Series Mania Forum delegates heard from Lisa Kramer, president of international content licensing at Paramount Global Content Distribution, and Lindsey Martin, senior VP of international co-productions and development at CBS Studios, about synergies and partnership potential.
On how the production studio works hand in hand with Paramount’s distribution group, Martin described it as “a very symbiotic relationship that ends up enabling us to make the best shows for the market. My main role at CBS Studios is to find the shows. So, we are out there talking to producers. We produce our own shows in the U.S., and we produce a lot of shows with third parties outside of the U.S. We are out there seeking the most commercial and creatively brilliant series that we can find that will have international legs. And that’s where our relationship overlaps because Lisa is an absolute expert in international distribution. We work very closely with Lisa and her team, whether it’s taking meetings together with local broadcasters or coming to them really early in the process so that they can understand our slate and we can get feedback on whether or not these are shows that they think they can sell.”
Kramer said that she and the content licensing and format sales team have “different bespoke means” of working with each of the Paramount Global brands. “If it is a regular CBS U.S. network show that we sell and we sell it internationally on a first-window basis, that’s a relationship. We also sell downstream windows on the premium series, Paramount+ originals or Nickelodeon or those brands that commission their content, so they commission it for their own-and-operated services and we fill in behind them, or on a first-window basis, if it happens to be a market that is not, in the case of a Paramount+ original, a Paramount+ market.”
She described the working relationship with Martin and the CBS Studios team as “a really excellent working relationship that now is down to a fine art.” Kramer added, “We can help coordinate meetings. We can participate in some of those very first early looks if we know that there’s a client in a certain market who is interested in prebuys as opposed to waiting for a show to come to market. We’re happy to take that lead and set up a meeting, and our team will wait. So, if indeed the conversations lead to something more fruitful, then that commercial negotiation would be passed off to our team and we would see it through to fruition.”
Kramer emphasized that Paramount Global Content Distribution is always looking for ways to deepen its relationship with clients, “and particularly the large regional media clients. So, this is a great way to do that, to be able to provide prebuy opportunities on an early basis. Even if they are not taken in a particular market for whatever reason, when the show is complete, the regions or countries that are not sold, our team then has an intimate knowledge of that project, almost from development, so it really is an amazing partnership.”
With a slate that includes the big-budget historical drama King & Conqueror to the hit procedural NCIS: Sydney—a spin-off of the uber-successful crime franchise—the Australian romantic comedy Colin from Accounts and Icelandic crime thriller The Darkness, there’s certainly a broad portfolio at CBS Studios. But what about white spaces?
“The breadth and scope of the types of shows we’re doing is pretty enormous,” Martin said. “We’re always going to be looking for crime and thrillers; it’s very much in the DNA of CBS Studios and what we do really well, and is a lot of what Lisa is selling around the world. So, crime and thrillers are always going to be hot properties for us. At the moment, there’s a lot of talk about finding something lighter and finding those shows that really zero in on escapism and a bit of lightness to break up all the serial killers and different crime shows out there.”
The above examples also highlight a mix of international series, all of which are English-language. “Over the past three or four years, especially, we have started to shift more toward primarily English-language storytelling,” Martin said. “That doesn’t mean that we’re not open-minded, because there are so many fantastic opportunities out there, but we probably will pursue primarily English-language series in the near future.” She added that “primarily English” doesn’t necessarily mean solely English. “We’re very open to working with European producers on European-generated IP and series.”
