Rüdiger Böss

This interview originally appeared in the MIPTV 2014 issue of TV Europe.

From their earliest days on the air, ProSieben and SAT.1 have relied on imported programming—mainly American movies and TV series. Rüdiger Böss, the senior VP of group programming acquisitions at ProSiebenSat.1, has been instrumental in finding product that German audiences love. Today he acquires for all channels in the company’s portfolio and for its popular digital platforms as well.

TV EUROPE: Did licensed content help establish the ProSieben brand?
BÖSS: From the very beginning, ProSieben always was and still is branded as a movie channel. One of our competitors once said, it's pay TV without paying. We strongly relied and still rely on feature films, on blockbusters. We worked with many studios and still work with many studios and thank God for the German audience because movies still play a big role on German TV. We’re not like other countries, we still have wonderful successes with new movies and even with old movies because if you air Beverly Hills Cop for the 13th time, it's still in prime time, maybe now on a smaller channel, but it's still big business.

Second, besides big movies, from the start, ProSieben was set up to air U.S. series, and there have been more over the years because of the appetite from the audience. We were the first ones to have U.S. series in prime time. We had The X Files. A big success since the very beginning was The Simpsons, and many other series, such as ER, then Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy. We are now launching Sleepy Hollow. U.S. series and movies play a big role on ProSieben and they will in the future, as long as our audience wants them.

TV EUROPE: Do you have volume deals with several studios?
BÖSS: Yes, because if you take a certain volume you have first choice of the studio’s product. That is what we have with many studios; I think right now we are collaborating with every studio. So it's not only that we have deals with two studios and do not speak to the others, because the offer is getting broader and broader. Of course, everybody is on the hunt for movies but for series it's a little bit different because sometimes there is a series that is more for pay TV, not for free TV, then we have to decide if it is something we can use on our pay channels, which are second-tier channels, or we can say, OK we'll sell it. There are many ways to wheel and deal. It's different now. In the early years when we were kind of innocent, we slept only with one partner, now we are in bed with everyone!

TV EUROPE: And nowadays you buy many more rights.
BÖSS: That's right, which was difficult in the early years, when we did free-TV deals. We had to learn how to acquire additional rights. Now there are many, many more rights and these discussions take more time and the paperwork is much more intensive and complicated because every week another right pops up. We have to survive in a much broader world for rights and of course we want to stay in that world as long as possible, which means we are acquiring more for our different channels: our six free-TV channels and three pay-TV channels. The parents ProSieben and SAT.1 had many children on the free and pay side and we are also buying for our platforms, ProSieben.de and SAT1.de, and MyVideo, which is the German equivalent to YouTube, and maxdome, which is our video-on-demand service that is becoming more and more successful.

TV EUROPE: Kabel eins targets 25- to 45-year-olds and is a general entertainment-channel?
BÖSS: It targets a little bit older viewers. We have new shows there like Castle and we have many well-known series. I would not call it a library channel, but it is big on classics.

TV EUROPE: And sixx targets females?
BÖSS: Yes, that is our very successful channel for the more female audience. I love it! Gossip Girls, Vampire Diaries; it's a little bit like The CW. We have The Good Wife. We have many new shows and first runs on sixx and it works quite well. And it still airs Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy.

TV EUROPE: ProSieben also airs U.S. comedies?
BÖSS: On ProSieben there are movies twice a week in prime time and then we have two prime-time nights completely filled with American sitcoms, which is right now the biggest success in Germany. I think we have 90 percent of all the relevant sitcoms: The Simpsons, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Two Broke Girls and we recently launched The Millers, so we have nearly everything.

TV EUROPE: That’s unusual in Europe that U.S. sitcoms would perform so well in prime time.
BÖSS: I know, we established this eight or ten years ago and now it works very well. It's really a big thing for us and the audience loves it.  We have sitcoms in strips during daytime, but two days a week in prime time, Monday and Tuesday, are now filled up completely with sitcoms and they are doing great.

TV EUROPE: And how about SAT.1?
BÖSS: Unfortunately in the last few months, it has been interesting to see that the audience is not really keen on our German series and sometimes even on our German TV movies. It's not easy to find a subject that attracts a younger audience in a big way. So we are struggling a little bit but we are not giving up, we are working hard. Of course, it's costly to take risks.

So we have U.S. series and movies on SAT.1. We have two movie nights, one on Saturday and one on Tuesday or Wednesday, which we program with U.S. feature films. Then we have three nights with U.S. series. The most successful show in Germany is NCIS, which is unbelievably successful on Sunday, the most competitive night. We also have The Mentalist. On Monday night, because German series were not working so well, we replaced them with Hawaii Five-0 and Elementary is coming back. On Thursday nights we are starting with a new season of Criminal Minds and we have the second season of Hannibal. Crime series work very well on SAT.1 and we also still have a late-night time slot for shows that are not for the broadest audience but they are wonderful, wonderful, shows. We have Homeland on Sunday at 11 p.m. and in later time slots we show Sons of Anarchy.

TV EUROPE: Do you buy more than anyone else in Germany—more than RTL Group?
BÖSS: Yes, I think so, we have more channels, and RTL is buying more U.S. and foreign rights now than they have in the last years because they see how successful imported programming can be. So they are getting more aggressive, but we are the only ones who can provide a studio with the Full Monty! We can do a lot also because we buy both current shows and library product.

TV EUROPE: What trends are you seeing in prime time?
BÖSS: For our free-TV channels there is a trend that we have to work around—it’s not easy to launch and have on the air very serialized shows, which are coming more and more often from the U.S. This is a concern for us because our audience’s viewing habits are changing. They want to watch when and where they want. So we have to be very creative that way because we are getting great series like Homeland that you have to see every episode otherwise you can't enjoy it. We have to make sure everybody can see the series, not only on the linear free-TV channel, but also on catch-up services.

Another trend is that U.S. sitcoms are unbelievably successful, and I hope this trend will continue.

And finally, we have seen the trend for event series like Under the Dome. We were very successful with it last year, because we aired it over a couple of nights, always two or three episodes in row.

My hope is that with more and more serialized series, maybe the trend will shift and come back to family dramas, easier to watch dramas—like a procedural that can air once a week. I think both serialized shows and procedurals will live on but I hope procedurals will come back because this is our bread and butter. They are easier to repeat. It's great to have an event series, but an event is a one-run wonder. And with one run we are not making money. We have to air series again, in other time slots, on other channels, in order to make money out of them. This will be the challenge in the future—we have to have a mix of different types of series otherwise it will become very difficult.

TV EUROPE: Do you ever put episodes of a new series online before they air on the linear channel, or is linear the main destination for premiering a show?
BÖSS: You need both. Sometimes, when you have a big series coming and the press is keen on it, you have to launch it on the main channel because the advertisers work with our programming guys and we need the series on linear first. And sometimes you need a different audience for a show, the Internet audience—the early adopters. We did this twice very well, with Spartacus and with Sons of Anarchy. We built an audience on MyVideo and then on maxdome, which is a subscription VOD portal. So you build an audience there and then the show goes to free TV. Online viewing is not hurting the linear viewing—not yet. I can't predict what will happen in ten years, but for now it's not. We have to be very, very, careful with rights in the future and we will be very protective of the rights we acquire and they have to be exclusive rights.