Paul Telegdy

***Paul Telegdy***

This article originally appeared in the MIPCOM ’09 issue.

Executive VP, Alternative Programming
NBC and Universal Media Studios

Paul Telegdy is known for his expertise in trans-Atlantic co-productions. When he worked for BBC Worldwide America, he oversaw the sale and launch of the ABC hit Dancing with the Stars, which is based on the BBC format Strictly Come Dancing. He also executive produced Grease: You’re the One That I Want, adapted from another BBC format. As executive VP of alternative programming at NBC and Universal Media Studios, Telegdy oversees NBC’s unscripted and specials programming, which this summer included several format-based titles, including I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!

TV REAL: When you are evaluating new alternative concepts, what are you looking for?
TELEGDY: Reality programming is no longer a genre that the audience in the U.S. sees as new and groundbreaking. So we still look for ingenuity and innovation as part of the basic concept because even if our audience hasn’t seen the specific twist of a show, our research shows that they will tell you they have already heard of the concept, even if they haven’t. So that means shows need to loom very bright in the area of ingenuity.

TV REAL: To what do you attribute the continued success of America’s Got Talent?
TELEGDY: There are a number of reasons. It’s hugely enjoyable. There is a degree of innocence to what its purpose is, which is to provide a very democratic right of access. Where other talent shows have perhaps a number of different criteria for contestants that need to be met—whether they are amateurs, or professionals, or [in a certain] age range—ours is just undiscovered talent. We have kids, we have what we call seniors, [contestants of] all ages and all shapes and sizes and all different talents. That pure innocence of purpose, which is just to be wildly entertaining, is one of the reasons people tune in, because they never know what they are going to see, so there is a sort of surprise. But one thing they do know is that it will be produced to some scale and it will be in our signature destination—which is the stage—and they are going to see the judges that they know. It’s a kind of familiarity that hasn’t bred contempt.

TV REAL: What are your plans for keeping The Biggest Loser fresh?
TELEGDY: The main statement of purpose of that show is uniformly clear: people with, in most cases, extreme weight problems will go on a life-changing journey in which they will lose that weight. The ticket to ride on that show has a very clear stamp on it, but within that, there are all sorts of production variations that can be used to drive the story in different ways. The producers brainstorm for hours and really raise the bar on the quality of ideas and the quality of challenges and the individual set pieces within the show, so that it all comes together to create a body of fresh ideas that inform the viewers’ experience. As I say, the purpose of the show couldn’t be clearer. So thematically you can change the approach, there are ways to draw in new audience segments [by focusing on] family members, or couples. Basically this is a show that successfully holds a mirror up to America in a way that at times is challenging and at times is difficult to watch, but all of the hardcore fans, as well as the broad public, see elements of themselves in the people on the show.

TV REAL: What new shows are you excited about?
TELEGDY: We are producing a show with Jerry Seinfeld, which certainly from an ingenuity point of view deserves to be on air because you haven’t seen it before, which is the show called The Marriage Ref. [It draws] on Jerry’s own experience with the institution of marriage and with that voice coming through, we will examine real-life discussions between husband and wife that will ring very, very familiar to our audience as the kinds of things that occasionally cause conflict. We will see real couples’ arguments commented on by a panel of personalities. And they will come down on a certain decision in what is meant to be a lighthearted comedian’s court of decision-making within marital disputes. These are not heavy duty, “I hate you, I wish you would change, I’m leaving you,” [types] of marital disputes. Instead it’s, “Do you really think that the vase looks good there?” It’s dealing with issues of passive aggression and differences of opinion in a humorous way. Now I’ve not seen that concept before and I watch a lot of TV, so I’m excited about it because the potential to entertain with real people and comedians is something that we see as having novelty. Of course, working with probably the best-loved brand of comedy in all of the U.S. is something that is exciting from a creative point of view.

TV REAL: Why has the U.K. become such a major source for entertainment ideas?
TELEGDY: Because of the economics of U.K. television, light entertainment—big shiny studio shows, prime-time entertainment other than scripted drama and comedy—has been a mainstay of British television for 40 years and it never went away. Going back to a different era, it was also on American television, but then it went away for a long time, while it didn’t go away from British television. That was out of economic necessity, because the BBC or ITV and, lastly, Channel 4, couldn’t afford to have just drama and comedy on, they had to do all sorts of different things. Part of that was also public purpose in the case of the BBC, which generated interesting forms of entertainment.

That heritage, both from a developmental and a practical point of view, never went away. When American television changed to a more similar economic model [less reliant on expensive scripted dramas and comedies] the main source for ideas, in a short space of time, happened to be the U.K.

But as someone who grew up with European television, I remember when Endemol was producing largely for Dutch TV, and they attained global status by producing for networks in the U.K. The U.K. may have been the English-language gateway for ideas from elsewhere in Europe.

Survivor, which was one of the major watersheds in U.S. reality television, was based on a U.K. format, which was taken from a Swedish format—so Sweden to the U.K. to the U.S. Pop Idol became big on ITV and the rest is history, and then Strictly Come Dancing became Dancing with the Stars. But the U.K. now faces its own issues, which are similar to the issues the U.S. is facing. Having big hit franchises, whether it’s Strictly Come Dancing, or The X Factor, or Britain’s Got Talent, which is actually based on America’s Got Talent, means there is limited real estate for innovation on those big shows, so you don’t see a lot of new ideas coming through.

TV REAL: Are there other markets you look at as well?
TELEGDY: Yes, we take pitches from producers all over the world. We have a Belgian format in development, a Japanese format in development and an Italian format in development. But no market mirrors exactly another market in terms of fragmentation or distribution. The U.S. with five, arguably six, terrestrial networks, is nothing like Germany, where there are 20 terrestrial networks, but there is a huge [number] of big cable players in America. So you can’t look [at a show] and say that was a hit there and therefore it will be a hit here…. But you can look at concepts that feel like they’ve had either pop-culture traction or that you just loved because you loved watching it—there is the sort of visceral element of buying shows, which is, “Hey I like that!”  And you couple that with audience [research].