THE YEAR AHEAD: As the North American content industry awakes from its festive slumber, top execs weigh in on trends to watch, burning questions and business goals for the year ahead.

Mike Cosentino, president and executive producer, CosMedia.Inc
The content bubble is no longer about to burst – in fact it’s ballooning. And the average cost per scripted hour produced will surge to all-new highs this year. Here are my top five predictions for scripted content in 2022:

Less New York, more Mumbai.
Demand for more international growth from the vertically integrated global streamers (VIGS), such as Disney+, Paramount+, Peacock and HBO Max, will compel them to refocus their commissioning lens to become more global in scope and scale. Less drama based in New York and LA and more in London, Rome and Mumbai. And perhaps more significantly, the VIGS will lean into the momentum generated from the successes of international formats.

Reboots.
What’s old is new again… again. More than ever, the VIGS will continue to exploit their catalogues to commission more reboots, but this time in part to fuel rekindled interest in their catalogues where the originals are likely streaming on FAST platforms like Pluto and Roku, whose international expansions are mining even more viewers.

FAST originals.
While the subscription services duke it out, adoption of the global ad-supported streamers, like Pluto, Roku and Tubi, will continue to surge, leading to a wave of scripted commissions to drive their audiences and hence their ad revenues. Look out for some very big drama swings to drive sampling and brand awareness in 2022.

Comic-based IP will accelerate.
The link between comic IP and successful franchises has never been stronger, so look for ongoing acceleration of comic IP as source material. Perhaps even an acquisition of one or more of the independent comic IP companies is becoming more likely than not, especially for the streamers that don’t currently have comic IP ownership.

2022 will be a watershed year in the race to acquire or license scripted formats from international territories, especially Korea, thanks in part to the Squid Game phenomenon, among others. Book IP will be optioned at record levels as platforms and services compete to land the next must-watch franchise.

John Morayniss

John Morayniss, CEO, Blink Studios
While there will be a continued and growing demand for premium scripted content, there will be more emphasis and focus placed on the value of locally originated, local-language scripted content. As a result, those production companies with a strong track record of producing high-quality scripted content in their countries will be attractive acquisition and/or joint-venture targets for larger media platforms and studios.

Related to this local content trend, global platforms will be less likely to consistently buy out worldwide rights when commissioning original scripted content. Having said that, there will also be a continued demand for big-budget global tent-pole premium scripted content, which means a continued arms race and hyper-competitive environment for underlying material, particularly manuscripts and just-published bestsellers.

Some of the biggest questions for the year ahead are: How will the ongoing Covid pandemic impact production in 2022? Will media consolidation continue at the same pace? How will studios/platforms manage theatrical/streaming windowing? Will demand for scripted content plateau? Will new buyers/platforms emerge that want to commission original scripted content and/or will certain legacy buyers and platforms decide to reduce their original scripted content spend? How will the deals for original scripted content change? Specifically, will there be more opportunities for independent production companies and studios to hold on to rights?

Hayley Babcock, CEO, Hayley Babcock Media Consulting
In 2022, there will be a significant recalibration in the SVoD space with mounting cancellations for services as viewers lose patience with too many subscriptions and too much money going out the door. SVoDs will therefore increase their search for attention-grabbing programming to keep existing subscribers.

That will mean an ever-rising need for marketable unscripted shows that can be produced and put on screens more quickly than scripted fare. And in that unscripted space, it won’t just be high-profile factual programmes that feel the love. Formats will have a strong position as SVoDs continue to expand their focus on locally produced content within their international hubs. If they have a proven project in one territory that can be replicated in other markets quickly and easily – in other words, a format – that will be more clearly valued as a win.

When thinking about what kinds of formats are likely to be trending, it seems clear that no matter the subject, tech inclusion will expand. Producers will find ways to use avatars in more genres, bake NFTs into forms of home participation and tie virtual reality into what’s happening in a show.

And last but certainly not least, the long overdue focus on diversity and inclusion that finally began in the last couple of years will continue to develop until it is no longer seen as a trend at all but merely the best way to present good programming and to reflect the world in which we live.

James F Blue, head, Smithsonian Channel and senior VP, MTV News
Many are familiar with the Smithsonian Channel, but over the course of the past year it has undergone many changes, the most important of which is that we are now part of the MTV Entertainment Group, which really places us in the heart of the programme-making and original series within the ViacomCBS family. What that has done has supercharged our ability to do ambitious and important programming.

It’s been clear that for a very long time the Smithsonian Channel has had a very narrow window into the world, and one of the things I find really exciting is broadening the mix and having different points of view. We believe that by attaching talent and using the resources of MTV, Viacom and CBS we can find ways to bring people into the tent who otherwise might not necessarily have taken a look at what we’ve done or what we’re doing.

Our greatest strength, and it’s something we’re doubling down on, is that we are the televisual outlet and brand of the world’s largest research institution. We have access to their entire IP. We can turn that into TV, documentaries, podcasts and digital, and we are very interested in figuring out what we can do with that relationship. Our brand equity completely comes from our relationship with the Smithsonian Institution, and rather than running away from it, we’re embracing it. You will continue to see additional programming and series that come out of that relationship.

Paul Gilbert, senior VP of international formats, ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group
In terms of what’s facing the business in the year ahead, I think it’s still Covid. It’s still shutting things down right and left, but I think the formats business is going to keep growing.

On the scripted side, it’s exploding. A huge portion of our business now is scripted formats, whereas before it was mostly non-scripted formats. And as everyone knows, non-scripted formats are a lot quicker and easier to get on air than scripted ones. My opinion is that the scripted formats business is going to keep getting bigger and bigger.

The one thing I can say is that with our combined assets [while Viacom and CBS officially merged in December 2019, their respective formats libraries were only combined at the end of 2021] and the shows we have to offer, we’re positioned to do great things in the coming years.

Aron Levitz, president, Wattpad Webtoon Studios
Anyone with a TV knows that every streaming service now looks and feels about the same. There may be differences in user numbers and audience demographics, but the user experience and products offered are now all of similarly high quality, which is why IP will be so important in 2022.

Stories and IP are now the primary differentiator among a proliferating number of streaming services, so we’re going to see new levels of investment in finding incredible IP in 2022.

Adding to this situation is the fact we’re now starting to see cracks in legacy IP mega-franchises. Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe are amazing, but they are now TV shows, films, spin-offs, tie-ins, etc. Like many legacy IPs, content from these franchises is no longer rare, so they just don’t generate the same excitement that they used to. People are still going to come out for Star Wars and Marvel content in droves – myself included – but people want to see more new stories from a wider and more diverse range of voices.

We already saw some of this in 2021 with the success of projects like Sweet Home and Hellbound, both of which come from international producers and started as digital comics on Webtoon. And one of the first big streaming film events of the year is set to be Netflix’s A Través de Mi Ventana, a story that originated on Wattpad. This combination – of international origins and emerging from storytelling technology platforms – is something that can’t be underestimated.

As a result, we’re going to see more entertainment companies focus on fandom as a starting point. People are starting to realise that IP with built-in fandoms means you already have an audience. You just have to spend the right time and attention to understand fans, what they love about a story, and how to adapt it for screens in a way that fans will embrace. Rather than building a piece of IP from the ground up, projects with existing fandoms online will continue to grow in importance, with strong performance in 2022 and beyond.

Superna Kalle, president of international networks, Starz
Covid for us continues to be a double-edged sword, as it is for a lot of streaming services. It holds up your productions, although I do think at this point that the protocols are pretty well established, and the production companies have it down now in terms of how to create that bubble and make sure everyone is safe. The good news, however, is that people might be home more, consuming content and finding us and really enjoying StarzPlay.

In terms of [building out the international strategy], we’ve been working on our Spanish-language strategy for about two years. It takes a long time to get things going, but we’re at a point now where we’ve got a Spanish-language original consistently all the way through for the year.

We also have a full management team in India, overseeing the South Asia and South-East Asia businesses. Their first Indian original debuted in December. It’s authentically written by Indians for Indians, and I think it will find a global audience.

David Zitzerman, partner and head of the Entertainment Law Group at Canadian corporate law firm Goodmans
Leaving aside the impact of the unfortunate recent worldwide Omicron surge, the leading question mark for the Canadian scripted business going into 2022 is the proposed Liberal legislative initiative to revive Bill C-10 and revamp the Canadian Broadcasting Act, including measures for the Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission [CRTC] to regulate the foreign streamers that operate in Canada.

There is much speculation that if and when the proposed legislation is finally enacted, the CRTC will ultimately mandate new, as-yet unspecified contributions to the Canadian system by the streamers which will likely significantly impact the scripted content business. Of course, as always when it comes to such initiatives, the devil is in the detail.