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TALKING SHOP: Danny Fenton, CEO and executive chairman of Zig Zag Productions, discuses the company’s new Fox show I Wanna Marry Harry, plus the latest spate of M&A activity in the TV business.
C21's Talking Shop is a daily strand on C21Media.net that goes behind the news to talk to leading players in the international content business.
Zig Zag partnered with Ryan Seacrest Productions on Harry – a comic reality series that sees 12 American women compete to marry a man they believe is Prince Harry – and also forged another alliance in the US recently with The Gurin Company.
“The thing about being an independent company is you can choose who you have relationships with,” says Fenton, conceding that this is an increasingly rare thing as the pace of M&A activity across the industry accelerates.
Having sold Zig Zag to Banijay in early 2010, only to buy back the business nine months later after that marriage went awry, Fenton says it may well be time to reconsider the firm’s independence.
But it’s transactions at a higher level that are shaping the industry. “It’s the 10-ton gorilla eating the other 10-ton gorilla. It’s consolidation of the so-called superpowers,” says Fenton. “There are going to be more players coming into the market – the Yahoo!s, Googles and Netflixs of this world.”
He offers thoughts on ITV’s string of acquisitions, Discovery Communications and Liberty Global’s buy-out of All3Media and Viacom taking over the UK’s Channel 5, plus the debate as to whether Israel really is a hotbed of format development.
