LONDON TV SCREENINGS: Changes at the streamers, Canadian tax credits and vanishing international borders are allowing Toronto’s Boat Rocker to move further into greenlighting its own productions – with UK partnerships a priority, reveals Natalie Vinet.
Natalie Vinet
Natalie Vinet is senior VP of global distribution at Toronto-headquartered studio Boat Rocker, leading international unscripted sales and strategy, acquisitions and pre-sales, as well as handling sales for the company in the Americas, UK, Spain, Italy and France.
As the experienced Canadian executive shops Boat Rocker’s new programming slate in London this week, she reveals the company’s Latin American ambitions and explains why in-house commissioning is an important part of its strategy.
How do you assess the demand for UK content around the world?
The UK produces great content and it does very well in Canada, especially on our public broadcaster, CBC, as well as on the streamers. On the unscripted side of our slate, all of our true crime series are made by UK production companies right now. Boat Rocker is always trying to do more business in the UK and we have to arm-wrestle our way into the market because there are some strong distributors here. But I feel like we’re getting more attention every year.
How has the distribution landscape changed in the last couple of years?
It’s now a lot harder to find commissions in the true sense of what they were maybe 10 years ago. It’s been a difficult time in Canada for a while now and how you go about getting shows financed has changed a lot.
Boat Rocker has been doing a lot of our own in-house commissioning and focusing on third-party alliances. That’s exciting because five or six years ago we would never have thought of greenlighting our own shows. We like to find strong partners, get involved with a project right from the start and use Canadian tax credits to help put our budgets together. In scripted, this strategy allows us to have a lot more editorial input by having a say in casting and scripts.
Deadpan Pictures’ Video Nasty is set in Sheffield but filmed in Ireland
Industry data indicates streamers are overtaking commercial broadcasters for the first time as investors in content. How has that impacted the distribution business?
As much as the streamers have a more important role, it’s now more territory-specific. Two or three years ago, it used to be that those platforms wanted to take rights for the whole of the world all the time. But that’s not an ecosystem that’s going to be viable in the long term – very few shows were penetrating further than that first window on Netflix or Prime Video. What’s nice now is that the streamers are realising that what works in one region doesn’t work everywhere. It’s opening up the playing field again, as opposed to a few companies having a monopoly.
Of the content genres in which Boat Rocker is active, which have seen the biggest growth in the past year?
Unscripted has been growing strongly and what’s really working for us is ancient history and mystery programming. In time for last year’s Mipcom, we picked up The Weather Channel’s library of content and that’s been a huge success, with series such as Weather Gone Viral and Storm of Suspicion. Taking a high-volume catalogue like that to a market is like having a giant bowl of candy to offer buyers.
Irish/Australian copro Mix Tape
Which countries or regions do you see emerging as exciting growth markets in the coming 12 months?
As a Canadian company, it’s been very exciting for us to get more business in the UK in the last four months. Latin America is an area where I’d like to see more growth. The pay TV and cable networks used to be very strong there and now that’s changing, so it’s been harder for us in that region. There was a time when the entire Boat Rocker catalogue was sold in Lat Am and now we’re looking at how we can get back there again. Right now, we have a gap in our sales team in terms of covering Lat Am.
What are the other opportunities for Boat Rocker?
We’re excited to have such a diverse slate of content with international partners. For example, leading our scripted line-up are Mix Tape, which is an Irish/Australian copro, and Video Nasty, which is set in Sheffield and filmed in Ireland with Deadpan Pictures. Later this year we’ve got The Ridge, which is with New Zealand’s Great Southern Studios for Sky New Zealand and BBC Scotland.
The borders are vanishing, and it feels like Boat Rocker can move around the world to work with different partners.
