name “flying producer” pretty much describes how they do what they do. After supplying the format buyer with the show bible and tapes of the original, they work from their home bases to consult with and advise the broadcaster or production company, and when the production date approaches they fly into the territory for rehearsals and the initial tapings.

Philip Livingstone is an international production executive with SPTI, which oversees the production and distribution of such formats as the hit reality show Dragons’ Den, The Dating Game, Pyramid, Karaoke Showdown, Chain Reaction and Power of 10. He spells out how things happen from the sale stage through to production: “Once a sale has been confirmed, a flying producer is assigned to the project and makes contact with someone at the station or production company,” he says. “When I’ve been assigned to a particular project, first I try to get hold of the hands-on producer. We send them the production bible, lots of tapes, the set design, graphics package, music—in essence, those items which can be supplied to support the production. They come back with questions and that’s usually where we start. I definitely attend their rehearsals and first recording. With all of the advance communication, hopefully I’ve helped them get most things in place before I get there. I’m usually there for five or six days and then they send me their edited tapes. If I can make suggestions before the first transmission, so much the better, but it doesn’t always happen that way.”

Michel Rodrigue, the president and CEO of Distraction, sets aside about a week for the flying producer on the ground. “Normally we ask for a one-week consultancy, covering part of the preproduction period and the production of the first episode or couple of episodes,” he says. “We want to make sure the producer buying the format understands the essentials of the format and can profit from the errors we’ve made in creating and developing the original. The main reason for the consultant to be there is to avoid the pitfalls that we’ve been through in the development of the format.”

Bas Guis, a senior consulting producer at Endemol International, allows about two months’ total time working with the buyer. “They have to cast people, search for a host, build the set, develop their logos,” he says. “About four or five days before recording, I will go there and if they have to pick a host it will be done two or three weeks before that. Normally I go there and train the host. We do rehearsals together for two days, then the recording itself. I’ll be there and if it’s OK, it can go on the air.”

Guis is currently rolling out formats of Endemol’s 1 vs. 100 game show. “We invented the show in 2000, and two and a half years ago the U.S. version started [on NBC]. We were in only six other countries in Europe, but since the U.S. came in, we are in 30 countries now. We grew from there.”

CASTING CALL

The international production format consultant Merrily Ross at Granada International points out that while game shows are fairly straightforward, reality shows are all about casting. “The big reality shows are the hardest,” Ross says. “We’ve had a lot of success with Dancing on Ice. All the production teams love making those shows. We just sold a format for Saturday Night Takeaway, which is a big entertainment show that is very technical to produce, so in that instance I would get the whole production team on board, because it’s a difficult show.”

One deal for Takeaway was with Hunan Satellite TV in China, which retitled it Super 2008: Friday Night Takeaway and began broadcasts earlier this year.

“I was working very closely with Hunan TV, who are the broadcasters and the production company,” Ross says. “They came over here to have a meeting with our producers. It was to make sure that the actual essence of the program was understood and that it would translate in China from the U.K. It’s a complicated program, a very fast entertainment show, with a lot of elements.”

The challenges that flying producers face vary by territory, broadcaster and program genre. While the format owner and the buyer have similar goals in making each show a success, there can sometimes be differences on how to achieve that. Probably the biggest challenge to a flying producer is helping to bridge the cultural differences between the countries where the format was created and those to which it must be adapted.

One of the more unexpected cross-culture successes in television recently has been the acceptance of Latin American telenovelas in Eastern Europe, in both their original versions and as local formats.

“In Eastern Europe, the challenge is always the same,” says Gonzalo Cilley, the head of formats and international production at Telefe International. “How do you make sure their audience is going to watch the show as if it was created for them?”

The role of the flying producer in putting the local producer and format owner on the same track is part of the answer, according to Cilley.

“The only way to make sure you are doing the best possible thing with the adaptation is to join forces between the format producers, who know the story so well, and the other side, the local partner, who knows the market and the audience very well. The best adaptation comes out of those discussions. It comes down to the descriptions of the characters, the back stories of the characters, the context where the scenes take place. In our sales process we try to make sure we have enough time and that discussion takes place. That’s our main goal.”

Cilley says 95 percent of Telefe’s format business is in scripted dramas and comedies.

In some cases, adapting for cultural differences isn’t particularly difficult, but it can still be important for the success of a show. Guis at Endemol notes that the game show 1 vs. 100 was tweaked in many of its formats. “When we started 1 vs. 100 in the U.S., NBC wanted to change a lot of things,” he recalls. “They know their market very well and they said, ‘This isn’t going to work here.’ In the original game show, it’s one person who has to beat 100 people in answering questions. In Holland, the only way to win money is to beat all 100. That was something that would not work in the U.S. market because NBC likes to give money away, likes to show off big amounts. What we did was change the format a little, so that if the 100 beat the one and 20 are still in the game, the 20 split the money. Now it was a real competition between the 100 and the one. The 100 were really shouting and trying to get rid of the one.”

HOW MUCH FLEXIBILITY?

Different companies and different shows bring with them differing degrees of flexibility.

Marc Lorber, who has launched formats for Sony and Disney-ABC International Television, says his current roost at MarVista Entertainment in Los Angeles, where he is senior VP of production, gives him more flexibility than the big studios.

“How much the locals can adapt it is always an ongoing conversation,” Lorber says. “You have to fit their local culture and market, as well as their budget and production abilities. The advantage of a small company is that we can be a lot more flexible.”

MarVista is currently selling formats of its Hawaiian surf comedy-drama Beyond the Break in both half-hour and hour versions. “It’s shot in Hawaii with a surf culture,” Lorber says, likening it somewhat to Baywatch. “If we take it to the Mediterranean, where there isn’t much surfing, then the surfers change to wind surfers, jet skiers or boogie boarders, and that’s what the team is. If we’re in South Africa or Australia, we maintain the integrity of surfing. We’ve got a fairly multiethnic cast. In some territories they may not want that, so we’ll change the character details. The heart of the premise is the same. It’s a young dramedy, a lot of it is about achieving a career, which just happens to be surfing, working within a company that sponsors you.”

WINNING IDEAS

With Telefe’s dramas and sitcoms, Cilley also takes a flexible approach. “There are no hard-and-fast rules,” he says. “The best idea wins. If they say this character wouldn’t make any sense in our country, and they give what we consider a strong reason, then we would decide it’s better for the show to change that character. Our goal is to have success with the shows, and for that we work very closely with our partners.”

Endemol takes a similar approach. “Endemol is not a strict company,” Guis says, “compared with some other companies. We like to come and sell it and go. Once a year we have the people who are doing our game shows come together and we show each other what the differences are. So people can pick up from there. That’s a way for me to work with the producers.”

As television markets have matured around the world in a relatively short time, few of today’s consulting producers are faced with the kinds of talent and equipment challenges that were common not too long ago. Working with limited budgets in some territories can be challenging, the producers say, but they point out that lower crew and talent costs account for much of the difference with top markets.

“In the U.K., the overheads are a lot higher than you would find in a lot of emerging countries,” Granada’s Ross says. “Our budget seems a lot bigger, but in a fair comparison they’re about the same.”

Livingstone has helped launch formats in Croatia and similar sized markets that turned out quite well using a production team a fifth the size of that for the original version in the U.S. or U.K. “They just work bloody hard, 24 hours a day,” he says. “In some of the shows I do, the American version would have ten or 11 cameras, the major European countries seven or eight, but it can be done with five or six. The sets vary in cost a lot. For a SPTI show, Karaoke Showdown, some of the sets are very lavish, but in Estonia the set was not nearly as lavish as in other countries but nevertheless the show worked. In other shows, like Power of 10, we are insisting that everybody has the sets looking pretty much, exactly the same. It’s to create and protect a global brand.”

Occasionally, the flying producer has to go above and beyond the call of duty. Telefe’s Cilley recalls helping Mexico and Colombia with formats for a comedy called The Roldans, about a family that includes a transvestite, played by a transvestite. “Telefe had it on in prime time for the whole family in Argentina. When we took it first to Mexico and then Colombia, one of the challenges of the adaptations was what should we do, because in Mexico the audience is used to more conservative telenovelas. Should we try to find an actor who is a transvestite? Ideally we would like this actor to be popular. Or known. Also we need him to be a good actor/actress and relatively good looking. She’s a woman in the show and the bad guy in the show is going to fall in love with her. So it had to be relatively credible. We had to ask, is it too much for a Mexican audience? Are they going to think it’s funny or are they going to hate it? We decided, in both cases, the best thing to do was search around the countries for a candidate who would meet all the requirements.”

Cilley was able to find a former telenovela actor who had been a leading character as a man, then became a transvestite in his life and then was acting as a female character in the same show.

MarVista’s Lorber, who has worked extensively in Russia, found himself not long ago on a set with a number of lighted kerosene torches. “I said, ‘Fire extinguishers?’ ‘We have them somewhere here,’ they said. ‘How about [placing them] by the set,’ I suggested. They didn’t know how to use the extinguishers. We had to show them how. Now we’ve got kerosene-driven smoke going into the ceiling, into the set—how does that affect the crew? Here we wouldn’t use kerosene, but if we did, we’d have masks, ventilation. All of that, which is second nature to us, is not elsewhere.”

At the end of the day, SPTI’s Livingstone says, “A flying producer has to have a slight element of adventure.”