\n\tPREMIUM: At the L.A. Screenings this year, more procedural dramas were on view than in past years, which satisfied Jakob Mejlhede, the senior VP of acquisitions and programming at Modern Times Group (MTG) and the chief content officer of MTGx.<\/p>\n
\n\t“I was quite satisfied with the one-hours,” he commented. “There was no breakout hit but in general it was quite a strong slate. There were a lot of shows that impressed me.”<\/p>\n
\n\tHe did point out that while there were more procedurals this year, these types of closed-ended crime or cop dramas skew older in the U.S. than they do internationally. “The difference is that when you put a U.S. procedural on screens internationally, you automatically cut off the older part of the demo, because they will watch the local German or Danish series.” Procedurals, therefore, have the positive effect of attracting a fairly younger demographic on the channels of the MTG Group. The free-TV and pay-TV services of the group, which operate under the Viasat Broadcasting umbrella, are present across Scandinavia, the Baltics, the Czech Republic, Central and Eastern Europe and portions of Africa.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe fact that there were fewer comedy pilots screened in Los Angeles this year was not a problem for Mejlhede. “I think the comedies were less strong than in previous years, but it’s not an immediate issue for us because when we launch comedies it usually takes quite some time to make them work. We have to wait until we have enough episodes to make a strand or a strip. It’s not until then that we can start building that expectation for the weekly premiere. So in our market it sometimes takes up to three years to launch a comedy. Of course, we want comedies for our secondary male-skewing networks.”<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile MTG has deals with Fox, Sony and NBCUniversal, Mejlhede doesn’t have to decide immediately which shows he wants to buy. “In these agreements, typically, there are a number of hours we need to pick within the new series category so we can wait until we see the ratings [before buying],” he explains. “Normally, we wait a couple of months just to feel the buzz around the show. What sometimes happens is a show might have a great pilot, but afterwards everyone forgets about the show.” He mentions the series Believe<\/em> as one such show.<\/p>\n \n\tMejlhede is pleased to see the U.S. networks moving toward the straight-to-series model as opposed to only producing a pilot of a show. “I endorse the straight-to-series model. It’s good, it allows more proper creative development so that focus is not only on the pilot and then the rest of the episodes kind of drown. I mentioned Believe<\/em> as one example of where I thought, Great pilot, but what happens afterwards? I feel a little bit the same about Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.<\/em> Sometimes it’s hard to judge because even with a magnificent pilot like Warner Bros. did with Gotham<\/em>, you have two concerns as an international buyer: one, they spent a fortune on this pilot, and two, you know the budget is going to shrink to something reasonably below $5 million per episode, and that is probably reducing the cost by a third. So you are going to have an amazing episode two but without all the graphics. So you get a bit nervous about all these things.”<\/p>\n \n\tAs for the new raft of superhero shows, Mejlhede comments, “It’s an interesting trend to observe; there is a bit of a concern with the superhero trend because you get the great superhero shows without the real superheroes! There is Batman without Batman and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D<\/em> without the great shield agents! The Flash<\/em> (WBITD) was quite well done because it’s the real deal. If you look at a show like Marvel’s Agent Carter<\/em> (DMD), the 15 minutes we saw, I think it’s brilliant because she is a really fascinating character to spin a universe around, but again, the concern is, Can you uphold a decent budget so it doesn’t look like something the audience isn’t really expecting? Even if we announce that this is a really decent superhero show and even though we live in a real world where budgets can’t be $50 million an episode, you still sit with an audience that might have that expectation—that is a risk.”<\/p>\n \n\tWant more on the U.S. fall season? See a recap of our coverage here<\/a>, or download the new edition of World Screen Reports<\/em>, our iPad publication, which features our handy network grid<\/a>, studio listings, analysis from The WIT on the season’s strongest contenders and more. Download it from iTunes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tYou can also read buyer feedback from ProSiebenSat.1’s Rüdiger Böss<\/a>, Sky’s Sarah Wright<\/a> and RTL’s Jörg Graf<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PREMIUM: At the L.A. Screenings this year, more procedural dramas were on view than in past years, which satisfied Jakob Mejlhede, the senior VP of acquisitions and programming at Modern Times Group (MTG) and the chief content officer of MTGx. “I was quite satisfied with the one-hours,” he commented. “There was no breakout hit but …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-top-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n