London Media Summit: Fremantle – “Experimenting Like Crazy”

Tony Cohen, Fremantle CEO - slideFremantle CEO Tony Cohen is a dab hand at presentations, and even managed to engineer some X-Factor hot pants into his talk somehow. Fremantle creates and sells programmes to broadcasters, and those broadcasters face a threat from ad-skipping PVRs and the ‘Napterisation’ of content on multiple platforms, among other things. Broadcasters have dealt with these challenges by introducing families of channels, interactive services like downloadable schedules and by creating partnerships – as CBS did with YouTube, NBC did with iVillage and Fox did with MySpace. “How their plans work remains to be seen but they are fighting back to maintain their businesses.”
– Big brands still wield the power, and hit TV shows are more important than ever. American Idol is still the top show in the US after three or four years, averaging 30 million viewers and peaking at 55 million. Fifty-nine percent of that audience is aged 16-34: “the potential to use the brand cross-platform increases every time we look at it.” It has monetised that extended brand through merchandising (that’s where the hot pants came in), sponsorship, licensing, an online karaoke challenge, user content and extra complementary programming in ITV2 in the UK – which now outstrips rival channel Five. Cohen said that in the US, the price of a 30-second ad slot on Fox during the last series peaked at $1.2 million.
– The Pop Idol format has been distributed in 30 countries and notched up a combined 2.4 billion phone votes – all of which Fremantle gets paid for.
– Fremantle’s is focusing on three areas of digital: repurposing existing content and brands, including Baywatch and Grand Designs; brand extensions, like The Price Is Right on mobile; and creating news brands, which is the most challenging. It is responsible for bringing Atomic Wedgie to the world for mobiles, and is creating a murder mystery in Berlin that invites users to participate by mobile.
– Digitisation unlocks the long tail: Fremantle is digitising much of its back catalogue including Benny Hill, George and Mildred, The Kenny Everett Show and Tommy Cooper.
– Some of his predictions for 2012: Passive TV viewing is alive and well, niche audiences grow and there’s an enormous opportunity for high-quality personalised and participatory content. “We have no idea what will capture people’s imagination and work, but all we can do in any period of great change is experiment like crazy and that’s what we’re doing.”

This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post