Tony Cohen

April 2008

As broadcasters around the world face increasing pressure to deliver ratings, they avoid taking risks on new ideas, preferring shows that have already been hits in other countries. This penchant for the tried and true has buoyed the format business, and FremantleMedia is a worldwide leader in providing broadcasters with winning concepts. CEO Tony Cohen talks about FremantleMedia’s global operation, whose success is based on sharing ideas and production know-how.

TV FORMATS: Would you give some examples of ideas that have been found in local markets and then adapted to other territories?

COHEN: Taking formats, adapting them, making sure that they are done properly and released at the right time and in the right way is one of the core skills that FremantleMedia has, and that is our know-how. And it’s one of the reasons why the rights-owners of formats want to work with FremantleMedia, because we can do that. And of course it applies to everything—from the formats that are very familiar to a lot of people around the world, like Idols, which is co-owned by 19TV and FremantleMedia, [to] ones that are traveling very successfully around the world, like The Farmer Wants a Wife. It’s a great example of an idea found in a local market. It was done in the U.K. some years ago. It’s about farmers who want a wife. It’s a very simple idea that farmers don’t get the opportunity to meet potential wives, so the show helps them do that. The audience follows the farmer’s journey to find a successful date. This show has been absolutely fantastic for us. It has been sold to 13 countries. It’s a huge hit everywhere from the Netherlands to Norway, Sweden and Belgium. In Holland this year, it was the highest-rated show, including sports, since 2003. There is something about the story of farmers that brings a very profound emotion in these countries. So for me that would be a tremendous example of what we thought was a small show that has done very well in world markets and really resonates with audiences.

One of the ways that the network is able to adapt formats from country to country is that we have a squad of what we call the flying producers.

TV FORMATS: What is unique about FremantleMedia’s flying producers?

COHEN: I don’t think anybody else’s are quite the same. It’s a very difficult job in some ways because it needs experience, it needs authority, but you’ve got to be a great diplomat at the same time, with a lot of tact and a lot of stamina, because you are working with a lot of different countries and a lot of different producers and broadcasters. But that team of flying producers has been at the heart of the FremantleMedia international model for many years. They all have got track records in their own right, and they have many years of experience. And they are not all based, by the way, in the U.K. or in the U.S. They have a worldwide remit. And they all specialize in particular shows or genres. So what is special about them is their experience and their authority and their ability to work with so many people.

TV FORMATS: What are your priorities in the emerging markets?

COHEN: FremantleMedia’s aim here is to create good strong creative businesses. And the way we are approaching some of these markets is to build our own businesses in markets we feel are quite mature, like Poland and Brazil, Russia and Japan and so on, while advancing with partnerships in some of the emerging markets, like China and India and so on.

In Latin America we have just opened our first FremantleMedia production company in Brazil and we are producing Poker Face, which is a game show, and Idols. In Mexico we already have The Weakest Link and Poker Face and we are just going to open our studio-based operation because we’ve got so much work now. We are also doing Hole in the Wall, which has been a big format for us in the last six months. It’s a very entertaining Japanese show, which has now sold widely around the world. It is basically a hole in the wall that moves toward you as you stand next to a swimming pool and if you can’t fit the shape that’s cut into the wall as it moves toward you, you get pushed into the pool. It sounds like a very simple idea, and indeed it is, but I have yet to play a clip of that show to a room where everyone hasn’t started laughing immediately and continued laughing all the way through the clip. It’s one of those shows that make you laugh all the way through [them]. We are doing that in Mexico and we are doing several shows in Argentina.

In Asia, the format we’ve been most excited about in these last years is in China, and it’s a show called Soccer Prince. This is about trying to find a young soccer champion in the different provinces of China. And the prize is that the winner is trained at one of the British football clubs, and in fact they’ve started training already. We’ve already had the first batch through at football clubs like Everton and Bolton. It’s very much a show where the prize is unique, and I think it’s very important to have something very unique.

And we’re going to be doing a Hole in the Wall pilot in China with another broadcaster and we have some game-show developments in place. Elsewhere in Asia, we are in the middle of discussions in Japan for partnerships there and we have been producing for some years now Asian Idols. We do a pan-Asian show in Indonesia. And we have winners from Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam where we have Idols running in those different countries.

In Eastern Europe, where we’ve operated for many years, we’ve got a lot of drama and entertainment in Poland, including daily shows, telenovelas and so on. And we do a daily soap in Hungary and one in Croatia as well. And we have a lot of shows, both entertainment and scripted, in Russia.

TV FORMATS: What shows work best, scripted or non-scripted?

COHEN: They both do. We do drama and entertainment in the more mature markets and we tend to license it more in some of the growing markets. But it is very much a mixture. The truth is, many of these markets have very long traditions of local drama, but quite often they spring from a tradition of public television. And quite often a more commercial approach has been new in the last few years, and we find that very helpful and very exciting as a business opportunity.

TV FORMATS: What are the challenges in the major markets?

COHEN: The main challenge for all of FremantleMedia is to make sure we sustain our track record of creativity and of working with others. All markets go in cycles—they will go up and down at some point—and because we are in many markets, we try to achieve a very nice and growing balance.

TV FORMATS: Tell us about the importance of maintaining ancillary rights to the properties you create, and some examples of additional businesses that have been spun off from TV shows.

COHEN: The capability that we’ve built to make sure we get the value from our ancillary rights has meant that we have access now to major revenue streams from a whole range of other places in addition to free-to-air television. That includes online, websites, mobile, books, DVDs, live shows, as well as sponsorships and the growing website businesses. Concerts based on the Got Talent format, co-owned by Syco TV and FremantleMedia, right through to a wonderful show in the U.K. called Grand Designs, which is a very popular [series] about people planning their dream homes and the trials, tribulations and the triumphs of going through the process. On top of the show we do magazines and a big exhibition every year for Grand Designs as well. That’s why it’s so important.

TV FORMATS: Would you ever have imagined that the format business would grow as much as it has?

COHEN: Not 10 or 15 years ago, but when we started to really think about the future of the business some years ago, it did strike us very forcibly that the world has changed and that people do want the best entertainment in their local markets. And broadcasters are hugely open-minded now about competing for and taking programs that didn’t originate in their country but came from other countries where they succeeded. And I think that change in mind-set and appetite and the demand for great entertainment has just transformed [the business] beyond all recognition, and I’m sure that is not reversible.