Exclusive Interview: TV 2 Norway’s John Ranelagh

June 5, 2012 World Screen Top Stories
ADVERTISEMENT

PREMIUM: As the head of acquisitions at TV 2 Norway, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, John Ranelagh has played a key role in making the channel the country’s leading commercial broadcaster.

He acquires programming from the U.S. and from other countries for the entire TV 2 Group. It consists of the terrestrial TV 2 as well as a bouquet of niche channels, including TV 2 News, a sports channel, TV 2 Zebra, which targets young viewers, the film channel TV 2 Filmkanalen, which offers movies 24 hours a day, and the online channel TV 2 Science Fiction. Owned by the Egmont Group, TV 2 was also among the first broadcasters in Europe to embrace digital media and stream content on its website. Ranelagh talks to TV Europe about reaching out to viewers of all ages on all platforms available.

 

TV EUROPE: What factors have contributed to TV 2’s success?
RANELAGH: News has been a locomotive for the channel. We have a different news agenda from others in Norway: we look for stories out of the mainstream about individuals, places, events, organizations away from Oslo and around the country. Building viewing habits has been another major factor and has meant that we stay with programs in the schedule for longer than many others in order to give both the programs and the audience a good opportunity to find each other. Hotel Caesar, our daily soap, has been a schedule mainstay for more than 10 years. We have always invested heavily in prime time with major sports events and we have developed successful formats: Idols, The Farm, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Farmer Wants a Wife, Shall We Dance?, The Voice, The Amazing Race.
 
TV EUROPE: What do viewers expect from TV 2?
RANELAGH: News, sport and entertainment. Surveys show that TV 2 is the national “Series Master” with a consistent schedule of popular scripted drama. Our news is viewed equally by men and women and skews younger than the competition. We have many of the top-rated soccer events, national and international, as well as the Tour de France, basketball, skiing and winter sports.
 
TV EUROPE: What are some of its most successful shows and genres?
RANELAGH: All our prime-time formats—Idols, The Voice, The Farm, The Amazing Race—are successful, as are our sports events, especially English Premier League soccer. News consistently performs. Grey’s Anatomy, Homeland, Desperate Housewives and Criminal Minds are currently strong performers.
 
TV EUROPE: What role do acquisitions play in TV 2’s schedule and in the schedules of its sister channels?
RANELAGH: Acquisitions, excluding sport, account for about 45 percent of TV 2’s schedule and more than 75 percent of our secondary channels.
 
TV EUROPE: What has been TV 2’s relationship with the Hollywood studios?
RANELAGH: We have concentrated our buying in Hollywood in order to: (a) be of some significance as a client and therefore, hopefully, do better deals, and (b) so that our screen is homogenous and does not jump around between television cultures and production values. At present we have a deal with CBS Studios International and we share a deal with our competitor TVNorge for Warner Bros. programming, which we sublicense from TV4 Sweden. We have lesser contracts with all the other studios.
 
TV EUROPE: How are U.S. series performing?
RANELAGH: Not well! Older, established series still perform reasonably well, as has Homeland (but that is an exception). Newer, excellent series—Brothers & Sisters, The Good Wife, Blue Bloods—do not seem able to capture the TV audience that they should. There is growing evidence that these shows are being viewed OTT [on over-the-top services] and Disney-ABC has allowed its series to stream on YouTube with more and more people finding them there every week.
 
TV EUROPE: How does TV 2 attract the elusive young demographics?
RANELAGH: Norway has a population of less than 5 million with about 600,000 people in any 10-year range. We now have more than 115 channels competing in Norway, with more to come this autumn. In peak prime time, about 50 percent of the potential audience watches television. Boiled down, this means that any channel that secures 30,000 viewers in a young demographic is doing very well, but that is not enough to generate the revenue any of us need. So we aim to attract younger people to our secondary channels and simultaneously to find programming that attracts everyone. Hotel Caesar, for example, has had a strong younger demographic within its overall audience.
 
We also have developed websites and our TV2.no operation to complement programming. Our TV 2 Sumo service provides a popular catch-up opportunity and a library.
 
TV EUROPE: TV 2 was one of the first broadcasters to stream shows online. What have you learned about the types of shows viewers want to watch on linear channels and what they want to watch online?
RANELAGH: We have found that the same programming is popular on both linear channels and online. That is why piracy, OTT, YouTube et al, are real threats. Young people utilize online for animation and for more violent programming than regulations allow broadcasters to show before 9 p.m.
 
TV EUROPE: Do you foresee a time when online viewing will surpass viewing of programs on linear channels?
RANELAGH: Difficult to answer. A slightly different question: I don’t see linear viewing disappearing. Linear viewing may skew older, but its ease of use and its unique selling proposition—that it can show what is happening now (OK, so can the Net but only haphazardly and with questionable trustworthiness)—will keep it with the picture.
 
TV EUROPE: What do linear channels have to do to remain relevant?
RANELAGH: Broadcasters unquestionably need to concentrate more on live events of all types and to commission and broadcast much more local programming. They need to stop acquiring as much as they have and put the budgets released into production not simply of prime-time fare, but of daytime and late night, too. Programs that have a long shelf life are needed so that repeats are available and budgets can thus be controlled better. Live current affairs, breakfast shows and a good deal of talk shows do not conform to this requirement.
 
TV EUROPE: Producers are increasingly retaining the rights to their shows. How is this impacting TV 2?
RANELAGH: Rights must be controlled more tightly, and this may mean that broadcasters need to commission less, because producers, rightly, want to keep as many rights as possible and develop their own production arms so that rights are clearly placed with them. With the arrival of international library operators (homegrown as well as U.S.), controlling our own library has become commercially significant. We have felt no impact yet, but we shall!