{"id":4969,"date":"2013-05-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvusa\/2013\/05\/28\/foxs-marion-edwards-on-changes-in-international-tv-business\/"},"modified":"2013-05-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T00:00:00","slug":"foxs-marion-edwards-on-changes-in-international-tv-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvusa\/foxs-marion-edwards-on-changes-in-international-tv-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox’s Marion Edwards on Changes in International TV Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

PREMIUM: Marion Edwards, the president of international television at Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, talks about the success of Homeland<\/em>, The Americans<\/em>, the studio’s extensive scripted formats business and how technology has transformed the international television business.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WS: <\/span><\/span><\/strong>How much has the international distribution business changed over the past ten years, particularly when selling television shows?<\/span><\/span>
\nEDWARDS:<\/span><\/span><\/strong> It’s like the Wild West! Everything we have known about windowing content has changed. We all know how to window film, even though it’s much more complicated now than it used to be, it has set windows. We were always thoughtful about how we set up the windows, shortened the theatrical windows, shortened the home entertainment windows, layered in EST [Electronic Sell Through] and VOD day-and-date release, with physical home entertainment. But television was like this child running wild and free in the world! No one ever really thought about how to window it or what the purpose of windowing it should be. And now we find ourselves doing some incredibly interesting and complicated things and experimenting in a way that was never possible with film. And it’s only possible with television because so many of these new interesting services are driven by television.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WS:<\/span><\/span><\/strong> How has technology revolutionized international distribution?<\/span><\/span>
\nEDWARDS: <\/span><\/span><\/strong>Technology has created all these additional devices and with them it’s created a desire for consumers to have what they want when they want it. They want it for free and they want it on any device. And that is not a business model that can sustain the cost of production, which is currently several million dollars an hour for television. Every day we’re worried about the business models, concerned because we are starting to see greater and greater usage of our content even within the first window. Everyone knows that the library value is really where you start to churn money to help compensate for the loss of all the shows that fail. When you have such heavy use in the first window, which covers broadcast and catch-up rights as well as EST for the people who want to watch without commercial interruptions, then people start to say, what happens next?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It used to be that at the end of the first season of a show, in theory, it would be renewed for another season and two seasons later you could sell it in syndication and hopefully make a lot of money. But now, at the end of that first season, the series will go into the SVOD window, about concurrent with the home entertainment window. And while we are absolutely being compensated very well for that, it’s changing the long-term additional licensing activity that used to make up the very long tail of distribution.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, to combat the popularity of SVOD, many networks would like to have the right to stack episodes, so at the end of a broadcast season, they are asking to have the entire season available for some period of time, 30 days or whatever. Then you have the SVOD platforms saying, well, if you do that I’m not going to pay you what I used to pay you. So there is a lot of elbowing and jostling around in the marketplace as we try to sort out what are the best models to help us sustain our production capability, and at the same time, try to not just turn content into fodder—that is one of our biggest concerns.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And trust me, trying to close deals in today’s environment is very difficult, because people are worried. Things are changing so quickly, people are very worried about stuff that doesn’t even exist yet and may exist during the term of their license.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WS: <\/span><\/span><\/strong>In several territories, like Italy, broadcasters are being negatively impacted by bad economies. How are you working with long-term clients, and how are you making up for lost revenue?<\/span><\/span>
\nEDWARDS:<\/span><\/span><\/strong> When you’ve got a problem in Italy, which is a very troubled market at the moment, it’s not like you make that up someplace else. You just take a hit because there isn’t someone else the size of Italy waiting in the wings to pay you X to make up for what you may not be getting out of Italy.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

You try to do the best you can in a very difficult situation; try to keep your licenses as short as possible. Selling at the bottom is never a good thing to do, but with product that has a relatively short shelf life, you also don’t want to put it on the shelf and hope that people will want it next year either. You do the best you can in markets where you don’t have a deal. Where you do have a deal, be grateful that you have a deal, but you also have to always be conscious that your client may come to you for some assistance, in order to bridge through what can be very troubled economic water for them. We went through this in 2009 with a couple of clients. So far, we haven’t had people come to us and ask for a lot of assistance. I think that the ad market is reasonably positive but people are acquiring less, unless they have deals, and hoping that things will turn around in the next 18 to 24 months.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WS: <\/span><\/span><\/strong>Do buyers perceive cable shows differently from broadcast network shows?<\/span><\/span>
\nEDWARDS:<\/span><\/span><\/strong> It reminds me of when I first came to Fox and people said, “Well you know, FOX isn’t a real network.” You had to go through the struggle of explaining, “No, The X Files<\/i> is a real show!” Now some people say, “Cable shows, well, they’re not really like network shows.” But the reality is that some of the biggest shows on television right now are cable shows. I think people understand that the budgets are the same and that great television is great television whoever you produce it for. For our clients who have a big network channel and also a number of smaller channels, including digital terrestrial channels, cable programming can really create a lot of noise. They may not have been able to use Sons of<\/i> Anarchy<\/i> on their main channel, but certainly they can find a home for it on one of their digital channels. A show like The Americans <\/i>really helps people recognize that great show is a great show.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WS:<\/span><\/span><\/strong> Do I need to ask how Homeland<\/i> is doing?<\/span><\/span>
\nEDWARDS:<\/span><\/span><\/strong> Probably not! Homeland<\/i> is our miracle show and the show that flies in the face of everything you think: serialized doesn’t work unless it’s great. It’s such a good show and it has performed incredibly well.     <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WS:<\/span><\/span><\/strong> You’re not having too many problems selling serialized shows?<\/span><\/span>
\nEDWARDS: <\/span><\/span><\/strong>It’s interesting, we’ve always had serialized drama here, principally kicked off by 24<\/i> although I remember a show called Murder One<\/i>, which was great but was before it’s time; it was very serialized. But we had some hits and misses in the serialized drama world. What really helps serialized drama series be popular is that they only have 13 episodes. I recently had lunch with Howard Gordon and we were talking about that. Homeland<\/i> is his show and now he is developing another great serialized show for FX, called Tyrant<\/i>. We were talking about the difference between asking people to watch 22 or 24 episodes and asking them to watch 13. And having a smaller number of episodes does seem to be important when it comes to serialized drama.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WS: <\/span><\/span><\/strong>Fox produces some of the most successful comedies on television. Are comedies harder to sell than dramas, or is that starting to change?<\/span><\/span>
\nEDWARDS:<\/span><\/span><\/strong> No, it’s not. I would like to say that humor is becoming more universal but it isn’t. We have in Modern Family<\/i> a show that probably works as well as any comedy works because it has universal themes.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We have a comedy called The Simpsons<\/i> that works better than any other comedy I have ever seen internationally. It’s hard to put your finger on it but that little yellow family is unbelievably popular internationally: multi-language, multi-country, multi-generational—an amazing thing! The characters don’t grow old. The quality of the scripts and the consistency of the show, I have never seen equaled in anything else. You can air it at many different times of day. It is a thing apart from live action.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Modern Family<\/i> works very well in English-speaking markets and there probably are a few non-English markets where it does reasonably well.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But it’s not a big break out hit because it’s very difficult for comedy to travel.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We also have How I Met Your Mother<\/i>, which does very well in certain English-language markets. We produced a Russian version. We are looking at a version in the Middle East. Comedy is the one thing that’s really right for local versioning because the original U.S. show is not going to work that well, whereas if you localize it, it does have the possibility of really becoming successful.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WS: <\/span><\/span><\/strong>What other local versions have you done?<\/span><\/span>
\nEDWARDS: <\/span><\/span><\/strong>We’ve done Prison Break<\/i> in Russia. We’ll probably do a version of Prison Break in the Middle East. We’re about to get Bones<\/i> up and running in Russia. It’s a kind of a passion project for us here at Fox but we’d love to get The Mary Tyler Moore<\/i> show up, particularly in an area like the Middle East, it doesn’t have a lot of drinking, it doesn’t have a lot of sex. It’s really just about a young woman who is coming into her own in a world that is still male dominated but there is a lot of humor. I think that show could really resonate if we could find a way to make it more modern but at the same time retain those core values of what made it such a great show. It was such an important show for so many of us, I think there is another generation of women in cultures that are now at the point where we were when that show was popular, women working and living alone and having women friends.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We have 24 <\/i>currently shooting in India. We have a deal to produce a Chinese version of Glee<\/i>. We have a version of Modern Family<\/i> that will begin shooting in Israel and Chile. We have a lot of things currently in production. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia<\/i> and Malcolm In The Middle<\/i> will start shooting in Moscow. We have lots of activity in Russia.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In Latin America we have produced The Wonder Years <\/i>and will be doing a version of Malcolm in the Middle<\/i> and White Collar. <\/i>The Middle East is full of activity because local programming is all anybody wants to watch. They don’t want to watch American series anymore. We’ve got a lot of great shows with great scripts and they’ve got the interest in producing local versions.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It’s fascinating to us. We are unique in that we don’t have our own production company. Universal has a big operation in London and Sony has operations in lots of places. Our model is to work with our broadcast partners and they choose the production company. And they produce it themselves. We license the format, we provide all the creative guidance to get it produced properly, but they produce it for themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WS: <\/span><\/span><\/strong>When you need to hire sales executives, what skills should they have?<\/span><\/span>
\nEDWARDS:<\/span><\/span><\/strong> So many different things need to be done now. There is the old-fashioned negotiation of license fees and terms and number of runs. That’s the easiest thing we do now and it happens the quickest. We need people who have a really good background in technology; content protection is something that every deal requires. It is complex and time consuming and we need people who are knowledgeable in that area. It’s still great to have an MBA or a law degree, or a degree in engineering, that’s going to be really helpful in television distribution, oddly enough. Production is still a good place to find people. You need to look for people who have a natural interest in the entire distribution process because if you find someone who loves to negotiate deals but does not care at all about the technology side of things, that’s ultimately not going to be a good fit. They won’t be happy because they are going to have to spend way too much of their time learning about content protection and devices and how many concurrent streams people can have, that’s not going to make for a happy work experience. We used to frequently hire people from channels because they had a clear understanding of how scheduling was done and what the acquisition executives were looking for. But that now may not be such a great fit either because, again, you need people who are more oriented toward technology. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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