LONDON SCREENINGS: Cathy Payne, CEO of Banijay Rights, reflects on the industry changes underway and the big trends being felt in the market, and walks us through some of the highlights of her slate.
Cathy Payne
How does your London Screenings slate reflect any changes in strategy at Banijay?
I don’t really think it reflects any new strategic changes because most of what’s on the slate has actually been in the works for some time, especially most of the scripted offering. If you look at the shows that are coming back, we’ve got the likes of Wolf Hall: The Mirror & the Light and also, next month will see the launch of This Town [on the BBC].
It has definitely been one of our strategies to find that long-running, broad audience scripted show in the space that Grantchester has done so well for us over many years. And, of course, we’ve got The Hardacres launching later this year on Channel 5. Again, we’re hoping that will find that broad audience as well. That was part of our strategy when we picked up that show.
There is a lot of period drama in the mix. How is that genre evolving?
A lot of streamers are not really that interested in period. No one’s interested in period unless it works for them. Period stories only work if they relate to a contemporary audience. Look at the most recent two period shows we launched. The focus of Marie Antoinette is telling the story about someone we all think we know, but do we really know her? And then we had Rogue Heroes, which was more of a ‘closer to now’ period piece. But that’s just a fabulous story from World War Two. So it really depends on the ability of the story to relate to the current time.
If you look at some of our previous shows, Peaky Blinders was period and that went on to find an audience. But it was interesting: nobody wanted Peaky Blinders at first. It was something that really built over time for us. Now we do have more period on this slate, and that’s really because of the timings and the shows that were pushed last year due to the strikes.
We do have a lot of period but we’re very much in the market for contemporary crime. We have the Welsh drama, The One That Got Away, on the slate and that’s contemporary crime. We have some others that we will be launching soon that are more in the contemporary space, it’s just a matter of timing.
Steven Knight’s BBC drama This Town
How does your slate take into account changes in global demand?
The slate does reflect the correction in the streaming market, I think, perhaps more than the strikes. There was, of course, a lot of shows pushed back due to the strikes but the correction of the platforms has seen them needing to break even and make profit. For them, it’s not just about subscribers at all cost anymore. It’s a balance of what product they need to attract subscribers but that has to be balanced with library acquisitions and selected copros and pre-sales.
That will be reflected more as we move along. Certainly, everyone we’ve spoken to says it’s a hard market to get those big, guaranteed pre-sales upfront. And there are many shows that we know in the market that even though they’ve been commissioned in the UK, it’s been a struggle to get their financing completed. And that’s a reflection of a recalibration of the streamers and their budgets. What that means is that people will look for those copros or enhanced pre-sales.
But they’ll be more selective in what they want; they’ll want more certainty around cast. There’ll be more offers that may be cast-contingent. There’ll certainly be a lot more pressure to deliver by certain dates that work for both parties. But if you ask me what everybody’s looking for, it’s broad audience, affordable scripted.
Are international clients acquiring more as local production gets more costly?
I think that’s a bit simplistic. Everybody is facing a shortage in the budget they’ve got to spend. But the more it’s changed, the more it has stayed the same. We’ve gone back to what it was before the streamers, before these big available budgets, and now we have to work in a different way. We have to look at the best places to shoot and the tax breaks. All those other people who want to tell like-minded stories will team together. Everyone’s got pressure on budgets and we have this correction in a time of economic volatility, and there’s a recession in a lot of countries.
Wolf Hall: The Mirror & the Light is currently in production
Is demand for UK drama up due to a lack of new US shows hitting the market?
Obviously, everyone knew the strikes were coming and, certainly in America, the broadcasters and platforms planned for it. There were longer runs on non-scripted and so forth. But there were a lot of big series that were delayed and now they’re coming back. People haven’t been rushing to buy more UK programming; they buy programming – whether it’s English-language or not – based on whether it’s cost-effective for them.
However, we have seen a number of the US platforms pull back from Europe and that has affected commissioning for non-English-language product. We’ve seen HBO, Paramount+ and a number of others because there is a greater focus on breaking even and being profitable.
How is the market changing now the US studios are licensing content again?
Well, the content is available to be to be licensed and there’s been a couple of big deals. Last year Channel 4 did a big package deal with Disney. They’re licensing content again but that product is just like it used to be; but if you look at British scripted, it has developed a real voice. And it will always, always compete with American studio product. And these days there’s great storytelling available from all around the world so it’s about what the audiences want to see.
Has the economy led to increased demand for lower-cost drama?
The product has to work editorially and that doesn’t mean the most expensive. It doesn’t have to be the biggest budget to be successful. Look at some of the most successful scripted we’ve been associated with: Silent Witness, Death in Paradise… They weren’t hugely expensive shows but delivered a broad audience with mid-range shows. There’s more pressure on what I used to call ‘super domestic’ programming, because at the moment they can be funded more easily and they’re broad so they do appeal to a wider variety of homes.
The new generation of the BBC’s Gladiators
Has the economy led to increased demand for unscripted content?
The trend we have seen in non-scripted is people have gone back to those signature shows that have a record, shows that have been able to survive through the years and have gone on to prosper. We’re lucky; we have a lot of those in our catalogue. They only sustain over many years because they’ve been creatively renewed all the time. The amount of work that goes into keeping those shows relevant and fresh is considerable.
Everybody is in a tight market with less money to spend on marketing. So they’re looking for a hook to bring the audience back and that’s all about audience awareness. If that awareness is already there, it delivers something and there’s a nostalgic piece to it, as happened with Gladiators. But let’s face it, when you’re making big-end non-scripted shows like that they’re still made for a significant budget.
But I do think they help. In particular, they help domestic broadcasters have more domestic product because they can really be attuned to the local tastes of that market. For those domestic broadcasters, I don’t think unscripted will completely replace scripted at all, but certainly it’s going to be a balanced portfolio, as it has been a difficult time to get scripted funded.
