Quest for the Best

Steve Clarke checks in with some of Europe’s top acquisition executives about their programming needs.

European broadcasters headed to MIPTV have a lot on their minds this spring. A volatile ex-reality TV star addicted to Twitter is the new resident of America’s most famous address, and he is threatening to end decades of global free trade. Meanwhile, the U.K. vote for Brexit and forthcoming elections in France and Germany are leading some commentators to think the unthinkable: could the European Union implode if more populist leaders in the mold of Trump are elected?

For some, the end of a European single market is the stuff of nightmares. But as TV buyers consider the prospect of international disruption, closer to home they know their on-demand rivals have gained further ground during the past year. Broadcasters hope to future-proof themselves by strengthening the appeal of their own nonlinear services and keeping core channels healthy. A lot of today’s audiences expect to binge-watch their favorite shows at their convenience and view them on any device. The upshot for buyers is they are increasingly looking to acquire catch-up rights and licenses that enable them to series-stack shows.

Series stacking is becoming something of a battlefield between TV acquisitions executives and distributors. Anette Romer, the head of acquisitions and formats for TV2 Denmark, speaks for many of her peers when she identifies the problem of securing certain nonlinear rights. “The distributors are listening and are aware of our demands, but it is still difficult to get sufficient catch-up and especially stacking rights.”

STACK ATTACK
“When the rights are available, they are sometimes way too expensive,” agrees Sofie Schütt, the head of acquisitions at Sweden’s TV4 Group.

“We need to monetize catch-up and series stacking rights,” says Katie Keenan, the head of acquisitions at the U.K.’s Channel 5. “If we aren’t granted the rights, it becomes an issue. We acquire a lot of content and spend a lot of money with the U.S. studios. They know that functionality is changing. It’s a huge sea change. If Netflix and Amazon do a global deal on a show, it makes it very challenging for us.”

Her view is repeated by other European broadcasters, including Channel 5’s free-to-air rival ITV. Sasha Breslau, head of acquired series, stresses that ITV now exists across multiple platforms. The online ITV Hub is a vital part of how the broadcaster attracts and maintains its viewers. Therefore it is important that ITV secures the best possible licensing package when it purchases a program. “It can be difficult when distributors are keen to hold back catch-up and series stacking rights so they can exploit them across multiple windows,” says Breslau. “Across the board, we often don’t get the rights we’d like to allow us to offer our viewers box sets. In the U.S., a lot of the commercial broadcasters are now insisting that they get full series stacking rights—an entire series available to view at any time. We would love the same thing to happen in the U.K.”

Breslau predicts, “With everyone now aggressively pursuing catch-up rights, the negotiations with distributors are only going to get more tenacious and involved.”

FOLLOWING THE MONEY
Jakob Mejlhede Andersen, the executive VP of programming and content development at MTG, explains that concluding a comprehensive rights deal is only half the story for broadcasters keen to earn extra revenue from streaming services. “Buying catch-up and series stacking rights is not a problem, although they carry a hefty price tag. The question is, How can I monetize them?”

He continues, “You can buy all the windows, but if you don’t have a proper SVOD service to use the extended rights, then you are paying a higher price for the same content that you used to network before, plus a bit of extended catch-up. If your business model can follow, then it’s fine.”

He adds: “We can’t use a show if we don’t have series stacking rights.”

For pay giants like Sky (whose service encompasses Germany, the U.K., Italy and Northern Ireland) acquiring a versatile licensing package is a lot easier than it is for the free-to-air channels. “We’ve always been ahead of the curve by offering our customers the flexibility to watch when they want to and on any device,” says Sarah Wright, Sky’s director of acquisitions.

At Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, Jörg Graf, COO of program affairs, takes a similar view. “For us, linear and nonlinear go hand in hand. We will not purchase programs or formats which are limited to linear only. We don’t define ourselves as linear broadcasters but as a media and video service. Our audience will decide whether they want to see a big, shiny-floor show live or a drama series on our VOD services.”

As negotiating a deal has become more complicated, buyers’ needs have grown exponentially.

On the main network, Keenan is scouting shows likely to pull in big audiences, such as the reboot of The X-Files, a success for Channel 5 last year. Broad-appeal drama and event shows are a priority. Movies are always needed for Channel 5. Alongside entertainment and drama, Keenan and her buying team need more factual one-offs and series. “We want factual pieces that can cut through—broad, popular history subjects like JFK’s assassination, or another take on something like the Bermuda Triangle or 9/11,” says Keenan.

In Scandinavia, British drama series are much sought after by Denmark’s TV2 and Sweden’s TV4. For the former, high-quality U.K. scripted shows are needed for TV2 Charlie.

“U.K. drama is a vital part of the schedules for prime time on our linear channels,” says TV4’s Schütt. “Broadchurch still plays well for us and we’ve just bought Apple Tree Yard and Loch Ness. We’re doing a huge push on our locally co-produced drama, which we are putting more money into. On New Year’s Day, we had a big success with Missing [Saknad, not the British drama of the same name] on C More. Six months later we’ll give it a window on TV4.”

This approach has been adopted partly because the emergence of the streaming giants has made acquiring high-end drama very costly. “To counteract this, we try and find new partners to work with and acquire rights early on,” says Schütt.

Factual entertainment is on TV2’s radar—“ideas that will sit well in our weekday schedule,” says Romer. On the weekends, entertainment shows, including versions of Strictly Come Dancing, The Voice Kids and Got Talent, continue to perform. However, “there is a renewed focus on Sunday evening where, given the budget, we could do much more,” Romer adds.

For MTG’s Mejlhede Andersen, the market priorities are ideas that can be developed for scripted co-productions—one-hour noirish dramas, and comedies with female leads. Of late, MTG’s successful shows have included several original thrillers such as Black Lake and Black Widows and the comedy Swedish Dicks.

At RTL, Graf’s MIPTV requirements are headed by non-scripted formats that can be adapted locally. “It is more important than ever to adapt formats and make them unique in our market,” he says. On RTL, Idols, Let’s Dance and the return of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! have all been recent hits. VOX, meanwhile, made a splash with Dragons’ Den, The Best Singers and Red Bracelets, the German adaptation of The Red Band Society. Graf is also targeting “ready-made factual programs for our smaller channels.”

Rüdiger Böss, executive VP of group programming acquisitions at rival ProSiebenSat.1 Media, is hoping to find some fresh, high-volume comedy. “One of our biggest shows is The Big Bang Theory, but it’s been on air for ten years,” he says.

Böss is thrilled with the success of FOX’s The Mick but needs more shows like it that can be established in the schedules and then return for multiple seasons.

The international drama glut shows no sign of ending, but Böss thinks it is becoming increasingly difficult to get viewers to regularly watch new drama series because of competition from streaming services. Nevertheless, he is on the lookout for long-running drama shows that have self-contained weekly stories. “Audiences on free-to-air channels are tired of serialized drama,” he says. “All these shows want to be the next House of Cards, which is fine but it doesn’t work for free TV.”

Warner Bros.’s cop show Lethal Weapon made an impressive debut for FOX in the fall, but will it work for ITV, the British network that rarely buys acquired shows for its main channel? That is a question Breslau will have the answer to as she arrives at MIPTV, following the show’s March launch on the channel.

SEEKING VARIETY
At the market, Breslau will be buying predominantly for ITV’s secondary channels, ITV2, 3 and 4, and ITVBe. ITV2 is seeking big volume drama, comedy and reality, aimed at 16- to 35-year-olds. Also on ITV2’s shopping list are one-off specials and live events. Female-skewed ITVBe hopes to add to its stock of glossy reality shows aimed at women. The channel also wants to bake up more cake shows. ITV3’s wish list includes shows tied into this August’s 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. Breslau would like to find something “positive, warm and celebratory rather than salacious.” Male-focused ITV4, meanwhile, is seeking transactional shows, sports, especially darts or snooker-related competition shows, and “anything that falls under the banner of dangerous jobs for men.”

For Sky, MIPTV is an opportunity to collect intelligence on what the U.S. studios are likely to unveil at the L.A. Screenings and scout for shows to play on Sky Arts. “Arts embraces a very broad range of shows, from performance, pure documentary and foreign-language drama if we can find the right content,” says Wright. “We’ve even been running comedy on Sky Arts, with our Urban Myths series, which is an original commission. We’re casting our net pretty wide.”

Sky Atlantic is “full,” says Wright—the channel benefits from Sky’s exclusive deals with HBO and Showtime. But “there is always room for big, strong mainstream network powerhouses on Sky 1,” and “big procedurals” for Sky Living.

In the U.K., Sky is the biggest spender on acquired shows. That is unlikely to change in the future. This is despite a recent dip in the company’s operating profit due to the inflated cost of English Premier League soccer. “We’re commissioning a lot, but we’re not buying less and we’re spending the same,” says Wright.

The fall in sterling against the dollar and euro following the Brexit vote will not help British buyers at MIPTV, but across Europe (including, for the time being, the U.K.) budgets appear to be holding up.

“Our budgets remain stable,” says TV2’s Romer. “Some of the money is eaten up by write-offs of U.S. returning series from our old output deals, which we are still struggling with.”

Sweden’s TV4 has diverted money from buying American shows to developing local drama and acquiring U.K. scripted series.

MINDING THE BUDGET
The finance is being moved around at MTG too. “The budget is constantly changing,” says Mejlhede Andersen. “It is moving between platforms…. Overall, the acquisition budget is flattish or decreasing slightly in favor of the co-production budget.”

At ProSiebenSat.1, Böss says his spending plans remain broadly in line with last year: “We are not cutting back, but we need to be careful how we spend.”

In any case, financial considerations seem less of a concern to European buyers than the complexities of today’s acquisitions market. In the days before multiplatform TV, finding, buying, scheduling and marketing shows was relatively straightforward. That is no longer so in today’s uber-competitive environment.

“Years ago we purchased formats and were able to bring them to air immediately,” says RTL’s Graf. “Formats have to be changed and adapted, while the international supply of drama is difficult. Today we don’t see any ‘no brainers’ anymore.”

At Sweden’s TV4, Schütt strikes a similar note. “It is hard to think of anything that is missing from MIPTV. More than anything else, the challenge we face is competition. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, but the challenge is securing it. It’s a very, very competitive market. Ten years ago it was us and a few other broadcasters. Today there are all these extra SVOD platforms and there’s piracy. We’re even facing the challenge of getting people to sit down and watch the television.”

Pictured: The German version of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! on RTL.