Danny Fenton, CEO of London-based indie Zig Zag Productions, has a new football format in production but cautions against what he sees as false optimism in the industry about the recovery from pandemic lockdown.

Danny Fenton

Tell us about your new show for BT Sport and Insight TV, Ultimate Goal.
We love football at Zig Zag so it’s always a labour of love to do a football project. We previously made The Next Jamie Vardy for Sky1 and while making that we were aware of the rise of the women’s game, which is now professional all around the world. We thought it would be a great idea to do a similar talent discovery format about finding the next female football star.

We want the format to feel real and the end results to be real. We’re in the process of selecting 28 women and girls who have the potential to make it pro, and they’ll go into a training camp. The final 14 will then go to the England national team’s training base at St George’s Park and be mentored by ex-players from the men’s and women’s game such as Ennie Aluko, Rio Ferdinand and Robin Van Persie. At the end of the second week we’ll be inviting coaches and scouts from professional clubs all around the world.

How was the pitch and development process?
We developed off the back of the successful male version with Jamie Vardy and pitched it to Insight TV at Mip. It peaked their interest and they wanted to do something in the women’s game but needed a coproduction partner and key talent attached. We’d worked with BT Sport before on a show called Call Yourself a Fan, and as they have the rights to the Women’s Premier League in the UK they were keen for support programming, so it was a perfect marriage. BT was able to bring access to St George’s Park through its sponsorship of England, as well as access to talent and services they’re giving us in kind, such as post facilities.

How has Covid-19 changed your plans for the show?
Football has probably set the highest bar for Covid-19 protocols of any industry. It has successfully come back and completed its season. TV has a high bar too, so we can dovetail the demands of TV protocols with existing football protocols. I was surprised we were able to get into St George’s Park so easily but they already have a protocol in place which makes it easier filming there than in most other locations.

We were commissioned and in pre-production when the pandemic hit. Fortuitously, we weren’t in physical production but we were in casting and like a number of projects we went on pause. We came out of that hold at the start of August and started filming promos with key talent to act as a call-out to female players who want to take part. We’ve got the production team back on board and we’re in the office, which feels good. We’ve started filming background profiles of players already involved. We’ll move up to St George’s Park at the end of the month.

We’re fortunate that when we started production, pre-pandemic, our insurance policy covered us for the event of a force majeure, so we are covered for that eventuality and can move back into production relatively smoothly, taking all precautions we have to take.

How has it been to run an indie in 2020?
It’s been challenging. It would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise. I get frustrated when I hear people say, ‘It’s great, never had it better.’ Offering false hope is dangerous. People want to be positive but you have to be realistic. We are still in the middle of a pandemic.

We’re fortunate compared with retail, hospitality and many other industries who have been crippled; at least there are things we can be doing. Zig Zag has been around a while, so we have a big back-catalogue that we’ve been able to sell, reversion and repurpose. We’ve been industrious during lockdown but we’ve had to furlough people and it has been incredibly difficult. We had five shows in some form of production pre-lockdown; the majority of the ones in production got put on hold. We’re producing Ultimate Goal and one other show now, which feels good, and we sold something brand new in lockdown which is mainly archive-based, and that’s an incredible achievement.

Ultimate Goal is in pre-production with Zig Zag

It is doable, but all in all it’s one of the most testing time we’ve faced in our industry and I feel that in many ways the smaller and medium-sized companies, which I would consider ourselves to be, have more chance of benefitting than the so-called superindies. The bigger you are, the harder you fall. Bigger companies like the merged Banijay and Endemol Shine group, face a massive challenge at any time, but at a time like this, with big overheads and debts to service, I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. It’s easier for smaller companies to pivot, lower overheads and be more flexible.

After lobbying from producers’ association Pact, the UK government has recently moved to underwrite pandemic insurance on productions. Good news or too late?
I’m on the board of Pact and know they have been lobbying the government for several months. The French government acted quicker and got back into production quicker. Yes, it’s been slow and could have come sooner. It was inevitable and a necessity, because of the amount of business film and television brings to the economy, that they would have to clear the log jam that was the insurance issue. It was impossible to get insurance for new productions. I’m now hopeful production will start up again, though it’s going to be easier for unscripted than scripted.

Are you changing your development to focus on projects with less international travel?
It’s forcing us to change our strategy. One of the shows we’ve got on hold is a medical series we’ve been filming for years which involves filming in Third World countries and hospitals. Certain productions are going to be difficult to deliver. We’re steering towards more domestic, studio-based ideas, shot in a Covid-friendly universe. Until there’s a vaccine, it hasn’t gone away. We have to think carefully whether we can deliver the thing we’re pitching. One thing for sure is most broadcasters don’t want shows related to Covid or filmed on Zoom because people are already exhausted by that, so we have to think cleverly about what we can deliver and how we deliver it.

There are more slots to pitch into and bigger audience figures but lower tariffs as the ad market falls away. How do you square that circle?
It’s a seesaw. Ratings have never been higher on terrestrial broadcasters but the ones that are ad supported, particularly ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 in the UK, are feeling the pinch. There is more appetite for brand-funded content. It was often dismissed as a poor relation before but now channels are saying if you can bring a brand you go to the top of the pile, and I’m engaging more with brands and agencies. We’re doing more business in the US than before. Even though we can’t physically go there, the broadcasters there have slots to fill and are looking to the UK where we have more flexibility for filming than they do. Commissioners in the UK and US are more accessible now than they’ve ever been. Where it was difficult to get in front of people before, with people locked down at home, it’s easier.

How is the loss of the event circuit affecting your business and will it come back in the form it was before?
It’s hard to know. A lot of key markets are coming up – Edinburgh, Mipcom, RealScreen, Natpe – and, personally, I don’t find the online versions of them that appealing. I’ve reached saturation point on webinars now. Being able to get facetime, albeit via a video call, with buyers is good. The thing you miss from the markets is not just the socialising but the random meetings or conversations that lead to something. For producers especially, that’s a challenge.

I’ve heard a lot of distributors saying they’ve never been selling more, but this goes back to my point about false optimism – they can’t see the wave that’s coming in to wash over them. Yes, they’re selling a lot at the moment, but they haven’t got markets to sell at, and come 2021, they won’t have new programmes to sell. It will creep up on them – how do you find and make content, how do you interact with them without markets?

As soon as there is a market I can go to I will definitely want to go to it, because I want to see people and having been on that merry-go-round for many a year, I’ve made friends and contacts in different countries. Until there is a vaccine, I don’t think there will be markets into next year. I was talking to an exec from YouTube the other day who has been told not to come back in until June 2021 – that’s a year away. Most of the studios and big networks aren’t going to allow their staff to travel. What you’re seeing with Mipcom is death by a thousand cuts; every day somebody announces they’re not going. I feel for [Mipcom organiser] Reed Midem but I wonder what is Mipcom going to be if every day somebody new pulls out.

Is this unscripted’s moment, with scripted particularly challenged?
We are already seeing it’s a moment for unscripted. Broadcasters and streamers are recognising it will take a lot longer to get scripted back up to speed. It’s a bit like the writers’ strike except there are challenges whatever form of production you’re in and getting back up to speed is the biggest challenge. I’m pleased to be speaking to you from the office and people are back here. It has frustrated me hearing people across the industry say they love working from home. We’re not working from home, we’re at home trying to work during a pandemic, it’s a completely different thing. The sooner people get back into game mode the better it will be across the board.

I certainly think unscripted will have a head start against scripted and it’s down to us as unscripted producers to capitalise on it. We’ve got to be creative and come up with new formats that work around whatever restrictions exist in society as a whole. Unscripted was always said to be a poor relation of scripted, and that’s because we haven’t reinvented it. Well, now’s the opportunity for the great revolution.