{"id":5052,"date":"2016-07-25T09:00:17","date_gmt":"2016-07-25T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2016-07-26T13:08:53","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T17:08:53","slug":"naked-entertainments-simon-andreae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/naked-entertainments-simon-andreae\/","title":{"rendered":"Naked Entertainment\u2019s Simon Andreae"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simon\u00a0Andreae, the founder and CEO of\u00a0Naked Entertainment, talks to <\/em>TV Formats about the company’s take on delivering innovative, brand-defining, unscripted entertainment.<\/em><\/p>\n

With more than two decades in the business of non-scripted entertainment, Simon Andreae has been on both the pitching and commissioning sides of the table. Last year, following a stint heading up alternative entertainment at FOX in the U.S., Andreae set up his own firm, Naked Entertainment, with the backing of FremantleMedia as a minority investor. Naked’s first commission,\u00a0100% Hotter<\/em>, launched on 5STAR this summer, and\u00a0Stripped and Stranded<\/em>\u00a0is headed to Channel 5 this fall. The company has also received two commissions from Channel 4\u2019s on-demand platform, All 4:\u00a0Britain\u2019s Best Boy Racer<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Threesome Dating<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"***Image***\"TV FORMATS:<\/strong>\u00a0What were your goals when you established Naked Entertainment, and how are you positioning it in the market?
\nANDREAE:<\/strong>\u00a0The company is [less than a year] old; we\u2019re still a baby. The point was and still is to develop, create and produce innovative but mainstream factual-entertainment formats for the U.K., the U.S. and around the world. I have a particular interest in genres and approaches that are sometimes a bit radical, at times a bit high-wire, but at best can result in new turns of the wheel for unscripted television and ultimately provocative ideas that can become prime-time hits. That\u2019s the point of the company. I\u2019m also trying to create a family of best-in-class producers in the U.K. who can share a fun journey with an exciting brand over a number of years.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong>\u00a0You\u2019ve been a commissioner as well as a producer. How does your experience on the broadcast side inform your work as a producer?
\nANDREAE:<\/strong>\u00a0I’ve been in unscripted television for about 25 years, and I’ve spent about half the time as a producer and half the time as a network executive. Each side informs the other.<\/p>\n

Network execs are looking at a lot of ideas\u2014the pressure on their time is heavy. As a producer, it would serve you well to have ideas that are bold, attention-grabbing, simple and easily expressed, ideally just in the title or just in a title and a logline. The buyers have so little time to get through so many ideas, quite apart from their responsibilities to marketing, promoting and scheduling the shows, and in many cases helping shape the creative. You better have something that grabs their attention fast!<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong>\u00a0Tell us about your relationship with FremantleMedia. Why did you partner with them when you launched Naked Entertainment?
\nANDREAE:<\/strong>\u00a0I have known Cecile [Frot-Coutaz, CEO of FremantleMedia] for a few years. She was behind\u00a0American Idol\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0X Factor<\/em>\u00a0and a number of shows we used to broadcast on FOX in the States. I always found that she had a really good mixture of creative savvy and business strength. I wanted to be in business with her. The other thing was [that] I wanted a minority investor who wouldn’t own more than 25 percent of the company, so that we could remain a qualifying independent producer under the terms of trade in the U.K. I also wanted [to partner with] a company that was not closely affiliated with any one particular network, and also that had really robust distribution and reproduction arms. If we create a hit show, I want our partner not just to be able to make effective tape sales around the world, but to be able to make local versions fast. FremantleMedia has 23 international production companies around the world\u2014they are among the largest, most proactive, most effective global IP disseminators.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong>\u00a0How is the landscape for setting up an independent production outfit today?
\nANDREAE:<\/strong>\u00a0On the one hand, there are more and more outlets for television production, so there’s more real estate to occupy, which is good. On the other, there are certainly as many if not more production companies than there has ever been who are fighting for that real estate.<\/p>\n

When setting up [an indie] today, it is helpful to have a backer, so that your back is not against the wall from the very first day. We\u2019re privileged in that the funding [from FremantleMedia] will take us through what may be one, two, three years of loss making while we build our business. We have the backing and the comfort to be able to do that. I always work best from a position where failure is not the end of the world! [Laughs<\/em>] It allows you to climb higher up the risk ladder. You can be more daring in your taste. It allows us to pitch shows that we feel might be a bit \u201cout on a limb\u201d [for a network] to begin with. It might take a while for a network to come on board.<\/p>\n

The other reason it’s more competitive than it used to be is that networks still employ some of the best television executives in the world, but production companies are in a much more powerful position to attract skillful creative executives. Ten-plus years ago, being a commissioning editor might well be the pinnacle of your career. Now, midlevel commissioning executives know that they may have the opportunity to go into jobs that are bigger and better and more exciting in the independent community. That\u2019s partly because of the size of many of the independent groups, and partly because of the opportunities that they can afford for both creative freedom and financial success. Those opportunities weren’t there to anything like the same degree 15, 20 years ago. In a way it’s exciting, but in a way it’s scary that you are, as a producer, now competing with a greater tranche of the best of the best than you used to.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong>\u00a0What are some of the projects you\u2019re working on?
\nANDREAE:\u00a0<\/strong>We\u2019ve only pitched 10 or 11 shows\u2014we\u2019ve been patient and thoughtful about getting a good team together, and patient and thoughtful about the ideas we pitch and how we pitch them. Of those, we\u2019ve sold six separate ideas: some are pilot commitments, some are straight to series. Our first series has started in the U.K.: it\u2019s a sex-appeal makeover format called\u00a0100% Hotter<\/em>\u00a0for 5STAR.<\/p>\n

Our new format is called\u00a0Stripped and Stranded<\/em>. One of the shows I created at Discovery was\u00a0Naked and Afraid<\/em>. It has a predominantly male audience. I wanted to figure out if we could make a show that would attract the male audience that is interested in survival techniques and the female audience that is interested in family dramas.\u00a0Stripped and Stranded<\/em>\u00a0is a family survival show where in each episode, a family that is at war with itself is plunged into the wilderness. It\u2019s airing on Channel 5 in the autumn. The channel\u2019s commissioning executive uses quite a good phrase about the families: \u201cIf they can\u2019t get on, they won\u2019t get out!\u201d You have to support your family members who you might not like or speak to at home. You have to pull together to find the exit point at the end of the journey. It’s got the best elements of family soaps if you like, and the best elements of survival shows, all wrapped up in what feels to me like an appealing, magnetic title:\u00a0Stripped and Stranded<\/em>. I\u2019ve just come back from Panama, where we are shooting four episodes that make up the first season. The first two families have just completed the journey. There is an extraordinary amount of high drama. There are some comedy moments, but there is high drama and screaming and tears\u2014and also embracing and redemption and expressions of love and forgiveness.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong>\u00a0Is this the kind of format that requires a production hub?
\nANDREAE:<\/strong>\u00a0It doesn\u2019t. It happens that we\u2019re shooting the first four episodes in Panama, partly because there are very different micro-ecosystems there that we can use: swamp, mountain, beach, etc. Going forward, any episode can be shot in any remote environment anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong>\u00a0As you\u2019re developing new ideas, how early in your creative process do you start thinking about how formattable a concept is?
\nANDREAE:<\/strong>\u00a0What we try to think about first is: how simple is it, how original is it, how extreme is it? If it\u2019s all of those things, then I\u2019m very happy. The next thing we always think about is, will this be something that has the potential to change television in some small way? Does it move the genre forward? If it does that as well, then we\u2019ll almost certainly develop and pitch it. The other thing is, I\u2019m fascinated by human behavior and the way in which television offers a fulcrum against which one can balance human morals and dilemmas and can consider the big themes of life: love, sex, marriage, friendship, betrayal, death, survival, redemption. If at its heart it has something that is core to the human experience, I get very excited. So [if a concept is] simple, original, extreme, can move the genre forward and is really about something that people fear or reach for, emotionally, that\u2019s what we try to develop. You quite often find, of course, that if it is all of those things, it is quite likely to have scalability and saleability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The founder and CEO talks about the company’s take on delivering innovative, brand-defining, unscripted entertainment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":5053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,69],"tags":[518,158],"class_list":["post-5052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-naked-entertainment","tag-simon-andreae","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nNaked Entertainment\u2019s Simon Andreae - TVFORMATS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/naked-entertainments-simon-andreae\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Naked Entertainment\u2019s Simon Andreae - TVFORMATS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The founder and CEO talks about the company's take on delivering innovative, brand-defining, unscripted entertainment.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/naked-entertainments-simon-andreae\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVFORMATS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-07-25T13:00:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-07-26T17:08:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2015\/09\/2016-07-22-Simon-Andreae.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/naked-entertainments-simon-andreae\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/naked-entertainments-simon-andreae\/\",\"name\":\"Naked Entertainment\u2019s Simon Andreae - TVFORMATS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-07-25T13:00:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-07-26T17:08:53+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/naked-entertainments-simon-andreae\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/naked-entertainments-simon-andreae\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/naked-entertainments-simon-andreae\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Naked Entertainment\u2019s Simon Andreae\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/\",\"name\":\"TVFORMATS\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. 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