The TV Whisperer on his return to production
When Ed Sayer was a commissioner for Nat Geo and Discovery the game was rights retention, now, as he steps back across the divide with new shingle Legend Entertainment, he’s looking to switch that model to cope with a challenging market.
What are your aims for Legend Entertainment?
One thing that the pandemic did was give me a huge amount of time to think about where the industry was going. I decided to retool myself completely into being a digital-first producer. I started off making the Amazing War Stories podcast that’s had well over a million downloads now, which taught me a lot about podcasting. I learned all about YouTube, newsletters, socials, and these are all valuable skill sets.
I think most people in the industry would know me from my Discovery and Nat Geo days but before that I spent a good 15 years being a producer at ITV and the BBC so I know how to make content, and I think that that’s the exciting thing. So, I’ve been filming my own stuff, like a self-shooting PD, editing my own content, and it’s been exhausting and tiring but great. It’s taught me a lot about digital first and creator-led content, as opposed to my background which was in premium linear television, and it’s led me to this moment where I want to bring those two worlds together with Legend Entertainment.
You did also come over to our side of the business with your TV Whisperer blog, how’s that been?
I love it. I genuinely love the creative industries, and I think a lot of people don’t understand how it really works. There are a lot of misconceptions about our broadcasters not taking enough risks and all that kind of stuff and I like to try and demystify it for people. It gives me an opportunity to talk about the industry as I see it.
My last post was all about broadcasters not really being truthful about their financial positions. I think it suits them to be able to, on the one hand, go ‘we’ve got no money, and business is terrible’, but that’s only if you look at one part of their business, which is the traditional linear business. Actually, what’s going on? They’re taking all their revenues and building out, as they should do, the digital side of their business which is actually starting to really pay dividends for them. So, while the traditional commissioners go ‘oh I’ve got nothing’, it’s a load of bollocks, really. I think they need to be much more transparent about that.
You have got a show away, Battle Treasures with Hearst Networks, tell us about that but more importantly the model behind it…
Working with Dan Korn and Sam Pearson at History has been great, they’re really progressive and I think as a company Hearst is the same and very open to discussing new models. If you look at Sam’s recent commissions with Dan they’re very willing to use AI in their shows and they’re really pushing boundaries.
Battle Treasures With Foxy and Bruce
I’ve come from that international cablenet space where the standard commissioning model is we own everything and you end up being a producer for hire on your own content. We sat down at the beginning to discuss a different type of business model. They don’t want to pay the full costs for what a show like this would be, as a producer I can suck up a lot of those costs. So we’ve done something similar to a pre-sale/copro deal where you’ve got partners in it who are financially committed and want to get returns.
Hearst and History Channel were really understanding, I think a lot of trust comes in, they have to believe what I’m saying and what I’m putting in. That’s the first hurdle that I think channels can be a bit cynical about. When I delivered my budgets, they were like, crikey, are you actually sure you can make it for this? And so I think it’s a level of trust and honesty that goes on, and then once you’ve got over that, it’s how are we going to ensure that my company is going to be able to recoup as much as your company? It’s an understanding about who goes first on what platform, and how you can both drive revenues.
It was a real challenge for me to be able to make that content at that price point, but I’ve walked away wholly owning that content. I think now I’ve pushed that door open I really hope other production companies can step in and follow that model, but it does require a level of transparency and creativeness around your production model and a certain amount of flexibility of how you’re going to distribute your own content. I’ve got the Amazing War Stories YouTube channel and a number of assets myself which I can exploit that content on. That’s key.
Are you going to do the traditional distribution yourself?
No a distributor will be handling that, as much as I like doing everything myself.
Hearst obviously get to go first on their EMEA territories, but the holdbacks aren’t as severe as they would normally be. I will then be able to sell the content to different platforms in available territories.
I think the future of television is all about collaboration, about producers shouldering more risk. I know that a lot of people will instantly react to that comment saying producers already take all the risk but historically that’s not the case. It’s the channels that have always taken the risk, because you go in there, you make a show, they pay for it, if that show doesn’t work for whatever reason the producers went off and made a different show and the channel was left holding onto a bit of content that didn’t work that they’d paid for. I get a bit annoyed when producers talk about channels not taking risks when all they’ve ever done is take risks. And of course, yes, there are a load of risks.
If you want to own your own content as a producer then you’ve got to be ingenious about how you find that funding, and you’ve got to shoulder more risk. The more risk you shoulder, then the more rights you keep.
Is that model of cablenets owning content for their channels in 196 territories dead?
If you look at the language of distribution, in the old days everyone was obsessed about premiere rights and exclusivity, because you are trying to drive people to your platform. In the modern industry, it may seem counter intuitive, but I think arguing for exclusivity is bonkers. If I was back in the channel game I would say don’t bother about exclusivity. We’re all used to sitting at home now, deciding we want to watch, say Horizon with Kevin Costner, and we can find that on Amazon, Netflix, all these different platforms at the same time. Households have their preferences, I guess in my house we’re Netflix first and then Amazon, Disney+ as we go down the scale. It’s really important to have your content distributed across as many different consumer touch points as you can because then your content gets noticed. And so arguing over things like exclusivity and premiere rights is an old-fashioned way of looking at content.
I think there are still plenty of old school execs at the cable channels who will insist on these kind of things and if you are fully funding a show then it’s not really unreasonable for you to own that show. If you hire builders to come in and build your house, you still own the house because you paid for it. Depending on who you’ve got at the top of the channel I still think you will see those old school methods of ‘we’ve paid we own’. We’ll just keep that as a bit of tent pole programming on our platform. But I think that will cease to work. I think you’ll see the channels themselves exploiting their content across the different platforms.
Where does AI and the technological advances fit in your thinking? Friend or foe?
I’m really bullish about AI, and I think it will be a force of good for our industry, as long as it’s done responsibly, which I believe it will. I think new legislation will come through.
Firstly, it’s about how you train your AI, you’ve got to own or licence what you put in. With Legend I’m already looking at AI to do recreations, but that doesn’t mean I’m just asking Sora to build me a tank. It’s about inputting images you own or licence and therefore the output is fully licenced and ownable.
Secondly, it can only be a good thing if it enables me as a producer to make better and glossier content at a cheaper rate. The whole distribution of content is being disrupted by YouTube and other platforms now. I think tech is going to disrupt production and through better, smarter cameras, with AI creeping into your post-production. In the end the cost of production will keep on plummeting to where it’s almost zero. And so that’s something I think that producers need to really be aware of.
I think it depends very much on what genre you’re using your AI in. I think AI is probably going to be a bit of a no no in news, unless you’re using it to create graphics. I think AI in natural history is going to be slightly problematic. But AI being able to bring something to life for the lower end of the production scale, that kind of cable channel documentary stuff, can only be a boom while budgets fall and there’s less commissioning. There are new opportunities opening up for distribution of your content on YouTube, and there will be another YouTube in the next five-to 10-years as well. AI will allow us to get our content onto those platforms. So I’m pretty positive about the benefits. It just needs to be regulated properly, and I think people need to be honest.
What’s your three-year plan?
I’ve definitely got a roadmap and a game plan. Any sensible production company now should be looking at a blended approach. My output is wholly digital first, but I will be seeking original commissions if I can get them. I think that hybrid model is a key one. It’s going to be a mixture of content that can sit on YouTube, television content that can sit traditional channels, podcasting and everything in between. In the first year I’m going to be building out the military history vertical and then after that building out other verticals in different genres.
