High Drama, Big Budgets And Millennial Shift

Michael Hedges April 19, 2015 Follow on Twitter

If there was one single take-away from the MIPTV market show in Cannes last week “Game of Thrones” was it. Selling to TV buyers means competing with high-quality - and quite expensive - shows that viewers everywhere know, have seen and talk about. Big shows are in demand; the rest just fills time.

Millennial Shift was the thematic focus for MIPTV 2015 like every other recent international trade show from automobiles and banking to consumer electronics and hardware. There’s a whole crop of viewers out there watching online and interacting on social media. All that in mind, TV buyers and sellers were talking up big budget prime-time shows.

Competing with “Game of Thrones,” HBO’s award winning and ratings smash fantasy drama seen around the world, is not for the faint of heart. TV producers, it seems, are teaming up to spread the financial burden. “International co-productions have experienced very significant growth this year,” said show organizer Reed Midem TV director director Laurine Garaude, quoted by lalibre.be (April 19), creating “a new trend in dramatic series and historical fiction.”

Spending huge sums for “content,” even prime-time, has not been in the business plan for free-to-air TV broadcasters. Pay-TV and subscription video on demand (SVOD) providers have a rather different model. The big “shift” is the blurred line between supporting TV shows through advertising and attracting direct payments from viewers.

“In each European country, TV networks finance series to the tune of 800,000 to 1.2 million euros per hour, compared to three million euros an hour on American networks,” said Canal+ executive Romain Bessi to AFP (April 16). "European networks are now seeking to team up to finance productions for three to four million per hour.” A produced hour of “Games of Thrones” costs about €5.5 million. Locations over the five seasons have included Malta, Morocco, Scotland, Croatia and, recently, Iceland.

The 10-hour historical drama “Versailles,” prominently screened at MIPTV, was produced by Canal+ with Italian and Canadian partners, in English "to ensure the biggest international distribution possible,” said Capa Drama co-producer Claude Chelli. The series reportedly cost €27 million, the most ever for a French production, and took five years for delivery.

“We have to make €10 million in sales internationally to get to break even,” said Capa Drama executive Fabrice Larue to the Wall Street Journal (April 15). As MIPTV got underway, NBCUniversal, through its UK production unit, announced a partnership with French network TF1 and German broadcaster RTL to produce, perhaps, three “US-style procedural dramas” over two years. The yet to be determined series will be produced in the US for fall 2016 delivery.

“From a business perspective,” said TF1 CEO Nonce Paolini, “the partnership will, in the medium term, increase the profitability of our programmes and allow TF1 to benefit from exclusive operating rights in France as well as from the financial impact of their distribution worldwide.”

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