Star Power

April 2008

The mega-watt shine of a celebrity’s star power attracts global buyers like moths to a flame. A-listers have the ability to drive a movie to a top box-office take and make magazines fly off the shelf, so it’s no wonder that television offerings with celebrities at their core are just as enticing, if not more so.

These programs run the gamut from reality-style observational series to biographies, gossip fodder and game shows, but all include the common allure of tying in a well-known name to really grab the attention of viewers, distributors and buyers alike.

As the market for these programs becomes increasingly crowded and viewers grow more celeb-savvy, distributors and buyers are eagerly looking for the next big thing. But the fact still remains that the world’s unwavering fascination with celebrities has created an evergreen demand for this type of programming.

“Everybody to some extent is fascinated by celebrities,” says Mark Gray, the VP of programming at FremantleMedia Enterprises (FME). “It’s that vicarious sort of thing. It’s always been there. They’re living their lives in front of us in a certain kind of way, and as there is more media and more hunger for this kind of thing, it grows.”

Robert Sharenow, the senior VP of nonfiction and alternative programming for A&E, shares a similar view, but says it’s more about uncovering these stars’ core identities to “see celebrities as they really are. [Viewers] want to get real insight into them as people, as real people, not playing a character.” He adds, “There’s something resonant and satisfying about that.”

E! Entertainment, owned by Comcast International Media Group (CIMG), has based its service on giving the public a glimpse into the glamour-filled lives of celebrities, providing up-to-date accounts of their lifestyles, fashions and romantic dalliances. In an attempt to satiate the appetite for celebrity content, E! rolls out daily Hollywood news and gossip with E! News, which has spawned several topical spin-offs, including The Daily 10 and Chelsea Lately.

And while news has remained a flagship for the network, celebrity clip-based shows and countdowns have proven to be top performers as well. CIMG currently has 70 hours of its 101 countdowns available and 25 hours of its 50 Most specials. Both series chronicle significant moments in certain aspects of entertainment—from celebrity couplings with 101 Juiciest Hollywood Hookups to major public faux pas with 101 Most Sensational Crimes of Fashion and 50 Most Shocking Celebrity Scandals—with actors, comedians and entertainment experts providing commentary throughout each countdown. Duccio Donati, CIMG’s senior VP, says that these shows are very watchable. “Everywhere they’ve played—from Korea to Russia to France to Germany—anything that is a clip-based celebrity countdown just rates incredibly well.”

CIMG has also taken up several observational reality series, which get up close and personal with cameras following celebrities during their daily lives. Girls of the Playboy Mansion, centered on Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and his bevy of beauties, has been a tremendous success in the U.S. and has also sold well internationally. Besides airing on the international E! channels, the series has been picked up by Nine Network in Australia, Viva in Germany, Zee TV in India and Paris Premiere in France, among others.

Piggybacking on that success, E! recently launched additional celeb-reality offerings with Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which follows Hollywood party girl Kim Kardashian and her blended family of ten, and Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood, which takes a look at the family life of the rapper and entrepreneur Snoop Dogg. Up next is a show with Denise Richards.

FLY ON THE WALL

Observational series have boosted sales for 3DD Entertainment as well. Having carved a niche with music programming over the years, the British distributor-producer has been expanding into factual entertainment and celebrity-based series.

3DD has recently taken on the international rights for Katie and Peter: The Next Chapter, which is a flagship series for ITV2 in the U.K. “It’s doing really well for us,” says Lara von Ahlefeldt, 3DD Group’s COO and director of programs and acquisitions. “It’s a ready-made soap opera. They (as characters) make for compelling viewing.”

But other distributors feel that even though these fly-on-the-wall series have an allure, they also need to come with more than just a celebrity attachment. FME’s Gray says that in regard to reality programs, a show can be “very much based around a celebrity,” but must also have “proper substance, with people of real genuine interest doing things.” Gray cites The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency as an example of this. The show, from Oxygen in the U.S., watches Dickinson setting up a modeling agency, but “it’s not just following her around and looking at outrageous excess and things. There is a story, there is something substantial going on and she’s doing more than just sitting around in front of a camera.”

A&E’s Sharenow agrees, and says, “We don’t just do cele-brities for celebrities’ sake. Celebrities have to have a certain level of public interest; there has to be something going on in the show that we think is really special.” A&E’s offerings include the observational reality show Gene Simmons Family Jewels, which is sold by AETN International. The series follows the household happenings of the KISS frontman Gene Simmons. Sharenow says that it’s a departure from all the other family-style reality series because “there’s something new and exciting about them. They’re a highly functional family, and I think most celebrity families that you see on TV are dysfunctional.” Interestingly enough, the series grew out of a biography that A&E did on Simmons: “We were so fascinated by what we saw of him and his family that we spun off a show,” says Sharenow.

LIFE STORIES

Biographies are another excellent way of giving the audience a peek into the lives of their favorite celebs. A&E Television Networks has an entire channel dedicated to just that: The Biography Channel. “Celebrity culture has been a fascination in America for as long as there has been mass media,” says Sharenow. “And I think biographies and The Biography Channel are a great testament to that. It’s one of the most enduring franchises in television history, going on 20 years. It is the first and best example of that sort of biographical documentary program.”

Also banking on these biographical documentaries is International Broadcast Communications (IBC). The company’s best-selling program is Famous, a half-hour series that charts the career path of A-list stars. IBC currently offers 104 episodes of the series, and has sold it in Japan, Italy, France, the U.K. and Scandinavia, among other markets.

Another approach to celebrity programming is gossip fare, which is offered in Distraction’s catalogue. Its interview-based magazine series Talk of the Town, originally titled Tout le monde en parle in France, has sold across Canada, Poland and Italy. The series thrives on confrontation, controversy and scandalous gossip. Each week celebrities gather for a round-table discussion, and guests often get so angry that they walk out of the studio during their interviews. The show’s topics and guests tend to get salacious; two lawyers are present at every recording to ensure that nothing libelous is broadcast.

Competition shows have proved to be successful for FME, which will be offering The Celebrity Apprentice to international buyers for the first time at MIPTV. Currently airing on NBC in the U.S., the series originally debuted with billionaire entrepreneur Donald Trump at its core, coupled with a cast of no-names, but the latest season implemented a multitude of celebs as its contestants as a way to revitalize the series, with the winner donating his or her proceeds to charity.

When selling these celebrity programs to third-party broadcasters, the issue arises of whether or not a star has to have global notoriety for the show to get pickups in far-reaching territories. FME’s Gray argues that celebrities’ fame does affect a show’s sales performance, “no doubt about it. We find very strong regional differences depending on the nature of the celebrity.” He explains that English-speaking countries do have many commonalities among their popular stars, but in Asia, it’s the movie-based Hollywood types who are in demand.

There are other companies, however, that are adamant that a strong story line will secure sales for a program no matter what. CIMG’s Donati says that “it comes down to the quality of the show,” citing the success of Keeping Up with the Kardashians as an example. The series was somewhat of a “sleeper hit” when it debuted in the U.S., and internationally, “the initial reaction was, ‘well, not a lot of people in my territory are going to know it,’ but once they watch the show, they tend to then buy into the fact that the audience will get into the show.”

Debbie Back, MTV Networks International’s (MTVNI) senior VP of international program sales, adds to the debate by saying that one of the things MTV does is “create celebrities out of reality shows.” Laguna Beach was an observational series that followed a group of regular high-schoolers, none of whom had ever been in the limelight. The show was so successful that it spawned a spin-off, The Hills, whose protagonist, Lauren Conrad, “has become a star in the U.S. and beyond with her own clothing line and nobody knew who she was,” says Back. “In The Hills, I don’t think it matters that there was no celebrity attached, because it was the soap-opera kind of who-did-what thing” that made Conrad a star in her own right.

JUST CAUSE

MTVNI in fact does use celebrity status to push programs in certain cases, notably with its pro-social programming. The company offers up a variety of titles with socially responsible messages at their core, rights and cost free. These include the topics of HIV and AIDS, with its aggressive Staying Alive campaign; an anti–human trafficking initiative called The EXIT Campaign; and MTV Switch, which focuses on the issue of climate change. Georgia Arnold, the company’s senior VP of social responsibility, says that when putting together these programs, “we knew right from the start that it was absolutely crucial for us to get celebrities involved.” She explains that “MTV and third-party broadcasters love programs with international and local celebrity-driven content,” so having star power behind these titles will help them gain as wide an exposure as possible, which is exactly the company’s goal when positioning these message-driven programs.

One is left to wonder, however, if there will soon come a time when audiences are simply overloaded on these famous faces. Michel Rodrigue, the president and CEO of Distraction, thinks that “because there are more and more shows that are now written for celebrities, it will get to saturation very soon, if we’re not already there yet.” He says that even the stars themselves grow weary of taking on a leading role because “[they] realize that it doesn’t always serve them.” So in a Darwinian perception of celeb-saturated programming, Rodrigue is confident that audiences will pick out what is worthy of their time and “only the top shows will survive.”

However, it’s also important to take into account that while the amount of star-driven product continues to grow, so does the number of potential outlets and buyers for this programming. Aside from all the new-media opportunities that are constantly expanding for this content, the channel world also shows no signs of slowing down its growth. IBC’s president and founder, Jon Helmrich, whose responsibilites also include channel development, agrees that “there’s room for more product and more channels to proliferate.” He explains, “I was on a conference call [the other] morning with a company in India on behalf of one of my channel clients, and India’s got some 400 channels, and we were talking about launching number 401! So we haven’t hit the ceiling.”

But while there may be room for more, it’s also time to ramp up what’s being offered. It is true that celebrities will pull an audience in, but it still has to be compelling programming to keep them watching. The new shows being developed need to have fresh, original content surrounding their celebrity stars, and that’s the challenge at the forefront of this genre. CIMG’s Donati agrees that “it is time for another breakthrough show. It’s pretty mature. There’s been so much celeb-reality out there and everybody is trying to figure out the new approach. It’s very hard, at this point, to break through the clutter.” For a new slant, Donati suggests that celeb programming may turn “even more extreme,” or could possibly take the direction of getting “more real and more intimate.”

Even with the market primed and waiting for the next new wave to come along, celebrity programming still remains at the top of buyers’ wish lists. “There is an insatiable demand for celebrity documentaries. People will tune in whether they love or loathe them,” says 3DD’s von Ahlefeldt. Everybody is eager to watch stars’ successes and failures alike, so the demand is “not going to wane, that’s for sure.”