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Golden career

Posted By Andy Fry On 20-04-2015 @ 4:02 pm In Features | Comments Disabled

Swedish entertainment pioneer Annie Wegelius picked up the International Formats Gold Award in Cannes, after 30 years in the business. Andy Fry reports.

International Formats Gold Award winner Annie Wegelius

International Formats Gold Award
winner Annie Wegelius

One of the most respected figures in the Swedish media business, Annie Wegelius is a well-known face at international forums like last week’s MipTV. However, this time around she was the centre of attention when she received [1] the International Formats Gold Award during MipFormats.

The award was in recognition of a career that has spanned more than three decades. Wegelius was part of the team that launched TV3 into the Nordic region, becoming its first programme director from 1987 to 1990. She then launched one of Sweden’s first indie production companies, Wegelius TV, creating and producing formats likes The Big Class Reunion and The Perfect Crime until she sold the company to Bonnier Group in 1994.

The company is now part of Zodiak Media Group, which still licenses Big Class Reunion around the world, last year to RTL in Germany and more recently to Al Hayat in Egypt.

Seeing the potential of the web early, Wegelius later launched education portal K-World, which closed in 2002, and she was appointed director of programmes at Swedish public broadcaster SVT from 2006 to 2013, overseeing hits like Minute to Win It, Hell of a Life and Eternal Glory.

Describing herself as “a very freedom-oriented person,” she decided to quit her linchpin role at SVT in order to work more closely with entrepreneurs. Today, she provides strategic consultancy to companies in the media business and beyond, as well as sitting on the board of Swedish online retailer Ellos.

Amid all this activity she somehow carved out time to co-organise Focus on the Nordics, a MipTV conference track that shined a spotlight on a region that has emerged as one of the world’s most dynamic media markets.

Explaining why, she says: “Nordic companies are very clever and creative but not always very good at marketing. So after I saw the big effort by Israeli companies at last year’s MipTV, I called a few people and suggested we do the same thing. Fortunately, the timing was right and we got all of the main Nordic players involved.”

Focus on the Nordics consisted of networking opportunities, seminars, show-and-tells, market overviews, digital talks and broadcaster Q&As. Among the broadcasters taking part were TV2 and DR (Denmark), YLE and MTV3 (Finland), TV2 and NRK (Norway), TV4 and SVT (Sweden), MTG and Discovery Networks (pan-Nordic), alongside companies such as Endemol Shine, Nordisk, Zodiak, Magine TV and Nordic World.

Wegelius hopes the programme demystified the market and allowed international executives to navigate their way towards partnerships with local talent. “After I left SVT, people would ask me in Cannes how they could get in touch with the people responsible for the great content being made in the region,” she says. “So, hopefully, this will have gone some way to addressing that interest.”

Eternal Glory

Eternal Glory

For Wegelius, the big story in content production terms of late has been the emergence of Nordic Noir drama as an international creative currency. “The genre wasn’t new to us; it’s been around since the 1970s, she says. “But what happened was that SVT and DR in Denmark professionalised the genre, so that it caught the attention of the international market. Productions like the Millennium trilogy and The Killing also had a kind of Bjorn Borg effect, encouraging a lot of young talent from film and commercials to consider television for the first time. And from there we’ve seen international companies get involved as coproducers or as distributors underwriting production costs.”

While drama has soared, Wegelius is more ambivalent about the situation with unscripted entertainment formats. “The production business in the region has consolidated into the hands of a few companies. And while my business head understands that this makes sense in terms of economies of scale, I get worried about the lack of diversity this brings,” she says.

“We’re seeing smaller formats pushed off the screen by the big established ones, which audiences are now watching in both their local and original versions. To me, a key problem with this is that the formats seem to be ageing up and losing their connection with younger audiences – with the exception of Paradise Hotel.”

She is not completely disheartened, however. “I’d be worried if we didn’t have strong public broadcasters. The pubcasters haven’t gone the same way as the commercial broadcasters with regards to formats and they are also willing to commission shows from small companies.

“Apart from a few hiccups, they have also executed the transition to digital very well. As things stand, the Nordic public broadcasters remain popular and trusted by audiences, who are willing to pay for them.”

She also has confidence in Nordic companies’ ability to innovate their way towards greater diversity and creativity. “If you look back at the big format breakthroughs they are often linked to developments in technology. For example, Survivor was non-linear editing; Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was premium rate telephony and Big Brother was fly-on-the-wall cameras.

“Because the digital revolution came early to the Nordic region, we have had more than 10 years of experience in understanding how it impacts on consumer behaviour, rights issues and the challenges of piracy. For this reason, our companies are well-placed to deliver great new formats to the millennial generation. There are exciting young companies like YouTube multi-channel network Splay in the digital arena.”

Big Class Reunion

Big Class Reunion

On-demand and over-the-top video are two of the big talking points in the region right now and were certainly a focal point during MipTV last week. With Netflix, YouTube, HBO, Modern Times Group, Bonnier and the various pubcasters all making major inroads into the on-demand area, analysts around the world are watching the Nordics to get an early understanding of how linear viewing will be affected.

“We are at a point when companies know what they want to do, but not how to do it,” says Wegelius. “I remember Michael Grade saying, 10 years ago, that on-demand would change everything – and now that’s coming true.”

One key issue, relevant to the MipTV audience, is the issue of rights and windowing, says Wegelius. “There is a dichotomy, which is that the content sellers, mainly the US studios, are not yet facing the issues being experienced by Nordic media companies.

“So they are licensing rights according to the old paradigm, but that doesn’t work in the Nordics anymore. Executives are afraid of setting unfavourable precedents, but we need to take a leap of faith to establish new best practices.”

If those best practices evolved in the Nordics first, it wouldn’t be the first time the world has learned from the region, says Wegelius. “A lot of international companies have looked at the way Nordic producers manage to make high quality on low budgets,” she says. “And some of the larger businesses that have come into the region have been drawn to the way we manage companies. We’re less hierarchical and bureaucratic than other parts of the world. That modus operandi, based on transparency and democracy, is catching on.”

In terms of her own strengths, Wegelius does not regard herself as an originator of format ideas, but someone who sees the opportunities, has a feeling for what works and likes to manage change. “My career has been more about leading innovation and creative processes.”

Looking ahead, however, she is tempted to break out in a completely new direction during the next phase of her career. “I have, over the years, become more and more value-driven, and the next phase is going to have to be something that makes a real difference,” she says. “If that means I have to get in front of the camera for the first time in my life, something I never wanted, so be it!”

Previous International Formats Gold Award winners
2014: Mark Itkin, William Morris Endeavor
2013: Stephen Lambert, Studio Lambert/All3Media
2012: David Lyle, Fox Reality
2011: Dick de Rijk, creator of gameshow hit Deal or No Deal
2010: Reg Grundy, former CEO of Grundy Television
2009: Peter Bazalgette, former creative director of Endemol Group
2008: Stephen Leahy and Trish Kinane, Ludus Entertainment
2007: Merv Griffin, creator of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy


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[1] received: https://www.c21media.net/itv-electus-win-big-at-format-awards/

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