Tom Koch

World Screen Weekly, December 14, 2006

Director

WGBH International

For more than a decade, WGBH International, the distribution arm of the U.S. public television station based in Boston, has been offering buyers quality documentaries and factual series such as Frontline, Nova and American Experience. These consist of programs from some of the best filmmakers and feature investigative reporting, groundbreaking information or a new perspective on a topic, person or country.

In today’s rapidly changing media landscape, with viewers watching programming on VOD, computers, iPods and mobile phones, Tom Koch, the director of WGBH International, decided it was time for the company to widen its reach. “We basically thought that our desire to grow really depended on a couple of things. One is the consistent output of WGBH as a producer, but secondly, we thought it would make a lot of sense if we could attract some of the top and premiere filmmakers in the U.S. and around the world to come in and work with us.”

In order to achieve this, Koch thought of his long-time acquaintance Charles Schuerhoff, the president of CS Associates, a company that specialized in documentaries. “Charles has been in the business for nearly 30 years,” explains Koch. “He’s a pro. He used to work at WGBH many years ago. Now, oddly enough, his office is just up the street. I’ve known him a long time and it started to make sense that maybe we should consider merging. For him, as a small independent distributor, it’s tough to compete in a world where there is a lot of consolidation. And from our side, here was someone who has a proven track record and understands our catalogue—in fact, he distributed WGBH programs many years ago. He understands what our style is, what we look for and the idea is that by bringing him in, he would be in charge of identifying, sourcing, and acquiring programs for distribution, including home video and DVD, in the U.S. and around the world.”

The merger with CS Associates adds more than 250 hours of documentary programming to WGBH International’s catalogue.

WGBH International is part of WGBH Enterprises, which encompasses many businesses: publishing, home video, new business development, co-production and financing of programs. “Now we can actually approach various filmmakers with potentially better offers and better terms because we can work across multiple platforms to create a better package for them and for us.” Koch feels that WGBH International is better positioned to work with top-notch producers. “We would like to open our doors to independent filmmakers who otherwise are being represented disparately and try to bring them into one place. But we’d also like to have the best of the best. We’d like to have the best producers and the best films and we have a bunch of them this year.”

Among WGBH International’s upcoming slate of programs is Jonestown, about the largest mass-suicide in history, led by Jim Jones on his compound in Guyana. “It is the definitive film on the suicide and it’s loaded with home videos and personal reflections of people who had been members of the church and people who had escaped,” explains Koch. “It’s a very gripping film.”

Frontline will offer a three-part series called “News War”. Through behind-the-scenes access to today’s most important news organizations, “News War” offers a probing look at the changing role of a free press.

WGBH is also offering “The Mormons,” about one of America’s fastest-growing religions. “This is the first-ever co-production between American Experience and Frontline,” explains Koch. “American Experience provides the historical angle and Frontline examines the current state of the church. It’s a very unique church and very much wound up into the fabric of American life.”

Also from American Experience is “Summer of Love” about the summer of 1967, when thousands of young people from across the U.S. flocked to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district to join in the hippie experience. “The 40th anniversary of Summer of Love is coming up this year,” says Koch. “This program looks at the Summer of Love from a different perspective. Everyone’s notion of the Summer of Love is peace, flowers in your hair, dancing in the streets, but within a year of the Summer of Love the idealism somehow gets lost. What you end up having is a lot of drug addiction, prostitution, immense poverty, free love but also very highly charged sexist attitudes. The program goes back and looks at that moment where idealism fails.”