The second part of Glow Media founder Siobhan Crawford’s pre-Mipcom deep dive into the indie distribution scene examines the idea that a few mergers of their own might allow indies to benefit from strength in numbers and take on the big boys.
OK, let’s pick up where we left off in part 1 of our digital distributor roundtable with that five-letter word:
Merge
Well, someone had to say it. But you forget with these indies, the value is in the executives leading the company as much as the content they keep. Could all of us sit under one umbrella?
“If you look at the Lineup Industries, Primitives and All Right Media catalogues and you put all this together, actually you get a catalogue that is super, super powerful – as powerful as one like NBCUniversal,” says Arnaud Renard, partner at Can’t Stop Media. “If you look at that catalogue, there’s a few great, big shows that are doing fantastically well – Top Chef, Real Housewives – but the catalogue is not that deep.”
I will let you imagine our faces when Renard from the French distributor suggests the Benelux distributors could cleanly ‘merge.’ But we could agree an indie pavilion at Mipcom would be spectacular.
Everyone agrees cooperation would be a good goal, says All Right founder and CEO Tanja van der Goes. “In an ideal world, we would be able to work together. But I also think that our power is our independence,” she adds.
If you imagine the shows that these independents hold individually – All Right now has The Connection; Primitives has 99 To Beat; Can’t Stop has The A Talks; Lineup Industries has Radio Gaga and Long Lost Family is still strong – and if the indie mindset is that any new development on any small or old format can put it in a different light, then we know their catalogues still have unexploited gems too.
The markets
Damien Porte, partner at Can’t Stop Media, wins the prize for earliest Mip attendance with 2003, then me in 2007, then van der Goes in 2008 and Simone de Pruyssenaere de la Woestyne, director of sales and acquisitions at Primitives, in 2010.
Mipcom has changed for many of us now. Yes, we still put between 50 and 70 meetings into our four days, but as Renard says, the list is getting shorter: “The big difference [is] I’m doing my list of people I should meet and every year it’s shrinking. It’s crazy. I’m looking at the indies and there are fewer people selling.”
With a market to attend almost every month, the indies’ launch schedule has been one of the biggest things affected.
The content
As the market evolves, distributors have to adjust – if you want to win distribution, successfully launch a format, even forecasting. It is a puzzle for us, de Pruyssenaere de la Woestyne explains: “We all know the fresh selection. You have to send in your stuff so early now because otherwise it’s too old.
“Back in the day, you were basically waiting for the show to be ready. It would air. We would have ratings. People would want to know more about it. But that’s obviously not the case now. Basically, you almost need to send in the pilot now, otherwise it’s already considered too old. So that’s also a different way of looking at marketing your shows. It’s a big puzzle sometimes to think about when the best moment is to launch it, where it will get attention.”
But Julian Curtis, co-founder of Lineup Industries, is sure that now is a good time to be in distribution. “We are going through the good times again,” he says. “I feel like people are talking about the value in formats, light entertainment. The platforms are looking around at what we have. We will present some value to them.”
This means content that is older than the streamer boom now has a second chance at consideration, but Curtis also says you have to be “savvy enough to know if a format has legs or not.”
Having a smaller catalogue with some heritage titles is something Primitives makes the most of, de Pruyssenaere de la Woestyne explains. “I always keep track of the shows that we’ve sold each year and the number of different titles that we’ve sold,” she says.
“We recently counted deals for 23 different shows in our catalogue, and that could be a licence deal, it could be an option. But it means if you’re looking at our total catalogue, which is more or less 50 titles at the moment, it means we’ve almost done deals for 50% of it. That shows we don’t give up after the first round.”
Can’t Stop’s Porte thinks we should put equal importance on updates: “Fresh news is always important – maybe sometimes more important – than just the fact of bringing a new format, because, and I’m sure you will agree, we are living among a herd of sheep,” he says.
That is to say, commissioners need the reassurance of seeing what is being commissioned elsewhere, to paraphrase.
An interesting thought from Curtis is about the change in big-group content launches, as indies focus on being selective but less is available to us. This is true, but he adds: “If you look at the bigger groups you see there is a bigger competition as they bring three new external formats to Mipcom. That would never have happened in previous years.”
The IP problem
If you get format people in a room you have to at least touch on IP infringement, but I think the consensus is that it is not bothering us right now – even during this season of long waits for new launches.
Curtis at Lineup has the feeling “commissioners are now so risk-averse they won’t buy a copy, they will buy the original,” which is a great way of looking at our low-risk issues. But also, he says the lines may have got a little fuzzy due to an influx of certain genres: “When you get such a proliferation of any one genre, like The Traitors, and there are so many, it is hard to say what is theft and what isn’t.”
The always reliable Renard comes in directly on this. “The only thing that can protect your show for sure is to be on air and then to become a success,” he says. “I don’t see the point in Frapa; what protects our IP is that we have a good show [like The A Talks] and then you get two seasons and nobody now is thinking of making another interview show with people on the spectrum because it’s obvious that if they want to do it, do the original – don’t buy the copy.”
I could not have said it better myself.
The US and us
Let’s be honest, there can always be something to be unhappy about in this industry. If you ask indie distributors what barriers or blockages they face you would expect there to be many, but van der Goes at All Right quickly says: “I don’t believe in frustrations. They will give us wrinkles.”
But if there is one country that often gives us headaches, it would be the US.
“I would like to be able to work more with the streamers and the platforms,” says Renard. “It’s a shame it’s the way it is. It’s the big US corporations that just want to work with these big companies. And I think they are missing many great shows.”
Curtis believes we are in “an evolving situation with the streamers. They don’t know about our business. [They are] going back to working with the studios, but they don’t particularly understand that either – you have to explain to them.”
So maybe it is a case that we need the streamers to catch up? In 2025, the Love is Blind franchise has really blown up, and hopefully with that Netflix and the like will start to understand the value of formats.
Porte shares the common story of the European-US divide in standards and norms. “The deals move to business affairs, who treat you with so much disrespect, with arrogance. You bring them a show that’s already in 10 countries and they ask you for a share of the IP and to get those 10 territories and this and that. It makes things impossible.”
And what has the US effect had on many of us? Porte believes it has driven us into the arms of others: “Actually, you make way more money on the format in two European countries, two Latin American countries and one Asian country than you would do in the US.”
Primitives’ de Pruyssenaere de la Woestyne adds what we all now know and what we are trying to convince the US of when they ask for a share of the international revenue: “In the end, it’s great to have deals in the US, but it’s not necessarily the Holy Grail. You can have big success in other territories and be equally happy.”
With all this talk of the US you can forget other markets when it comes to big format sales, such as Australia, which seems to be keeping to a strong recommissioning trend currently. But van der Goes seems to find a way. “It depends upon who you talk to, of course, but I am falling even deeper in love with the Australian market,” she says.
Lineup Industries has a slightly different experience of the US, given Curtis and co-founder Ed Louwerse’s backgrounds at Sony. Or perhaps they just know what to expect? Curtis says it’s about “deciding what you are willing to stomach or not. The US is never the Holy Grail and having a hit in the US does not define the future of your format.”
The self-distribution trend
Straight off, Curtis calms my mind about the rise of this new trend. He says: “For every one success there must be a 1,000 other self-distributed formats that are less of a success. If a producer feels they can self-distribute in their local area, that makes sense. Most producers want to focus on what they do.”
For him this is not a real problem. As for the others, van der Goes has experience of producers who return to her after trying to distribute themselves. “Most people that I see who try to self-distribute come back within a few months and you look at the people they’re talking to and you know those conversations are really time-consuming but won’t get them anywhere. That’s the knowledge that we, as distributors, have,”
The A Talks features a group of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder interviewing a celebrity
Ortal Dahan Ziv
For Renard, this is not about self-distribution versus standard distribution – it’s about what we offer as individuals with our experience.
“What I believe, not in an arrogant way, is we all know the market better than most of the salespeople in the big groups, because in the big groups they just cover a territory. Sometimes they don’t have a background in production and don’t know the buyers like we do. We understand the markets, we understand production and I believe that. So that’s why we’re probably more efficient.”
The wrap-up
And paper. No one has so far said anything about paper. Well, they have but I’m afraid no one is open to that right now. All Right’s van der Goes and Can’t Stop’s Renard mention very limited interactions with paper formats that require a completely different approach, while Primitives and Lineup do not touch them.
Now, with this crowd I was hoping for some spice, but they are too professional. One question I probably know the answer to, but van der Goes sums up perfectly, is about the relationships we independent distributors have with one another. Because I know that Lineup and Primitives cross paths on the acquisitions hunt in Belgium and All Right is currently dominating in Netherlands. But many of us are also friends who call each other for advice or guidance, catch up for a coffee or are our preferred dinner partners. But are they also my competitors?
“I don’t think so, because success in Formatland is a success for all of us and it proves the necessity of buying formats. If I see great news, whether it’s from Simone or from Damien, I’m honestly happy,” says van der Goes.
And that’s Formatland for you folks: one small indie love-in.
So when you see them at Mipcom next week, first remember the distributor’s anthem: Panic at the Disco’s High Hopes. But also consider what you want one of us to sell through your Velux!
