Exclusive Interview: Sky’s Sophie Turner Laing

PREMIUM: Sophie Turner Laing, the managing director of content at BSkyB, has initiated a significant investment in original content, which, as she tells World Screen Newsflash, has not only yielded several hit shows, with more to come, but is also boosting Sky’s international distribution.

TV EUROPE: Sky has been investing heavily in original content. What type of programming has been produced so far?
TURNER LAING: We’ll be investing up to £600 million by 2014 in original British productions, which is a great chance to have. About two years ago, Stuart Murphy [the director of Sky’s entertainment channels] and Lucy Lumsden, who is our head of comedy commissioning, kicked off investing in comedy production in a way that Sky had never, ever done before. We started from zero and have grown it into 18 new comedy series, of which 11 have been renewed, which is a pretty high percentage return rate for our industry. I am really proud of what Stuart and Lucy and the team have managed to pull off. It’s the “Sky” way of doing things; we rarely do things on a half-hearted basis! They didn’t dip a toe in, they jumped fully into it on the premise that some things are going to be brilliant and others are just not going to work for whatever reason. But you can see from the awards that we have started to win: Darren Boyd of Spy won the male performance in a comedy program award at BAFTA last year. Hunderby, which is our wonderful very dark Gothic comedy from Julia Davis for Sky Atlantic, got two new awards at the British Comedy Awards recently. I feel we’ve landed the message that we’re in comedy and we’re here to stay.

TV EUROPE: Are you going to branch out into other genres?
TURNER LAING: Next on the to-do list is drama. Anne Mensah, who is our head of drama, has a wide portfolio of commissions and development deals across the four channels in our portfolio, which is very exciting. We sometimes look on in envy at the American market and their ability to deliver 22 episodes of drama. The U.K. is usually a territory [that commissions] six hours at a time. One of the things that we are very focused on is how can we deliver British dramas that, in our terms, are long running. We’re looking to commission ten-plus hours, which obviously is a big investment to make in drama.

TV EUROPE: Since you have planted the flag in the original production area, what message does this send the creative community in the U.K.?
TURNER LAING: I definitely think the creative community, in particular the production community, understands what our four channels’ brands stand for, who they are aimed at, and what kind of shows we are looking for. We are hopefully quite clear about continually giving that message. That is quite important. It’s also quite interesting if you are a Sky commissioner because you have a portfolio of channels to commission across. You’re not stuck in one genre, which allows of a lot of creative freedom to work with different talent on a variety of projects. But I guess the main message is that creativity is a very, very important discipline to us. We work with people that we love and admire. We are supportive but not prescriptive. There is a lot of creative freedom here. Obviously we’ve got commissioners who are very experienced. The great thing about being in this business is that it’s one of the totally naturally collaborative businesses. I’d like to think that we work with people that we admire and trust and we let them get on with it.

TV EUROPE: You acquired Sky Vision, which includes a distribution arm. What are the plans boosting your international distribution?
TURNER LAING: The plan is that with an investment of £600 million I need to create a significant return on the investment! There is no such thing as a free lunch in a very commercial organization! One of the ways that we like to do it is by supercharging a distribution arm, because we feel that as the closest to the content, we are perfectly positioned to sell it. Equally, as a broadcaster selling to other broadcasters, we have a slightly unique perspective on the business and the kind of information and other value adds we can bring to a sale. We totally accept that there are a lot of production companies out there that already have existing distribution deals. We are not going to not commission great ideas just because their distribution rights are already tied up, because, fundamentally, that does not put our customers first. If you look at the new slate we have at the moment, there’s a very large percentage that is distributed elsewhere. What we hope to do is work closer and closer with talent to be part of the first-look process, whereby distribution rights will therefore come at the end of that process.

TV EUROPE: Looking at your portfolio of channels, what are their strengths? Do you envision any changes in direction for any of them?
TURNER LAING: We’re in pretty good shape, particularly on Sky 1, the entertainment shows, whether it’s A League of Their Own or Got to Dance to the high-octane, high-energy drama Mad Dogs or Strike Back, which is our co-production with HBO. And Sky 1 has had the lion’s share of comedies.

Sky Atlantic is very well supported and driven by the content from our friends at HBO. The delivery slate of what is coming down the pipe from HBO is very exciting indeed. On Sky Atlantic what I am really interested in on the drama side is the international perspective that we can bring. We’ve announced The Tunnel, which is a co-production with Canal+, which we are keen to do, because it is very unusual. The lead male is a Brit, the lead woman is French, there’s a French director and what I love is the ability for us to bring a whole new fresh array of talent whether on screen or behind the scenes to a channel. It gives us a USP [unique selling proposition] that is very international. And the fact of joining forces with our pay brethren around the world is also an interesting concept.

Sky Arts has always been a really unusual and brilliant place for talent. Several years ago we started doing Playhouse Presents, which initially were live plays shot here at our studios at Sky. It’s gradually evolved into a who’s who of writing, acting and directing talent. We recently announced the mini-series A Young Doctor’s Notebook with Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe, based on a collection of short stories by the Russian writer and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov, which I’m not sure many commercial broadcasters would ever look at doing. The opportunity to have that kind of unique talent working together has been totally brilliant.

Sky Living is definitely a work in progress for us. It started with its first big commission comedy in the shape of The Spa, which is written by the comedy writer and actor Derren Litten of Benidorm fame. We started a series of one-off dramas and comedies. They are like on-air pilots and we’ll see if any of them will lend themselves to a series.

And we have announced the co-production with NBC for Dracula starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, partially shot here and then in Hungary.

TV EUROPE: How is Sky News providing up-to-the-minute news online but at the same time providing great programming on the channel?
TURNER LAING: At the heart of any news service, irrespective of how it’s delivered, is brilliant journalism. The best content is about great storytelling. News is no different. Sky News is very much a digital environment. We deliver news to screens in train stations, in the backseats of taxis, as well as on phones. It was one of the first news channels to go into HD. It is truly multiplatform. That is predominantly because Sky News is great at being first for breaking news. It lends itself very easily to multiplatform because it’s not restricted to a set number of bulletins during the day. It’s able to put the news out when it breaks. The interesting thing for us with Sky News is that last year we launched Sky News Arabia, which is our joint venture with the Abu Dhabi Media Corporation, so we are expanding our brand outside of the U.K.

TV EUROPE: Are you starting to provide second-screen experiences for some of the programming you offer?
TURNER LAING: We started some time ago because we were one of the original investors in Zeebox. What is really interesting, and I don’t think anyone has got the silver bullet on this one yet; we’re all just trying out different concepts to see what works. But the thing that gives me hope is that when I look at what Sky Sports has done with Formula 1, which is, if you have the Sky Sports app, in the Formula 1 section, when the actual race is on, you can take two extra video feeds into your tablet as well as watching on your big screen. So we are at early days of experimenting with what that technology means for other genres. It’s very exciting. It’s all about how you enhance not how you distract.