A New Start

FT: Reality sets in for US television

Reality sets in for US television

By Matthew Garrahan

Published: May 29 2008 03:00 | Last updated: May 29 2008 03:00

When a female contestant on a new US prime time TV reality programme recently confessed to being in love with another man on her wedding day - in front of her stunned husband and more than 8m viewers - network executives at Fox knew they had a hit on their hands.

The Moment of Truth has a simple, if uncomfortable premise. Contestants first take a lie detector test, being asked a series of highly personal questions, and are then asked the same questions again in front of friends, family and television viewers. If they answer truthfully, they can win up to $500,000.

The programme has drawn criticism for its content but its popularity with viewers ensured it became one of the few new shows aired since January to be recommissioned for a second series. Fox ordered a new batch of episodes, the first of which aired last night.

"Reality gets ratings in key demographics that you don't get in a lot of other shows," says Howard Schultz, chief executive of Lighthearted Entertainment, which produces and owns the show.

The programme has been sold to more than 50 countries by Lighthearted and is the latest example of the mushrooming popularity of the reality genre.

Reality TV is not a new phenomenon, with programmes such as Big Brother and The Apprentice regular fixtures on schedules in the US and Europe.

But since January there has been a marked increase in the number of reality shows in coveted US prime-time slots as networks adapt to a rapidly shifting economic landscape and the effects of the three-month writers' strike, which ended in February.

The strike hit the production of drama and comedy programmes, forcing the networks to look for alternative content. Cheap, quick to produce and, more importantly, popular with younger viewers, reality shows filled the gap. With more reality programming than its rivals, Fox was the top performing network during the September-May broadcasting season.

Some series were hit particularly hard by the strike, with ratings for ABC's Grey's Anatomy and CBS's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation taking hefty knocks. Although production schedules have returned to normal since the strike finished, the big four networks - ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox - did not rush to pack the upcoming autumn season with new scripted programming.

For example, ABC has commissioned only one new drama for autumn - an adaptation of the BBC's Life on Mars - while its other new programme is a game show. It is relying on the recommissioned series of scripted shows it launched last year, such as Pushing Daisies , to attract audiences.

NBC, meanwhile, will premiere eight new programmes in its summer schedule to build up to the Olympics, which it will broadcast in the US. Of those eight, seven are reality shows, including American Gladiators and Nashville Star : only Fear Itself is scripted.

Before making The Moment of Truth, Lighthearted had scored a global hit with Extreme Makeover , a reality show sold to more than 100 countries that offered lifestyle training and plastic surgery to women unhappy with their appearance. "It's difficult to get the 18-34 [demographic], which advertisers want. The networks don't seem to care about older audiences . . . we tend to make edgier fare, which negates the older audiences."

Other factors also explain why reality programming holds great appeal for the networks. Scripted shows are expensive to produce and can cost $3m for a one-hour show compared with less than $1m for a typical reality programme. Television advertising generates vast amounts of money, with about $9bn spent by advertisers last year in the US. But the market is fragmenting and facing competition from rival media, such as the internet.

"We have this fight over advertising dollars, which are drifting away to other platforms," says Mr Schultz. "Networks are making less money from advertising, which means they have to pay less for their programming."

Rob Lee, head of programming at IMG, which produces Make Me a Supermodel for Bravo, the US cable channel owned by NBC, agrees with Mr Schultz that reality TV is in the ascendancy. "The economic model for scripted shows is broken," he says. He argues that scripted entertainment has been driven to cable channels, which can support the higher cost of production because they have additional revenue streams, namely, from their subscribers.

But not everyone is writing off scripted programming on the main networks. Media Rights Capital, a new company backed by Goldman Sachs and WPP, has struck deals to make several scripted shows for the big networks, including The Goode Family on ABC and Outnumbered on Fox.

Modi Wiczyk, co-chairman of MRC, expects more dramas and comedies to return to screens before the end of the year as the networks and studios absorb the effect of the writers' strike. "Reality doesn't have the same lead-up time [as scripted programming]. If you need to adjust on the fly to a f orce majeure situation like a strike, you can make a reality show more quickly," he says.

"People have been bemoaning the death of scripted for years," he adds. "But it never goes away."

MRC recently struck a deal with ShineReveille, the TV distribution company controlled by Elizabeth Murdoch, to sell scripted and unscripted programmes to international buyers. "Audiences have an appetite for both," says Chris Grant, president of ShineReveille International. He cites current uncertainty about a possible strike by actors in the summer as another factor depressing the production of scripted shows.

"I don't think Hollywood is ready for another strike but it will weigh on the thinking [of the networks]. It's the reason for the surge in reality but there will be a resurgence in scripted programming," he says.

But for Mr Schultz, reality TV is more cost-effective. It does not represent the "big bet" of an expensive drama that might pay off in spectacular style if it becomes a hit. "Reality has stayed away from these big bets," he says, adding that networks like the genre because it is stable and more likely to make a profit.

Break with tradition on pilots and seasons

All four big US television networks used to invest heavily in scripted pilots - one-off episodes that allow executives and advertisers to assess a particular programme or idea before deciding whether to commission a full series.

But the industry is now divided over whether pilots represent value for money. The four networks spend about $500m each year on pilots that often fail to yield successful series.

Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal, has pledged to cut the number produced by NBC from about 20 to five. "We're focused on pushing up more projects straight to series," says Mitch Metcalf, head of scheduling at NBC. "We need to control costs. There just isn't that margin for waste any more."

In another break with tradition, NBC is introducing new programming throughout the year, instead of only during the traditional broadcasting "season", which runs from September to May.

This summer, NBC is launching several new shows, mostly in the reality genre. "We are increasingly looking at the summer as 52 weeks long, with summer just happening to be the epicentre of reality programming," says Mr Metcalf. "There are more distractions for scripted series [in the summer] but people are in the mood for lighter entertainment, which reality delivers so well."

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: A Sex and the City guide to media

A Sex and the City guide to media

By John Gapper

Published: May 15 2008 03:00 | Last updated: May 15 2008 03:00

It may not take a lot to make the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch's city tabloid, grumpy but the four actresses of Sex and the City , the new film of the television series, certainly provoked it this week.

The Post was dubious about the hat worn to the film's premiere by Sara Jessica Parker, who plays the lead character Carrie Bradshaw in the drama about the lives of four Manhattan women. Even worse than this faux-pas, she wore the hat in London, where the film's world premiere was held.

After London, which the Post dismissed as "the wrong city", the quartet is hitting Berlin tonight before returning to New York for yet another glitzy launch event in two weeks. New Yorkers must make do for now with posters of Carrie and her friends plastered around the city.

Even in its absence, however, Sex and the City is part of the Zeitgeist. Both the drama itself and the way it is being marketed say a lot about the future of film and television. In fact, here is my Sex and the City guide to the entertainment industry.

First, the world is bigger than the US. Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha are jetting around Europe for the same reason that the Cannes film festival, which opened yesterday, includes the premiere of the planned summer blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That is where the money is.

US films earned $17bn at the international box office last year, compared with $9.6bn at home. As a result, studios are becoming loath to invest in films that do not travel, such as dramas based on baseball. Because SATC is heavily identified with New York, the producer New Line Cinema hedged its bets with European premieres.

Second, paid-for is bigger than free. That sounds strange in the era of the internet, but entertainment for which consumers rather than advertisers pay is growing more powerful. Americans used to spend many more hours with media such as radio and broadcast television than with DVDs and video games but they are switching.

SATC is a prime example because it was a subscription cable television series made by Time Warner's Home Box Office. Indeed, along with The Sopranos , it was part of the Sunday night line-up of original programmes that turned HBO into one of the most powerful forces in entertainment, with annual revenues of about $4bn.

HBO's formula, which has since been mimicked by pay channels such as Showtime and even free cable channels such as AMC, the maker of Mad Men , was to make expensive and intelligent dramas that viewers could not find on broadcast television. SATC was too raunchy, The Sopranos was too dark and violent, Six Feet Under was too morbid etc.

It did not care about decency, or whether there was a broad enough audience to draw advertisers, because it was funded by 29m subscribers. Meanwhile, broadcasters switched to reality shows that were cheap to make - far cheaper than the $2.5m per hour a top-rank drama can cost - and reached big audiences.

That made sense in the moment but it means that HBO and Showtime, which makes Dexter and Weeds , hold more valuable long-term properties. The deal struck by HBO with Apple this week to charge $2.99 for episodes of The Sopranos and Rome on iTunes (and the standard $1.99 for SATC ) shows its pricing power.

Third, the small screen is bigger than the big screen. Box office receipts of $9.6bn in the US last year were easily outstripped by the $23.4bn of DVD rentals and sales. Digital technology allows studios to exploit new forms of distribution, including iTunes and video-on-demand. Some 20 per cent of HBO's revenues come from reselling its dramas.

Furthermore, the power of pay television is not only biting into broadcast networks but is posing a challenge to Hollywood. Subscription channels used to rely almost wholly on re-running Hollywood films and, even now, 70 per cent of HBO's output consists of studio films. The transfer of SATC from the small to the big screen is a symbol of a shift in the power balance.

A decade ago, actors, directors and scriptwriters far preferred to work in film. Complex and sophisticated dramas were found in cinemas while television was a forum for soap operas and bland drama. The rise of HBO and Hollywood's switch to making blockbusters for the 12-24 year-olds who comprise 41 per cent of frequent film-goers is changing that.

The rise of pay television as an artistic force is matched by a decline in the value of run-of-the-mill films in the secondary market. Three Hollywood studios broke away from a deal with Showtime last month to form their own pay television channel after the latter complained that it was paying too much for films and could make its own dramas.

Fourth, adults are bigger than teenagers. Young people have held sway over Hollywood in recent years because they can be relied upon to go to the cinema. But pay television has tapped an adult audience that has been under-served by film studios and can now watch dramas at home on high-definition televisions.

That is breathing life into dramas made for adult niche audiences rather than big teenage and college-student cohorts. Hollywood studios are responding to this. "Studios are being much more deliberate about choosing demographic targets and developing films for them," says Geoff Sands, a consultant at McKinsey & Company.

As adult targets go, you do not get much better than SATC . It started out as a quintessentially American television series and has ended up as a film seen first by Londoners and Berliners. Romance, promiscuity, fashion and all, it is the very model of a modern media enterprise.

john.gapper@ft.com

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: TV poetry is epic success as Arabs return to roots

TV poetry is epic success as Arabs return to roots

By Roula Khalaf

Published: March 4 2008 02:00 | Last updated: March 4 2008 02:00

Poetry, more than other art forms that have sometimes been frowned on by the religious establishment, has long held a special power to enchant in the Arab world.

Although it remains popular, and is still published on newspapers' front pages, its pre-eminence has been diluted by the dizzying offerings of more modern entertainment.

Thanks to a hit show on Abu Dhabi television, however, poetry is not only back but is now also capturing the imagination of a younger generation.

Now in its second season, the Million's Poet show, loosely modelled on American Idol , is part of Abu Dhabi's attempt to use its oil surplus to enhance its cultural credentials.

The success of the show - it has spurred copycats, a television station that broadcasts only reruns and a slew of websites and blogs - has stunned even its creators.

"Everybody laughed at us when we said we were doing a poetry show because the media focuses on looks rather than substance, or it's political or musical," says Nashwa al-Ruwaini, head of Pyramedia, producer of the show. "But we won the bet - people found it brought them back to their roots."

Nabati, the tribal form of poetry featured in the competition, can sound harsh and incomprehensible even to Arabic speakers. But in a Gulf region swimming in oil wealth and importing everything from financial centres to world- class museums, Nabati represents a comforting return to the past.

Inundated with foreigners taking advantage of the United Arab Emirates' rapidly growing economy, Emirati society has also found in the revival of a traditional cultural form a welcome protection of national identity.

The number of people attending the show in an Abu Dhabi theatre quickly swelled from about 500 to more than 1,800 and hits on the website reached 11m within hours of its launch. Encouraged, the station commissioned a second poetry show - The Prince of Poets - giving a boost this time to classical Arab poetry and a rare regional platform for young poets.

Nabati poetry has remained an integral part of UAE culture but the Million's Poet show has widened its appeal and restored a special status to the poet. That the Abu Dhabi crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nayhan, regularly attends the show has only added to its popularity.

Winners may be invited by rulers of nearby states to recite poems. Ms Ruwaini says an Iraqi contestant, called to Saudi Arabia to be congratulated, was rewarded with the citizenship he had been desperately seeking.

"We grow very fast but we need to protect our culture," says Mohammed Khalaf al Mazrouei, director-general of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage. "We brought back poetry, gave it life, gave it prestige."

Financially too, the show has been a success. Each episode costs Dh45m ($12m, €8.1m, £6.2m) to produce, which includes the winner's Dh1m prize but, says Mr Mazrouei, "all the major companies back it, with sponsorships and commercials".

Though jazzed up with star guests and dramatic music, the show remains firmly in line with local political custom. Audiences have a say - but not on their own: poets succeed only if they also win the votes of the five judges.

Although the show's producers say the poets can say what they like in the competition's first stage, praise for rulers and the region are recurrent topics. Poets are given the subjects for later stages, themes such as "love", "mother", "horse", "desert", "falcon".

Some of the five judges are tough but always respectful - and the participants would react badly to ridicule, says Ms Ruwaini. "Poets were the voice of the tribes, so you can't put them in a bad position because you'd be disrespectful towards the tribe - they're very touchy."

So touchy, in fact, that some were offended by the "bad" category they could be put into if they failed to please the audiences, forcing producers to come up with a more agreeable choice of "excellent", "good" or "medium".

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

NY Times: Sweeping the Clouds Away

The Medium

Sweeping the Clouds Away

Kevin Van Aelst

 

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By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

Published: November 18, 2007

 

Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia.

Skip to next paragraph    

Related

The Medium

For adventures in digital culture, don't miss The Medium, a blog by Virginia Heffernan.

   

Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Say what? At a recent all-ages home screening, a hush fell over the room. “What did they do to us?” asked one Gen-X mother of two, finally. The show rolled, and the sweet trauma came flooding back. What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.

Nothing in the children’s entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hopped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times. Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.

Live-action cows also charge the 1969 screen — cows eating common grass, not grain improved with hormones. Cows are milked by plain old farmers, who use their unsanitary hands and fill one bucket at a time. Elsewhere, two brothers risk concussion while whaling on each other with allergenic feather pillows. Overweight layabouts, lacking touch-screen iPods and headphones, jockey for airtime with their deafening transistor radios. And one of those radios plays a late-’60s news report — something about a “senior American official” and “two billion in credit over the next five years” — that conjures a bleak economic climate, with war debt and stagflation in the offing.

The old “Sesame Street” is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for softies born since 1998, when the chipper “Elmo’s World” started. Anyone who considers bull markets normal, extracurricular activities sacrosanct and New York a tidy, governable place — well, the original “Sesame Street” might hurt your feelings.

I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”

Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.

Snuffleupagus is visible only to Big Bird; since 1985, all the characters can see him, as Big Bird’s old protestations that he was not hallucinating came to seem a little creepy, not to mention somewhat strained. As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”). Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure. His controversial conversion to a more diverse diet wouldn’t come until 2005, and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict.

The biggest surprise of the early episodes is the rural — agrarian, even — sequences. Episode 1 spends a stoned time warp in the company of backlighted cows, while they mill around and chew cud. This pastoral scene rolls to an industrial voiceover explaining dairy farms, and the sleepy chords of Joe Raposo’s aimless masterpiece, “Hey Cow, I See You Now.” Chewing the grass so green/Making the milk/Waiting for milking time/Waiting for giving time/Mmmmm.

Oh, what’s that? Right, the trance of early “Sesame Street” and its country-time sequences. In spite of the show’s devotion to its “target child,” the “4-year-old inner-city black youngster” (as The New York Times explained in 1979), the first episodes join kids cavorting in amber waves of grain — black children, mostly, who must be pressed into service as the face of America’s farms uniquely on “Sesame Street.”

In East Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1978, 95 percent of households with kids ages 2 to 5 watched “Sesame Street.” The figure was even higher in Washington. Nationwide, though, the number wasn’t much lower, and was largely determined by the whims of the PBS affiliates: 80 percent in houses with young children. The so-called inner city became anywhere that “Sesame Street” played, because the Children’s Television Workshop declared the inner city not a grim sociological reality but a full-color fantasy — an eccentric scene, framed by a box and far removed from real farmland and city streets alike.

The concept of the “inner city” — or “slums,” as The Times bluntly put it in its first review of “Sesame Street” — was therefore transformed into a kind of Xanadu on the show: a bright, no-clouds, clear-air place where people bopped around with monsters and didn’t worry too much about money, cleanliness or projecting false cheer. The Upper West Side, hardly a burned-out ghetto, was said to be the model.

People on “Sesame Street” had limited possibilities and fixed identities, and (the best part) you weren’t expected to change much. The harshness of existence was a given, and no one was proposing that numbers and letters would lead you “out” of your inner city to Elysian suburbs. Instead, “Sesame Street” suggested that learning might merely make our days more bearable, more interesting, funnier. It encouraged us, above all, to be nice to our neighbors and to cultivate the safer pleasures that take the edge off — taking baths, eating cookies, reading. Don’t tell the kids.

Points of Entry

Caveat teletor: Volumes 1 and 2 of “Sesame Street: Old School” are available on DVD, which you can sample and buy on Sesameworkshop.org. With a few episodes, extras and celebrity appearances by the likes of Richard Pryor and Lou Rawls, “Old School” sounds harmless enough. But are you ready to mainline this much ’70s nostalgia?

The Way Old: YouTube is great for performance art. If 1969 is not far back enough for you, how’s 1935? The Oscar-winning short film “How to Sleep,” by the Algonquin Round-Tabler Robert Benchley, can be found here in sumptuous black-and-white; search for his name and the film’s title on YouTube.

Come of Age: Marshall Herskovitz and

Edward Zwick

, the men of “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething,” have at last introduced their online-only young-adult series, “Quarterlife.” It started Nov. 11 on MySpaceTV.com, and it marks the first time a network-quality series — a long indie film, really — has been produced directly for the Internet. If the old times unnerve you, welcome to the new times.

FT: Saudi comedy writers turn gaze on liberals

Saudi comedy writers turn gaze on liberals

By Roula Khalaf in London

Published: September 25 2007 05:21 | Last updated: September 25 2007 05:21

Tash Ma Tash, the hit Saudi comedy series that runs during the holy month of Ramadan, has been poking fun at local life for the past 14 years, targeting the kingdom’s stifling religious rules and ridiculing those who support them.

For the first time this year, however, the show has also taken aim at Saudi liberals, a growing but still shy minority that has been struggling to compete with the more powerful Islamists.

Nasser al-Qassabi, a creator of the series and lead actor in the show, which is aired on the Saudi-owned MBC channel, says he is counted as a liberal, but that “the liberals are not serious, they are not committed, they are not practical. They just talk.”

Although in recent years voices calling for social and religious reform in Saudi Arabia have multiplied, they have failed to coalesce into a coherent movement to compete with Islamists.

In the limited 2005 municipal poll, as in most other elections in the Arab world, liberals were trounced by Islamists. Worse, liberals have become associated with unpopular US policies. Briefly encouraged by the Bush administration’s post-9/11 drive to democratise the Middle East, they were left disappointed and on the defensive when US enthusiasm faded.

Mr Qassabi says he was first shocked by the failure of liberal writers to respond to a Tash episode four years ago that dealt with mihran, the male guardians imposed on women.

“The episode made a lot of noise and was very controversial. But although 90 per cent of writers are liberals, no one spoke about it: they were worried about the consequences,” he says. “There are liberal voices working but they’re not effective. They could do more if they were a bit more courageous.”

The episode about liberals, aired at the weekend, told the story of a “real” liberal writer “who is free and fights for his ideas”, according to Mr Qassabi. “But those around him only shout slogans and are lost in their dreams. So when he gets into trouble, they give up on him.”

Yet the influence of liberals on the debate over social change in Saudi Arabia should not be underestimated. They have become a dominant voice in the local press and have contributed to breaking social taboos, particularly on the role of women.

This year a series of articles accusing the mutawa’a, the religious police, of violent abuses led to official investigations. Moreover, a women’s committee has been formed this month to lobby for permission to drive. The “League of Demanders of Women’s Right to Drive Cars” presented a petition to the king on Sunday.

In a conservative society such as Saudi Arabia’s, liberals face a formidable challenge from Islamists, who also seem more attuned to the economic concerns of ordinary people and more determined to push for political democratisation.

The appeal of liberals is weakened by their views sometimes being associated with those of the royal family, particularly since King Abdullah himself has advocated social change. “Reform to the liberals is about criticising Islamists but not about the bad policies of the government,” says Sulaiman al-Hattlan, a liberal writer who hosts a talk show on the US-backed Hurra Arabic channel.

“Islamists have credibility because they are true to their political ideals, because they go to jail, and they’re willing to pay the price. The liberals have no credibility. They’re associated with foreign powers and people are sceptical of them.”

Across the Arab world, restrictions on political life have constrained liberal groups’ ability to win mass support. In spite of their weakness, some regimes – Egypt’s in particular – consider their liberal opponents to be a greater menace than Islamists because they represent an acceptable alternative for the world community.

Mr Qassabi says his show’s decision to take on the liberals is not aimed at placating Islamists or the religious establishment. And he claims not to be worried about the reaction of his friends to the parody of their political life.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

FT: Fighting talk

Fighting talk

By Rachel Morarjee

Published: May 9 2007 03:00 | Last updated: May 9 2007 03:00

T o get to an interview with

Afghanistan

's biggest media mogul, you have to show your ID to armed guards and wait outside a fortified gate topped by barbed wire.

Once inside the Tolo Television building, Saad Mohseni holds court in a surprisingly unassuming office, juggling telephone calls in two languages as businessmen and politicians sit and wait to talk to him in front of a bank of television screens.

"The key to survival is not being recognised and being low-key," says the director of the Moby Media Group, which runs two television stations, a radio station and a magazine.

Low-key is not a word usually associated with Mr Mohseni, an Afghan-American former investment banker who once headed Tricom Group, a stockbroking firm in

Melbourne

. In 2002, he came out to

Kabul

to start a venture capital fund with almost $3m raised by his family and is now the most important figure in the country's fledgling media industry.

The son of an Afghan diplomat in

Tokyo

, he says he felt the need to see

Afghanistan

for himself and his commitment to the country has built up gradually over the years. "As Afghans, many of us felt compelled to come back. During the Taliban reign, many of us wondered: what if we had returned in 1989 following the Russian withdrawal? Would things have been different?"

He began by setting up the radio station Arman FM in early 2003. "I was going to be a passive investor in a sort of venture capital fund," he says.

It didn't take him long, though, to realise that a much more hands-on approach was called for. "To form a business in a market that doesn't exist you need a degree of vision to imagine a strategy," he says. The grand plan was unlikely to come from disc jockeys who had so little idea of how a radio station worked that they struggled with the challenge of filling airtime with conversation.

Starting with just five employees - including the DJs - and building up to the current 400, Mr Mohseni's media empire now encompasses Arman FM and the Persian language television channel Tolo, which broadcasts in 15 Afghan towns and cities.

Mr Mohseni recruited his brothers Zaid and Jahid, a lawyer who also worked in finance, to buildup the radio station and launch Tolo Television in October 2004, using a US Agency for International Development grant topurchase the hardware for both the television and the radio operations.

Lemar TV, a Pashtun-language channel that serves up a diet of news and current affairs programmes aimed at a conservative audience in the southern andeastern part of the country, was launched in August last year. Like the other two stations, it is available within

Afghanistan

and regionally on satellite.

Increasingly, the content is driven by the journalists and producers, who are young and in touch with the audience of young Afghans.

"The changes in society are reflected on TV. The content is now more sophisticated than when we started," says Mr Mohseni, adding that although the age of the country's political establishment hovers around 60, most Afghans are below 30 and have little memory of the Russian occupation or even the civil war that followed.

Tolo broadcasts a lighter stream of news, slapstick comedy, soap operas and reality shows, including an American Idol-style programme called Afghan Star and another that showcases stand-up comedy from around the country.

Afghan Star has spawned a production company, Aria Production, and a recording and distribution arm, Barbud Music, which now boasts a dozen artists, including the country's first rap star, DJ Besho.

"We write music and lyrics, produce the songs and groom the stars. We have men and women. We're creating an industry," says Mr Mohseni, in a basement television studio where announcers are preparing the 6pm news broadcast.

Yet Tolo Television and its sister channels have become a lightning rod for controversy as the content has become more political (see below).

After the fall of the Taliban, Arman's broadcasts stirred up a furore because the shows featured male and female presenters. "Three years ago, Arman was nearly shut down because we had men and women talking on air," says Saad's sister Wazhma Mohseni, the marketing director.

When Tolo Television started and there was a lack of resources, music videos were the easiest thing to air, raising the ire of conservative clerics but delighting the urban youth.

Since then, the station has gone on to produce more of its own content as well as running Indian and Turkish dramas, raising more hackles in the process, especially with Danger Bell, a political satire that mocks establishment figures.

"No one is safe. We will make fun of everyone. We are constantly pushing the envelope working out how far we can go," says Zaid Mohseni.

Tolo created a storm last year and was banned from filming in parliament after the programme aired footage of MPs snoozing and picking their noses. A cameraman was attacked in the parliament, while armed men linked to another MP who was filmed napping paid a threatening visit to the home of a Tolo reporter.

"You have to be prepared for everything. To have wings clipped, your staff killed, to be blown up or shut down. Ultimately, though, we can say that we tried," says Saad Mohseni.

To add to the difficulties, layers of bureaucracy laid down by successive communist, Islamist and US-backed regimesform a labyrinthine tangle for businesses. "In 2002, there was a sense of euphoria. I felt completely safe and completely at ease in

Kabul

. There was sense that the country really could change for the better," he says. That feeling has now dissipated.

Escalating security threats have since hampered business, with criminality as big a problem as the Taliban insurgency.

Advertising revenue dried up within weeks of riots that swept

Kabul

last May, as chief executives cancelled their trips to

Afghanistan

and international companies put expansion plans on hold.

Despite that, advertising revenues continue to grow and Tolo has about a third of the advertising market, estimated to stand at between $15m and $20m, according to figures from the Kabul-based agency Altai-JWT.

Annual advertising expenditure in

Afghanistan

stands at 30 US cents per capita, compared with $6 over the border in

Pakistan

, says Mr Mohseni, and, with the entry of multinational advertisers such as Unilever and Nestlé into the market in the past six months, it is set to grow further. "We are coming from such a low base, there is a lot of room for expansion," he says.

Despite the political and practical obstacles, Mr Mohseni is determined that public support will keep the station on air and popular.

"It has reached a stage where the media has got a life of its own and it's not always driven by politics. Sometimes it's soap operas. People will not tolerate missing out on their favourite show, even for a night," he adds.

Business at the limits: how Afghan start-ups fend for themselves

Published: May 9 2007 03:00 | Last updated: May 9 2007 03:00

Despite paying corporate tax at a rate of 20 per cent,

Afghanistan

's Moby Media Group can rely on little help from the government.

Security is provided by a private firm. The police are allied with political leaders, who object to Tolo Television's coverage of their policies. In the wake of an interview last month, in which he was questioned about his failure to tackle corruption, Abdul Jabar Sabet, the attorney-general, sent policemen to arrest reporters without a warrant. The station caught the raid on camera, and after the reporters' release broadcast images of injuries they suffered while in custody.

Meanwhile, the Information Ministry is trying to push draconian media laws through parliament. It has tried to bar Lemar Television from airing broadcasts by the English arm of Al Jazeera television as part of a broader effort to rein in media that have criticised government.

"It is a pretty lonely place for most businesses," says Saad Mohseni, the media group's director. "You can't rely on the legal institutions. There is no one you can rely on."

Like many other businesses, the stations produce their own electricity using generators, which costs 20-25 US cents per kilowatt hour. "That's double what it should be," he says.

There is no public transport so employees have to be ferried to work in company cars, which break down regularly on the country's poorly maintained roads.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

FT: Big-spending brands turn Oscars into week-long party

With 30-second advertising slots that can cost $1m a piece, the Super Bowl is a more lucrative marketing opportunity than the Oscars. But the build-up to the Oscars is coveted by advertisers because they can conduct smaller, more targeted campaigns.

The Oscars, unlike the Super Bowl, represent "a week in time that allows entertainment and brands to converge in a really strong way", says Lori Sale, head of global branded entertainment at International Creative Management, a Hollywood talent agency.

"It is hugely important for every fashion, jewellery and cosmetic brand. But the Oscars has also expanded to cars, weight loss products . . any brand you can think of."

==

Big-spending brands turn Oscars into week-long party

By Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles

Published: February 24 2007 02:00 | Last updated: February 24 2007 02:00

The ticking clock on the official Oscar website is breathlessly billed as a "countdown to the live telecast", showing the number of hours left before the start of the 79th Academy Awards tomorrow.

The website, much like the awards themselves, serves another purpose though: a host of brands are prominently displayed, reflecting the Oscars' increasing ability to sell products.

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The Oscars used to be confined to a single evening of television, watched patiently by families across America. But during the last 10 years, they have evolved into a week-long marketing juggernaut of promotional parties and events that are highly coveted by advertisers.

Hollywood has been packed this week as companies have sought to capitalise on the pulling power of the awards. General Motors, for example, bought itself priceless airtime on the main television networks when it hosted a pre-Oscar fashion show featuring stars such as Lindsay Lohan and Carmen Electra posing alongside its latest range.

The Oscars have "become a season", says Damon Wolf, president and chief executive of Crew Creative, the advertising agency that creates campaigns for Hollywood films. The week of warm-up events and parties, and the big night itself, is a "must for certain products and [brand] categories.

"It is a great opportunity for companies to seetheir brands reach millions of people around the world".

Unlike the Sunday night ceremony, the private events this week will not be seen by millions of people. Instead, they represent a chance for individual brands to reach a wealthy, niche audience.

At the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills, home to many nominated actors during Oscar week, several "luxury lounges" have been opened where invited stars can view and sample the latest upmarket products.

The Oscars are a marketing opportunity for the hotel, too. It is popular with British nominees and is using Oscar week to redirect its marketing activities towards British guests. "It is our most important market outside the US," says Sarah Cairns of Four Seasons.

Giorgio Armani is tonight due to host a star-studded event at the home of Ron Burkle, the southern California-based billionaire. Meanwhile, Ebony magazine's pre-Oscar party on Thursday night attracted leading African American stars such as Forest Whitaker and secured sponsorship from Lincoln Mercury cars, Anheuser-Busch, and the Bahamas.

"What we are trying to do is break out of all the clutter," says Ellison Tommy Thompson, deputy director- general of the Bahamas ministry of tourism. "We are trying to attract the African American audience to the Bahamas while Los Angeles is also a growing market for us." The Ebony Oscar party, he said, was "a great opportunity to associate ourselves with a big brand that is fun and exciting".

With 30-second advertising slots that can cost $1m a piece, the Super Bowl is a more lucrative marketing opportunity than the Oscars. But the build-up to the Oscars is coveted by advertisers because they can conduct smaller, more targeted campaigns.

The Oscars, unlike the Super Bowl, represent "a week in time that allows entertainment and brands to converge in a really strong way", says Lori Sale, head of global branded entertainment at International Creative Management, a Hollywood talent agency.

"It is hugely important for every fashion, jewellery and cosmetic brand. But the Oscars has also expanded to cars, weight loss products . . any brand you can think of."

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

FT: Monday Interview: Big hitter who bats for stars

As the head of ICM, his management strategy has always been to give young, talented agents more responsibility.

“We tend to put agents in senior roles relatively early on in their careers,” he says. “We would rather let someone grow and develop when their ambition is unbridled than let them settle into a complacent career.”

Monday Interview: Big hitter who bats for stars

By Matthew Garrahan

Published: February 4 2007 17:53 | Last updated: February 4 2007 17:53

Two photographs hang on the wall of Jeffrey Berg’s Beverly Hills office, each one showing the biggest hitters in US corporate life relaxing at Herb Allen’s exclusive annual media gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Among the small group dressed casually for the golf course are Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Sumner Redstone of Viacom is there, as is Dick Parsons of Time Warner. And in the middle of each photograph is Mr Berg, the chairman and chief executive of International Creative Management.

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ICM is a minnow compared with Microsoft and News Corp. But as Mr Berg’s attendance at the elite Sun Valley event suggests, the talent agency he has chaired for 22 years packs a big punch.

Under Mr Berg’s leadership, the company has established itself as one of the leading players in talent representation, jostling for supremacy with the likes of CAA, William Morris and Endeavor.

Some of Hollywood’s brightest stars are on its books, notably Mel Gibson, Denzel Washington, Beyoncé Knowles and Halle Berry. Its activities are not confined to the film industry, though. It has had a hand in the success of many lucrative, long-running television programmes, packaging and syndicating Grey’s Anatomy, Friends, Sex and the City and The Simpsons, among others. ICM also boasts a thriving literary division, representing authors such as Toni Morrison and Carl Hiaasen.

Mr Berg’s career in the entertainment industry be-gan unconventionally. At high school he toyed with joining the marines but had to change his plans after a fall in which he broke both arms. Then, as an undergraduate reading literature at the University at California at Berkeley in the 1960s, he joined the Peace & Freedom party, which campaigned against the war in Vietnam.

He had his first encounter with the industry when he took a summer job for an agency reading scripts and novels to find material that might be suitable for the big screen.

Through this work he had a hand in two of the era’s seminal films, reading A Clockwork Orange and Midnight Cowboy and recommending them to his agency bosses. “I found those pro-jects at a relatively young stage in my life and I thought, ‘I like this. This is interesting’.”

After graduating in 1969 and going to Hawaii for a surfing holiday, word reached him that the agency, a predecessor of ICM, was offering him a full-time job. So he packed his surfboard and returned to the office to take up his post.

Almost 40 years later, after a career in which he has worked on films as diverse as Star Wars, Jaws and Braveheart, the board shorts have gone, replaced by a smart suit, blue shirt and Hermès tie. He appears erudite yet is personable and easy-going – a useful attri-bute in an industry where the ability to maintain strong personal relationships is prized.

Unlike the average Hollywood executive who is happy to charm actors and directors but lacks financial know-how, Mr Berg also has a grasp of the broader economic changes taking place in the industry. Hedge funds, private equity groups and other investors are increasingly looking to put money into the film business.

“All the studios are accessing sources of outside capital,” he says. “At one point our job [as an agency] was to advise artists and negotiate smart and informed deals. We still do this but we also have a role to play in securing finance to make the films in the first place.” This has led to new opportunities for ICM. “We have been one of the agencies that have successfully penetrated the capital markets. It has given us a real competitive edge.”

He has also been able to act on his long-held belief in the need for consolidation among talent agencies, last year acquiring Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann, a leading television agency, in a deal worth close to $100m. The deal was made possible by an equity financing in which Rizvi Traverse, a private equity group, and Merrill Lynch’s asset-based finance group acquired stakes in ICM. “There will be more deals to follow,” Mr Berg says.

The Broder deal strengthened ICM’s position in tele-vision at a critical time. The sharp increase in the num-ber of US cable channels and the fast-expanding international broadcasting market has increased the value of television content. Capable of drawing audiences years after they were first aired because of secondary and even tertiary syndication deals, popular television shows “can have an economic life in perpetuity”, according to Mr Berg.

The shift has led to ICM’s television business becoming more profitable than its core film activities. “From a margin performance, television is the leader,” he says. Following the Broder deal, ICM’s revenues are believed to be about $200m.

In terms of prestige, though, having a strong presence in film remains crucial because of its ability to act as a magnet for talent in related industries. So ICM has maintained and added to an impressive roster of film clients. All of the top 10 grossing films of 2006 featured ICM clients, while the company also represents directors such as Woody Allen, and Stephen Frears who directed The Queen.

As in other agencies, staff retention is crucial at ICM because of the close relationships between agents and their superstar clients. But at the beginning of the year ICM suffered a blow when Robert Newman, one of its most senior agents, left to join Endeavor, a fierce rival. Mr Berg takes a pragmatic view. “We never want to lose good people,” he says, adding that he is proud of the group’s ability to retain key staff. “If you look around our offices in Los Angeles and New York you will find people who have been here 20, 25 years.”

The close relationship between an agency and its clients also means agents can be brought into the spotlight if the clients mis-behave. Mr Berg experienced this six months ago when Mel Gibson, one of ICM’s biggest stars, made anti-Semitic remarks to a Jewish police officer after being arrested for drink driving.

Mr Berg, who is Jewish, was faced with a dilemma. “It was a difficult event for our agency. I supported him publicly but also said his actions were indefensible. I think I know what’s in his heart and who he is.”

When he came out in support of Mr Gibson, “I took criticism for it. But I would do it again,” says Mr Berg. The broader issue, he says, “is that agents often find themselves in situations that have nothing to do with the deal”.

Still, the boy from Berkeley continues to love the entertainment industry. “It’s a smaller industry than something like financial services. But it’s wildly more influential in terms of affecting social thought and cultural opinion,” he says.

Thick skin and a level head

An agent for almost 40 years, Jeffrey Berg has worked on a diverse range of films and entertainment projects, including ‘Star Wars’, ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ and ‘Braveheart’. He knows what it takes to succeed in the competitive talent agency industry.

“You need to know how to construct a deal and be able to openly communicate complex issues to staff and clients,” he says.

“You need passion for
the career, intense salesmanship skills and the ability to subordinate your own ego. You need to be able to foster good relations [with clients]. I would also say a pretty tough skin and ability to cope with rejection [is important].”

As the head of ICM, his management strategy has always been to give young, talented agents more responsibility.

“We tend to put agents in senior roles relatively early on in their careers,” he says. “We would rather let someone grow and develop when their ambition is unbridled than let them settle into a complacent career.”

With hedge funds and private equity firms looking to invest in Hollywood, the nature of ICM’s work has changed: the agency is now active in securing film financing. Such complex work requires employees with different skills.

“We compete directly with the major law firms and investment banks for new staff,” says Mr Berg. “People coming out of business schools in America are looking at agency careers in the way that 10, 15 years ago they were looking at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey.”

The changing nature of ICM’s business is a new attraction, he adds, but the lure of working in the entertainment industry is also a factor for young people considering an agency career. “It’s dynamic and sexy . . . it’s a magnet to people.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

FT: Media groups are grappling with a drift of revenue to the web

In addition, the shift in classified advertising to the internet as sites such as Craigslist make this service available, also often free, has gathered pace, hitting newspaper revenues. Advertising shifts appear to have hastened last year, leading many forecasters to cut their 2007 expectations.

In particular, she says, television will start to feel the impact this year as the wider use of high-speed internet connections allows online video to proliferate.

An analysis by Bain & Company, a consultancy, illustrates the problem. For an average US newspaper, a subscriber generates about $1,000 a year from advertising. For those newspapers that base their internet strategy around being a content destination, each viewer generates an average of $5.50 of advertising revenue. Losing one print subscriber can therefore be hard to recoup in terms of advertising, even as advertising dollars shift online.

==

Media groups are grappling with a drift of revenue to the web

By Aline van Duyn

Published: January 1 2007 18:44 | Last updated: January 1 2007 18:44

Whenever a large company goes on the block, industry consultants can expect the phone to ring. Private-equity investors and other potential buyers need someone to analyse the business and its prospects, or at least produce figures to back up opinions they already have.

Yet the ongoing auction of Tribune, the second-largest US newspaper company and owner of titles such as the Los Angeles Times, has generated very little such business. Plenty of in-depth assessments of the future of US newspapers were conducted about a year ago when Knight Ridder, another newspaper group, was for sale.

Knight Ridder went in a trade purchase. It drew no significant bid from private-equity investors, who concluded there was no hidden pot of gold in the newspaper industry and little certainty about future earnings amid internet-fuelled declines in circulation and advertising revenue.

“We all had a lot of work on Knight Ridder,” says the head of the media division of a New York based consulting firm. “Not for Tribune, however. Potential buyers already know the story – and it is not a good one.”

Gloom surrounding the prospects for the newspaper industry is one reason the boards of both Tribune and Knight Ridder sought buyers, submitting to pressure from some of their shareholders to find a way to boost returns.

Yet deals are not always the answer. McClatchy, the press group that bought Knight Ridder for $4.5bn (£2.3bn, €3.4bn) in cash and shares, turned out to be the worst-performing stock last year among US listed companies that completed large acquisitions. But how many more readers and advertisers will online rivals lure away and what can print publishers do to keep them?

Newspaper circulation has been in decline since the 1970s following the widespread introduction of news coverage on television. But the falls have accelerated in recent years as more people turn to the internet for instant news, often provided for free.

In addition, the shift in classified advertising to the internet as sites such as Craigslist make this service available, also often free, has gathered pace, hitting newspaper revenues. Advertising shifts appear to have hastened last year, leading many forecasters to cut their 2007 expectations.

Merrill Lynch, for example, expects a 2.6 per cent gain in overall US advertising spending this year but anticipates that newspaper advertising revenues will be down 1.5 per cent. Analysts at Lehman Brothers are even more pessimistic: newspaper revenues are forecast to fall 4 per cent this year, due in part to a migration of property advertising to the web.

“The movement out of print media continues and has lately been sharper than expected,” says Peter Winkler, managing director of the entertainment and media practice at PwC.

With newspapers at the centre of the digital storm, that industry’s efforts to adapt are being closely watched by executives in other media sectors, among them magazine publishers, television networks, film studios and cable and satellite television distributors. So far, at least in the US, the shifts have been less severe in television, the biggest advertising medium, with advertising growth keeping pace with economic expansion.

In Britain, where commercial television is a smaller market, a much larger proportion of advertising has already shifted to the internet. Google, the search engine, is forecast to take the biggest share of UK advertising revenues and overtake the top broadcasters as early as this year.

Laura Desmond, chief executive officer of MediaVest, a media buying agency, says that in the past year digital strategies have been “95 per cent of the talk and 5 per cent of the spend”. She predicts that this ratio will shift rapidly, with digital advertising potentially reaching 15 per cent of total advertising spending by 2009.

In particular, she says, television will start to feel the impact this year as the wider use of high-speed internet connections allows online video to proliferate. On the internet “you can now get sight, sound and motion”, she says. “Television [channels] will have to innovate to take that into account. The barrier around their fortress is crumbling; they will take a larger share of the shifts from now on.”

Other factors have so far limited the ability of advertisers to switch spending from old to newer media, Ms Desmond says. These include a lack of people with digital experience, as well as insufficient technical systems and infrastructure. “Digital is not the wild west but there is nothing standard in digital,” she says. “Everything is highly customised and this means it is not easily scalable. The industry needs to invest to develop these areas.”

Two weeks ago Publicis, the French advertising group, made a $1.3bn bid for Digitas, a US specialist in online advertising and other forms of digital and interactive marketing. Maurice Levy, Publicis chairman, said then that the bid reflected the speed with which advertising was moving to the web.

“What we can see is a huge migration of investment from traditional media to online media,” he said, adding that Publicis – which owns the Leo Burnett, Publicis and Saatchi & Saatchi global advertising networks – had expertise online but needed to buy Digitas to accelerate its efforts.

The effectiveness of interactive internet advertising – such as the search marketing developed by Google – is much easier to gauge than than television or print advertising. The increased attention being given to measurability has already led to shifts in strategy at many media groups, which are concentrating more on big brands that can more easily be extended to the internet and have a bigger resonance with consumers.

Time Warner, the world’s biggest media company – owner of AOL, Time magazine, Warner Brothers film studios and cable channels such as CNN and Cartoon Network – recently revamped its magazine group and is selling titles that are not among its strongest brands. This strategy is being adopted across the company.

“We are extremely optimistic about the internet platform providing advertising growth,” says Jeff Bewkes, president and chief operating officer at Time Warner. “Advertisers have long said that they know half of their advertising budget is being wasted; they just don’t know which half. As they figure this out with the improved measurability of the internet, it is a good thing to own the leading media brands as well as AOL, as all of these will be effective online, just as they are offline.”

Mr Winkler says that television advertisers are adapting their selling techniques, offering many more ways for companies to promote their brands. “Cross-platform ad sales are happening more and more,” he says. “For many, it is less about a move out of television than an evolution towards a broader approach, which includes product placement, online advertising and sponsorship. Big media companies are responding aggressively.”

For its part, the newspaper industry has seen no shortage of innovative efforts, with many newspapers adapting their content to make it available in a more suitable form online. Video and picture content have flourished on newspaper websites, with readers often being able to submit stories and pictures, strengthening the bond.

Yet there are troubling trends, which account for the nervousness about judging future profitability. The newspaper industry has higher fixed costs than some other sectors of the media, so switching distribution does not automatically lead to significant savings.

An analysis by Bain & Company, a consultancy, illustrates the problem. For an average US newspaper, a subscriber generates about $1,000 a year from advertising. For those newspapers that base their internet strategy around being a content destination, each viewer generates an average of $5.50 of advertising revenue. Losing one print subscriber can therefore be hard to recoup in terms of advertising, even as advertising dollars shift online.

“Newspapers can’t make up the difference for what they are losing,” says Peter Aman, a partner at Bain & Company. “Newspapers therefore need to monetise the internet through different business models.” These might include taking a cut from transactions that take place on the site (such as airline ticket sales) or charging a fee for consumer referrals (to a qualified plumber, say).

Some of the extremely popular social networking sites are also experimenting to see what will work best. Sites such as MySpace – owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and at the centre of his online strategy – are not content to rely solely on advertising as a revenue source. They are seeking to develop e-commerce deals with mobile phone companies, for instance, and offer users a search facility in a revenue-sharing tie-up with Google.

This need to find new income streams is one of the harder issues for the “old” media, which may resist investing in new areas in order to preserve their declining margins. Many are trying, though, revamping both print and online editions in an effort to attract more advertisers and also keep their readers interested. The Wall Street Journal, for example, is today due to change its print design. “We are in the early days of the digital age even now,” says Gordon Crovitz, executive vice-president of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

There are still some buyers interested in newspapers. The LA Times has attracted the attention of a number of California billionaires, who see value in owning a newspaper that has a strong local presence and is at the centre of the entertainment industry. David Geffen, the Hollywood media mogul, has made an offer but it is believed to be a lot less than Tribune wants. Jack Welch, former head of GE, has looked into buying one of Boston’s main newspapers together with a number of other local businessmen.

As efforts to sell Tribune gather pace again in the coming weeks, the level of interest will be watched by the newspaper industry as well as other media sectors. It will help place a future value on these businesses in transition.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

FT: 'Famous Five' deal for Disney

The deal comes as Disney shifts its focus away from exporting US-made content and towards producingmore content in local markets.
==

'Famous Five' deal for Disney

By Matthew Garrahanin Los Angeles

Published: December 4 2006 02:00 | Last updated: December 4 2006 02:00

Walt Disney has struck a deal to develop an animated television series based on Enid Blyton's Famous Five stories, as part of the media group's new strategy for international growth.

The company will work with Chorion, a British company that owns the rights to several literary properties,to develop the series. It will be produced in the UK and broadcast on the UK Disney Channel.

The deal comes as Disney shifts its focus away from exporting US-made content and towards producingmore content in local markets.

A Bollywood version of the hit Disney Channel film High School Musical is in production in India for example, while versions of the movie are also being made in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. Meanwhile, ABC, the US TV network owned by Disney, is co-producing an Argentine version of its popular Desperate Housewives series.

"Our goal is to create a global library of content," said Rich Ross, president of Disney Channel Worldwide. He added that television formats created in international markets, such as the UK, could then be adaptedfor other countries, including the US.

This has already happened in Italy, where Quelli dell Intervallo, an Italian Disney Channel programme, was remade for the French and Spanish markets. The programme is also being remade for the UK and the US.

Twenty-six episodes of Famous Five have been commissioned with the programme due to premiere in the UK in 2008. Other countries, possibly the US, will then broadcast the programme.

Disney said the 1940s stories would be given a contemporary twist and would remain true to the spirit of Blyton's characters. However, old-fashioned Famous Five catchphrases, such as "lashings of ginger beer" will not be included in the new series.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006