AMC Networks Chief Stresses Importance of Iconic Content

CANNES: Josh Sapan, the president and CEO of AMC Networks, noted that iconic content that viewers are personally connected to is the “killer app” of TV’s digital age in a speech at MIPTV today, which was followed by a Q&A with World Screen’s Anna Carugati.

Sapan’s Media Mastermind Keynote focused on “the paradox the [pay-TV] business currently finds itself in." On the one hand, Sapan said, there is the enormous success of pay TV globally. On the other is the threat being posed by the Internet and digital content. “With all the strength of pay TV, it becomes more fragile as it becomes more successful each day.”

The Internet, Sapan said, is the single greatest challenge to the pay-TV ecosystem. Its impact on the newspaper and music industries, he said, have demonstrated its “tsunami-like” qualities. Cord-cutting is a fact, Sapan noted, and people are watching content on online platforms like Netflix, Hulu and LOVEFiLM. “A recent report from Nielsen confirms that more homes than ever are now broadcast and broadband only—they get their TV in every way but paid cable, satellite and telco.”

TV Everywhere and authentication are key to the success and growth of the pay-TV model, he said, and “iconic content” is necessary. These are shows that are “durable, enduring, and satisfying” and aren’t easily substituted. These are the series with the best characters, best writing and best storytelling. “In success these shows are widely known, understood, referred to, and occasionally parodied.”

These shows, when “deployed through technology that extends the viewers’ ability to watch it whenever and wherever they want,” enables the pay-TV content providers to “work with the web” as opposed to against it.

At the heart of iconic content is a viewer’s personal connection to it—shows with characters who “become our friends on the screen…. They are also the shows that keep people literally connected and keep people paying their [pay-TV] bills. And they are the shows that are at the center of the sustainability of the pay-TV system." The connection, he said, “is the killer app of TV’s digital age.” Appointment viewing, he noted, is giving way to the concept of “connection TV.”

Sapan continued, “Connection TV is what happens when audiences become divorced from the constraints of linear and empowered by the digital age to get their favorite content.” These connected viewers could be called “super viewers” or “extreme fans” who use social media to connect with their favorite shows.

Iconic TV shows can take advantage of online platforms like Netflix for later windows, he noted: “a sort of digital, post-window supercharge.”

For example, season two of The Walking Dead generated huge ratings in part from season one’s availability on Netflix ahead of the premiere. Similarly, the fifth season premiere of Mad Med delivered ratings nearly 40 percent higher than previous seasons, in part because audiences were able to catch up on seasons one through four on Netflix. “It made the web work" for pay-TV channels, Sapan noted.