World View: As Time Goes By

NEW YORK: Anna Carugati shares her thoughts on changes and developments in the media business during her 20 years at World Screen.

How quickly do 20 years go by? Very. But we only realize that as we look back. We are usually too preoccupied with what needs to be done by tomorrow to notice how fast time is passing, until we are surprised by our children growing or the inexorable impact of age and gravity on our bodies.

Why am I focusing on 20 years ago? Because I was doing some research and realized that I started writing for this magazine in 1993. That got me thinking about what has changed since then and what has remained the same. Bill Clinton was sworn in for his first term as president in January of that year. In February, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in New York. In June, Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. U.N. inspectors were in Iraq looking for nuclear weapons. Even though Clinton brokered a peace accord between the PLO and Israel, it hardly seems much has changed in the incendiary Middle East.

Also in 1993, Czechoslovakia split into two countries, Poland held parliamentary elections and in Russia there was a constitutional crisis prompting a mass uprising against President Boris Yeltsin. The Maastricht Treaty took effect, formally establishing the European Union. Yes, the countries in the former Soviet Bloc have embraced democracy, a positive change, but while the European Union has grown, it is struggling to keep its footing.

Of course, the most bizarre event of 1993 was when Lorena Bobbitt, in a moment of desperate rebellion against her abusive husband, sliced off his penis with a knife. After fleeing in her car with the dismembered member, she flung it out the window into a field, only to call 911 in remorse. Eventually, John Wayne Bobbitt was reunited with his penis, literally; it was surgically reattached. “Bobbitt” became a verb, and people everywhere were talking about this in conversations animated by cheers from sympathetic women and flinches of pain from men. Perhaps this event drew so much attention because those were the days before reality television—audiences weren’t yet inured to the antics of people who will do just about anything in search of 15 minutes of fame.

The pop-culture highlights of 1993 included the finale of Cheers, which attracted 80.4 million viewers (that doesn’t happen anymore); among the new shows that year were Frasier, The X-Files and NYPD Blue. A wide range of feature films enthralled audiences: Jurassic Park, Mrs. Doubtfire, Schindler’s List, Philadelphia, Sleepless in Seattle and even Free Willy, whose significance in the U.K. was far different from what the film’s creator intended.

Television in Europe was experiencing a flurry of activity: deregulation of the broadcast industry was giving way to a number of successful commercial networks, such as RTL Television and Sat.1 in Germany, Canale 5 in Italy, TF1 and M6 in France, and Telecinco and Antena 3 TV in Spain. Cable and satellite channels were being launched. Most of these new networks and channels relied heavily on imported programming, the lion’s share of which came from Hollywood.

That has definitely changed. The European Union may be struggling with economic problems, but its member states have active content-creation and export sectors. The U.K. has a long tradition of period and cutting-edge drama, the Germans have cop shows, the French and Italians have mini-series, Scandinavia has given the world noir crime series, most countries have home-grown soaps—and that’s only on the fiction side. Europe has been a hotbed of formats, first from Holland and the U.K., and now from across the continent. We examine Europe’s fervent production and distribution industries in our main feature, all evidence of significant development in the last 20 years.

In this issue, which I believe has the best editorial lineup we’ve ever offered, we interview some of the leading executives in the industry today, from DreamWorks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg to Viacom’s Philippe Dauman to Globo’s Carlos Henrique Schroder to the RTL Group’s Guillaume de Posch. We focus on the major issues facing the media business, including binge viewing, the penchant viewers have for watching one episode after another of their favorite shows. We examine the phenomenon in a feature; we also speak to Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer at Netflix, the main vehicle for binge viewing. We also look at topics including docudramas and travel programming, consolidation in the kids’ business, constructed reality and fashion formats, top channels in Asia and Dubai as a production hub in the Middle East.

As a special treat, we offer conversations with Claire Danes, Alec Baldwin, James Spader, Kevin Bacon, Armando Iannucci, Andrew Davies and Steven Moffat. No matter how quickly the years pass, the enjoyment of good storytelling and engaging characters is timeless.