Category Archives: Television

Film streaming and downloads to overtake box office in 2017

Film, Latest News, Online Media, Television

The growing popularity of downloads and streaming services like Netflix means that Blu-ray and DVD sales are declining

A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has declared that the market for DVDs and Blu-ray is quickly declining, with the slack taken up by increasingly popular on-demand streaming services like Netflix – which will also overtake cinema box office revenues in the coming years.

The study says that revenue from electronic home video (ie streaming and downloading films) will outstrip physical media in 2016, and that the market for physical media will drop from $12.2bn now to $8.7bn in 2018. They also predict that in 2017 electronic home video will overtake the traditional cinema as the biggest contributor to total film revenue in the US, reaching a total of $17bn the following year – double the $8.5bn the sector currently generates.

That’s not to say the multiplex is under threat – PwC predict a 16% increase in ticket sales over the next five years. “People still want to go to the movies, especially the big tentpole films,” said Cindy McKenzie, managing director of PwC’s entertainment, media and communications arm. She also pointed to the cheap and easy distribution allowed by digital media as being a major cost saving: “The amount of money that you’re making per transaction may not be the same, but it is cheaper to distribute things digitally.”

Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and the popular US streaming service Hulu are funnelling their growth into ambitious production projects: all have quickly made the jump from mere middlemen to creators of original content, with hits like House of Cards and Arrested Development. Netflix’s revenue rose an astonishing 24% in the first quarter of 2014.

In the music market, streaming is eating into downloads to the point where Spotify’s streaming revenue is beginning to outpace iTunes’ download revenue in certain parts of Europe – perhaps a catalyst for Apple’s recent purchase of streaming service Beats Music. But downloads of films are still growing (albeit at a much lower pace than streaming) and topped $1bn in revenue for the first time last year, driven in part by high-quality downloads becoming available before physical and streamed versions.

PwC also announced that ebooks would overtake printed books as the UK’s most popular reading format by 2018, with revenue to triple to nearly £1bn over the next four years.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas – theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 June 2014

British TV is learning to love the arts – but it can love them too much

Documentary, Latest News, Television

TV’s new passion for the arts should be good news for culture enthusiasts. But are critical voices being drowned out by applause?

In the history of television, the areas of British life that have most regularly complained about the lack – and, in recent times, reduction – of airtime are religion and the arts. But, while bishops may still be bitter, artists now seem to have cause to applaud. This week Channel 4 announced a large increase in its arts programming, just over a month after BBC director general Tony Hall revealed the ambition to put arts “at the heart” of the schedules.

The broadcasters will hope for an unreserved cheer from producers and consumers of culture, but there is reason for concern that the type and tone of coverage being promoted may prove rather more beneficial to the creators of the arts than to those who have to pay to see them.

Channel 4’s new commissions include, for example, Random Acts, a showcase for short films by visual artists and film-makers, which is a collaboration with Arts Council England (Ace), an organisation that also featured in the BBC plans, as co-funder and co-producer of The Space, a website on which, again, brief films will be screened.

These cases of Ace teaming up with TV are examples of the current fashion in cultural broadcasting for “creative partnerships”. The BBC has announced co-productions with institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain and the National Galleries of Scotland. The biannual Manchester international festival will become another “creative partner”, with its director, Alex Poots, becoming one of a number of creative figures who will advise the BBC on its coverage. Sir Nicholas Hytner(National Theatre boss until March next year) has joined the BBC’s board as a non-executive director, with Sir Nicholas Serota, head of Tate, chairing a separate “sounding board” of arts supremos.

The fact that almost all these new projects involve actual or virtual art galleries –

with Channel 4 commissioning, as well as Random Acts, a series on modern

portraiture – has revived complaints about the tendency of arts coverage on

television to favour the visual arts over other disciplines. But while it understandably

annoys literature and theatre, this bias is less ideological than technological: a

picture, sculpture or photograph can be represented on screen more or less as it

looks to a gallery-goer, so the viewer can see exactly what is being discussed. In

contrast, any programme dealing with a book or play is able to give only a hint –

through a brief reading or dramatisation – of the material being featured.

This structural difficulty explains the lack of any dedicated theatre or books

programmes on British TV, a frequent cause of lament from fans of those arts.

Although it should not be forgotten that the most enduring and successful arts

programme of modern times – Melvyn Bragg’s The South Bank Show, which ran on

ITV between 1978 and 2010, and has now been revived by Sky Arts – managed to

cover all of the artistic disciplines in rotation, through interviews or documentaries.

Interviewing and film-making, however, are acts of mediation, and potentially of

criticism. The biggest concern about the new generation of arts shows proposed by

Channel 4 and the BBC is not just the preference for pictorial forms, but that they

seem to offer the TV screen as an annexe to the art gallery, with external curators

having at least as much power as internal producers.

Some pundits have pointed to the apparent paradox that the BBC’s commitment to

more cultural coverage was bracketed by the reduction or removal of long-running

arts programmes. Twenty years after it began as Late Review, The Review Show was

cancelled last month without fanfare, just weeks after Radio 3’s Nightwaves was cut

from four nights to three and renamed Freethinking to reflect a more generally

intellectual rather than specifically artistic brief.

One of the BBC’s senior managers recently told a meeting: “We don’t want arts

programmes that say: ‘Should you see this?’; we want programmes that say: ‘You

should see this.'” This small reversal of words reveals a large and significant shift of

intention.

Over its two decades, the Review studio was known for often witheringly direct

dismissal of the work under discussion; there are still writers and artists whom I

would fear meeting on a dark night after critiques they received on editions I chaired.

Judgment was also a key element of Nightwaves, which would often make a noisy

point about featuring first-night reviews of London theatre productions.

Now, though, there are strong suspicions that broadcasters are less interested in

reviewing plays than in co-producing them: another of the recently announced BBC

initiatives promises to screen “the best of British theatre”. There is a sense of

editorial energy moving, in footballing terms, from the press box to the terraces.

And sporting metaphors are apt. When announcing that the BBC arts brand would be

given greater prominence in the credits of programmes, executives acknowledged

that they were following the example of the sports department, which closes each

transmission with a lingering picture of its logo.

And the arts/sports comparison has frequently been made over the years by

members of the cultural community. “Why can’t television support arts in the way

that it does sport?” curators and artistic directors would plead.

But this analogy is problematic. Although propagandists for more arts on television

often talk of TV “promoting” or “getting behind” sport, the coverage of football in

particular has become progressively more analytical. Pundits on Match of the Day

were encouraged to be more critical of players and referees, while, on Radio 5 Live’s

after-match phone-in 606, it is almost unknown for managers or officials to be

praised.

If arts broadcasting were truly to become more like sport, there would be regular

shows in which punters shouted that “Damien Hirst is a total waste of money,” or

“David Hare was just diabolical tonight”.

There is also, though, another intriguing connection. BBC sport began its policy of

aggressive branding at a time when the corporation was rapidly losing attractions

(cricket, rugby, live football) to rival bidders, especially Sky. So the self-
advertisement was that of a rapidly shrinking man frantically measuring his

remaining height.

In the same way, the pumped-up budgets and publicity for culture at Channel 4 and

the BBC reflect a fear that artists and the big national institutions have alternative

outlets. Digital democracy means that creators and curators can easily make their

work available on-screen without the intervention of TV networks. So provision of

platforms for visual artists – in Random Acts and The Space – can be seen as a hedge

against that trend, while collaborating with the National Portrait Gallery for series

fronted by Grayson Perry (Channel 4) and Simon Schama (BBC) may delay a future

in which the NPG itself produces and distributes such projects.

Live drama already demonstrates television’s loss of a screening monopoly. Last

year’s Globe theatre production of The Duchess of Malfiwas not regarded by most

reviewers as one of the highest achievements of British theatre; and, as its main

design feature was being lit by candles, it does not seem obviously suited to TV

transmission. However, the BBC has chosen to broadcast it.

One reason for this is that the biggest hits of the National, Royal Shakespeare

Company and the West End during that period – such Helen Mirren in The

Audience and David Tennant’s Richard II – were screened in cinemas as part of the

NT Live project pioneered by the National. Those shows neither needed nor wanted

TV. Meanwhile, galleries, including the British Museum and Tate, have started

transmitting guided tours of new exhibitions into cinemas and online.

Perhaps the BBC’s new tranche of “creative partners” could advise on this contest for

content? Or can they? Under a strict reading of the BBC’s conflict of interest rules,

future work produced by either Hytner or Serota should not be reviewed or broadcast

by the BBC.

To invoke again the sporting comparison, it is hard to imagine Manchester United

boss David Moyes being appointed as a non-executive director of the BBC to

supervise football coverage, or West Ham’s Sam Allardyce becoming a “sounding

board” for the makers of Match of the Day.

Several newspaper journalists – including Richard Brooks in the Sunday Times and

the Evening Standard’s Anne McElvoy – have expressed concern that arts television

will become an electronic stage for the UK’s cultural producers rather than a

journalistic scrutineer in the way that it operates towards, say, politics or business.

And the Channel 4 plans seem, on paper, to continue a move from mediation to

presentation.

Certainly, whether or not this was the intention, the cancellation of The Review Show

spares the BBC the difficulty of having to explain to “creative partner” Alex Poots

why Paul Morley or Julie Myerson has just said on television that a production at the

Manchester international festival was a “waste of time”. There is a danger that, in TV

arts coverage, criticism is being downgraded in favour of uncritical jingoism.

Mark Lawson – The Guardian, Saturday 19 April 2014

When the chemistry works – Vince Gilligan and Breaking Bad

Latest News, Television

Vince Gilligan admits that Breaking Bad may prove to be his career highlight. But with a spin-off now in production, his creative team just keeps on cooking.

‘It is a wonderful time to be working in television,” declares writer Vince Gilligan, as our audience with the man behind arguably the most critically exalted drama of our time – Breaking Bad – begins. ”One of the things that I love about television and, in fact, have always loved about television, is that it is a writers’ medium.”

At a time when the industry’s best writers, directors and, now, actors are drawn to television, Gilligan says the drawcard, especially for writers, is freedom. ”It still takes a village to make a movie and a village to make a TV show, but more often than not, one of the final arbiters of the actions of that village in movies is the director and in television is the writer,” he says.

”Most of the enjoyment and satisfaction that I’ve derived from working in this business has been from working in television as opposed to movies. Plain and simple, I get listened to more by the television business than the movie business.”

The 47-year-old writer-producer of Breaking Bad is heading to Australia as a guest of the Sydney Writers’ Festival. He says he’s not much of a public speaker and he’s honest enough to know exactly what’s on everyone’s mind: ”People want to know how my writers and I went about writing Breaking Bad and how we went about producing it,” he says. ”There’s not a lot of things I’m good at explaining in life, but that’s one thing that comes pretty easily.”

Before Breaking Bad, Gilligan’s credits included The X-Files, its spin-off The Lone Gunmen, and the 2005 reboot of the iconic 1970s horror-detective hybrid, Night Stalker. In fact, The X-Files was Gilligan’s first staff writing gig. As a young writer in Hollywood he found himself in a writers’ room working alongside the show’s creator, Chris Carter, and one of its key creatives, the acclaimed Frank Spotnitz. Most of Gilligan’s credited episodes were collaborations with Spotnitz and John Shiban, who has since gone on to write The Vampire Diaries, Torchwood and Hell on Wheels.

”Chris Carter taught us all how to write for television and how to produce for television,” he says. ”He was an excellent boss and teacher and mentor. John Shiban was very good in the editing room, he was excellent in post-production, and Frank Spotnitz was a wonderful storyteller. Working with those folks and also with Chris for seven years, I learnt an awful lot.”

The experience offered Gilligan the perfect training ground for Breaking Bad, the story of a high-school chemistry teacher, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), who resolves, after a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer, to become a methamphetamine manufacturer in order to secure his family’s finances. Though it dabbles in the crime genre, the execution more closely resembles a western, partly because of the bleak, arid landscape of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the series was set and filmed.

”I suspect that’s the luckiest I’m ever gonna get career-wise, including the perfect timing of this thing,” Gilligan says, laughing. ”And I don’t take credit for the perfect timing. Sometimes, you’re in the casino and you happen to pull the arm on the slot machine and it comes up three cherries and a bunch of silver coins come out. That’s what it felt like with Breaking Bad from beginning to end.”

Curiously, when the series premiered in 2008 it was not an immediate hit, either commercially or critically. In truth, it was something of a slow burn, accelerating during its second and third season, thanks to DVD sales and the emergence of online platforms such as Netflix, iTunes and Amazon, all of which carried the series. That was when, Gilligan says, ”the smouldering little ember suddenly caught flame”.

In hindsight, he says, ”that was a very good thing and a very healthy thing, because if we had been a so-called hit right out of the box, I was still learning the job”.

”I was learning it for a great number of years after we started. Having the extra pressure right out of the gate of the show being a hit would have been oddly hard to deal with. It would have caused more problems than it would have garnered benefits for us.”

And he is the first to concede the most intangible, and uncontrollable, aspect of crafting a television hit: timing. ”If Breaking Bad had gone on the air six months or a year sooner, or six months or a year later, it might have been a flop and might not have lasted,” he says. ”The timing with the advent of streaming video on demand was just perfect. That’s a technology that really launched us into the stratosphere in a way where if the show had been on a few years before that, we probably would have never really been noticed.”

It also allowed the series to mature properly, without the bruising attention drawn to a blockbuster. ”We weren’t an ant under a magnifying glass, as it were, at least in those early days, and that made that period of growth and learning much more

tolerable and much more civilised.”

During the show’s shelf life – 62 episodes broadcast between January 20, 2008, and

September 29, 2013 – it also rewrote the playbook on finishing a television series.

Barely a decade earlier it was the norm for shows to be axed late in their lives during

summer hiatus, leaving the story threads untied. But as writers stepped into the

centre of the room, more emphasis was placed on allowing shows to deliver closure

on characters and stories.

Notably, Gilligan’s choices were met with wide affection – a dramatic contrast to,

say, Dexter, which drew heavy criticism from its fans during its final season. And for

the creator now, almost a year after Breaking Bad concluded, he has no regrets. ”I

feel very at peace and serene about the ending of Breaking Bad,” he says. ”I felt a

huge amount of pressure to end this thing right, more creative pressure than I’ve ever

felt … ”

The final 16 episodes, he says, took a toll on the writing team as they struggled to dot

every i and cross every t.

”We agonised over getting those episodes right, getting them ‘perfect’, even where, in

point of fact, there is no such thing as perfect. The pressure to get it right, and more

importantly to not let down the audience, was intense.”

Far worse, he says, would have been staying on the air, and outlasting the show’s

welcome. ”It was better to go out boldly and a little early … but go down in a ball of

fire,” he says. ”The worst thing for Breaking Bad in my mind would have been to go

on too long and slowly sputter out creatively. Better to go out a meteor than fade out

into the night slowly.”

Besides, there is now Better Call Saul – the highly anticipated spin-off

featuring Breaking Bad’s unorthodox criminal lawyer – to think about.

”It’s a wonderful opportunity and we’re very excited about it,” says Gilligan. He isn’t

giving much away, except to say that the writing team is working on the fourth and

fifth episodes of the show’s first 10-episode season. ”We’re trying to create the show

with the same tools and skill sets and same working methods that we used

on Breaking Bad, and hopefully we can catch lightning in a bottle again,” he says. ”If

we don’t, it won’t be for lack of trying.”

But if Breaking Bad proves to be Gilligan’s best work ever, then that’s OK, too.

”I keep telling myself if I never come close to those heights again, so long as I do the

best I’m capable of and do work that I’m proud of, then so be it. If nothing ever

tops Breaking Bad, then so be it. I was lucky to have it. I give myself that pep-talk a

great many times; have given it to myself; will continue to give it to myself.”

Michael Idato – Tribal Mind – April 19, 2014

Jonah from Tonga will come out on ABC iView before traditional TV

Latest News, Online Media, Television

All six episodes of Chris Lilley’s comedy will go on the catch-up service days before  TV broadcast in an online first

Chris Lilley’s new comedy series, Jonah from Tonga, will be made available on the ABC’s catch-up TV service iView before being broadcast on ABC1, a first for Australian broadcasters. BBC Three, a co-broadcaster of Jonah, will also offer the entire series on the BBC iPlayer first. All six episodes of the comedy about Jonah Takalua who was expelled from the fictional Summer Heights High, will be on iView for what the ABC has described as “binge viewing” on the weekend of 2 May. It will be broadcast traditionally on TV from 7 May on Wednesday nights.

Putting a program online first flies in the face of the conventional path taken by the networks because an online viewing doesn’t count towards the TV ratings, which determine whether a program has been successful or not. But the appetite of younger viewers to consume shows all in one sitting is growing and binge viewing may create buzz around the first broadcast, in particular on social media.

Lilley’s last series, Ja’mie: Private School Girl, was not a major ratings success for ABC1 but did very well on iView and has garnered the actor a nomination for most popular actor in the TV Week Logie Awards next month. Producer Laura Waters of Princess Pictures said: “Jonah from Tonga is a thrilling series, coming out in the most thrilling era of television. Chris and I will always put the fan’s experience first. We’re so excited that people can choose their own way of getting involved with Jonah.”

The ABC’s iView is the most successful catch-up service in Australia, with 15m monthly program plays. The ABC’s head of online and multiplatform, Arul Baskaran, said: “We’re firm believers in innovation and improving how technology can deliver outstanding Australian content to audiences no matter where they’re watching, and we’re thrilled to now offer binge viewing of a highly anticipated show from one of Australia’s most respected comedic talents.”

Amanda Meade – theguardian.com, Thursday 17 April 2014

Docklands studios Melbourne makes it to 10 years

Film, Latest News, Television

Rod Allan, chief executive of Docklands Studios Melbourne. ‘The studio is being used more widely, and that was the ideal a few years ago’.

EVEN by the standards of the forever fluky film industry, the young life of Docklands Studios Melbourne has been rocky. However, after two name changes, a change of ownership, a government bailout and much gnashing of teeth, the purpose-built film and television studio that sits in the windswept shadow of the Bolte Bridge has this month made it to its 10th anniversary.

“The 10 years is an opportunity worth celebrating,” says studio chief executive Rod Allan. “A lot of production has come through here in the last 10 years, international and domestic.”

The mere survival of the complex is worth celebrating. The Docklands studio hasn’t had it quite as easy as its two peers.

Sydney’s Fox Studios Australia has survived a downturn in the number of international film productions coming to Australia by hosting Hollywood films fuelled by Australian talent and the 40 per cent producer offset — ¬including Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, Stuart Beattie’s I, Frankenstein and currently Alex Proyas’s Gods of Egypt —and a steady flow of TV talent shows, including The Voice.

Meanwhile, the Gold Coast’s Village Roadshow Studios has plugged away with steady production including The Railway Man and Bait, a valuable water tank and a solid community of film services.

But Docklands struggled for years after the initial fanfare by the Bracks Labor state government in 2001 of a grand public-private partnership that would bring Hollywood to Melbourne.

The reality was Hollywood brought the occasional film to Docklands — such as Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are (Allan’s favourite during his time at the studio), thriller The Killer Elite, with Robert De Niro, and the Nicolas Cage vehicle Ghost Rider— but not at a sustainable rate.

Estimates that the studio would generate $100 million in film production every year and deliver “lasting economic and cultural benefits’’ were wildly optimistic. As it happened, the studio ¬recorded successive multimillion-dollar losses and, in 2008, Victoria was forced to take control, at a further cost of $15m, after shareholders withdrew.

Those days appear to be past after the studio, and government, realised Hollywood would not be enough. “Originally, the focus was much more international,” Allan says. “In the last five years, we’ve had to maintain that focus, but at the same time make sure the studio is available to the domestic market. I think we’ve done that quite successfully.”

A deal with the Nine Network ensures one studio is well used at all times, hosting programs -including The Footy Show and Millionaire Hot Seat.

Network Seven uses the studio for its local drama Winners & Losers and Slide Show and, before that, Australia’s Got Talent. As well, smaller Australian films — including horror remake Patrick, Kath & Kimdrella and, most recently, David Parker’s comedy drama with Noah Taylor, The Menkoff Method — have been able to afford space at Docklands.

“Certainly, the high Australian dollar has made it very difficult to attract production under the location offset, which we refer to as footloose productions,” Allan says.

“That’s an aspect of the market that has definitely slowed, which is why we and Ausfilm continue to lobby the government to increase the location offset to 30 per cent. “Currently, the 15 per cent incentive (plus usually a mixture of state government incentives) is not enough to be competitive globally,’’ he says.

The global success of The Lego Movie, produced in Sydney by Australian digital studio Animal Logic for Warner Bros and Village Roadshow, has helped generate interest, particularly with the lift in PDV (post-production, digital and visual effect) Incentive to 30 per cent. The Lego Movie used that incentive. “At 30 per cent, we’d still have to compete with everyone else, but that 30 per cent would make us competitive again,” Richards says.

Michael Bodey – The Australian – April 16, 2014

Aussie writer secures US agent, manager

Latest News, Screenwriting, Television

Australian writer Justine Juel Gillmer has signed with major US talent agency WME (Blake Fronstin) and with Jeff Silver’s 4th Floor Management.

Gillmer’s pilot Wanted has been optioned by ITV Studios US Group and Deb Spera and Maria Grasso of One-Two Punch Productions, who, along with Gillmer, will executive produce the series.

Set in 1874, the drama follows three women – an assassin, a grifter and a healer – who become entwined in the web of a criminal conspiracy stretching across America’s Wild West.

“The producing team, as well as Justine’s reps, are currently working to solidify the package and are in contact with a select group of buyers,” said Keith Sweitzer, the literary manager and producer who represents Gillmer in Australia and is among the producers attached to Wanted.

Gillmer is writing one episode for each of the second series of Playmaker Media’s Love Child and FremantleMedia Australia’s Wonderland.

She started writing for TV in 2005 after graduating from AFTRS with a Masters in Screenwriting.

Her credits include episodes of Packed to the Rafters, McLeod’s Daughters, Crownies, Mako-Island of Secrets and In Your Dreams.

She was script producer on SLR Productions’ Sam Fox: Extreme Adventures, a children’s series based on the popular action adventure books by Justin D’Ath.

Gillmer is also developing Vault, a feature film with Mike Wiluan of Infinite Studios, Singapore, described as a pan-Asian period action pic involving a Singaporean heist that goes wrong and the ancient myth of the deadly Langsuir.

By Don Groves

IF magazine  Tue 15/04/2014

10 viewing trends for 2014 that will change the way we watch TV

Latest News, Online Media, Television

From Twitter’s ‘social soundtrack’ to self-made YouTube stars and Amazon turning future viewers into commissioners: the latest in interactive television trends

Israeli show Rising Star separates singers from the studio audience by a wall, which rises as viewers vote using the show’s official app.

The MIPTV conference in Cannes is where the television industry gathers to buy and sell shows, while debating the changing attitudes of broadcasters and producers, the shifting habits of viewers and the disruption coming from new technologies. This year’s show was a mixture of stars – traditional celebrities, but also fresh-faced YouTubers with audiences in the millions – and strong opinions about how we’re watching TV now, and how this may change in the years ahead.

1 Twitter wants to be the ‘social soundtrack’ for TV social networks

Twitter and Facebook are competing to become the online watercooler where people discuss their favourite shows. Twitter’s pitch – as made by chief media scientist Deb Roy – is that it is a “synchronised social soundtrack for whatever is happening in the moment, as a shared experience”.

During this year’s Oscars, 5 million people sent 19m tweets that were seen by 37 million people – including Ellen DeGeneres’s famous selfie. Meanwhile, a single episode of The X Factor in the UK last year tempted 1.2 million Brits to tweet. Roy also suggested that Twitter buzz could fuel new kinds of shows. “The opportunity is in the hands of storytellers in how to tap into this new creative storytelling … to look to the data, and to really go and pioneer potentially whole new genres.”

2 YouTube and rivals are creating new stars and starry shows

Could the next Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones come from YouTube? It’s not a ridiculous thought: there are growing numbers of sharp, witty and well-scripted dramas being made for online viewing – and not just on YouTube, with Hulu, Amazon, Xbox and (most famously) Netflix all commissioning. Britain also has a growing cadre of young YouTube stars reaching mass audiences. Twins Finn and Jack Harries are good examples: their JacksGap YouTube channel has 3.4 million subscribers, with their latest show documenting a rickshaw ride across India.

Gamer Joseph Garrett has 2.3 million subscribers – many of them kids – for his Stampylonghead channel, with its daily videos of a virtual cat exploring the Minecraft game. He’s now spinning off a new education channel.

3 Jerry Springer was inevitable, just like social media

Jerry Springer delivered a robust defence of his chatshow genre’s effects on society. “This concept that television has influenced human behaviour and the destruction of society is garbage. We had a Holocaust before anyone had a television set,” he said.

Springer sought to put his show into historical context. “What is happening in the social media was inevitable. The coming of my show 23 years ago was inevitable. What we are witnessing is the democratisation of culture,” he said.

“For thousands of years it was people sitting in an audience watching something happen on a stage, on a screen, on a ball-field. It was the audience and then the performers. Now, literally, the audience are the ones that are entertaining.” And not just when throwing chairs.

4 Amazon is turning viewers into commissioners

Amazon’s Studios division funds pilots and full series of TV shows for adults and children, then makes them available through its Prime subscription service – with brooding crime drama Bosch the latest show to be unveiled.

It’s Amazon’s commissioning process that’s most interesting: it funds a pilot, puts it online and then waits to see how its customers rate and review the episode before deciding whether to commission a full series. “It is oddly Marxist in its idea, but it’s a very smart business model,” saidBosch star Titus Welliver. “What you’re doing is empowering the people.”

Amazon’s Roy Price said show producers get over their “initial trepidation” rapidly. “At the end of the day we’re in a commercial art form, we’re not exchanging private haikus,” he said. “You want to get your work out there in front of millions of viewers and see what they think.”

5 Kids are causing the biggest changes in TV

The average six- to 14-year-old in the UK still spends 10.4 hours a week watching linear TV, according to research firm Dubit. But the growth of tablets is startling: the percentage of children with access to a tablet at home has surged from 20% in 2012 to 51% in 2013 and 84% now.

Angry Birds maker Rovio is one of the companies capitalising on this: it has quietly built its own kids’ TV network within its mobile games, generating billions of views for shows by other companies – including Fraggle Rock – as well as its own cartoons. Meanwhile, British startup Hopster has an app blending shows with educational games. “For the first time this new, alternative ‘first screen’ is going to establish a relationship of equals with the TV,” said Hopster founder Nicholas Walters.

6 Kim Cattrall is flying the flag for older women

Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall’s latest TV role focuses on a woman coming to terms with the ageing process. She had sharp words for broadcasting bosses who she feels are discriminating against female writers and actors.

“I believe that women my age have very much to say, and unfortunately this business doesn’t recognise that, most of the time,” said Cattrall, adding that “the pressure to stay young, be young, bubbly, nubile, is suffocating”. She also suggested that TV had a long way to go in its roles for older women. “They don’t really know what to do with me. I don’t want to play someone’s wife and become a joke about plastic surgery.”

7 Interactive TV shows are more than just a novelty

Transmedia – telling a story across different devices and platforms – has been around a long time as a concept. But there are more and more interesting examples.

Fort McMoney is a Canadian web project focusing on environmental issues, using a mixture of video and gameplay. “The game is a tool to debate,” said director David Dufresne. “A lot of people came for the game, and they stayed for the subject.”

Another Canadian project, State of Syn, is a sci-fi show that lives on various devices. “It’s a series, it’s an app, it’s a Google Glass game and it’s a social experience,” said producer Jay Bennett. Meanwhile, Australian crime drama Secrets & Lies gives fans clues through social networks and social TV app Zeebox, to help them solve the crimes.

8 Vice isn’t as hip as you might think

Critics often label magazine-turned-media-network Vice as a haven for insufferable hipsters. Actually, it’s emerging as an important voice for the teens and twentysomethings who feel ill-served by traditional channels.

Vice’s latest online channel is the food-focused Munchies, but the company is also tackling hard news. “People say young people aren’t interested in the news around them. It’s bullshit,” said chief creative officer Eddy Moretti. “Our audience was telling us, ‘no, we want news, we want long-form, we want documentaries’,” added CEO Shane Smith.

Here, too, environmental activism is to the fore, with a new show calledToxic about climate change. “We can’t just have stick-your-head-in-the-sand shit any more. We have to say something. We have to say ‘if we don’t do something about the environment, we’re fucked’,” said Smith. “And if we don’t say that in media, then shame on us.”

9 The second screen is changing talent and game shows

TV talent shows have had viewers voting with their phones for a long time. The next generation of formats takes that further. Israeli show Rising Star, which is now being adapted around the world, separates singers from the studio audience by a video wall, which rises only when enough viewers have voted using the show’s app.

Elsewhere, American Idol has been allowing viewers to vote from Google’s search engine in its latest series. “We are doing two times the average number of votes we did the previous year, and almost half of them are coming from Google,” said Olivier Delfosse of producer FremantleMedia.

10 Monkey Tennis is alive, well, and being pitched in 2014

The spirit of Alan Partridge’s famously strange pitches for new TV shows lives on in 2014. Among shows being pitched at MIPTV were Host in the Box, where a presenter is shipped to a mystery location in a box, and has to survive; Rocco to the Rescue, where former porn star Rocco Siffredi helps people in need of “sexual healing”; and Adam Looking for Eve, a dating show where prematched contestants meet on a tropical island. Nude.

Babe Magnet is like Blind Date if the female contestants could reject unsuitable men with a giant magnet; The Shower is a music talent show where contestants sing in an on-stage shower whose temperature is controlled by the audience’s app votes; and Dolphins With the Starspairs celebrities with dolphins for a weekly performance.

None of these formats has been made up.

Stuart Dredge – The Observer, Sunday 13 April 2014

The secret to a successful YouTube video – by some of the site’s stars

Latest News, Online Media, Television

Creators of Rhett & Link, JacksGap and The Young Turks channels explain why they’re so popular

The Grand Auditorium in Cannes’ Palais des Festivals is most famous for hosting film screenings during the city’s annual film festival. This week, it’s showing YouTube videos.

The MIPTV television industry conference is holding its first “Digital Fronts” – two days of screenings and talks by YouTube and the multi-channel networks (MCNs) that have built businesses on Google’s video service.

The sessions included interviews with some of the most popular young YouTubers, including the creators of the Rhett & Link, JacksGap and The Young Turks channels.

Rhett & Link

Rhett Mclaughlin and Link Neal describe themselves as “Internetainers”, producing a mix of sketches, music videos and comical adverts, as well as a daily talk show called Good Mythical Morning.

Their main channel has nearly 1.9m subscribers and 263m total views, while the separate talk-show channel has 1.5m subscribers and 166m views. The duo now have a fluctuating team of 7-8 people and their own studio space in Los Angeles.

Neal talked about how they fund their productions by partnerships with brands. “Over years of doing that a lot, we’ve been able to have a conversation with our audience as it’s grown to help them understand that brands fund our content, and help us to create content for them that otherwise we couldn’t create,” he said.

“For us, there has always been a commitment to create better content with a brand involved, and that’s really paid off in the long run. There’s no backlash from our audience, because they’re on-board. We’re not trying to pull the wool over our audience’s eyes: we’re upfront about it, and everybody wins.”

JacksGap

British twin brothers Finn and Jack Harries started their YouTube channel to document a gap year, but over time it has grown to 3.4m subscribers who have watched their videos 144m times.

“What we realised on YouTube is that it’s very different to TV. People are directly engaged with you as a person and your story,” said Jack. “People were subscribing and coming back every single week to find out more.”

Two years in, the brothers decided to branch out from their early five-minute clips and make longer 15-minute episodes as part of a web series, themed around driving rickshaws across the width of India. They raised £20,000 to fund the series from Skype, Sony and MyDestination.

“There’s money in YouTube through ads on the site, but only for a certain level. If you want to create higher quality content, obviously you need to generate more money,” said Jack.

“We did four episodes, and each is over 15 minutes,” added Finn. “We had no idea how it was going to go down, but each episode now has just over 1m views and Google allows us to see how long people watch for. The average engagement of those people is 13 minutes, out of a 15-minute episode.”

The Young Turks

Billed as “the largest online news show in the world”, The Young Turks streams live on YouTube and archives its shows for later viewing. Its channel has 1.5m subscribers and nearly 1.4bn total views. It’s aimed squarely at young people.

“There is this massive misconception that young people have absolutely no interest in the news. Young people definitely do want to be informed, but they want to be informed by people they can relate to,” said host and producer Ana Kasparian.

“We noticed this void in the market, especially in the US. There are great news anchors, they’re probably very smart, but they’re not talking to the audience like real people. They’re just reading from a teleprompter.”

Kasparian said that The Young Turks’ audience is a “huge part of our content”, playing a prominent role in commenting and tweeting on live streams and archived shows alike.

“Immediately you know what they like and don’t like,” she said. “They’re holding you accountable. If you want an audience that genuinely sticks around, you have to listen to what their opinion is.”

YouTube’s potential

These creators were all speaking as part of a Digital Fronts session curated by YouTube itself, which also saw French channel Golden Moustache’s Adrien Labastire talking about running a Web Comedy Awards as a simultaneous YouTube and TV event.

Meanwhile, football channel Copa90’s Eli Mengem outlining the dizzying rise of online video fame. “11 months ago I was a uni student working in a bar, watching Arsenal on TV. Two months ago, I interviewed Arsene Wenger,” he said.

Session host Michael Stevens, from science network VSauce, said that these stories were the tip of an online iceberg for the media industry.

“These five channels made the choice to build a global fanbase on YouTube. They are not just isolated examples: this is happening everywhere, and the scale of the audience available on YouTube is gigantic,” he said, before harking back to comments the previous day from YouTube’s entertainment head Alex Carloss about the desirability of creating a fanbase rather than just an audience.

“You can build a really big audience on YouTube: they show up, they listen. But a fanbase is going to subscribe and watch everything you make in the future, and tell their friends about you,” said Stevens.

“What we’re seeing on YouTube all over the place is the building of fanbases that will follow you to new formats and to new platforms.”

Challenge to TV networks

In a later session, MCN Maker Studios – which is in the process of being acquired by Disney – presented similarly-bullish views on the potential, with the company’s international president René Rechtman warning the television industry not to be scared of the implications of YouTube’s growth.

“It’s democratising creativity and media… It’s a big opportunity for all of us. We should embrace this,” he said. “YouTube has now become the second biggest search engine. So we go there, we search. And six billion hours of video is watched every single month. And a lot of that is happening with the mobile device. The numbers are insane.”

Rechtman also claimed that MCNs like his company are presenting a challenge for traditional TV networks – this may well have been one of the reasons Disney agreed to pay up to $950m for the company.

“Networks like Maker are now becoming more important than the traditional cable players. According to Nielsen if you want to reach the millennials, you have to come to us, or other players like us… and we do it for 5-10% of the cost of traditional TV,” he said, before turning the attention back onto the YouTubers that form the backbone of any MCN.

“Fans, hobbyists, creators are the new publishers, and they are the new distribution,” said Rechtman, who added that of the more-than 380m subscribers to Maker’s network of YouTube channels, 80% are aged between 13 and 34, 60% are outside the US, and 40% are watching on mobile devices.

He also warned the TV industry not to miss the impact of the shifting habits of young people. “We had the newspapers who neglected what happened, the music industry.neglected what happened. We cannot do the same. We need to embrace the change.”

Stuart Dredge – theguardian.com, Wednesday 9 April 2014 22.08 AEST

The business of adapting scripted dramas and comedies across borders is picking up steam

Latest News, Screenwriting, Television

Australian drama Wentworth has now been sold into 20-plus territories as a ready- made drama and into Germany and the Netherlands as a scripted format.

Mark Twain famously said that he liked a good story well told, quipping, “That is the
reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
Judging by the current boom in scripted format sales, the global content industry
feels much the same way. There’s a lot of storytelling going on—or, more accurately,
story-retelling, as it becomes clear that, while audiences everywhere like a good
story, they like it even better if it’s told in their own language, is anchored in their
own culture and resonates with their own experiences.
Neil Bailey, the commercial director of all3media international, sums it up neatly:
“Broadcasters need drama. Most are seeking local content. Few have the luxury of
time and money to create things from scratch. And we all take comfort in concepts
and ideas that have been proven and succeeded elsewhere.”
Examples abound, from SVT Sweden/DR Denmark’s cult crime series Bron/Broen
(The Bridge) to Disney’s Desperate Housewives, now powering into its sixth local
adaptation in Nigeria, to Turkey’s Forbidden Love, reincarnated by Telemundo
as Pasión Prohibida for the U.S. Hispanic market. And let’s not forget the masters of
scripted reality, the Israelis, responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed
shows on U.S. television, most notably Showtime’s brilliantly complex thriller
Homeland, inspired by Keshet’s Prisoners of War.
So what exactly is a scripted format? How does it vary from an old-school adaptation,
such as CBS’s retooling of the ’70s British sitcom Till Death Us Do Part to create All
in the Family, or, to cite a more topical example, Movie Central/The Movie
Network’s adaptation of the 2005 BBC comedy Sensitive Skin, now in production in
Canada?
“For me, a scripted format provides both a story line and a method of production that
will reduce development time and make the program more cost-effective,” Bailey
says. “An adaptation won’t necessarily be cheaper, quicker or easier, nor [mimic] the
processes used to develop and produce the original or seek to replicate them.”
As with all successful drama, a scripted format needs a strong original idea at its
core. But it helps, Bailey says, if there are no “idiosyncratic gimmicks” and the plot or
premise can be easily adapted to reflect local cultural differences and locations.
“There also needs to be some economies of scale, so that you can learn from each
version and see ways to improve the concept each time,” he adds. “This means the
proposition can be commoditized, which helps with rollout.”
Bailey names Cases of Doubt and Berlin: Day & Night, from all3media’s Filmpool, as
examples of constructed reality formats that blend “strong accessible stories with
refined production techniques and straightforward locations that can be easily
replicated in multiple territories.”
ON THE HOOK
Andrea Jackson, the managing director of acquisitions and formats at DRG, agrees
with Bailey that, for a drama to travel in scripted form, it needs a “distinctive hook.”
But she has a slightly different take on the importance of simple settings. As an
example, she points to DRG’s breakthrough scripted format, ITV’s hit Doc Martin,
the location of which—a sleepy Cornish fishing village—is arguably as big a star as the
comedy drama’s eponymous central character.
DRG did its first format deal for Doc Martin back in 2005. “I think it’s fair to say we
pioneered the scripted space with Doc Martin,” Jackson says. Since 2005 it has been
remade in six territories and is under option in several others. “It’s been really
interesting to see each country identify their equivalent to Cornwall,” she adds. “But
they have all succeeded in replicating that sense of remoteness and localness, and a
small community in which the arrival of a doctor makes a big impact.”
Jackson also believes that the casting of the original drama is crucial. In the ITV
series, Doc Martin is played by Martin Clunes, whose brilliant portrayal of a socially
inept physician around whom rich comedy unfolds undoubtedly made it easier for
DRG to sell the show as a format, not to mention as a finished series, which has now
aired in some 200 territories.
DRG’s current slate includes several dramas that combine a unique hook with
cultural portability, including NRK Norway’s political thriller Mammon and TVNZ’s
mystery drama The Cult, recently sold to Russian state broadcaster Rossiya 1.
Jackson is particularly excited about two Finnish dramas from Moskito Television:
the award-winning Easy Living, a high-octane thriller that centers on the secret
criminal life of a respectable family man; and Black Widows, a darkly humorous tale
of three unhappily married women who decide to murder their objectionable husbands.
“I think Black Widows will do very well as a scripted format,” Jackson says. “It’s brilliant, it’s different and it has universal resonance. In every country and culture, the idea of being stuck in the wrong relationship resonates.”
Nadine Nohr, the CEO of Shine International, identifies another topic that has universal traction when analyzing the success of Bron/Broen, which has now inspired two distinct adaptations: Shine America’s version for cable network FX set on the U.S.-Mexico border; and The Tunnel for Sky Atlantic and CANAL+, produced by Shine France and Kudos, set in the Channel Tunnel between France and the U.K.
“Every country has a neighbor with whom there are cultural conflicts and issues,” Nohr says of Bron’s “highly transposable premise.” But ultimately, she adds, every- thing must flow from brilliant writing and original, compelling story lines. “Drama is always an expensive risk. It’s high profile and if it fails, it can fail big. However, it is also channel-defining and can punch above its weight in terms of impact,” she says.
THE WRITE STUFF
Sarah Doole, the director of global drama at FremantleMedia, also names writing talent as a key driver of the scripted formats boom. She points out that writers are at a premium throughout the world, with top talent booked up to three years in advance. “The most difficult thing [to write] is the plotline for a crime drama, because you have to come up with all the twists and turns and scenarios,” she adds. “But if you have the plots already written, you can bring in local writers to shape characters and settings to fit cultural concepts. That’s a huge advantage.”
Another aspect of the scripted phenomenon that fascinates Doole is drama’s ability to shine a light on social and political trends. “In territories that are closed culturally because of, say, religious or political beliefs, it can be difficult for broadcasters to tell contemporary stories via news or current-affairs programming because of media control,” she says. “But drama can tackle hard-hitting or intimate issues, like divorce and adultery, in a way that’s more culturally acceptable and that broadcasters can get away with showing.”
An example from FremantleMedia’s scripted portfolio is Confrontation, which launched in Indonesia in 2011 and went on to be a hit in India. The drama, which takes the form of a talk show, pits brother against brother, wife against mistress, faith healer against fraud, in a tightly scripted format that offers all the surprises and reveals of a drama. “It allows brave stories to be told—ones that real contributors would struggle to reveal—and gives broadcasters the opportunity to provide a strong take-home message,” Doole adds.
FremantleMedia’s scripted format lineup also includes Danish producer Miso Film’s Dicte, a contemporary drama about a woman juggling her career as a crime reporter with single motherhood, which has blazed a trail across Scandinavia and is now set for the international market; ITV’s highest-rated sitcom launch in a decade, Birds of a Feather, produced by FremantleMedia UK label Retort; and the gritty Australian drama Wentworth, set in the brutal world of a women’s prison.
A reimagining of the classic Australian drama Prisoner: Cell Block
H, Wentworth also serves as an illustration of one of the trickiest challenges for
rights holders in terms of scripted format sales: ensuring that a remake
complements, rather than competes with, the original drama. Wentworth has now
been sold into 20-plus territories as a ready-made drama and into Germany and the
Netherlands as a scripted format. “Managing those windows to make sure your
format sales don’t cannibalize your tape sales is a job in itself,” Doole says, noting
that FremantleMedia has a dedicated team in London to orchestrate the process.
After identifying a strong idea that reflects the universality of the human condition
but is able to be tweaked to suit local lifestyle, cultural and religious differences, the
next challenge is to determine how involved the rights owner, or original producer,
should be in the adaptation process. How far beyond the original script does—or
should—a scripted format go? On one hand, the local producer has the advantage of
knowing the local audience; on the other, the format owner has a duty “to maintain
the high production values of the original and thus give it the same level of success,”
says Andrew Zein, the senior VP of creative, format development and sales at Warner
Bros. International Television Production (WBITVP). “The overall design concept of
a scripted format is something that WBITVP takes very seriously. Our clients have to
embrace the original design elements, including costumes, make-up, locations and
studio set.”
IF IT AIN’T BROKE…
Keeping remakes as true to the primary production as possible is based on the sound
principle that “there are reasons why the original was a success,” Zein says. For the
same reason, the production team involved in any local adaptation of a WBITVP
scripted format must be capable of making the show, on the basis that, if the director
and producer aren’t up to par, the adaptation will suffer—and with it so will
WBITVP’s reputation.
Zein reports a significant rise over the past 12 months in the number of local versions
of WBITVP’s scripted shows, with highlights including The O.C. remade in Turkey by
Star TV, Nip/Tuck given a make-over by Colombia’s Caracol TV—the first-ever
reversioning of a U.S. scripted format in the Latin American country—and The New
Adventures of Old Christine reincarnated on RTL in Germany.
Zein agrees with the general view that a strong, original story is always the starting
point for a scripted format—“trying to find a generic formula would hamper
creativity,” he says. Zein has found that buyers are drawn to long-running series,
both current and historic, and formats that have clear target-audience segmentation
profiles, such as younger-skewing dramas or comedies with a female bias.
Peter Iacono, the managing director of international television at Lionsgate, echoes
Zein when he says, “it all starts with the script and story,” but disagrees about the
necessity of sticking rigidly to the original version. In fact, he believes it is critical not
to be too firmly wedded to the primary script. “It’s so important not to copy but
instead to build upon the original in order to create something new and fresh for
each market, yet still maintain all the elements that made the audience fall in love
with the initial program,” he says.
Nurse Jackie, one of Lionsgate’s first forays into the scripted format market, serves
as a good example. The Showtime comedy drama was picked up in late 2012 by
Dutch pubcaster AVRO for Nederland 3, where it aired under the nameCharlie.
Iacono says that while the Dutch remake featured new local elements and developed
its own distinctive “voice,” it remained true to the inspiration of the original series.
TRAVEL TIPS
As to what genres travel best in scripted form, Iacono reports as much interest in
Lionsgate’s comedies, includingWeeds, House of Payne and Are We There Yet?, as in
its dramas Boss, The Kill Point and Hidden Palms.
But Shine’s Nohr believes comedy is a harder sell than crime. “The basic structure of
a whodunit is arguably more straightforward than comedy, which is more subjective
and presents a particular set of challenges,” she says. “Ask any stand-up comedian—
what works in one territory might not play so well in another. The joke, quite
literally, can get lost in translation.”
Catherine Stryker, the head of sales for Global Agency, agrees that comedy doesn’t
always migrate across cultures. That said, there are no hard and fast rules. The
popularity of Turkish drama formats, particularly with Middle Eastern viewers, has
been one of the most talked-about TV trends of recent years. But these tales of
passion and intrigue, of sultans and sinners, are about as far from Nordic noir’s dark
menace as it is possible to get. Both genres, however, have proved to be export gold.
“Turkish storytelling tends to center on a romantic interest and relationships within
extended families,” Stryker says. “These themes can be very appealing to societies
with the same close familial ties and dynamics. That’s one of the reasons our drama
has taken off like wildfire in the CEE and MENA regions. Also, many viewers like to
be swept away from their everyday lives by a powerful love story—and that’s where
Turkish stories really deliver.”
ISRAELI INSPIRATION
Few would dispute, following the massive success of Homeland, that Israeli scripted
formats are among the hottest properties on the international market. In recent
months, Dori Media Group has sold three scripted dramas into the U.S.: its
thriller New York, and its comedies Little Mom and Magic Malabi Express. Late last
year, Armoza Formats reported that the Israeli version of its psychological
thriller Hostages, the scripted format behind the recent CBS series, has been bought
by the BBC—the first time the British public broadcaster will air an Israeli series. And
in early February, CBS announced that it is to pilot Armoza’s The Ran Quadruplets,
which tells the moving story of the first quadruplets born in Israel, whose lives have
been played out in the media spotlight.
Avi Armoza, the founder and CEO of Armoza Formats, believes there are three
reasons behind Israel’s current status as the world’s go-to supplier of drama. “The
first is that Israeli culture is very comfortable with risk-taking,” he says. “That helps
us take the risks that are necessary for creating successful formats. Second, there’s
something in the essence of Israeli dramas that makes them universally
appealing. Hostages is a good example. It’s a powerful story about a very real family
thrown into an impossible dilemma. That makes it very easy to relate to and gives it
inherent potential for adaptation.”
The third reason is financial, Armoza suggests. He points out that Israeli budgets are
comparatively low but local audience expectations are high—a contradiction that has
resulted in a talent for producing shows that cost relatively little but look and feel like
big-budget productions. “Take The Naked Truth, also from Hostages producer
Chaim Sharir,” Armoza adds. “It’s a suspense-filled drama that follows a police team
looking into the disappearance of a 17-year-old girl. The action takes place in an
interrogation room, which creates a dramatic pressure-cooker effect, but is also
extremely cost effective.”
TWEET IT
Interestingly, Armoza believes that good old-fashioned word-of-mouth, far from
being obsolete in today’s hyper-connected world, is playing a bigger role than ever in
creating drama hits. “Thanks to social media and consumer-created content,
conversations about successful dramas are more prevalent than ever,” he says. “And
the more controversial the drama, the more there is to discuss. That’s what happened
with our psychological thriller Allenby, which generated a huge amount of online
chatter when it aired on Channel 10 Israel. It’s set in Tel Aviv’s red-light district and
it reveals, in a very authentic way, the lives of those who live and work in this dark
underworld.”
So what’s next for scripted formats? DRG’s Jackson thinks we’re in for some
unpleasantness. “The crime detective thing is getting a bit tired,” she says. “I think
it’s time for something more spine-chilling. It doesn’t have to be uber-gruesome, but
it could be something broadly in the horror genre, like The Returned (Les
Revenants) or In the Flesh.”
Shine’s Nohr, whose scripted format slate includes ITV’s audacious, addictive crime
drama Broadchurch, now being remade as Gracepoint for FOX in the U.S., also
thinks the future looks sinister. She adds, “The current trend in the U.K. seems to be
for dark thrillers, populated by flawed central characters.”
Lionsgate’s Iacono predicts there will be fewer formulaic cop, legal and medical
formats as “we begin to see a similar renaissance in extraordinary television
internationally as we have seen in the U.S.” And WBITVP’s Zein sees the demand for
scripted drama expanding out of the TV heartlands of the U.S. and Western Europe
to encompass the likes of China, Serbia, Thailand and the Philippines.
“If WBITVP is any indication of the wider business, I think the appetite for scripted
formats is going to continue to rise,” Zein adds, a view endorsed by all3media’s
Bailey. “We are all looking for things that perform and that are quicker and cheaper
to make and less risky,” Bailey concludes. “So I see further growth and sophistication
as producers, distributors and broadcasters increase their focus on this key area and
try to improve their expertise and understanding.”

By Joanna Stephens – WorldScreen

Broadchurch’s UK Broadcasting Press Guild award hat-trick is proof of UK TV’s new golden era

Latest News, Screenwriting, Television

British dramas The Fall and Top of the Lake show British small-screen drama is stronger than ever, despite its uncertain future

Award-winning writer Chris Chibnall pitched the idea for his drama Broadchurch 10 years ago.
It was Broadchurch wot won it. One programme has a habit of dominating the Broadcasting Press Guild awards in recent years. Last year it was Tom Stoppard’s BBC2 adaptation, Parade’s End; the year before that it was the same channel’s Tom Hollander sitcom, Rev.
This year it was Chris Chibnall’s ITV murder mystery that captured our members’ imagination. Everyone compared Broadchurch to The Killing. Well, everyone except Chibnall, who first pitched the idea for the drama 10 years ago.
Broadchurch took a hat-trick of prizes at today’s awards, sponsored by Discovery Channel, including best drama series, the best writer’s prize for Chibnall and best actress for Olivia Colman, who starred opposite David Tennant, for her extraordinary turn as DS Ellie Miller.
Kevin Spacey told last year’s Edinburgh TV festival that the small screen had entered a new golden age, and in UK television drama there was evidence of that in spades. Not just Broadchurch but The Fall and Top of the Lake, both on BBC2 (and both BPG nominees), Utopia and Southcliffe on Channel 4 and intriguing one-offs such as BBC2’s The Wipers Times, co-written by Ian Hislop, another BPG winner.
Broadchurch will be back, as will Allan Cubitt’s The Fall, starring the winner of this year’s BPG breakthrough award, Jamie Dornan, two of the most eagerly awaited dramas of the year. The first series of Jed Mercurio’s Line of Duty on BBC2 missed out at awards time two years ago; expect it to loom large next year.
The BPG awards, now in their 40th year, are unique because they are the only ones voted for by people who write about TV and radio for a living, including reviewers, feature writers and media correspondents.
If it is a golden age for television then it is also an uncertain one, with a revolution in the way we watch TV in the Netflix/iPlayer/Sky+ era. Linear TV still rules – witness the outcry over the looming closure of the BBC3 TV channel – but the shift to on- demand gains pace, with a record 3bn TV and radio programmes requested on
the BBC’s iPlayer, led by the reassuringly old-school, BBC2’s Top Gear.
It is a shift reflected by the BPG’s innovation award, which this year went to BSkyB, reflecting 25 years of pushing the envelope, from its innovative coverage on its news and sport channels to Sky+, HD and 3D, with particular recognition from our members for its mobile TV apps.
The way we fund our biggest shows is also changing, with UK broadcasters looking overseas with increasing regularity to fund their blockbuster dramas – witness BBC2’s Top of the Lake (again), made with the Sundance Channel in the US and UKTV in Australia/New Zealand, and another BPG winner, Sky Atlantic’s The Tunnel, the most literal of cross-border tie-ups between Sky and Canal+.
Greg Dyke used to talk about the “800lb gorillas” in UK broadcasting – the BBC, BSkyB and ITV (until its dramatic ITV Digital weight loss). Now the challenge is coming from overseas and tech giants such as Google, Apple, Netflix and Amazon.
The BBC’s drama chief, Ben Stephenson, told journalists last month: “With Netflix and Amazon, I think there are 94 broadcasters, to use a conventional word, making drama in America … I see them as things that make us better.” Forget about the late Sir David Frost’s global village – welcome to the worldwide living room.
Other themes of 2013? Channel 4, after a year or two in the doldrums (Paralympics aside), staged a critical revival, if not yet a commercial one, a triple BPG winner with Educating Yorkshire, the most moving television of the year; Syria: Across The Lines, some of the most disturbing; and one of the simplest – and most innovative – formats of them all, Gogglebox.
Former Channel 4 chief executive Michael Grade has argued that the broadcaster should be able to compete for a slice of the licence fee because advertising would no longer cut the mustard (a suggestion politely refuted by C4).
What happens to the licence fee, and the role and remit of the BBC when its charter is renewed, will be one of the great topics of discussion in the months (and years) ahead.
How today’s TV landscape would look to a time traveller from 1974, and the first BPG awards, is hard to imagine; how television will look in 2054 tougher still.
Back in 1974, Doctor Who fans were eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new doctor (Tom Baker) after Jon Pertwee stepped down, and the final series of Monty Python came to an end on the BBC. With Peter Capaldi about to take over the Tardis from Matt Smith, it is reassuring to know that some things don’t change.
Broadcasting Press Guild awards 2014 winners
Best single drama – The Wipers Times (BBC2) Best drama series – Broadchurch (ITV) Best single documentary – Syria: Across the Lines (Channel 4) Best documentary series – Educating Yorkshire (Channel 4) Best entertainment/comedy – Strictly Come Dancing (BBC1) Best multichannel programme – The Tunnel (Sky Atlantic) Best factual entertainment – Gogglebox (Channel 4) Best actor – Chiwetel Ejiofor for Dancing on the Edge (BBC2) Best actress Olivia Colman for Broadchurch (ITV) Best writer – Chris Chibnall for Broadchurch (ITV) Breakthrough award – Jamie Dornan (The Fall) Innovation award – Sky TV for 25 years of innovation Harvey Lee award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting – Andrew Davies

John Plunkett – theguardian.com, Saturday 29 March 2014