TV Europe MIPCOM 2012

MIPCOMEDITION

Period DramaThe Turkish Market30 Years of Italia 1 & Rete 4 Ricky GervaisAndrew DaviesFremantleMedia’s Cecile Frot-Coutazwww.tveurope.ws THE MAGAZINE OF EUROPEAN TELEVISION OCTOBER 2012

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TV EUROPE 7

Headquartered in Barcelona, Filmax International has solid-ified a strong position for itself within the international filmindustry. However, the company is also in the series busi-ness, and is coming to MIPCOM armed with two seasons ofThe Red Band Society. Iván Díaz, the director of the interna-tional division at Filmax International, says that the show,produced by Filmax for TVC, had an excellent first season,which is why expectations are high for the 15 new episodes.

“We are also presenting the TV movie The Visitor of Pris-ons, a great production from Distinto Films for TVC andTVE that follows the narrative of grand productions on his-torical [female] figures,” Díaz says. The drama is based onreal events, telling the story of a revolutionary woman whotook a stand against the conditions of women’s prisons.Filmax also has the action thriller No Rest for the Wicked, aSpanish-language film, the remake rights for which havealready been sold to the U.S.

• The Red Band Society• The Visitor of Prisons • No Rest for the Wicked

Filmax Internationalwww.filmaxinternational.com

A jewel in the crown of the Turkuvaz Media Group, ATVis among Turkey’s most prominent and acclaimed TVnetworks. Through its distribution arm, the global mar-ket can have access to ATV’s dramas, action series andcomedies, among other offerings.

Two of its newest series are Peace Street and Last Sum-mer: The Balkans. Peace Street is a drama series that isadapted from a novel and tells a love story about twoincompatible people who are living on the same street.Last Summer: The Balkans is a period drama that startson the eve of the first Balkan War and ends at the Bat-tle for Gallipoli. “Nowadays, period drama series are verypopular,” says Ziyad Varol, the deputy manager for con-tent sales at ATV.

The company is also offering new episodes from TheCliff, a drama featuring two Moldavian sisters who go toIstanbul and are trapped and forced into prostitution.One of them manages to escape and is trying to helpsave her sister.

• Peace Street• Last Summer: The Balkans• The Cliff

ATV

“The Cliff has attracted great attention.”—Ziyad Varol

IN THIS ISSUE

Trip Down Memory LanePeriod dramas fromEurope are in highdemand 12

Turkish DelightA spotlight onthe vibrant Turkishmarket 18

Italia 1 and Rete 4 @ 30Mediaset’s Italia 1 andRete 4 celebrate their30th anniversaries 26

InterviewsRicky Gervais 28Andrew Davies 32FremantleMedia’s Cecile Frot-Coutaz 34

www.atvdistribution.com

The Cliff

“Our prospects for MIPCOMare great, since we have avery strong TV slate.”

—Iván Díaz

The Visitor of Prisons

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8 TV EUROPE

The international-distribution arm of Italy’s Mediaset,Mediaset Distribution, comes to MIPCOM with a slate ofboth finished programs and scripted and unscripted for-mats. On the scripted-formats side, there is The Chosen—originally titled Il tredicesimo apostolo—a 12x50-minute sus-pense thriller. As far as unscripted formats go, the companyis showcasing Date Me! (Uomini e donne), a daily daytimedating show that has been adapted in Spain, and You’ve GotMail (C’è posta per te), an emotional weekly prime-timeshow that has versions in 14 countries. “We’re [focusing]this year on our scripted- and unscripted-formats busi-ness, [which] has been, until now, quite a success, havingclosed options and adaptations in many different coun-tries, including the U.S.A.,” says Manuela Caputi, the inter-national sales manager at Mediaset Distribution.

Mediaset offers the mafia series Antimafia Squad and AMatter of Respect as finished shows as well as formats.

• The Chosen• Date Me!• You’ve Got Mail

Mediaset Distributionwww.mediasetdistribution.com

Completing the trilogy of adventure movies from Dream-tool Entertainment alongside The Charlemagne Code and TheSpear of Destiny is The Hunt for the Amber Room. GlobalScreen is offering clients at MIPCOM the first chance towatch a full-length screening of the production. “There is ahigh demand for action and adventure programming all overthe world,” notes Marlene Fritz, the head of TV sales atGlobal Screen. “We have witnessed this for The CharlemagneCode and The Spear of Destiny, which were both sold intomore than 70 territories. The Hunt for the Amber Room hasalready scored massive presales, and Heroes is following inthese footsteps.” Fritz calls Heroes a “high-budget, spectaculardisaster movie, featuring a star-studded German cast.” GlobalScreen is launching presales for the title at the market.

“We are able to offer almost the entire program lineupof the German public broadcaster ARD, comprising fic-tional programs as well as documentaries,” Fritz points out.“Our portfolio features two of the most popular German-language series on the international stage,” she adds, high-lighting Storm of Love and Alarm for Cobra 11.

• Heroes• The Hunt for the Amber Room

Global Screen

“We are convinced that thequality and diversity of ourprogram portfolio will onceagain meet the demands ofinternational buyers.”

—Marlene Fritz

www.globalscreen.de

The Hunt for the Amber Room

“We look to promoteand strengthen themarket perception ofour company [notonly as] a supplier ofready-made programsbut also as a providerof great entertain-ment [formats] andsuccessful stories.”

—Manuela Caputi

Ricardo Seguin GuisePublisher

Anna CarugatiEditor

Mansha DaswaniExecutive Editor

Kristin BrzoznowskiManaging EditorJoanna PadovanoAssociate Editor

Simon WeaverOnline DirectorMeredith MillerChris Carline

Production DirectorsPhyllis Q. Busell

Art DirectorCesar Suero

Sales & Marketing Director

Vanessa BrandSales & Marketing

ManagerTerry Acunzo

Business Affairs Manager

Ricardo Seguin GuisePresident

Anna CarugatiExecutive VP &

Group Editorial DirectorMansha Daswani

Associate Publisher &VP of StrategicDevelopment

TV Europe© 2012 WSN INC.

1123 Broadway, #1207New York, NY 10010

Phone: (212) 924-7620

Fax: (212) 924-6940

Website: www.tveurope.ws

Get daily news on European television

Date Me!

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200 World Screen 10/12

10 TV EUROPE

Available in more than 144 million homes in Europealone, TV5MONDE ranks as the second-most distributedchannel in the world. Even with this impressive footprint,growth is still the most important aim of the channel.Marie-Christine Saragosse, the director-general, points toRussia as a market where TV5MONDE hopes to expandits distribution. The channel is already available with Russ-ian subtitles, in addition to German, Dutch, Romanian,Polish and French—for those using the channel to learnthe French language. This year, TV5MONDE also addedEnglish and Spanish subtitles to its offerings.

“Agreements for TV Everywhere are being signedwith many operators,” says Saragosse of the new develop-ments at the channel. TV5MONDE is also offered forstreaming over mobile. There are apps for the iPhone andAndroid devices that provide content that is complemen-tary to the channel as well. A further testament to its reachon other platforms is that there are more than 8 million vis-its per month on the tv5monde.com website and themobile website m.tv5monde.com.

Offerings on the channel include entertainment shows,sports, kids’ content, music programming and news.

TV5MONDEwww.tv5.org

For more than ten years, SOVETELEEXPORT, the distri-bution arm of Russia Television and Radio, has been pre-senting the market with high-budget historical dramas,original series, theatrical movies and unique documen-taries from Russia. At MIPCOM, the company is present-ing the adaptation of the world-famous novel Life and Fateby Vasily Grossman, which was banned during Soviettimes. “The epic story of ordinary people surviving dur-ing the dark epoch of World War II, combined with thebest Russian actors, producers and creative forces, haseverything to become our international bestseller,” saysJulia Matiash, the director of SOVTELEEXPORT.

“Another big production we prepared for the market isa new entertainment dancing format, Big Ballet,” she says.“The best world-famous choreographers, young talentedballet stars as well as unique stage and shooting technolo-gies create an unforgettable, gorgeous and highly involvingevent out of this show.” A new season of Secrets of the Insti-tute for Noble Maidens is being presented as well.

• Life and Fate• Big Ballet• Secrets of the Institute for Noble Maidens

Russia Television andRadio/SOVTELEEXPORT

Life and Fate

sales.vgtrk.com

TV5MONDE Le Journal

“For us, each market is an excitingopportunity to present the best Russianprograms.”

—Julia Matiash

“Our priority is towiden the audience forTV5MONDE, thanks tothe English and Spanishsubtitles that are nowavailable.”

—Marie-Christine Saragosse

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The British series Downton Abbey, set in World War I–era Eng-land with its entrenched class structure, walked away with 16

nods at this year’s Emmy Award nominations, making it the mostnominated British show in the Emmys’ history when combinedwith last year’s nominations. The show is just one of severalrecent series from Europe that not only prove that dramatic TVnarratives set in the past are in demand with today’s broadcastersand audiences, but also illustrate how their production techniquesare evolving and becoming more sophisticated. Gareth Neame, Downton Abbey’s executive producer and man-

aging director at Carnival Films and NBCUniversal Interna-tional Television Production, argues that audiences have alwaysbeen intrigued by the dynamics involving England’s upperclasses and the servants literally below them, when the country’sempire ruled half the world.“Stories set in grand English country houses form a genre that

audiences worldwide are familiar with and are perennially pop-ular,” Neame says. “This was the British Empire at its height, butit was also the beginning of its end.”Television producers have often exploited period drama’s

ability to take us away into imaginary but recognized worlds.Whether based on literary classics like Jane Austen’s works ororiginal concepts like Downton Abbey, they fill prime-timeslots, generate high audience ratings internationally and makemoney when done well.

“British and European period drama is crafted to a wonderfulstandard, and broadcasters around the world know this, based onprecedent and knowledge of such creativity,” says Greg Phillips,the president of Content Television and Digital, which is launch-ing The Scapegoat at MIPCOM. The ITV1 drama stars MatthewRhys and Eileen Atkins and is adapted from the 1957 Daphnedu Maurier novel of the same name. “Time and again, perioddramas have worked well and delivered,” Phillips says, addingthat their timeless quality means a long shelf life for both net-works and distributors.

DRAMATIC RENAISSANCE“Period dramas are having a renaissance, and Downton Abbey haspaved the way,” says Kate Lewis, an executive producer at theU.K.-based ITV Studios, the sister company to the ITV net-work that originally commissioned the series. ITV is gambling onthe genre again with Mr Selfridge, a drama series, which Lewis isexecutive producing, that tells the story of Harry Gordon Self-ridge, the flamboyant American who built the iconic Londondepartment store Selfridges at the start of the 20th century. ITVStudios Global Entertainment has been selling the show world-wide and has already scored presales in a number of markets,including the U.S. with PBS’s Masterpiece.“Downton Abbey’s popularity has opened the way for people

to ask what else was going on around that period,” Lewis notes.

12 TV EUROPE

By JulianaKoranteng

Memory LaneTrip Down

Period dramasfrom Europeare receiving critical acclaimand devoted audiencesacross the globe. BBC Worldwide’s

Call the Midwife.

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“But they will not want another Downton Abbey. Mr Selfridge isabout the future, it is about the history of retail at a time whenwomen were enjoying a new sense of freedom.”

CONTEMPORARY TAKEExperts agree that the current economic slump means audiencescould do with some diversion into times gone by. “In times of adownturn, people do look to a nostalgic past and Downton Abbeynails that,” Lewis adds.Period fiction produced today features the twists and turns nor-

mally associated with contemporary fiction. The languid tempoof Brideshead Revisited in the 1980s and the original Upstairs,Downstairs in the 1970s would not appeal to our digitallydemanding audiences. “Today’s audiences are drawn to the con-temporary pace of the storytelling, like a soap opera, fast-pacedwith interconnected multiple story lines and set in clearly definedenvironments,” Carnival’s Neame says. “If a modern approach is taken, it makes the ‘leap’ into a

specific time period completely accessible for audiencesworldwide,” states Rola Bauer, the president of the Munich-based Tandem Communications. Currently on Tandem’s plateis the $44 million mini-series World Without End, the sequel toThe Pillars of the Earth. World Without End has already beenpresold to more than 120 countries.Tandem’s other historically themed projects include Pompeii,

with Sony Pictures Television; Labyrinth, a German–South Africanco-production; and Titanic: Blood and Steel, which is being dis-tributed by Tandem for the De Angelis Group, based in Italy.If quality is of the essence, period dramas will never come

cheap. Setting narratives in our rapidly evolving world, whetherthey’re from as far back as Biblical times or as recent as the 1980s,requires the reconstruction of locales, fashion, architecture, inte-rior design and transportation, among other requirements. Copper, a ten-part, one-hour thriller from Tom Fontana and

Barry Levinson, is set in Five Points, one of the grimiest partsof 1860s New York City. Its budget matches the “high end ofbudgets for a one-hour U.S. cable-TV drama,” says ChristinaWayne, the president of Cineflix Studios, which co-producedCopper with Germany’s Beta Film. Although she admits that thebudget might not be as much as HBO’s most expensive shows,the company still needed presales to BBC America and Canada’s

Shaw Media, with Beta Film handling international rights,to cover costs.In Spain, each episode of The Red Eagle (Águila Roja), an

adventure series produced by Globomedia and distributedby its sister company Imagina International Sales, costabout €800,000. Based on the adventures of a masked17th-century justice-seeking hero, a cross between RobinHood and Zorro, The Red Eagle has been a massive hit inSpain since its debut in 2009. On the state-owned RTVE’sLa 1 network, The Red Eagle has been known to snap upa 31-percent-plus audience share (more than 6 millionviewers). “The only programs that get more viewers havebeen live Spanish soccer games, especially when Spainwon the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the Euro 2012 tour-naments,” says Géraldine Gonard, the Madrid-based salesdirector at Imagina International Sales. RTVE has put transmission of The Red Eagle’s fifth

season (and other major dramas) on hold while thecountry sorts out its economic calamity. Until then, thedemand for period dramas has spurred Globomedia to

create more, including In the Heart of the Ocean (El Corazón delocéano), which is set during Spain’s colonization of Latin Amer-ica following Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Ameri-cas. It is scheduled to debut on Spain’s Antena 3 network.The Red Eagle has been sold to broadcasters and distributors in

the Asia Pacific, Eastern and Western Europe, and Latin America.Gonard, however, admits that Globomedia and its sister produc-tion companies would consider co-productions for future his-torical fiction. “They are going to be much more popular inthe future, but also much more expensive. So we would needco-production partners and stories that resonate in any country.”

TV EUROPE14


High society: Nominated for 16Emmys this year, Carnival Films’ Downton Abbey, heading into seasonthree on ITV, is creditedwith kick-startingdemand for period dramas.

Looking back: For its first scripted project, Cineflix worked withBeta Film on Copper, set in the 1860s.

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Tandem has garnered a reputation for getting expensive pro-ductions off the ground thanks to its skills in joining forces withlike-minded international partners.“Tandem has always basedits business model on the complex process of co-productions,”Bauer explains. “The company recognizes the business potentialof offering its partners prime-time event programs that they canmarket [domestically] but at a fraction of the financial risk. Thismodel is robust, even in serious economic times.”The authenticity, accuracy and forensic research required when

reproducing the past should be uncompromising because audi-ences will point out errors. “With the Internet, you need to be ten times more careful and,

for the show’s integrity, you need to be precise,” states Cineflix’sWayne, who enlisted the expertise of a history professor, DanielCzitrom, in reenacting 1864 New York faithfully. “We spentweeks on photo references. An article of clothing would not beused if the fabric didn’t exist at the time, sidewalks couldn’t lookpristine and we would even argue about the curve of a shoe,”Wayne quips.Location shoots bring their own challenges for

period fiction. Germany’s Beta Film is distributingMary, a co-production involving Italy’s Lux Vide,RAI Fiction, Spain’s Telecinco Cinema, and Ger-many’s Tellux Film and BR. A significant part of themini-series was shot in Tunisia. “For a story like this,you needed the desert, ancient cities and a lot ofsun, so we knew it had to be Tunisia or Morocco,”says Eric Welbers, Beta Film’s managing director. The British public broadcaster BBC is consid-

ered by many to be the home of the period drama,with a deep catalogue of family-viewing ratingshits. Call the Midwife has been a British Sundayprime-time success for the BBC, with as many as11 million viewers. It follows the daily trials, tribu-lations and triumphs of young midwives workingat a convent in poverty-stricken East London dur-ing the 1950s. One of its newest period pieces isParade’s End. Budgeted at a reported £13 million(€16.5 million), it is a five-part production basedon the Ford Madox Ford quartet of novels and pro-

duced by Mammoth Screen for the BBC andHBO. It premiered in the U.K. in August. The pre-sales have involved BBC Worldwide, ARTE,Breakout Films and Lookout Point.With a stellar cast, which includes Benedict

Cumberbatch (whose breakout role, coinciden-tally, is the modernization of Victorian England’smost famous sleuth in Sherlock) and Rebecca Hall,Parade’s End was adapted by the Oscar-winningBritish playwright Sir Tom Stoppard.

Parade’s End encapsulates the ingredients thatcan ensure a period drama’s effectiveness, says Car-oline Torrance, BBC Worldwide’s director ofdrama. “It brings the audience in by giving them agreat writer and a wonderful cast. A good perioddrama needs a good hook to make people wantto watch.”Other new titles on BBC Worldwide’s slate are

Ripper Street, which takes place during the periodshortly after the Jack the Ripper murders; The Par-adise, set in a fictional department store; and Spies of

Warsaw, adapted from World War II historical spy novels by theU.S. writer Alan Furst.

RISK AND REWARDA good period drama demands tenacity, as it is never the easiest ofgenres to create, says Michael Oesterlin, the executive VP forinternational sales at Germany’s Tele München Group. “Depend-ing on the project (and the period), the pool of feasible locationsand crews with the necessary expertise becomes smaller.Indeed this, albeit to a lesser extent, extends even to theoptions for casting on-screen talent. On set, one might saythere is less flexibility and that the planning required for perioddramas can limit spontaneity.”Rikolt von Gagern, a producer of TMG’s English-language

productions Moby Dick and The Sea Wolf, adds, “Research playsan important and unavoidable role throughout the production.It can prove a slow and costly process. It is, however, the detailunearthed through research that sets great work apart.”


TV EUROPE16

Lush landscapes: Following the successof the TV adaptation ofKen Follett’s The Pillarsof the Earth, Tandem isworking on the sequel,World Without End.

Novel approach: Building its drama portfolio, Content Television has picked upthe rights to ITV’s Scapegoat, based on the 1957 Daphne du Maurier novel.

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Turkish television is booming. Inside the country, broad-casters are enjoying significant advertising growth,

while outside, the appetite for Turkish-made drama seemsto be getting bigger. With a new regulatory regime com-ing into effect, foreign players might finally be able tobecome major players in what looks like one of the mostattractive markets in the world right now.In March 2011, the Radio and TV Supreme Council

(RTÜK) relaxed the law on foreign ownership of mediaassets. Previously, the direct foreign ownership in TV or radiowas capped at a 25-percent holding and did not allow own-ership of a stake in a second media company. Now, the limit is50 percent, with a maximum of two TV or radio channels.And there is no limitation on indirect ownership. Turkey’s own broadcasting market is fragmented, with 247

terrestrials—25 national, 15 regional and 207 local—93 cablenetworks and about 200 satellite-TV channels. However, thefive main channels take about 63 percent of the prime-timeaudience and command a 53-percent share of the total broad-cast audience, according to a recent Bank of America MerrillLynch report.

Turkish advertising spending jumped 20 percent last yearto $2.4 billion, of which television took a 57-percentshare, according to the Turkish Association of AdvertisingAgencies. Ad spend is forecast to rise 15 percent this year.And programming exports, which have soared over thepast few years, are getting even stronger. Leading Istanbul-based distributor Global Agency estimates the volume ofTurkish production being sold overseas annually at about4,000 hours.In January 2013, Dubai TV will start airing North South

(Kuzey Güney), a new Turkish drama series from Kanal D,across the Middle East. Turkish drama is the hottest genre inthis region. In the past, Dubai TV’s rival MBC had many ofthe big Turkish series, and competition is now getting fierce.“The Hollywood studios would be shocked to know thelicense fee we got for North South,” says Ozlem Ozsumbul,Kanal D’s head of acquisitions and sales. In early August, a Russian network started airing a Turkish

series for the first time. CTC is showing Kanal D’s Fatmagül(Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne?), which has been sold in numerous ter-ritories worldwide.


Global Agency’s Magnificent Century.

18 TV EUROPE

By Jay Stuart

Turkish DelightWith its strong economy, drama exports that are surging in popularity and a percolatingdemand for formats, Turkey is attracting a wealth of international attention.

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The country’s main content sellers are also finding oppor-tunities in new markets by selling the format rights to theirpopular dramas. Kanal D, for example, is in the final stages ofclosing a deal to sell the format of one of its shows to theMiddle East for an Arabic-language version for the first time.

FORMAT FRENZY“There are many opportunities to co-produce and manyoffers are coming in,” Ozsumbul says. “We have discussions inprogress with the Middle East, Europe and Latin America. Weare close to a deal for one of our formats to be made in theU.S. for the international market.”Global Agency, meanwhile, has sold the format rights to the

Ay Yapim-produced series Forbidden Love (Ask-i Memnu) toTelemundo for a U.S. Hispanic version.As distributors celebrate the opportunities available for

Turkish content today, they are quick to note that this hasbeen a fairly recent development.“When we first started to produce our own series at Kanal D,

there was no thought of the foreign market,” says Ozsumbul,who used to attend trade shows like MIPCOM only as a buyer.“Then, in 2007, the Middle Eastern regional channel MBCcame to us to buy a few series. The first two were not success-ful. But the third one, Silver (Gümüs), was a smash. Perhaps theswitch from dubbing in Egyptian Arabic to the Syrian dialecthelped. Whatever the reason, the show became a social phe-nomenon, hitting audience levels of 75 million across theArabic-speaking world, where it was known as Noor.”The Middle East also kick-started Turkish drama sales for

Global Agency, according to CEO Izzet Pinto. “Four yearsago it started in the Middle East. Then we pioneered theexpansion into Europe in Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia.Our shows are being broadcast in 50 countries at the

moment—and they are not just on the air, they are hits, evennumber one in some cases.”Turkish series are not only hits throughout the Middle East

and the Turkic republics of Central Asia, but also in Serbia,Croatia and Bulgaria, and even in Slovakia, farther west.“The price of Turkish series [in those markets] is many

times higher than for American series, literally 20 or 30 timeshigher,” Pinto says. “This is because our shows are for primetime, and that is where networks make their money. Ameri-can series are now daytime programming.”ATV is looking to tap into this new demand for Turkish dra-

mas with its MIPCOM slate, which is heavy on period series,according to Ziyad Varol, the deputy manager for content salesat the Turkish broadcaster. “Nowadays, period drama series arevery popular in Turkey. Our expectations are high for the upcom-ing season. We will have eight new titles and two from the last sea-son. Our cast and library are very strong.”

EXPORTING TURKEYTurkey’s main exports are derived from the country’s top fivecommercial channels, which garner more than 70 percent ofTV ad spend. In the first quarter of this year, Kanal D led the waywith $76.5 million, followed by Show TV with $50.3 millionand Star TV with $43.6 million. Rounding out the big fiveare ATV and FOX Türkiye.The publicly traded Dogan Yayin Holding, Turkey’s biggest

media group, is the owner of Kanal D through Dogan TV, inwhich Germany’s Axel Springer holds a 25-percent stake. Until November 2011, the Dogan group also owned Star

TV, but it was required to sell it because revenue from the twochannels combined exceeded the cap of 30 percent of totalTV revenues laid down by law. Star TV was acquired byDogus Group for $327 million.

TV EUROPE20

Turkish tales: Kanal D is bringing toMIPCOM the ‘60s-eraKötü Yol (Fallen Angel ).



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Determining who’s leading the market in terms of view-ership is currently a challenge, as Turkey is in the midst of ahiccup regarding ratings, which have not been available sincelast December. That’s when AGB Nielsen lost the franchiseon supplying data amid controversy over possible manipula-tion of its panels. TNS will be the new supplier. “The systemis supposed to be ready in October, but I would not be sur-prised if we have to wait until 2013,” says Esra Ergun, the admarketing director at CNN Türk. “It’s a big problem formainstream channels, but it also affects the niche channels.”

RATINGS WAROf the top 50 shows in the ratings in the latest available fig-ures (November 2011), 27 were Turkish drama series—includingTime Goes By, Fatmagül, Magnificent Century andI Named Her Feriha—seven were news broadcasts and fivewere soccer matches. There was only one import, a the-atrical movie.Indeed, domestic fare completely dominates schedules. In

prime time, all of the main channels prefer Turkish series. Thevolume of Turkey’s domestic drama output is amazing. Eachseries consists of 38 to 40 new episodes per season. “We areeffectively showing a new movie every day,” Kanal D’sOzsumbul says. “These are not low-budget studio-based pro-ductions. We have big casts, we shoot on location and theproduction values are extremely high. Everything is pro-duced in HD.”“There is little room for imports,” says Kenan Saran, the man-

aging director of SARAN Media, which has output deals withstudios such as Warner Bros. to distribute programming inTurkey. “The main prime-time slots are filled by Turkish series,preventing imported series from finding space in the schedules.American blockbuster movies that might have been grabbedfor prime time a decade ago now struggle to get air time onthe big networks. The channels tend to use them when the Turk-ish series end their runs. A domestic show might start in Sep-

tember and there’s a gap in January or Feb-ruary for Hollywood.”Even a worldwide hit like CSI can find

itself relegated to a post-midnight slot.The demand for imported fare is mainlyfrom the channels in the middle of thepack, with smaller budgets. Those chan-nels are still buying films and sometimesseries for the summer.“Weaker demand impacts prices, which

have been flat for imports,” Saran says. For-tunately, he also sells big sports propertiessuch as Wimbledon, Formula 1 and theEnglish Premier League.“We have not bought American series for

several years,” says Kübra Sefkatli, the deputyof program research and social media man-ager at the broadcaster Show TV. “Foreigncontent does not work for the Turkish audi-ence. But there are many successful adapta-tions in Turkey. We adapted Grey’s Anatomy asDoktorlar and The Nanny as Dadı.”

AMERICAN INSPIRATIONAccording to Kanal D’s Ozsumbul, adapta-

tions of foreign drama series usually do not work. But on Sun-day nights Kanal D is showing its own locally produced versionof ABC’s Desperate Housewives. And in a twist that typifies thebooming distribution business, Kanal D is actually selling thatTurkish version, Umutsuz Ev Kadinlari, internationally, clinchinga slot with MBC. According to Ozsumbul, only two imported genres work

on the main channels in Turkey: blockbuster movies and for-mats. Local versions of Idols, Survivor and Wheel of Fortune haveall been successful.Endemol has a local company dedicated to Turkish pro-

duction. Ansi Elagöz, the managing director of EndemolTurkey, notes that Turkish broadcasters are very discerningwhen it comes to buying international concepts. “There isnot really a keen appetite unless it is a very strong format,which has performed well internationally, “she says.” TheTurkish landscape is governed by scripted product and thebroadcasters take very limited chances with formats. Espe-cially since it is very difficult to find a strong format that cancompete with drama series in prime time. There is also roomfor quiz shows in what we call second prime-time slots, after11 p.m., but when it comes to [the main 8 p.m. prime-time]slot, broadcasters become very selective with what they puton air. Our productions such as Your Face Sounds Familiar andWipeout manage to hold their own very well in prime time.”Does that mean the price of programs is going up? “Unfor-

tunately, not necessarily,” Elagöz says. “But of course, when itcomes to launching a strong format in prime time, which isrunning up against drama series, the broadcasters are inclinedto spend more for better production values, so they becomea bit more flexible with budgets. Production costs are holdingsteady in line with the yearly inflation rate.”There are two pay-TV platforms in Turkey, Digiturk and

D-Smart. Digiturk, owned by Çukurova Holding (54 per-cent) and Providence Equity Partners (46 percent), waslaunched in 2000. Its rights to the Turkish Super League have


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Revisiting history: This September, ATVpremiered Son YazBalkanlar 1912 (Last Summer: The Balkans), commemorating the anniversary of the start of the Balkan wars.


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been central to its success. Currently it has about 2.6 millionsubscribers, about half of them buying its soccer package.Launched in 2007, the rival D-Smart is a DTH platform

owned by Dogan Yayin Holding. It offers a variety of the-matic channels and holds rights to the Champions Leagueand the UEFA Europa League. As of late 2011 it had 1.4 mil-lion users, 40 percent of whom subscribe to its pay-TV offer.DTT, meanwhile, is on the way. The regulator RTÜK

has said that the switch to digital terrestrial will be com-pleted by 2015. A tender for frequencies is expected to beheld in March 2013.

NEW ENTRANTS“I don’t see any more room for mainstream channels, butthere is room for thematic channels,” Saran says. “The arrivalof digital terrestrial delivery could mean new channels willarrive. But local production will also grow and it will domi-nate. I’m surprised there is not more of an interest in gettinginvolved in the Turkish market. The cost of entry is still rela-tively low and the potential upside is large.”Saran also points out that “the digital space is hugely attrac-

tive. Turkey has about 30 million Internet users and 8 millionbroadband homes. Digital advertising is showing very stronggrowth. We see a lot of potential for VOD and are now operat-ing a 24/7 platform streaming content for smart devices...Piracyis still an issue, of course.”All the main TV channels have established websites to dis-

tribute content online. Service providers bundling contentand offering movie archives include Tivibu Web, DigiturkWebTV and D-Smart WebTV. There are over a million view-

ers who subscribe to web-TV applications in Turkey, indi-cating possible future pressure on traditional TV.

WHAT’S NEXT?“The entrance of foreign ownership will be key to the healthof the sector,” according to a recent note by Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch Global Research. “The expertise they provideand cash they will deploy, especially for highly leveragedbroadcasters,” will boost the media industry as a whole. Potential bidders for Turkish media assets include News

Corporation, Time Warner, RTL Group and ProSiebenSat.1Media, as well as private-equity firms such as TPG and KKR,“which have shown interest before but backed down due toownership limitation and disagreement on valuation.” News Corporation is already in the market via FOX Türkiye.

Time Warner is already there, too. Its Turner Broadcasting unitrecently closed its TNT television operations in Turkey afterfailing to hit targets. Turner continues to run Cartoon Net-work and the CNN Türk news channel (owned in partnershipwith the Dogan group).Bloomberg is in the market with business news channels

owned in partnership with Ciner Media. Çalik Holding isreported to be talking about selling ATV. Bidders are said toinclude Time Warner and the Dubai-based Abraaj Capital.Endemol’s Elagöz sees a stabilization of the competitive

broadcasting picture as the next big development in the Turk-ish television market. “ATV is probably going to be sold to anew owner, so the balance between the top four channels willbe established for good,” she says. “Or at least for the next fourto five years.”

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The concept of targeting channels to specific segments of theaudience is completely accepted today. There is hardly a coun-try around the world that doesn’t have a channel dedicated tochildren or women or action lovers or movie buffs. But backin the early ’80s in Europe, this was quite a novel idea.

The Italian commercial networks Italia 1 and Rete 4,which both launched in 1982 and are today owned byMedia set, were arguably the first aimed at specific audiencegroups. Through the decades they have been models of chan-nels that have remained true to their mission, while adaptingto the rapidly evolving television landscape.

Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest group, whose broadcast divi-sion then became Mediaset, acquired Italia 1 from the Italianpublishing concern Rusconi just within a year of its launch.In 1984, Fininvest bought Retequattro, as it was then called,from the publishing company Mondadori.

The two publishing groups, eager to get into television,didn’t have the programming expertise or deep enoughpockets to afford a broadcasting operation. Berlusconialready had Canale 5 on the air and could find economiesof scale with two more networks. More importantly,Berlusconi realized that Fininvest could only compete withstate-run RAI—which for decades held a broadcastingmono poly and ran three channels—if he also had threenetworks and not just one.

THE POWER OF DEMOSBerlusconi, along with his programming team and advertis-ing executives at Publitalia, decided to target Italia 1 andRetequattro to different audience/consumer groups thatwould complement Canale 5, which was a broad generalentertainment network aimed at the entire family. Italia 1would appeal to youth, young adults and the young atheart, and generally more urban viewers, and Retequat-tro to females, particularly housewives, and a lower socio-economic demographic.

This split immediately proved successful because the key toBerlusconi’s programming strategy was to serve the unsatis-fied needs of viewers, who for decades could only watchRAI’s generally stodgy, complacent program offering; and ofadvertisers, who had never had access to television becauseRAI had limited commercial slots.

From the outset, Italia 1 has been a channel willing toexperiment with new show ideas and formulas. It had slots

for children and then lots of comedy, satire, and irreverent,light-entertainment shows that launched the careers of anumber of comedians, as well as imported series, movies andsports, science and documentary programs.

Retequattro, dubbed “la rete rosa,” the pink networkbecause of its female audience, was the home to Latin Amer-ican telenovelas and American soap operas and series, movies,game shows and talk shows.

NEW HORIZONSWith the dawn of the new millennium, Retequattrounderwent a significant shift, as its schedulers tried tobroaden its audience and reach out to male viewers. Itsname was abbreviated to Rete 4 and the network, “is nolonger just female, it appeals to a mature audience and thepercentage of male viewers is much higher than it used tobe,” says Giovanni Modina, the executive VP of resourceplanning at Mediaset, who manages the acquisition andscheduling of films, series and sport on Mediaset’s free andpay networks.

“Like all Italian broadcasters, we have had to deal with theeconomic crisis, which has impacted our acquisition strategy,”continues Modina. “We are fortunate to have large deals withWarner Bros. and Universal that provide us with great prod-uct. The only ad hoc acquisition we have made recently wasfor Rete 4 and it was Downton Abbey and it worked verywell. We would have never made this kind of investment forRete 4 ten years ago, when at most we would have boughta soap, which is a much smaller investment.” Today, Rete4 also airs The Mentalist and Law & Order: SVU, and, asMo dina explains, it is a more profitable channel than it wasa decade ago.

Italia 1 today remains true to its mission. “It definitely is stillthe young network and the one that is willing to experimentwith its original productions, with acquired series, sports,and certainly with factual and documentary programming,”says Modina. Among its imported shows are The Simpsons andthe CSI franchise.

Thirty years from their launches, as much as the Italian TVlandscape has changed, Italia 1 and Rete 4 remain destinationsthat resonate with their viewers. Despite all the changes in themarket, one rule of television that originated in the dayswhen free TV reigned remains true: if a channel knows itsaudience and programs for it, it will remain relevant.

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Mediaset’s Italia 1 and Rete 4 celebrate their 30th anniversaries.By Anna Carugati

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Ricky Gervais has given comedy fans someof the most original shows in the genre. WithThe Office, Extras and Life’s Too Short,he has explored the dark side of celebrityand fame. With The Ricky Gervais Show,animated renditions of his hilarious pod-casts, he launched the career of Karl Pil -kington, whose unique and hilarious world-view and quirky antics gained him a loyalfan base. With his most recent project, Derek,a comedy drama for Channel 4 about a tender,vulnerable man who works in an old people’shome, Gervais expands his comedy to look atthe lives and trials of ordinary people.

TV EUROPE:What type of comedy works best?GERVAIS: Comedy should appeal to the intellect more than tothe emotions. I see a lot of stand-ups going up there and they’remore rallying than trying to make the audience laugh. Stand-upscome out and say things like, “What are we going to do aboutall these immigrants?” And they get a round of applause. Thathas nothing to do with comedy—nothing at all to do with it. Assoon as something steps out of the bounds of the intellect, it failsto be funny. It loses its impact because it’s not true. The reason Idon’t like racist jokes—it’s not because I’m offended by them, I’moffended by the fact that it doesn’t work comedically because it’sbased on a falsehood. I can’t have a comedic premise that isn’t

true. If someone comes out and says something like, “Whydo Mexicans blah, blah, blah.” My first thought is,

No! Whatever you say now, the punch linewon’t work! It fails comedically because itfalls down intellectually. It’s an intellec-tual pursuit. We feel good about getting[the joke]. We can get it on so manylevels. We can get the pun, we canget the guy acting abnormally. Itcomes down to what we’re reallylike as people. The more accu-rate a joke is, the funnier it is.When something knocksit out of the park, youdouble over.

TV EUROPE: Can youjoke about anything?GERVAIS: I say there’snothing you can’t jokeabout; it depends what the

joke is. Comedy comes from agood or bad place. People accuse me of being thisshock comedian or trying to offend. I never go outto offend; it’s easy and it’s churlish, but mainly waytoo easy. Some people are offended by my merepresence, some people are offended by mixedmarriage, some people are offended by mebeing an atheist—what do you want me to do?Pretend I’m not? Just because you’re offendeddoesn’t mean you’re right. And offense is taken,not given. In comedy, there’s no right or wronganswer for what offense is, it’s personal. Sim-ple as that. It’s about feelings, and feelings are

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RickyGervais


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personal. One person’s ism isn’t another’s. You really just needto explore the subject honestly and sensibly and put a newspin on it. People will be able to laugh because it’s a release. Atthe end of the day, comedy is just a release. Comedy is nodifferent from having a beer or having a massage. We do itbecause it feels good. We make jokes because we make someonelaugh, and we feel good because we’ve made someone feelgood. And we get points for that socially. If something popsinto your head you have to get it out there, whether it’s apainting or song. But the point of any art form—evensomething as lowly as TV comedy, and it is a lowly artform, I know that—is to make a connection. That’s all itis. To make a connection with strangers or someone youknow, it doesn’t matter. For me, it’s the size of that con-nection that matters. Not how many people it connectswith, because there’s so [much] homogenized stuff thatreaches a lot of people very quickly, but it’s nothing. It’s alight rip-off. You want to kick the door down. You want tothink that your work could be as life-changing as some ofthe work that you’ve seen that have changed your life.

TV EUROPE: What upcoming projects do you have? GERVAIS: At the moment it’s the end of an era and thebeginning of another. I’m making the final installment of AnIdiot Abroad. It’s a two-part special where I’m sending Karlon the Marco Polo route from Venice to China with WarwickDavis [the star of Life’s Too Short]. Why not?

I’m doing a special of Life’s Too Short; it might not be the endbut we’re doing a special next because it’s an idea that it wouldbe better as an hour special than as a series. We’re in the middleof the third season of The Ricky Gervais Show, which might be thelast now. That’s 39 episodes and we don’t want to be goingthrough the dregs of stuff. I don’t know if we’ll ever get around tositting down and doing more, but I love that, it’s one of thefavorite projects I’ve ever done. It’s comedy and it’s all so real andtrue and Karl is so lovable. The empathy is amazing with him. He’stotally honest. He hasn’t got a pretentious bone in his body. He’sthe perfect subject, character, comedy one-liner machine in theuniverse. I’m also just starting a new sitcom called Derek.

TV EUROPE: Where did the inspiration for that come from?GERVAIS: Lots of places. But I worked in an office for eightyears and I’ve watched a lot of docu-soaps made with normalpeople. Most of my family works in care homes. My sister workswith people with learning disabilities and disabled children.My sister-in-law works in a home for people with Alzheimer’s.About four of my nieces work in old people’s homes and carehomes. So I’ve always been around that. I’m a little bit disap-pointed with how we treat our old people in Britain. It seems tobe inevitable that when they can’t chew the fat anymore we sortof discard them, which is terrible because there seems to bethis ridiculous arrogance in youth. If you’re lucky, you’re goingto be old one day. I’ve also always been interested with outsiders.On my travels I’ve seen these people that are on the fringes ofsociety. They collect autographs, they live in their own littleworld and I wonder, Where do they live? Do they live withtheir mom? They can’t be married. Are they together? Whereare these strange people that are very sweet? I wanted to explorethat. I wanted to know the outsiders and get them togetherand make them a home. I’ve made them a sitcom family so it’sthem against the world. [There is a reality show] called SecretMillionaire and what I discovered is, you’ve got these celebritiesthat do these charity events, but they only do it if it’s on TV.Then you’ve got the real people who stand outside the shop-ping mall every day of their life collecting for cancer becausetheir mum died of cancer. These people who’ve got nothing,and they’re collecting for people who’ve got less. Then I realizedwhat the shortcut is in life. It’s kindness. You don’t have to beclever. You don’t have to work out the meaning of life. Becauseif you’re just kind—if you just do the thing that you think iskind—it’ll work. So it’s all about that. Anyone knows what’sright, really.They don’t need any direction with it. It’s the onlyshortcut you can take to be a good person. Just do the kindthing. It’s about that.

TV EUROPE: There certainly seems to be a moral bankruptcyof kindness these days.GERVAIS: It’s time [to do a show like Derek] because I’ve stud-ied the ego of the rich and famous and the desperate and I justwant to turn to normal people. I want to return to what’s so niceand brilliant about just being a normal person trying to livea good life.


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Dream team: Ricky Gervais and hisfrequent collaboratorStephen Merchantstar in and write Life’s Too Short, the comedy featuringWarwick Davis forBBC Two and HBO.

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Those familiar with some of the best-known, critically acclaimedBritish drama exports of the last three decades will recognize thename Andrew Davies. The screenwriter’s long list of credits includesHouse of Cards, Pride and Prejudice, Vanity Fair, Sense and Sen-sibility, Daniel Deronda, Doctor Zhivago, Bleak House,Northanger Abbey and Little Dorrit. His latest project is Mr Self-ridge for ITV. The series, which stars Jeremy Piven, has already beenpresold by ITV Studios Global Entertainment to broadcasters in Aus-tralia, Sweden, Israel and the U.S. Davies speaks to TV Europe abouthis approach to telling the story of retail magnate Harry Gordon Sel-fridge in late-19th- and early-20th-century London.

TV EUROPE: How did Mr Selfridge come about?DAVIES: Kate Lewis, who is the executive producer—we’veworked together many times—had this book called Shopping,Seduction & Mr Selfridge, which was an account of how HarryGordon Selfridge came to London from America and opened ashop. She said, I think this will make a fantastic series. At first Ithought, Do I want to do a whole series about shopping? [Laughs]But then I did get drawn in by the story. He’s just a fantastic char-

acter. And it’s a story about business and modernity and change—he did revolutionize retail practices and started lots of things wetake for granted today. He was a real historical figure, and weknow about his wife and about his children and his mother. Buthe had a lot of mistresses and we don’t really know much aboutthem, so I had the freedom to create characters.Harry Gordon Selfridge was in a way a self-destructive char-

acter. He loved to gamble; that was his way of relaxing. And hetook incredible risks with his business and usually got away withthem. In terms of his emotional life, he was drawn to the kind ofwomen who would be the most trouble. Of course; that makesfor terrific drama. We’ve got a really rich mix, with lots going onin the story in terms of ambition, jealousy, and also secret loveaffairs. Even though he didn’t have very strict rules for himself, hedid have strict rules in the shop—shop romances amongst thestaff were definitely [not allowed]. But of course they went on.

TV EUROPE: And you have Jeremy Piven playing the lead role.DAVIES: We are so excited.You get the feeling that the audiencewill like him. He’s got that kind of outrageous cheek—that hecan do bad things but you’ll still like him. And we’ve got lots ofinteresting women. There’s an aristocratic character, except she’snot a real aristocrat, called Lady Mae [portrayed by KatherineKelly]. She’s a former [chorus] girl who marries an earl, but theynever see each other. When he’s in the country she’s in town,and vice versa. She thinks that’s the way to make a marriage work!We’ve got [Zoë Tapper as] Ellen Love, who is an actress thatHarry wants to [set up] as the face of Selfridges, and of coursehe starts an affair with her and she turns out to be terribly highmaintenance and very flaky, with a cocaine habit. And we’ve gota sweet little heroine called Agnes [Aisling Loftus], who comesfrom a very poor background. She starts work as an assistant andwe’re going to watch her progress. She’ll carry a lot of our hopes.

TV EUROPE: How much time went into the research tomake the settings and the language historically accurate?DAVIES: It’s getting easier and easier with the Internet. Thinkabout [the character of ] Ellen Love, who is a musical comedyactress. Google “musical comedies 1909” and you can learn allabout who the stars were, what kind of lives they had. Thewoman who wrote the book, Lindy Woodhead, is a fashion his-torian and has access to the whole archive of Selfridges, and we’vegot her as an advisor. So if there’s anything we don’t know we cancontact her, and indeed, she sees all the drafts of all the scripts. Soif we get anything wrong, we certainly hear about it!

TV EUROPE: What are some of the biggest changes you’vewitnessed in your years working in British television?DAVIES:When I started, producers at the BBC could commis-sion—they didn’t have to go to commissioners. So my earlycareer was very much tied up with two producers, Louis Marksand Rosemary Hill. They would have their four productions ayear, and if three of them worked then they were all right for thenext [project]. Producers had much more freedom. For a whilemy career hung on the same fragile thread as Louis Marks,because he would not only commission me again and again, buthe’d also recommend me to other producers. One of the big dif-ferences [today] is that, at the BBC especially, [there is a greater]number of people that have got to say yes [to a project]. It’s muchmore straightforward at ITV. There are fewer people involved anddecisions are made more quickly.

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By Mansha Daswani


AndrewDavies

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Cecile Frot-Coutaz, FremantleMedia’s recently appointed CEO, isbest known for heading up the company’s North American oper-ations, where she shepherded the huge hits American Idol,America’s Got Talent and The X Factor. She has been with thecompany since 1995, starting in Europe, where she helpeddevelop the business strategy of what today is one of the world’sleading producers and distributors of programming.

TV EUROPE: Tell us about your 17 years with the company. FROT-COUTAZ: When I started it was a very different kind ofcompany. We were Pearson Television, which had literally just beenassembled under Greg Dyke’s leadership. The core of the com-pany was Thames Television. We had just bought Grundy; thatwas our first big acquisition and it set us down a path of buildingan international-production business. My first big deal in my role,which was to support Greg Dyke in acquisitions and strategy, wasthe acquisition of All American Television, which at the time wasowned by the Scotti brothers. The company produced Baywatch,it had a big syndication operation and it had all the Goodson-Tod-

man Productions’ game-show formats. That was a sub-stantial acquisition and a very big deal for us, in

size, in scale and in monetary terms. Get-ting that acquisition done, and also

then integrating the acquisitioninto the rest of the company,was a fantastic experience. Italk about that dealbecause having thatexperience and historymeans I understand thefabric of the company,and how the businessmodel was put together,

and why it works and howit works. Some of the ques-

tions we have today, interest-ingly, were the same ones we

had 10, 12 or 15 years ago. Wewent from a collection of compa-

nies around the world to being a trulyglobal company. There is a big differ-

ence; having an international footprint isone thing, but having a company thatfunctions as a global company, as we donow, is very different and a huge strength.Looking back, I’m really proud to have

been part of that very big con-struction exercise.

TV EUROPE:And you eventually moved to the U.S.FROT-COUTAZ: I went from that job to a more operational jobin Europe and then eventually went over to the U.S., where Iran our North American operation. That was about building thecompany into one of the leaders in North America in realitytelevision. When I arrived there, it really wasn’t an empire atall. It was quite transformational, and this is a business that hasmanaged to retain its key brands. We have the very successfuldaytime shows that are still going strong, which maybe peopledon’t talk about as much as the big prime-time televisionshows. But for us those are very big brands and some of themhave had a real resurgence lately, like Family Feud with SteveHarvey. The social-gaming activities we’ve been able to launcharound Family Feud have shown us the power of these brandsand how evergreen and important to the business they are. Andof course there are the three big talent shows, American Idol,Got Talent and The X Factor. I also served as executive produceron these three shows and I’m very passionate about them! Ispent a lot of my days and years worrying about how to makethe next season better than the previous season. It has been agreat roller coaster and there is something really special aboutbeing part of shows that are big events like that and that reallyhave an impact on the culture.

TV EUROPE: As you step into your new role as CEO, whatare you excited about?FROT-COUTAZ: The thing that is incredibly excitingabout FremantleMedia and that I am very proud of is thatwe are a truly global player. And there are very few com-panies like ours. We have worked very hard during the lastten years to make that work. When I say we are global, weare global in terms of our approach to production andwe’re also starting to use our global presence to furtherour development efforts. That is quite hard to do becausethe world has become a much more global marketplacethan it was ten years ago. We’re a great partner, we workvery well in partnerships and we are really good execu-tors. This company makes really good shows. We have avery large amount of number one shows around the world.If I look at the future, the challenge for me is aroundanswering the question Where is the business going? Whereare the viewers going? People’s tastes are changing. Thekinds of shows that are working today are not the samekinds of shows that were working ten years ago. Drama ismaking a comeback. We’re looking at those trends and Iwant to broaden the scope of the company into some newgenres. I also want to really focus on what digital meansfor us. There is a transition that is happening right now.[For] a content player that is very exciting because we haveoptions and opportunities. The next decade will be quitetransformational for our company and for our competitorsas well. And that is the exciting part, figuring out what ourpath is going to be and how we can be a trailblazer.

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By Anna Carugati


Cecile Frot-CoutazFremantleMedia’s

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Documents

TV Europe MIPCOM 2012