{"id":6404,"date":"2018-08-13T09:00:11","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2018-08-24T17:59:20","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T21:59:20","slug":"sky-visions-barnaby-shingleton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/sky-visions-barnaby-shingleton\/","title":{"rendered":"Sky Vision\u2019s Barnaby Shingleton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barnaby Shingleton, the director of entertainment and factual at Sky Vision, talks to <\/em>TV Formats about the company’s format catalog, trends he\u2019s noticing and the strategy for this part of the business looking ahead.<\/em><\/p>\n

While formats are just one part of the diversified Sky Vision catalog, it\u2019s an area that\u2019s growing, albeit with a carefully curated approach. At any given time, the company is \u201cactively pushing\u201d some 35 to 40 formats, with current highlights including Duck Quacks Don\u2019t Echo<\/em>, 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy<\/em>, The Great Pottery Throw Down<\/em>, The Secret Life of the Zoo<\/em>, Revolution<\/em>, BattleBots<\/em>, And They\u2019re Off<\/em> and I Don\u2019t Like Mondays<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"***Image***\"TV FORMATS:<\/strong> How much of Sky Vision\u2019s catalog is devoted to formats, and what percent of that comes from in-house production companies?
\nSHINGLETON: <\/strong>We\u2019ve got somewhere in the region of 35 to 40 formats that we\u2019re actively pushing at any one time, which is relatively modest. We don\u2019t have an enormous catalog of content because we\u2019re a relatively young company. We\u2019re about five years old now; we were established by Sky via the acquisition of a production and distribution company called Parthenon. Since then, we\u2019ve been really growing exponentially in terms of the scale of what we\u2019re doing and also the genres that we are distributing. In addition to building our catalog from what was quite specialist factual-focused into popular factual, factual entertainment, entertainment formats as well as drama and comedy, we have a number of production companies in the U.K. and in the U.S. as well. Sky Vision is not just a distribution entity, it\u2019s also a production entity as well as a broadcaster and a network and a platform in Europe. When you look at our formats catalog, it is what I would call relatively modest but growing in terms of its scale.<\/p>\n

Maybe 10, 20 percent [of our formats are produced in-house]. Some of our formats come via our channel, and a good example of that would be something like Duck Quacks Don\u2019t Echo<\/em> or 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy<\/em>. Some are coming from our own production companies, so something like The Great Pottery Throw Down<\/em> from Love Productions. We\u2019re starting to sell the format rights to The<\/em> Secret Life of the Zoo<\/em>, which is from Blast! Films, and Znak & Co has Revolution<\/em>. But I\u2019d say the vast majority of our formats are actually third-party and acquired directly by us either as part of a bigger development deal or on an ad hoc basis. For example, BattleBots<\/em> is a format that we\u2019ve acquired from a third-party company…. Our big launches from last MIPCOM are And They\u2019re Off<\/em> and I Don\u2019t Like Mondays<\/em>, both of which are third-party formats. So we are acquiring content in lots of different ways.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> What trends are you noticing in the formats arena?
\nSHINGLETON: <\/strong>Simple concepts are what really cut through to our buyers and audiences. When we\u2019re thinking about formats and we\u2019re selling them, we\u2019re always trying to think of, What is the top line that really cuts through? We have a format called My Wonderful Life<\/em>, which is produced for our channel Sky 1 in the U.K. It\u2019s effectively [about] individuals at the end of their life who want to leave special gifts and experiences for people after they\u2019ve gone; they record messages and then they\u2019re delivered after they\u2019ve passed away. It sounds quite morbid and it\u2019s very emotional, but it can be funny, uplifting and positive at the same time. It\u2019s a really simple idea\u2014quite hard to execute but simple\u2014and it cuts through pretty quickly and clearly.<\/p>\n

In terms of some of the challenges, more so in entertainment than in lifestyle and factual entertainment, it is [increasingly] difficult to grab an audience with something new. You can\u2019t expect to throw something new onto a schedule and hope it\u2019ll stick without some heavy marketing and some real thought into what will make it sticky with that audience. That might be a piece of talent, that might be a format point that extends beyond the program to add a stickiness to it, but you\u2019ve got to give audiences a reason to stay. One of the challenges that we\u2019re seeing in the entertainment market in particular with broadcasters trying new things is that at the end of the day, formats need an opportunity to become familiar to audiences, and the quicker you can do that, the better. One way of doing that is simply by repeating it a lot…. You\u2019ve got to keep pushing it out there. This idea of, We\u2019ll do a single episode a week and rest it\u2014I just don\u2019t think that works anymore, at least not with new entertainment shows. So keeping audiences engaged with entertainment is really hard and it\u2019s one of the reasons why I think revivals are proving popular, particularly in the States, and we\u2019ve seen some in the U.K. and elsewhere because you\u2019ve got built-in stickiness already [since] your audience knows it. The challenge for us is we\u2019ve got a new catalog, so we\u2019re pushing new content out there. But talent can definitely make it sticky, there are other formatting techniques to make it sticky and social media can make it sticky.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> Where is Sky Vision having the most success with format sales, and what territories are you still looking to enter?
\nSHINGLETON: <\/strong>Western Europe is working well for us; we\u2019ve had productions in France, we\u2019re doing well in Italy, Germany is developing well for us. In Scandinavia, we\u2019re doing well particularly on factual entertainment. We\u2019re really looking to push entertainment in Scandinavia a little bit more; they do a lot of their own development, but we\u2019re hoping that our strategy there will bear fruit. And Australia is always very attractive…. That\u2019s a market we are definitely targeting.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re very aware that formats grow in time. Gone are the days when you\u2019d go to a market and you\u2019d walk away with five commissions and 14 or 15 option agreements and you\u2019d be on air in the next 12 months. That doesn\u2019t really happen anymore. So you\u2019ve got to be quite focused on specific opportunities in specific territories.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> What are Sky Vision\u2019s format plans for the future?
\nSHINGLETON: <\/strong>We\u2019re not looking to develop a telephone directory of formats; we want our formats to be quite curated. Most of the formats we are acquiring because we think there\u2019s an opportunity for them, so we\u2019re being quite picky about what we do. We\u2019re not looking to take on lots of new ones. We always want to offer buyers new things to look at, but we\u2019re also aware that there are great shows in [the catalog] already and sometimes you just don\u2019t want to distract from working on the ones you\u2019ve got. So we will keep it curated and we\u2019ll keep it relatively modest in size, but we\u2019ll always want to have provocative, strong top lines so that people will be interested and genuinely excited about the formats that we\u2019re offering. And we\u2019re particularly interested in strengthening factual entertainment; not to say that we wouldn\u2019t be picking up regular entertainment, shiny-floor entertainment, but factual entertainment is an area that we\u2019re particularly focused on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The director of entertainment and factual talks about the company’s format catalog and the strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":479,"featured_media":6405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,69],"tags":[1458,922],"class_list":["post-6404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-barnaby-shingleton","tag-sky-vision","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nSky Vision\u2019s Barnaby Shingleton - 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\/sky-visions-barnaby-shingleton\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sky Vision\u2019s Barnaby Shingleton - 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