Programmer Profile: Ovation’s Kris Slava

February 17, 2012 World Screen Top Stories
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PREMIUM: The U.S. basic-cable arts channel Ovation is looking to acquire and co-produce high-quality international drama series, says Kris Slava, its senior VP of programming and production.

 

WS: What kinds of content are you looking to acquire?
SLAVA: Across the board, both on the acquisitions and the co-production front, we’re looking for international scripted. There seems to be, from what I can see around the world and it’s even happening in the U.S., more television movies being made than there were a few years ago. People are once again seeing the utility of them, the way that they serve as a kind of brand flag for the channels, and that’s what we’re looking for. We’ve had lots of success in a number of different categories—romantic classics, fantasy and science fiction, swashbuckling—so we’re looking for all of those and already have heard about some really great things that are being produced.
We did our first co-production this year, which was a television movie [called We’ll Take Manhattan]. Shine put the deal together with Kudos and BBC Four. It’s about the photographer David Bailey, in the ’60s, and his model Jean Shrimpton. He was an iconoclast in an era when photographers were lords and they wore bow ties and suspenders and took their jackets off when they were relaxing. He came in and he was a boy with a lot of talent, a bad accent and a leather jacket and he went off to New York with Jean Shrimpton and kind of revolutionized photography. So it’s a topic that’s really good for us, clearly in the genre.
 
We’re looking for great co-productions, whether they’re one-off films, mini-series, or series. [We’re looking for] big stories, well told and smartly told. So maybe a cut above the mainstream ordinary—as an arts channel, that’s our audience, so we can go there, when other channels may not be able to quite so freely. [A foreign] accent can be a big barrier in the United States. For our audience it’s a good thing, it’s a [sign] of the best drama that’s created around the world and travels well.
 
We’re growing so rapidly. We’ve gone from 5 to 48 million in five years. We got Nielsen rated last year, we’ve increased our ratings by 25 percent since then and so we are into our adolescent phase. We have more money. We want to spend that money to acquire things that are going to make people sit up and notice, put the channel on the map and make people come back again and again to see what we have. We’ve either closed, or are near to closing deals with a half dozen major scripted distributors. It’s the start of a new era for Ovation.
 
WS: DRG has sold many of your original series and specials to broadcasters around the world. Why do you think the portfolio is striking a chord on the international market?
SLAVA: There is and always has been a great market for arts programming internationally. We have acquired a lot of stuff out of the international market and we had hoped that there would likewise be an international market for our product. We’re really glad that it’s resonating, particularly since we’re maturing as a channel and we are getting ready to produce even more, so there will be a bigger pipeline coming to DRG.
 
WS: And that revenue is then reinvested back into original content?
SLAVA: Absolutely, that’s the beauty of it. It allows you to either make more episodes or make better episodes or both, hopefully.