international · 1995-07-08 · tv series. if you're a perfectionist like gerry anderson and...

INTERNATIONALJULY/AUGUST 1995

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THE NEWEXPLORERS,ith Bill Kurtis

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WEIRD TV

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DinosaursPenguinsVolcanoesWhales

16 DAYSOF GLORYEarcelc r a '922.5 HoursLilleha Tmer '943 Hour

4515 VAN Nuvs &v v. SA-rE 301 S-IERMAN OAKS, CA 91403 USA TEL: (818) 784-3337 FAX: (818) 848-7934

TBI CONTENTS16 PROGRAMMING

Tooth And ClawThe love affair between film-makers and theworld's flora and fauna continues unabated,but many broadcasters aren't convinced.TBI's global round -up checks the health ofthe natural history genre and profilesNational Geographic Television, aproducer/distributor with a mission.

16 Watching Wildlife24 Peak PerformerCover picture: The Discovery Channel

33 FOCUS: ARCHIVES

Making HistoryArchive can mean low-cost or ready-madetv or the stuff of "high -end," high -profiledocumentaries. Either way, demand is onthe increase and the range of sources forarchive is expanding all the time.

33 Mining The Gold38 New Riches41 The Price Of Gold42 TBI's Guide To Archives Worldwide

28 COPYRIGHT LAW

Right RevisionsThe law on copyright is changing on both sides of the Atlantic. Experts tell all rightsowners and distributors need to know.

28 Another Breath30 User Friendly

DEPARTMENTS

Monitor6 MGM Goes Gold With Asian Channel

7 Fourth Taiwan Network Free Of Govt

7 Singapore TV Speaks Mandarin

8 Seven Switches Sides In Oz Battle

8 U.S. Shows Prized By Canadian Nets

10 Pilots Piloting New Series To Air

11 CME Seeks Profits In New Markets

12 Bartering Novelas Into Soap Operas

13 Hallmark Channel Spreads Its Wings

13 Spain Takes Up Quota Cudgels

EDITOR'S NOTE

Big Scary Animals 2

PERSPECTIVE

Slow Progress To The Next Century 4

COMMENT

More Channels, Not Better Boxes 14

PRODUCT NEWS

The LA Screenings and other stories 51

DATA

Micro Economics 54

ADVERTISING

Who Controls The Mass Medium? 56

Television Business International July/August 1995

1

EDITOR'S NOTE

TBITELEVISION=BUSINESSINTERNATIONAL

Publisher Paul Nicholson

Editor Rich Zahradnik

Deputy Editor Tim Westcott

Reporter Marie Beardmore

Hong Kong Bureau Chief Sarah Walker

Contributing EditorsToby Syfret, Les Brown, Wilfred Ahrens,Jean -Luc Renaud, Chris Dziadul,Barbara Bliss Osborn (U.S.)

Editorial Assistant Jane Birch

Director of Sales Sally -Anne \Vilse

Publishing & Sales Co-ordinatorCaroline Haybyrne

European Sales Manager Helen Stredder

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Art Editor/Business PublicationsMatthew Humberstone

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Production Debbie Williams

Managing Director,21st Century Publishing Nick Snow

Correspondents: Argentina Mike GalettoAustralia Liz Fell; Brazil Michael Kepp;Canada Noel Meyer, Karen Murray; DenmarkThomas Dodd; China Ma Yuanhe; FinlandEddie Hawkins; France Serge Siritzky;Germany Jack Kindred; Greece StylianosPapathanassopoulos; Hong Kong SarahWalker, Owen Hughes; India Asoka Raina;Ireland Fergal Ringrose; Israel BarryChamish; Italy Cecilia Zecchinelli; JapanMark Schilling; Kenya Kazunga Katana;Netherlands Dick Versteeg; New ZealandPaul Smith; Nigeria Titus Ogunwale; PortugalEduardo Cintra Torres; South Africa DeziRorich; Spain Justin Webster; Sweden BerntHermele, Goran Sellgren; Turkey SerhanYarar

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Tel: (+61 2) 439 4730 Fax: (+61 2) 439 3103TBI (s published monthly except January and August. 10 issues (ISSN 0953-6841) byTelevision Business International. a 21st Century Publishing company. TBI Is availableby subscription only at an annual subscription price of EEO United Kingdom. USS102Europe and US389 USA US3110 Outside Europe including air speed delivery. Sendaddress changes to: TBI. 531-532 llings Road. London SW10 01'3.0 An contentscopyright 21st Century PubliShingPriMed M England by Headley Brothers Ltd Ashford Kent.Reproduction by Graphic Ideas Studios. 111 Bathes Street. London N1 601U.S.A. POSTMASTERS; Send address changes to Television Business International,Publications ExpedMng, Inc.. 200 Meacham Ave.. Elmont. N.Y. 11003. Air freight andmailing In the U.S.A. by Publications Expediting, Inc.. 200 Meacham Ave.. EImont. N.Y.11001 Second class postage paid at JarnaKe, N.Y. 11431.

Big Scary AnimalsMost people, if asked, will say tv channels are full of terrible, violent,over -sexed shows that are bad for their brains and worse for their chil-dren. Society gives television a terrible beating. Name a problem - illit-

eracy, violence, the breakdown of the family - and someone has tried toblame it on the box. Thirty years ago, sex and tv were bad for us. Now it'sjust tv, and I very much doubt tv will get the kind of revolution sex got. Thepress latches onto the bad, the ugly, the stupid on tv, leavening its coveragewith the very occasional mention of something quality - the exception thatproves their rule. Politicians criticize tv for biased news coverage, and moredangerously, attack it on moral grounds when there are votes to be won.Social crusaders spend entire lives sitting on couches looking for things theydon't want to see.

I like television. I think tv still informs, illuminates, even educates, withprogramming its troika of critics may have convinced the general public van-ished some time before the debut of color. Those critics would, for one, besurprised to learn the BBC increased natural history programming by 20% inthe past two years, as we report in our cover story on wildlife production.The pubcaster's Wildlife on One autumn schedule will include Alien Empire,a innovative six -part series on insects that will use new cameras and com-puter technology to go right inside their world. Tv's critics will be furthershocked when they hear that in the U.S., where tv supposedly has beenturning into a vast wasteland since radio got pictures, NBC is airing NationalGeographic Specials again - for the first time in 20 years. Rival commercialnetwork ABC is doing its own quarterly specials, ABC's World of Discovery."ABC has been at it for seven years," says executive producer Dennis Kane.Viewers - knowledgeable about the naked skin shown on NYPD Blue downto the last square inch, courtesy of the crusaders, the politicians and thepress - probably haven't read about that in the papers. On cable, TurnerBroadcasting funds 60 hours a year of natural history programming, and theDiscovery Channel single-handedly turned documentaries into a hot genre.

No doubt tv could use more quality. There isn't nearly enough to negateall of the critics' arguments. French producers can't get natural history on theair in primetime, except on Canal Plus, and Australia's commercial broadcast-ers flatly declare "documentaries are now an archaic program type in whichviewers no longer show much interest." But both situations contain theirown irony. The French are the first to complain when they can't sell showsoverseas, yet are sidelined from participating in a genre that easily crossesborders by their own broadcasters. And the Australians are repeating, almostword-for-word, statements made by U.S. executives a decade ago. Like ABCand NBC, the Oz nets may find they're simply at the bottom of a cycle and itwill soon make sense to again put on some of the good stuff.

The Editor


2

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PERSPECTIVE NEW YORK

Iread somewhere recently about a sur-vey taken 100 years ago in whichexperts were asked to predict the most

significant technology of the 20th Centu-ry. Most of them said - would youbelieve - the Monorail.

Radio, telephone, television, motionpictures, the automobile and the airplanewere all in stages of infancy in 1895, butobviously the forecasters didn't take anyof them seriously.

Today's experts would not be so faroff the mark. All the cards are face -up onthe table, everything from the CD -Romto virtual reality, with scores of interac-tive and transactional devices and sys-tems in between.

With such a groaning board of proventechnologies, the central question inforecasting change is not whether butwhen. And the more intriguing questionsmay be which and who.

Only the naive would ask why.In the U.S. (which for the moment is

where), the 1990 forecasts on the build-ing of the new fibre optic infrastructurewere a bit optimistic. A frantic racebetween the telcos and the cable opera-tors was supposed to have been at feverpitch by now, but cable can't seem toget in gear, and the telcos, after breakingfast from the starting -line, have slowedto a trot while reappraising the hard-ware.

Mainly what happened is that WallStreet fell out of love with cable, after aheavy 20 -year romance, and cut off theflow of investment capital needed torewire for mega -channel interactive sys-tems - cable's best great hope for explo-sive growth.

The Street's disenchantment beganwith the government's reregulation ofcable in 1992 in response to a din ofconsumer complaints. The industry hadbrought this misery upon itself when itbehaved as a greedy monopoly afterbeing deregulated in the Bush Adminis-tration. Between 1986 and 1992, cablerates grew three times faster than infla-tion.

Cable systems were not only pun-ished with new rules that served tofreeze their rates for basic service but,even worse, were forced to rebate 17%of a year's revenues to their subscribers.

Slow Progress To

The Next Century

As a result, the industry's aggregatecash flow dropped by more than $3 bil-lion over three years, and cable stocksplummeted. After two decades of steadysurging growth, cable has smacked awall.

Once cable was shackled by govern-ment, its sources of finance became con-cerned also with the looming competi-tion for cable's audience - not only fromthe telcos but also from the growingDTH market, and so-called wirelesscable.

Nor does it help cable's quest for cap-ital that a recent study by the MorganStanley brokerage house predicts thatwhen all the super systems are built, thetelcos will get half the cable business.

So if one were forecasting today, theanswer to the which would tilt to the tel-cos. They appear to have everything intheir favor, including annual revenues of

In the race to build the infrastructure,cable can't seem to get in gear, and

the telcos have slowed to a trotwhile reappraising the hardware

around $100 billion, or five times that ofthe cable industry.

And with no-one chasing them afterall, they can be leisurely and circumspectin rebuilding optical fibre.

But help is on the way for cable. Thesame arm of government that hobbledthe industry a few years ago has stirredthe pot again. Congress has produced itslong-awaited telecommunications billthat is spectacular for its permissivenesswith all the industries concerned.

Essentially it would knock down allregulatory barriers that separated theindustries - cable, the regional phonecompanies, and the long-distanceproviders - and allow each to invade theother's turf.

It also allows for liberal media cross -ownership, permitting single companiesto own cable, tv and radio stations, andnewspapers in the same market.

Cable would be free of rate regulationagain, able to charge subscribers whatev-er the traffic will bear. And that sameMorgan Stanley study predicts that cablewill steal away 25% of the telephonebusiness, which in dollar terms exceedswhat cable gets from its television ser-vice today.

Wall Street loves unregulated busi-nesses and may smile on cable again.especially since it is an industry that isgiven to swift action on the frontier. WallStreet also loves mergers, and there isbound to be another wave of media con-glomeraton after the bill is signed intolaw.

All this serves to illustrate how revolu-tionary change comes about in the mod-ern capitalist world. Technology may bethe engine, but business is the drivingforce and investment capital the fuel.

For better or worse, everything is inmotion to fulfill the forecast that interac-tive and transactional media will makethe big difference early on in the 21stcentury.

The Monorail revolution may have towait another hundred years. EDI


4

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Germany); Ahmed Fawzi (personal spokesman for the U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali); Robert M.Gates

(Director 1991-3 of the C.I.A); Hideo Yana Gifawa (NHK); Loek Hermans (The Queens Commissioner, The Netherlands); Jiro

Hirano (NHK); Eason Jordan (CNN Senior Vice -President International Newsgathering); Pallo Jordan (South Africa's Minister

for Telecom and Broadcasting); Major General Lewis MacKenzie (former Chief of Staff for the UN forces in former

Yugoslavia); Dr Manfred Murck (Head of the German Police Officers' Academy); Ralph Nicholson (Managing Editor of Reuters

Television); Sefako Nyaka (SABC);Piero Ottone (former Editor of Corriere de la Sera in Milan); Geoffrey Robertson Q.C. (dis-

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MONITORASIA

MGM Goes Gold With

New ChannelThe Hollywood major will beam abrand name network to Asia

MGM/UA Telecommunications Group, the inter-national distribution, co -production and new

business development unit of U.S. studioMGM/UA, is stepping up its efforts in the race tolaunch satellite channels. MGM last monthannounced plans to create a 24 -hour, encryptedAsian satellite channel called MGM Gold, as an

equity partnership withIndonesian companyAsia Media Management.

According to WilliamWells, senior vice presi-dent/Australasia, MGMGold is aiming for anearly 1996 launch andwill probably debut firstin Indonesia as part ofthe Indovision DTHpackage which, current-ly broadcasting in ana-log off Palapa B2P, alsoincludes HBO Asia, TheDiscovery Channel,ESPN, CNNI andTNT/Cartoon Network.

Wells said the servicewill be subtitled but willnot be programmedspecifically for theIndonesian market.Although he wouldn'tdisclose specific satellitedeals, Wells said MGM islooking for distributionin the rest of southeastAsia. "We will look ateach market individuallySome Like It Hot: Part of the MGM Gold mine

and take into account all the dynamics... Indiais definitely part of the plan. Other possiblesare Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines andTaiwan."

As regards the huge mainland Chinese mar-ket, he said it has a lot of potential, "but wewill be concentrating our efforts on marketswhere there are more immediate opportuni-ties." In Taiwan, MGM is in discussions with anumber of companies including Po Hsin Enter-tainment, distributor of the Disney Channel.

Although most of the MGM library up to1986 was sold off to Turner, MGM Gold willbe able to draw on 1500 film titles from MGMpost -1986, United Artists, and Cannon backcatalog, including Some Like It Hot, One FlewOver The Cuckoo's Nest and Annie Hall. Mostterrestrial broadcasters in the region buy first -run feature films from the studio, not the clas-sics which will form the basis of the schedule.In addition, MGM Gold will program blocks ofchildren's and animated programming, draw-ing on its libraries of over 2,500 hours of tvproduct, and some original production.

Although MGM Gold will be different frommovie service HBO Asia, its reliance on classicmovies will place it in competition with Turn-er's TNT/Cartoon Network. "Turner is closer towhat we are trying to do," agreed Wells.

The partnership with Asia Media Manage-ment, he explained, will "have a great degreeof helpfulness in terms of distribution, localmarket expertise and programming."

Asia Media Management's core business isthe development and distribution of satellite -delivered entertainment services. It wasformed by executives from both Asia andNorth America. One of its principles, PeterGontha, is a senior executive at Indonesia'sgiant Bimantara Citra group, which is run byPresident Suharto's second son Bambang Tri-hatmodjo and has extensive tv and telecomsholdings in the archipelago.

MGM Gold is expected to be only the firstof many branded channels for the studio. Thecompany already holds significant interests inCineCanal in Latin America, Telecine in Brazil,two OptusVision movie channels in Australia,and a stake in Japan's Star Channel.

by Sarah Walker - HONG KONG


6

MONITOR

TAIWAN

Fourth Network Free

Of Government TiesPeople's Broadcasting beattwo others for a national license

Taiwanhas licensed a fourth national terrestrial

network, breaking the three -decade oldmonopoly held by government -controlled broad-cast media. The People's Broadcasting Corpora-tion won the license, beating out two other con-tenders, Asia -Pacific Television Co., which hasstrong ties to the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party,and Harvest Television, which is affiliated withthe local arm of Hong Kong terrestrial broadcast-er TVB.

Taiwan's three existing terrestrial broadcastersare each partly controlled by an arm of the gov-ernment: The provincial government owns 49% ofTaiwan Television, the defense ministry 36% ofChinese Television System and the KMT 68% ofChinese Television Co. One of People's Broad-casting Corp.'s selling points was that it is notaffiliated with any political party through directownership, although many of its top managementare members of the opposition party, the Demo-cratic Progressive Party. Its ownership structure ismade up of about 4,000 shareholders.

The channel is due to begin test broadcasts ina year, and full commercial broadcasts in twoyears. A spokesperson for the channel said it istoo early to start talking specifically about pro-gramming plans, but added the channel will aimto provide independent, unbiased news coverageand more shows in the local Taiwanese dialect.

The new channel's license agreement stipu-lates that "entertainment programming should notconstitute more than 55% of the weekly totalbroadcasting time and newscasts and news pro-grams no less than 15%."

Currently the Taiwanese tv ad pie - worth over$1 billion in 1994 - is equally split between thethree terrestrial stations, with cable limited to a3% to 5% share. Ogilvy and Mather's Taiwanesemedia director Choo Chi Han said there isenough revenue to support a fourth channel, pro-viding it differentiates its programming.

Competition for ad dollars in the Taiwanesemarket is only going to increase. Plans are afootfor the government to issue licenses for anothernational terrestrial broadcaster, plus severalregional ones. This year, licenses will finally beawarded to the country's 100 -odd cable operatorscurrently operating under temporary licenses.

Choo Chi Han said total cable ratings nowaccount for up to 35% of the audience share, with

the most popular channels being Star TV's Chi-nese Channel and TVB's TVBS and TVB Gold.While there is no monitoring of advertising oncable at present, its 60% penetration rate means itis starting to impinge on the terrestrial networks'ratings. Soon, it will start winning over theirclients.


SINGAPORE

In Satellite Race, TCS

Speaks MandarinThe Singapore broadcaster will putits service on PanAmSat 2

e tate-owned Television Corporation of Singa-',pore (TCS) is to launch a Mandarin -languagesatellite channel in October, broadcasting fromPanAmSat's PAS -2 satellite.

The channel, aptly dubbed TCS Satellite Chan-nel, will be digitally compressed, using anunspecified MPEG 2 system. Initially, it willbroadcast 18 hours a day, repeating a six -hourschedule three times. It is targeted at the majorChinese markets of mainland China, Taiwan,Hong Kong and Malaysia.

According to TCS chief executive officer LeeCheok Yew, the broadcaster is currently lookingto appoint a distributor in Taiwan, while in HongKong it is likely the channel will go with WharfCable. In mainland China, distribution could bevia both terrestrial and cable outlets, while oppor-tunities are being explored in Malaysia.

During year one, the channel's schedule willbe comprised of Chinese drama, tv movies andvariety shows culled from TCS's extensive library.The satellite network will also air new materialproduced for the broadcaster's terrestrial chan-nels. During year two, the channel will probablybegin original productions.

TCS is one of the largest producers of Man-darin language programming in the world, pro-ducing over 3,000 hours a year of Chinese drama,tv movies, documentaries and variety showswhich are sold all over Asia. But to avoid compli-cated rights issues, programming has been heldback from Star TV to keep the pan -Asian windowfree. And, Lee said, "selling to the terrestrialshelps promote familiarity." He expects the chan-nel's major competitors to be Star TV's ChineseChannel and TVBI's Mandarin Channels.

Lee said the TCS Satellite Channel is likely tobe "the first of a few" for the broadcaster. Also inthe pipeline is an English -language network, tar-geted at the expat community and Asian coun-


7

MONITOR

ISRAEL LICENSESSHOP TV

Israeli authorities haveawarded a license to oper-ate the country's first tvshopping channel to theKED consortium. KED,backed by Israel's largestconglomerate, Klal, filmcompany Golan -Globus, ad

agency Dahaf and book-store chain Steimatsky,saw off three other bidsincluding one backed byCoca-Cola and the HomeShopping Network. Calledthe Shopping Channel, the

new outlet will be broad-cast via cable and willreach a potential 70% ofthe national audience. Thechannel will broadcast 24hours a day in Hebrew,with half an hour a day inArabic.

Rugby League: A football for Aussie media moghuls?

tries where there is a large English-speaking pop-ulation, such as India. Since TCS's Channel 5 isbroadcast in English, the company also controls abig library of English -language programmingwhich it intends to build on. Lee said English -lan-guage production amounts to more than 2,000hours a year, but "will soon match the Chineselanguage output."


AUSTRALIA

Seven Switching Sides

In Cable BattleSeven signed for Optus Vision, butnew chairman unhappy about it

Which Australian tv network is backing whichTV cable service? It's hard to say because thingskeep changing from month to month.

Network Seven followed Network Nine in opt-ing for a stake in Optus Vision, the cable compa-ny controlled by telecommunications carrierOptus and Continental Cablevision of the U.S.Optus Vision plans to deliver tv, telephony andother interactive services over a cable network.

Seven's decision to provide programs on anexclusive basis to Optus Vision was a major set-back for Foxtel -a joint cable tv venture between

Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp. and state-ownedTelstra. Foxtel, in turn,has an exclusive pro-gram delivery deal aswell as equity in Aus-tralis, the microwaveand satellite pay-tv pro-grammer in which Tele-Communications Inc.holds a major share.

However, changes inNetwork Seven's owner-ship during the follow-ing two months havenow altered the balanceof power on the board.Kerry Stokes, a regionaltv and newspaper pro-prietor, has snapped upa 20% share, taken overas chairman, and madeit quite clear that he dis-approves of the OptusVision agreement. Fur-ther, the key Seven per-sonnel who delivered

the cable deal, including managing director BobCampbell, have departed.

In taking control of Seven, Stokes has deniedhe is acting as an "associate" of News Corp. Inthe past, he has received financial support fromthe media giant and he is still a partner withNews Corp.'s director Ken Cowley in anotherventure. Given these links, the broadcastingauthority has decided to investigate whetherNews Corp., which is limited to a 15% share inSeven, has breached the cross -media or foreigncontrol rules.

Optus Vision, meanwhile, is crowing about asports programming line-up that will see Sevendeliver exclusive cable rights to the Atlanta andSydney Olympics and popular Australian Rulesfootball. In addition, Kerry Packer's Nine haspromised rights to Rugby League, while ESPN willprovide exclusive offshore sports.

With the battleground shifting to sports, Mur-doch has harnessed his buying power to try tocreate an alternative Super League for RugbyLeague and a southern hemisphere Rugby Unioncompetition. Foxtel also has exclusive rights todeliver Premier Sports, a pay channel jointlyowned by Australis and TCl/Prime. Program net-works such as BBC World have signed up exclu-sively with Foxtel, though CNN and Discovery areholding out for non-exclusive delivery.

The communications minister, Michael Lee,has said the two cable companies can controlaccess to their networks until at least 1997.

As the rivals rush to roll out their networks foran end of year launch, footie fans face theprospect of connecting to Optus Vision for OzzieRules and Foxtel for Rugby Union. Rugby Leaguefollowers face a more uncertain choice becauseMurdoch's plans for a Super League competitionhave landed up in court and split League playersand their clubs.

by Liz Fell - SYDNEY

CANADA

U.S. Shows Prized By

Canadian NetsBig three find room for U.S. showsalong with local hits in fall line-ups

With one or two exceptions the fall program-ming line-up for Canadian networks, CBC,

CTV and Global could best be described as nogreat changes, more of the same.

As far as CTV is concerned, its biggest pro-gramming story is the return of Due South. Pro-duced by Alliance in conjunction with ABC and


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MONITOR

HUNGARYDEBATESNEW LAW

Hungary's parliament isdebating a bill on radioand television which willaim to protect the indepen-dence of public servicebroadcasters from govern-ment interference. The bill

calls for the establishmentof bodies to protect free-dom of speech, preventcommunication monopo-lies and ensure a bal-anced information service.Hungarian Radio and Tele-

vision (MTV) will operateas a public company andsell off the second of itstwo tv channels. Accordingto Hungarian radio, cultureminister Gabor Fodor saidhe did not expect fullagreement with the govern-

ment proposals but"hoped the most accept-able solution would befound in full debate."

Touchstone's If Not For You: For CTV this Fall

CTV, Due South made programming history lastyear when it became the first Canadian -madeseries to crack U.S. network primetime. The showstarted off promisingly with a 17% audience shareagainst NBC's sitcoms. Then it started to fall, bat-tered by pre-emptions, finally to rest at a 13%share, which prompted ABC to cancel it.

In Canada, the show regularly attracted largeaudiences in the 1.8 million range and sometimesrose up to over 2 million viewers. "Due South isthe programming story of the year for us," saidGail Morrell, CTV programming director. "It didso well we just couldn't let it go."

To keep Due South running, Telefilm Canada,CTV, Alliance and the Cable Production Fundhave all committed extra funds. Alliance is alsoshopping for another American network to carrythe show.

Not so sweet has been the endgame for Tek-war. Produced by Atlantis and based on novelsby Captain Kirk actor William Shatner, the futuris-tic cops and robbers drama once again startedhigh (on USA Network) but fizzled. Atlantis said aslim hope remains that the series, shown on CTVin Canada, will resurface.

One of the peculiarities of Canadian program-ming acquisition and scheduling is simulcasting -broadcasting a U.S. network show at the sametime as the U.S network.

According to CBC vice-president of English -language programming Jim Byrd, "the best way tounderstand it is to take a specific program, sayFresh Prince of Bel Air, that is broadcast at thesame time as it is on an American network. Onthe CBC it might get 1.2 million viewers, but it isworth more to advertisers because it has thebonus of 300,000 more viewers tuning in to the

American network oncable."

This bonus audienceleads Canadian pro-gramming buyers to pay10-15% more for U.S.network shows they cansimulcast.

Global spokesmanDavid Hamilton said thenetwork went after CBS -produced sitcom Caro-line in the City because"we knew there wouldbe a hole and because itwould give us back toback simulcasts onThursday night. If wewere outbid there was achance a good part ofour audience would goto the competition afterSeinfeld. You have tolook at the flow pat-terns."

Keeping up its tradi-tion of showing perhapsthe most U.S. network

shows of all Canadian broadcasters, Global isshowing eight new American series to reach itssimulcast total of 14 hours. As well as Caroline,they include J.A.G. and Murder One. It's introduc-ing two new Canadian one -hour series, fake &The Kid and Traders, and taking The Outer Limitsfrom pay -television to network status, to use as alead-in to the X -Files.

In terms of new Canadian programming, CTVis offering a one hour comedy -drama fromAlliance called Taking The Falls, Homestyle, ahalf-hour of practical advice and three half-hourshows aimed at the youth market. CTV will alsobroadcast U.S. series If Not For You, HudsonStreet, and The Bold and the Beautiful.

Pubcaster the CBC will be introducing fournew Canadian series and will move a comedyshowcase, Comics, from late night into primetime.As well, the CBC will broadcast Talk 16 and Cen-tral Park West. Battered by budget cuts and anever-changing mandate, CBC is filling airtimewith a vast number of international co -produc-tions and dozens of Canadian specials, moviesand documentaries.

by Noel Meyer - MONTREAL

PROGRAMMING

Pilots Piloting New

Series On To Air

Training in the ways of Hollywoodis now a hit with European ntworks

Pdots, the script development scheme backed bythe European Union, is making headway with

broadcasters in its third year of operation and isin talks with Finnish and Flemish television aboutlaunching similar workshops on site.

"More than half of the projects selected areapplications that come from broadcasters or withbroadcasters attached, compared with maybe twoor three a few years ago," said Julian Friedmann,head of studies.

The ten teams attending this year's Pilotsincluded one from Norway's NRK working on theadaptation of the best-selling philosophical tomeSophie's World, and one from Sweden's SVT aim-ing to take a long -running drama series, HighSeas, in a new direction.

One past success from the program is the soapPoble Nou produced by Catalan station TV3,which in a modest but unprecedented way ful-filled the scheme's brief "to train European writ-ers to write long -running series that can travel."Its audience ratings in Catalonia prompted Span-ish channel Antena 3 to buy it, dub it into Span -


10

MONITOR

ARD MULLSKIRCH DEAL

Representatives fromARD's supervisory boardand the public network'sacquisition arm Degeto,narrowly gave the nod to aDM35 million ($25 million)package deal with filmmogul Leo Kirch. In thecontroversial deal, ARDacqures the tv rights to 10episodes of the interna-tional co -production, TheBible, as well as 29 Ger-man -Italian co -producedminiseries and tv movies.The vote resulted in a sixto five vote in favor, withNDR managing directorJobst Plog among thenaysayers. His WDR

couterpart Friedrich Nowot-

tny, who steps down onJuly 1, said he would leavethe decision to his succes-sor Fritz Pleitgen. Finalapproval depends on thebroadcasting councils offour ARD members of theassociation's 11 tv corpo-rations. A "heated politicalmedia debate" took placeamong the ARD and Dege-to reps at the Potsdammeeting, questioningwhether ARD should dealwith the Kirch Group,which supplies product tocommercial channelsSat1, Pro 7 and Kabel 1,as well as ARD's rival pub -

caster ZDF. Kirch holdsGerman -language territory

broadcasting rights tosome 15,000 films andover 50,000 hours of tvprogramming.

ish from Catalan and broadcast it nationally. SVTAnd Antena 3, which reworked a series calledDen Of Thieves, are so far the other two broad-casters who have taken Pilots projects into pro-duction.

But European scriptwriters still have a longway to go before they will be able to make pro-grams that can easily cross borders, according tothe organizers. "They can be trained," said Fried-mann, "but they need to be trained first to writeseries that travel further in their own market."

With that aim, Pilots this year brought in spe-cialists John Wells, executive producer of WarnerBros. hospital drama ER, and Rob Ulin, executiveproducer of Roseanne. The program continues toemphasize the team -writing approach used onmost U.S. series but rarely adopted in Europe.

A feasibility study surveying the views of morethan 100 European broadcasters forms the basisof Pilots' plans to expand into a travelling work-shop, partly to get over the problem of usingonly English with multilingual teams. Some 89%of broadcasters agreed that scriptwriters neededbetter training, and 74% said team writing skillswere lacking.

In offering tailor-made seminars and more spe-cialized groups, Pilots hopes to become lessfinancially dependent on Brussels by earningback some of the money that funds it.

The new Media II program, which will radical-ly reorganize and replace the Media 95 programthat funds Pilot, will put a huge emphasis on dis-tribution, rather than on development schemeslike Pilots. However, Friedmann argued thatMedia will miss the boat if it directs the lion'sshare of its funds to European distribution. "Wehave to change the emphasis onto development.The script for Four Weddings and a Funeral had17 drafts. This, rather than distribution, is the pri-ority."

by Justin Webster - SITGES, SPAIN

CENTRAL EUROPE

CME Seeks Profits

In New MarketsThe investment firm is backingstations in Romania and Slovenia

TV Nova, the Czech tv station that was one ofthe first commercial channels to get off the

ground in eastern Europe, took less than a yearto turn a profit. Central European Media Enter-prises (CME), the U.S. investment company with amajority stake in Nova, will need a bit more timeto wring profits out of other start-ups.

A string of deals announced by the companythis year demonstrates CME is, if nothing else,dedicated to its -strategy of becoming a drivingforce in the so -far sluggish development of com-mercial tv in the former Eastern Bloc.

Launches of terrestrial stations in Romania anda program supply deal linking local broadcastersin Slovenia are CME's next ventures, both due tokick off in the last quarter of the year, accordingto president of development and chief financialofficer Len Fertig.

In Romania, CME is partnering with Media Pro,a mini -conglomerate owned by former tennis starIon Tiriac, in licenses to operate tv stations ineight cities in the country. In Slovenia, it hasteamed up with four of the country's leadingbroadcasters - Kanal A, MMTV, Tele 59 and Euro3 - to create Pro Plus, a company that will supplythe four broadcasters with a 12 -hour package ofnetworked programming each day.

CME has been acquiring programming rightsfor Romania and Slovenia since Mipcom last yearthrough its CME Program Services arm. It nowcontrols the rights to 600 film titles in each coun-try; series acquisitions include ER, The X -Files,NYPD Blue and Lois & Clark.

A local station in Budapest, Hungary, whereCME won a license with partner 2002 Kft, is nextin line after Slovenia and Romania; CME plans tostart next spring a microwave and cable servicethat will serve 800,000 homes.

So far, CME has been thwarted in bids fornational and regional licenses in Poland. It hasnow formed a $5 million joint venture with localmedia company ITI to bid for further regionallicences in northern and central Poland. CME is

Lois & Clarke: Snapped up for CME stations


11

MONITOR

METRO'SIMPORT

ASSAULT

Metrovision, Malaysia'sfourth terrestrial broad-caster, launched on July 1,

five months behind sched-ule. It missed the originalsign -on date in Februaryafter critical equipmentwas damaged in shipmentfrom Japan. Metrovision'slicense permits it to broad-cast to a 50 kilometerradius in the Kiang Valleyarea, including nationalcapital Kuala Lumpur. As a

result, Metrovision reach-es an estimated 3.2 mil-lion households and isaiming to capture 12% oftotal tv advertising revenuein its first year. Executivesat Metrovision say they are

hoping to have the broad-caster's license extendedto cover the whole country.

The channel plans tobroadcast a line-up ofmainly imported English -language U.S., British andAustralian shows, a strate-gy that won't hurt itsefforts to get a piece ofthe country's $200 milliontv advertising spend,according to one ad agen-

cy observer. Metrovision is50% owned and operatedby City Television, whichis, in turn, 50% -owned bythe Negeri Sembilan royalfamily. The newspapergroup Utusan Melayu con-trols 30% of the companyand Medanmas and Diver-sified Systems each hold10% stakes.

also looking for opportunities in the Ukraine andBulgaria, and, last month, learned two of its part-ners had been awarded licenses in Dresden andLeipzig, Germany.

As another corporate step to help its stations,CME leased a transponder on Eutelsat's Hot Bird3 - due for launch in 1997 - so the stations canbeam their signals to cable systems and terrestrialaffiliates within their countries. Fertig said thetransponder would be digitally compressed toallow it to serve up to five or six stations at thesame time. This means of delivering signals tocable headends would, he said, "greatly reduce(its partners') operating costs."

TV Nova, the first private station in the region,uses a former state-owned frequency that gives itnationwide distribution. That is, however, a rareprivilege. Many governments have chosen toaward only local licenses to private broadcasters,and microwave and terrestrial links are difficult tocome by. "(The transponder) provides a resourceto make it a lot easier to launch new channels,"said Fertig. "Once you have it there, you canexpand your network by adding cable headendsand terrestrial affiliates."

by Chris Dziadul - LONDON

BRAZIL

Bartering Novelas

Into 'Soap' OperasNumber two network is offeringinternational rights to sponsors

eistema Brasileiro de Televisao (SBT), Brazil's4second largest tv network, has hit on barter asthe way to get its telenovelas sold abroad. Insteadof selling the soaps to foreign broadcasters, SBTis offering them to major multinationals. Underthe plan, the multinationals would buy the nove-las and provide them to foreign broadcasters freeof charge, taking in return airtime during the pro-gramming.

Brazil's biggest network, TV Globo, has formany years sold its soaps to broadcasters indozens of countries. SBT, which only began pro-ducing novelas (all of them period pieces) in1993, is beginning to do the same, but with limit-ed success.

It sold its first in-house soap, There were Six ofUs, about the trials of a middle class Brazilianfamily from the 1920s through the 1940s, to Por-tugal last year for $7,000 an episode. It plans tosell a Portuguese network its second in-houseproduction, The Wards of Mr. Priest, about the

priest/guardian of two adolescent girls in a 19thcentury Portuguese village.

SBT vice president Guilherme Stoliar said thenetwork didn't have the name recognition neededto interest a wide range of foreign networks inbuying its telenovelas. "SBT doesn't yet have theTV Globo-type prestige needed to sell its soaps toa wide number of foreign countries," heexplained. "So we're looking for multinationals,like Unilever or Johnson, who will buy the soapsand allow foreign broadcasters to run them inexchange for free commercial airtime. In thatway, the multinationals can act as go-betweensfor getting our soaps on the air in other coun-tries."

In addition to barter, SBT is working tobecome a more diversified domestic programmerin an attempt to increase its share of audience.The network, which attracts just over 20% of theviewing audience - and which earned $220 mil-lion in 1994 - only produces two soaps per yearand runs only one soap a night. By comparison,TV Globo, which attracts 65% of the TV audience- and earned around $1 billion in 1994 - pro-duces six soaps a year, airing three of them anight.

As an alternative to TV Globo's back-to-backnightly soap format, SBT airs live audience andquiz shows hosted by Silvio Santos, the business-man and two-time presidential candidate whoowns the Sao Paulo -based SBT; a late -night talkshow hosted by Jo Soares, Brazil's best-knowncomedian and formerly of TV Globo, and numer-ous films, news and sporting events

SBT, which aired the World Cup last year,bought the rights to transmit the Indy 500 thisyear. Audience ratings for the race were upbecause numerous Brazilian drivers are compet-ing. By contrast, TV Globo, which airs Formula 1racing, has watched its Formula 1 audience dropfollowing last year's death of Formula 1 champi-on and Brazilian national hero Aryton Senna.

by Michael Kepp - RIO DE JANEIRO

Ratings for Formula One have dropped off this year


12

MONITOR

SVT CUTSBACK

Sweden's public broad-caster Sveriges Television(SVT) has unveiled the firststage of a corporate reor-ganization triggered by theSocial Democrat govern-ment's decision to cutSkr350 million ($45 mil-lion) from its budget overthe next three years. Over20 management positionsand 400-450 of the pre-sent 1,000 staff will beshed by natural wastageover the next few years.SVT is setting up a plan-ning department responsi-ble for programming andscheduling its two chan-nels, headed by Hans Bon-

nevier, currently director ofprograms at SVT2. SVT'sdrama department, head-ed by Ingrid Dahlberg, willnow be a separate produc-tion unit along with newsand five regional produc-tion centers in Stockholm,Gothenberg, Malmo, Ore-bro and Lulea. Sam Nils-son, director-general ofSVT since 1981, has beenre-elected for another twoyears. All the changes willbe effective January 1,1996.

CHANNELS

HEN To Hatch In Benelux And Scandi

Hallmark Entertainment said it planned to launch24 -hour premium cable channels in Benelux andScandinavia by the end of the year in addition toits UK venture announced in May. The HallmarkEntertainment Network will launch in Benelux onAugust 1 and in Scandinavia on January 1, 1996.Both versions of the channel will be joint ven-tures with pay-tv company Nethold.

M4 Bill For Spring 1996

Sweden's government said it would present a billinviting applications for a fourth national tv net-work next spring. It is expected to stipulate thatthe so-called M4 will be a made up of a networkof regional stations carrying educational programsin daytime but allowed to network and carryadvertising during evening primetime. Interestedbidders are already lining up, with commercialchannels TV4 and SBS already active in creatinglocal stations and the Bonnier publishing groupand Nethold also voicing interest.

DISTRIBUTION

Sony Opens Sales Office In China

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) has opened anoffice in Beijing to handle sales of theatrical, tvand home video product in China. The office willbe headed by Mishka Chen. In addition to han-dling marketing and sales for SPE's theatricalproduct, Chen will handle barter and sales of filmand tv product and assist in the development oflocal tv production and broadcasting ventures,said the company.

PEOPLE

Nick UK's Head To Take On Intl Role

Jon Miller, head of Nickelodeon UK since thechannel's launch two years ago, has been pro-moted to the new position of managing director,Nickelodeon International. Based in London,Miller will oversee the launch of new channelsand develop co -productions between Nick-elodeon channels and will be looking to form"some strong alliances in the production and mar-keting areas." Nickelodeon has lined up channellaunches in Germany and Australia this year andplans to look at Scandinavia, Benelux, India andsouth-east Asia in 1996, said Miller. Janie Grace,currently head of children's programs at ITV com-pany Meridian, will replace Miller at Nick UK inSeptember.

NBC Staffs Up In Europe And Asia

Ogden: Denver to London

NBC has added twosenior executives toits overseas broadcast-ing operations inEurope and Asia.Roger Ogden hasbeen moved to thepost of president andmanaging director ofEuropean satellitenetwork NBC SuperChannel. Odgen, pre-

viously head of NBC affiliate station KCNC inDenver, Colorado, joins the London -based chan-nel on August 7. In Asia, NBC has poached SKFung, general manager of Hong Kong -basedTVBI, to head up its operations, including ANBCAsia, a 24 -hour news and current affairs channelwhich launched in June, and NBC Super ChannelAsia, due to launch August 5.

Erratum

The picture on page 32 of last month's TBI wasof Pekka Hyvarinen, editor -in -chief of MTV3,rather than Jaakko Paavela, executive vice presi-dent, as captioned.

REGULATION

Spain Takes Up Deadlocked Quota Issue

A meeting of European Union ministers responsi-ble for broadcasting passed last month with noagreement on a revised Television Without Fron-tiers directive. France had hoped to agree on anew directive, with tougher quotas on non -Euro-pean programming, during its presidency, butwas opposed by member states including Ger-many and Britain which want quotas scrapped.Ministers did reach agreement on a new programof financial assistance for European distributionand development, Media II, though the budget of$230 million over five years was $90m lower thanthe commission's proposal. Officials will nowattempt to thrash out an agreement behind thescenes for discussion under Spain's six-monthpresidency, which starts July 1.

Malaysia To Lift Dish Ban

The Malaysian government will lift its ban onsatellite reception equipment by the end of theyear. According to information minister DatukMohamed Rahmat, amendments to the broadcast-ing laws are being drawn up for tabling in thenext session of Parliament. He said amendmentswill specify the type of antennas allowed, a possi-ble indication that only receivers trained on thegovernment's Measat system, due to launch inDecember, will be licensed.


13

COMMENT MUNICH

The outcome of the Italian referendumlast month is more than a case of theschemes of Silvio Berlusconi's oppo-

nents backfiring. Its repercussions reachwell beyond beyond sua emittenza'shomeland.

For one, politicians have once againbeen warned against confusing theirown spe.cial interests with the demandsand wishes of the general public.

The message to the tv industry is thatthe general public, the masses of poten-tial viewers and customers, can - only -be won over by an attractive package ofprogramming made available at afford-able prices.

Whoever neglects this rule is doomedto failure, and that includes, as the Ital-ians have found out, politicians whoconvey the impression that they want totake away what has become an acceptedstaple of the tv consumer's life. The typi-cal tv consumer of the 1990s simply isnot interested in who owns and controlswhat is shown on his screen.

Nor is he or she interested in thetechnical. prerequisites for receiving anever-growing menu of programs.

The success of the Astra satellite sys-tem was built on this insight. The Lux-emburgers never marketed dishes andfancy reception equipment, but packagesof alluring programs.

As axiomatic as all this may seem,there have been many instances in thepast when this rule was ignored - to thedismay of failed would-be tventrepreneurs, hardware manufacturersand, sometimes, the taxpayers.

At the threshold of the digital age,similar misunderstanding of the marketpriorities could thwart ambitious busi-ness plans.

In Germany, several so-called pilotprojects for multimedia services havebeen technology -oriented. Mostly underthe roof of Deutsche Telekom, millionsof dollars and months of debate havebeen devoted to problems of receptionand server hardware and software.

Until very recently, nobody appearedto have thought about the content tosupply to all those wonderful glass fiberhighways and technical gimmicks likeset -top boxes and interactive computer-tv-telephone combinations.

More Channels,

Not Better Boxes

BY WILFRIED AHRENS

The infrastructure is nothing morethan a technical necessity.

The MSG concept of a multimediajoint venture between Bertelsmann,Telekom and Kirch Group, vetoed by theEuropean Commission, is now beingrevived with a different combination ofplayers, without Kirch but with Bertels-mann and Telekom again plus ARD,ZDF, RTL, CLT and Canal Plus. Itremains to be seen how this will workout, given the Bertelsmann-Canal Plus-Kirch co -ownership of pay-tv channelPremiere. The more than 900,000 analogPremiere decoders could easily beexchanged for digital equipment.

In any case, Kirch Group is still in thegame, and given its unparalleledresources of 80,000 tv program hours isthe player most likely to come out ontop. Kirch Group's technical arm, BetaTechnik, has developed its own set -top

Which digital technology is moresophisticated than others will be less

decisive than the attractiveness ofprograms and services

box able to decode digital signals and beconnected with personal computers aswell. What is more, the Kirch Group hascontracted five transponders on digitalAstra satellites. CLT in turn has securedsix Astra transponders.

In Germany as elsewhere, the verypossibility of competing set -top devicesand standards causes nightmares reminis-cent of the VHS/Betamax battle.

But again, which technology is moresophisticated than others will be lessdecisive in the multimedia era than whowill offer the most attractive programsand services.

The much -debated question aboutwhich will win the multimedia futurefirst and fastest - television (free, pay,on -demand, and pay -per -view) or ser-vices like homeshopping - is futile.

The lure of the German market,potentially the most lucrative of them all,has already forged alliances withinEurope as well as across the Atlantic.CLT, Canal Plus and Bertelsmann haveall been trying to acquire program rightsand to push their own production andco -production.

At that, foreign players may have theGerman territory to themselves becausethe natives are still facing the perennialimponderables of regulation and politicalstrangulation. In Germany it is still unde-cided, to mention just one example,whether homeshopping is television ornot. As things stand, this and other openmatters will not be decided on until theend of 1996. In the meantime, nobodywould or could hinder the Time Warn-ers, Viacoms and Turners of this worldfrom stepping in.

After what happened to their col-leagues in Italy, the politicians will cer-tainly do anything but ask the Germanpeople what they want and expect in thedigital age.

The answer would, all the evidencesuggests, be simple enough: Enjoyableand useful programs and services, asmany and as cheap as possible. EEO


14

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WatchinWildlifeGLOBAL REPORT: Fewbroadcasters are immune tothe attractions of naturalhistory. Wildlife programmingwins a family audience, canfit in most schedules almostanywhere and is some of theeasiest programming toco -produce. But despite allthe positives, producers theworld over complain slotsfor natural history are toofew and primetime is fastbecoming a wildlife no-goarea in some countries.

The BBC is keen to pioneer new filming techniques in series like Alien Empire, its close-up on the insect world.

UNITED KINGDOM

Britain's broadcasters, both public andcommercial, have long been associatedwith blue-chip natural history produc-tion. Marie Beardmore finds they areas committed as ever to wildlife docu-mentaries. The BBC alone has increasedoutput by 20% in two years.

London may be the UK's capital, butBristol is where it's at in natural historyfilm production. Bristol is home to theBBC's natural history unit - at 60 to 70

hours a year the biggest producer of thegenre in the UK - as well as severalindependent production companies,including Partridge, part of the HTVGroup -and a member of HIT's WildMedia division.

Survival, the natural history strandproduced by Anglia for the ITV network,is the UK's other main producer in thegenre, and though only turning out ninehours a year, it does qualify as thelongest running strand, having beenestablished in 1961.

The BBC has two strands for natural

history output: Wildlife on One for BBC1and the Natural Word for BBC2. "Overthe last two years natural history hourshave increased 20%, with Wildlife onOne alone up from 10 to 13 hours," saidAlastair Fothergill, head of the BBC Natu-ral History Unit.

The pubcaster is keen to pioneer newfilming techniques for its latest projects.A major project for the BBC's Wildlife onOne autumn schedule is Alien Empire, asix-parter on insects that uses new cam-era lenses and computer animation tech-niques, enabling the viewer to go close


16

up to - and even inside - insects.Another breakthrough, the animation ofthe electron microscope, allows micro-scopic processes to be filmed rather thanstill photographed.

Meanwhile, Nightmares of Nature,(5x30), a Wildlife on One series late inthe year, asks if the world's most fearedanimals deserve their reputations. Overon Natural World, Incredible Suckers, afilm about the giant squid, an animalthat's never actually been seen beforebut is believed to be 70 feet long, is slat-ed for the start of the 1996 season. And

BBC wildlife doyen David Attenbor-ough's follow up to The Secret Life ofPlants, Birds of the World, is set to air inthe fall of 1998, as either eight or 10 x50 -minute specials, reported Fothergill.

Survival, traditionally master ofwomb -to -tomb films that show animalsin all stages of life in their natural habi-tat, is adding to its repertoire using filmfrom its 30 -year -old library to create orig-inal programming. Survival also plansmore presenter -led programming, saidPetra Regent, executive producer. Preda-tors, a six -part series on predatory ani-

mals, is the first product of the newthinking and has Gabby Roslyn of Chan-nel 4's Big Breakfast in front of the cam-era as Survival's first on location, on-screen female presenter. Another newproject, Tooth and Claw, a six -part seriesthat looks at the relationship betweenpeople and animals, uses library footagejuxtaposed with new film. And for itslate summer schedule, the BBC hasordered from Survival a new series TheAnimal Show, a half-hour kids series thatmixes animal footage with Muppets.

Blue-chip programming is still impor-tant to Survival and there are a numberof films queued up waiting for an ITVnetwork slot. Mountains of the SnowLeopard, a one -hour special on Mongo-lia, and Creatures of the Magic Waters, afilm about the Amazon rain forest, areboth ready to screen, while baboons andgenets are the subjects of two films cur-rently in production.

USA

A resurgence of sorts in natural historyprogramming has producers excitedabout the future. While a majority of nat-ural history shows still air on the nation'scable networks and the Public Broadcast-ing System, Richard Huff reports the bigbroadcast networks are showing renewedinterest in a genre they had all but aban-doned.

For the first time in 20 years, the Nation-al Geographic Specials are airing onNBC. Another commercial network,ABC, has made its own, albeit limited,commitment to regular natural historyand wildlife fare. Both moves are seen asimportant signs by industry executives.

"I think we're seeing a resurgence,"said Clark Bunting, senior vice presidentof programming at the Discovery Chan-nel. "People are saying, 'I want to beeducated. I want to be entertained.'"

National Geographic Television andDiscovery are by far the largest produc-ers and distributors of natural historyprogramming in the States. NationalGeographic alone produces five hours ofSpecials programming for NBC, another60 hours for Turner Broadcasting's TBS,and several more hours for the PublicBroadcasting Service.

Industry observers point to severalfactors for the increased exposure fornatural history programming. Some citethe nation's growing displeasure and dis-enchantment with the extensive cover-age given to the murder trial of O.J.Simpson. Others point to a desire by


17

COVER STORY

viewers for more stimulating fare. Andsome mention the increased quality ofnatural history shows available in themarketplace.

"The American audience has alwayshad an appetite for good action naturalhistory programming," said Dennis Kane,executive producer of ABC's World ofDiscovery and president of ABC/KaneProductions International, Inc. Kane, aformer National Geographic producer,oversees the production of a series ofone -hour specials that air quarterly onABC. "ABC has been at it for sevenyears," he said. "Our ratings are reason-able."

Compared to other hour-long forms ofprogramming, natural history can be fair-ly inexpensive. Costs vary depending onwhere the shooting is to take place andhow difficult it is to get there. Producersworking exclusively in video can bringprojects in at around $150,000 per hour,while those working in film average inthe $500,000 per hour range. High -endproduction in remote locations can climbinto the $750,000 range.

However, when compared with thecosts of hour-long drama, natural historyshows come in cheap. The productionbudget for the typical hour-long networkdrama averages $1.5 million. And costsare climbing.

Natural history programming alsotravels abroad better than most program-ming forms, according to those involvedin the genre. The content transcendsinternational boundaries. "One of thereasons ABC got into it, was becausethese are evergreen programs," Kanesaid. "They just go on and on and on.Nothing really dates them."

The fare also lends itself to a numberof other multimedia areas, includinghome video and CD -Rom.

But despite the various revenue out-lets, few would argue that there can beany comparison to typical broadcast farein the ratings, which, after all, are whatdrive the broadcast network system. Aprimetime drama such as NBC's hit ERaverages ratings in the 20 -plus range,with each ratings point representing954,000 U.S. television homes. Ratingsfor ABC's World of Discovery specialscome in at less than half that.

As a result, most producers believethe future for such programming remainsthe cable networks. Cable networks, theysay, have the dual revenue streams -subscriber fees paid by cable operatorsand advertising revenues - which allowthem to survive on often minuscule rat-ings.

"Let's face it," said Kane, "the net-

works survive on numbers and we justdon't bring them those big numbers. Webring them modest numbers."

Discovery's Bunting is pleased cableis leading the way in the genre. Indeed,Discovery recently launched a moviedivision to produce and develop theatri-cal natural history properties. Its first,Leopard's Son, is due next spring.

AUSTRALIA

As the home of the kangaroo, platypus,koala bear and most species of lizard,Australia is ideal for natural history pro-ducers. But Liz Fell reports independentswith blue-chip projects are often forced tolook offshore for most of their funding.Why? The three commercial nets rarelybuy wildlife programs.

Australia's powerful Federation of Com-mercial Television Stations last year toldthe country's broadcasting regulator,"The commercial programming reality isthat documentaries are now an archaicprogram type in which viewers nolonger show much interest."

With the commercial broadcasters tak-ing that hard line, public broadcasterABC's tiny Natural History Unit is left asAustralia's major producer, purchaserand broadcaster of local wildlife docu-mentaries. The unit has an extensivelibrary of natural history footage but, likemost public service broadcasters, is sosqueezed for funds that the unit's pro-duction budget for the next 12 monthswill cover only three fully -funded pro-jects.

The state -funded Film Finance Corp.has taken steps to alleviate the fundingproblem. The fund previously investedin documentaries thathad secured a local andan overseas pre -sale.But, recognizing thatnatural history travelswell, the FFC nowinvests in quality localprojects that can raise60% of budget from twooverseas pre -sales.

As a result, wildlifeproducer Roger Whit-taker secured FFC sup-port for his Little Killersproject after Devillier-Donegan offered a dis-tribution guarantee andDiscovery provided apre -sale. Another of hisprojects, Pythons, hasbeen pre -sold to Canal

Plus and Discovery. In fact, Whittaker'slast five documentaries have failed togain a local pre -sale, though he said theydo eventually get local airtime.

The FFC has also invested in Heaven'sBreath with Germany's ZDF, Asahi TVJapan and Austria's ORF. Produced byindependent Stuart Quinn, this four-partseries will explore the wind's influenceon natural life. Quinn said local broad-casters offer a tiny license fee of $25,000(U.S.) an hour at the most, and none hada dedicated wildlife slot in 1993 when heapproached them about the series.

Network Seven now has a regulardocumentary slot, The World Around Us,while Nine has won high primetime rat-ings with Wildlife, a magazin.e.series pro-duced by Beyond and fronted by starOlivia Newton -John. However, someproducers argue Nine's infotainmentapproach really isn't natural history pro-gramming.

Despite a tight budget, DioneGilmour, head of ABC Natural History,has several exciting projects in develop-ment. A bio-geography series, BetweenTwo Worlds, will explore how animalsand plants from Asia meet and minglewith those from Australia on Indonesia'sarchipelago. Another upcoming ABCproduction with the BBC and NationalGeographic is Dragons of the Galapagosfrom award -winning producers DavidParer and Elizabeth Parer -Cook.

Gilmour also pointed to Once UponAustralia, a new in-house productionslated for air on ABC's Wildscreen slot inAugust. This 30 -minute documentary,which will be offered at Mipcom 95, uses3D animation to show Australia as a landwhere dinosaurs roamed, giant kanga-roos browsed on tree branches and mar-supial lions stalked the forests.

Eye On The Reef: Co -pro between Tina Dalton and U.S. public tv


18

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COVER STORY

FRANCE

The home of Jacques Cousteau is not thehome of the primetime wildlife show.Even Cousteau himself can't get intoprime on France 2, writes SergeSiritzky. The good news: Pay operatorCanal Plus plans a weekly slot.

Natural history programming has a fighton its hands in France. The major net-works here set aside few slots in theirschedules for the genre, and those theydo program are all outside of primetime,except in the 'case of magazine -style pro-grams. The most successful of the maga-zines, 20 -year -old sea life show Thalassa,airs Friday evenings on France 3 andalso covers human and economic prob-lems.

The situation in France is ironic, sinceit is the nation that provided Americanaudiences with their most popularwildlife personality - undersea explorerJacques Cousteau. France 2 airsCosteau's series, a co -production withTurner and Amaya Films, on Sundays inaccess prime. This year, Costeau willproduce four 52 -minute programs - eachbudgeted at $1 million an hour.

The only French channel that regular-ly broadcasts nature documentaries ispay-tv operator Canal Plus, which is nowconsidering scheduling a weekly slotbecause of audience demand. Canal Plus

Cormorants: Lucky to get a domestic window

has had success with Frederic Foguea'stwo half-hour series Les contes sauvages- about ancestral relations betweenhumans and wild animals - and HeDances For His Cormorants. Both serieshave been sold around the world,including to regular American pre -buyerDiscovery. Still, Canal Plus is the onlydomestic broadcaster that has shown anyinterest in Foguea's work.

The tough domestic climate hasn'tstopped other indies from taking theplunge. Jean-Louis Burgat of Leo Produc-tions started Leo Wildlife to produce "sci-entific series" about natural history sub-jects. "But it is difficult for a French com-pany to enter a market dominated by theBritish and Americans," said Burgat. "Forinstance, when we made a documentaryin Ethiopia, the country was controlledby the British. It took a very long time toconvince the local authorities that theFrench could also make documentariesabout wildlife. Finally, we had to bribethe guards to shoot our documentaryabout a baboon's harem."

Burgat said his biggest challenge is tobe scientifically accurate, teach the audi-ence, show unknown things and tell astory that will grab the public. His nextproject is for La 5, the new educationalchannel. The station's license fees aresmall, but the deal will let him reformatshows in Leo's library. "They pay onetenth of the price, but that is more

understandable than France2's offer to buy for $32,400two hours when Canal Pluspaid ten times that price. Irefused." Like others inFrance, he is working withthe BBC and Discovery, inhis case to make an 8x30series on men who devotedtheir lives to wild animals.

"The advantage of thegenre is it sells everywhere,"explained Olivier Bremondof Marathon. "French broad-casters pay only 15% ofthe budget, but we can getnot far from that moneythrough related (local) subsi-dies, and then we pre -sellaround the world." Bre-mond specializes in thenature and adventure field asa producer and, throughMarathon International, as aworldwide distributor. He isproducing a four-hour serieson wildlife in Europe forFrance 2 and also distributesfor XL Productions (SavageSanctuaries).

JAPAN

Nature and wildlife programs, especiallyprograms about exotic animals, havelong fascinated Japanese viewers, who seeso little of the real thing in their concretejungles. Nonetheless, Mark Schillingwrites, the production boom of a decadeago is over.

The Japanese loved their animal showsfor the longest time. One Tokyo Broad-casting System (TBS) animal quiz pro-gram, Waku Waku Animal Land, evenstarted a nationwide craze for the Aus-tralian frilled lizard in the mid -80s. WakuWaku went on to become a long run-ning domestic and international hit,appearing in more than 40 countries.

In this decade, however, surfeit hasset in; having long since seen everyspecies on the planet, with the possibleexception of a few fast -mutatingmicrobes, Japanese viewers are jaded.The demand for nature and wildlifeshows remains, but the various animalbooms of the 70s and 80s - panda bearsand koala bears being among the biggest- are a thing of the past.

Public broadcaster NHK remains theleader in this genre, in both quality andquantity. One reason is resources; withreceiving fee income from more than 36million tv households, NHK can afford todispatch its own crews to the four cor-ners of the earth to film a polar bear'scubhood or life on the African savannah.Another is mission: NHK keeps makingabout the same number of shows eachyear, regardless of ratings. "It's our obli-gation as a public broadcaster,"explained NHK spokesman MayumiFujikawa.

NHK currently has two regular natureshows on the air. One is Home TownNature Discover, a 10 -minute domestictravelogue program aired every Saturdayat 6.15 am. The other is World Travel-ogue of Living Creatures, a 40 -minuteshow broadcast every Monday at 8.00pm. On the air for three years, the pro-gram's footage of rare animals in naturalsettings - one recent instalment featuredmountain gorillas in Central Africa - hasattracted a large, mainly family audience,with household ratings averaging 15."Viewers say that, because of the animalson the show, even their dogs like towatch it," said Fujikawa.

NHK also makes and markets a broadrange of nature and wildlife specials.Recent programs included SavannahWatch, an exploration of the natural his-tory of the African savannah, Secrets ofthe Chichild, about chichild fish in Lake


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COVER STORY

Tanganyika, and Arctic Hunters, aboutpredators living in the Arctic Circle.

Nature and wildlife programs are rareron the five commercial nets, where costefficiency is the order of the day andviewer enthusiasm for the shows haswaned. One of the few commercialbroadcasters still doing pure natureshows is TV Asahi, whose Nature Spe-cials are a decade -old tradition. Broad-cast three times a year, these two-hourspecials have featured not only thenature and wildlife of five continents,but the people who live there. "It'ssomewhat different from most programsof this type because we send in onereporter with a crew to cover the story,"said a spokesman. "This gives the seriesa human element that other documen-tary specials lack." Ratings in the show'sprimetime slot average 12 to 13. "But rat-ings are not the only consideration inmaking a program of this type," thespokesman added. "High quality is moreimportant."

Regular programs with a nature themeon the remaining commercial networkstake a strong entertainment slant. TBS'sother contribution to the genre, AnimalShopping Street, uses the now -standardquiz panel format. On one recent show,panellists tried to guess how variousbaby animals would react in a given situ-ation. On the air for two years, the showaverages a 15 rating. Trying to explainthe show's success, TBS TV programpublicity department manager TakakazuHirose said, "It's one of the few pro-grams on the air that appeals to thewhole family. Also, though viewers maylike or dislike celebrities, they don't havethe same objections to animals."

NTV broadcasts no nature shows inprimetime and only a few in off-peakhours. "They don't get high ratings andthey're expensive to make," said aspokesman. "The third reason is thatthough viewers want to see rare andunusual places, there aren't that manyleft. They've already seen them all."

NEW ZEALAND

Eco-friendly Kiwis enjoy wildlife showsand in TVNZ Natural History has anaggressive self-supporting unit that keepscoming up with good stories, reports PaulNicholson

New Zealand is one of the traditionalhomes of excellence in the production ofwildlife programs. Domestic productioncomes almost exclusively from publicbroadcaster Television New Zealand's

Natural History Unit. But demand for thegenre sees TVNZ (and its competitorsTV3 and the new regional stations)acquiring from overseas.

"TVNZ has a long history of success-fully screening natural history programsunder the generic title Our World. Thisstrand of programs in recent years hasplayed on both TV1 and TV2 andbetween the two networks it covers awide variety of material, from SteveIrwin's Crocodile Hunter series (Aus-tralia) to the more traditional wildlifeprograms like Natural World and Sur-vival," said Glenn Usmar, program man-ager - TV One.

TVNZ's own wildlife strand, WildSouth, is a strongly established domesticbrand. Wild South and Our World areusually scheduled in early evening slotsat the weekend, often after the 6pmnews on a Sunday. Ratings regularlyattract 15-20% of the population for anaudience share of 35% on average.

Wild South has become a long run-ning series for TVNZ with annual seriesgenerally being made up of 10 or 12programs, all one -offs in subject matter."Now about 20% of the programs areabout New Zealand and the region. Itused to be 100%," said Michael Stedman,managing director of TVNZ Natural His-tory.

Stedman operates his division as aseparate profit center within TVNZ. Assuch it is expected to fully fund all itsproductions without the guarantee of anetwork slot, but rather treating TVNZ asanother market. "We can do withoutTVNZ because we are driven as a busi-ness and TVNZ is one of our clients, butit would be unusual for it to happen,"said Stedman. Typically an hour fromStedman's unit will cost between $300-400,000 (U.S.), with some going as highas $500,000. With TVNZ generally payingbetween 15-20% of the budget theremaining 80% plus via co -production orpre -sales monies.

Stedman, who reckons to spend $8million on natural history programmingin 1995, targets the world south of theequator "as our patch" for the generationof stories. "South east Asia is morediverse and rich than Africa in wildlifeand to a large degree it is untouched,"said Stedman. Last month he announcedTVNZ Natural History is co -producing afour-hour documentary series, Chile -Land of Extremes, with The DiscoveryChannel. Stedman is also expecting toclose a co -production deal with SurvivalAnglia in. the UK which will result in anextra 12 hours of co -produced naturalhistory a year.


22

COVER STORY

DENMARK

Danish channels consistently rank natu-ral history and environmental documen-taries as priority items on their schedules.Thomas Dodd finds both the public andthe commercial networks remain com-mitted to the genre despite economic con-straints.

In 1994, national broadcaster DanmarksRadio (DR) TV screened approximately30 hours of nature documentaries out ofa total of 80 hours of documentariesscheduled.

DR TV buyer Hanne Lindemann lastyear bought material from UK produc-tion company Partridge Films (distributedby Canal Plus), 13 episodes of Wildlifeon One from the BBC and 26 half-hourepisodes of Wildlife Tales from the Aus-tralian Broadcasting Corp. There is noregular nature slot on DR TV, althoughLindemann is pushing for one. Some ofthe material is used in the quiz seriesViden Om (Knowledge About).

In the first half of 1995, the maincommercial station, TV2, screened 35hours (including repeats) of nature pro-grams, roughly equivalent to its outputfor the previous six months (33 hours). Ascreening on TV2 of Eyewitness, aBBC/Dorling Kindersley Vision co -pro-

duction, regis-tered a 30%share of viewingin a weekdayprimetime slot.

In recentyears, Danishbroadcastershave discoveredthe benefit ofdomestic pro-gramming and itsability to attractprimetime audi-ences. As aresult, personali-ty -led natureseries haveappeared on allthe nationalchannels; TV2even signed upan eccentric for-mer CopenhagenZoo director,Bent Jorgensen,as nature quizmaster.

In terms of own production, in 1995DR TV expects to commission at least sixnatural history productions, all of themdocumentaries produced by local inde-pendent producer Fauna Film. Fauna hasin the past co -produced programs with

Eyewitness: 30% viewing share in a prime DR slot

the BBC and various French companies.With increased competition from pri-

vate tv, cost considerations have come tothe fore. Budgets for nature films espe-cially can be prohibitive for broadcastersin smaller countries like Denmark. HT

WHERE ELSE COULD YOU FIND ...

A SCHOOL OF DUSKY DOLPHINS LEAPING?

A TIGER SUNBATHING IN THE JUNGLE?

A PAIR OF TUSKED WETAS FIGHTING?

OR, A BIRD -EATING TREE?

TVNZ's Natural History Unit of course.

`EWM

For further information contact:-Rosi Crane, Library Manager

TVNZ, Natural History Unit,P.O. Box 474, Dunedin, New Zealand

Telephone 64 3 479 9799Facsimile 64 3 479 9917

COVER STORY

,...,National Geographic is the wci! fl's/largest profitscientific and educational org ization wit10.2 millionmembers..,pts television activity' has beenuntil recently. Richard Huff reports on a

Special interests: National Geographic TV's Wildlif

low build,ly predator

Three decades ago, the folks who runNational Geographic magazine decid-ed to expand into television. This

September, National Geographic Televi-sion, the venture they created, will cele-brate its 30th year on the air.

Three years ago they planned a pushof the National Geographic brand nameinto international television markets. Thegrowth has been rapid. Next month theinternational television marketing anddistribution unit under Helen Tourrellrelocates itself in London offices with theaim of bettering service to the 60 coun-tries (up from 25 in 1993 and 50 in 1994)which air National Geographic -brandedstrands of programs.

The drive into international marketshas been fast. While many tv p;unditsclaim that the fastest -growing life form innatural history and documentary pro-gramming in recent years has been theDiscovery Channel, with its global roll-out and huge increase in program pro-duction, National Geographic's growth isstill very significant.

Driven by the Society's central objec-tive to create an organization "for theincrease and diffusion of geographicknowledge," the embracing of televisionas a way of getting the message acrossglobally has been handled with determi-nation and sensitivity. No more than the33 men who in 1888 convened in Wash-ington's Cosmos Club to form the Societywould expect.

Television for National Geographic isnot an end in itself, but just anothermeans (a very powerful one) by whichto extend the brand name.

The concept for a tv unit was hatchedin 1961, though National Geographic'sfirst Special didn't air until 1965. Butwhen it did, the documentary hit with aloud ratings bang. In fact, the program,Americans on Everest, earned the highestratings for any documentary at the time.

Today, National Geographic Televi-sion produces some 80 hours of pro-graming each year, reaching viewers oncable, commercial and public broadcast-ing, home video and syndication. Andcoming down the road are feature filmsbearing the National Geographic name.

"Consumers are still fascinated by theimages and the programming serves asan alternative to the other kinds ofdrama that are offered," said Tim Kelly,senior vice president of National Geo-graphic Television. "Clearly there is anaudience out there for well -produceddramatic, real -life kinds of programming,like the kind we do."

Currently Kelly oversees a program-ming arsenal that includes five annual


24

COVER STORY

hours of National Geographic Specials onNBC, a new children's series that willdebut on CBS this fall, Explorer, a two-hour weekly program on TBS, and OnAssignment and World of National Geo-graphic, two series sold to stations on abarter basis. And if that was not enough,he also oversees a home video unit andthe upstart feature films unit.

Specials has traditionally been thetelevision production division's flagshipunit. For nine years after its initial tele-cast in 1965, the series bounced betweenCBS and ABC. In 1975, National Geo-graphic partnered with public stationWQED-TV in Pittsburgh to co -producethe specials and distribute them to publicstations. In 1991, National Geographictook production in house, where it'sremained since.

However, in 1994, Chevron, theseries' major underwriter, cut back itsfunding. While normally a crisis for anypublic program, the decision by the oilcompany to back out worked in NationalGeographic's favor. As a result of thefunding search, Specials ended up backon a commercial network, only this timeit was NBC.

"For 30 years the series has beenavailable nationally. It was important forus to have this flagship series on broad-cast television," said Kelly.

Like any other program licensed by abroadcast or cable outlet, the license feedoesn't cover the production costs.According to Kelly, National Geographicspends between $300,000 and $1.5 mil-lion to produce an hour of television.

"Sometimes we feel that we want togo the extra mile," Kelly said. "Some-times that involves an expedition orsome kind of scientific operations."

Yet compared to the typical hour-longdrama, which costs anywhere from $1.5million to $2 million, the developmentperiod for a National Geographic pro-gram is two to three times as long. Pro-grams also take longer to make money.

Indeed, some National Geographicdocumentaries take two years to produce- if all goes to plan. Occasionally it takeslonger.

"Sometimes it takes years for theseshows to pay off," Kelly said. "We kindof pick our projects carefully for that rea-son."

The company makes its money backthrough syndication, international salesand home video releases. Internationalco -funding provides another cash stream.

"It takes three or four years before westart seeing some money from theseshows," Kelly said. "That's one reasonwe have to have partners. We see a lot

of cash go out the door early, and for along time before we even get the thingto air. It can be less expensive (whencompared to drama hours) but the costsgo out for such a long time before youhave a finished project."

Last year the company generated rev-enues of $65 million, which is almostentirely earmarked for programming.

Kelly said the production process hasan impact on the cash flow. And as aresult, the company tends to make dealswhere its partners are contributing cashearly on.

The international concerns acting insome fashion as partners with NationalGeographic are many of the blue chipcorporations of the world's public andcommercial broadcasters. They includeCanal Plus, Bertelsmann, NHK, Channel4, the BBC, TV Tokyo and Rai. With thiskind of international partner the societyhas found itself taking a place veryquickly at the top table of internationaltelevision. It has also forced the Wash-ington -based society to listen to thereports coming back from internationalmarketplaces about the television prod-uct.

Initially distributed by Turner andPublic Television International (P11), thesociety found it had no real involvementin the promotion or marketing of its pro-grams in the internationalmarketplace. After a longprocess of finding areplacement distributor,the UK's Itel was appoint-ed three years ago. WithHelen Tourell, managingdirector of internationaldistribution, moving herunit to London, the role ofItel will change, withmany markets revertingback to National Geo-graphic to sell. Itel is likelyto hold on to the SouthAmerican and Eastern Blocmarkets where it has astrength, as well as someWestern European mar-kets.

As much as 50% of rev-enues for new programsnow come from interna-tional markets in the formof presales, and the Soci-ety is increasingly movingto a position where pro-grams will be fully fundedprior to completion. Themain strategy here hasbeen to secure outputdeals where major broad-

casters get a first look at everythingbeing developed, though Tourell stressesthat "we won't impose programs on abroadcaster."

Now the Society is prepared to spendon marketing and promoting its productin international markets, as well as onversioning the programs for local mar-kets. Tourell sees it as important thatNational Geographic as far as possibleowns its foreign version for future salesinto the marketplace and to other win-dows when they arise. Tourell is alsomaking headway in convincing the pro-gram -makers to gear programming tomore international markets.

In the U.S., the first three instalmentsof National Geographic's Specials haveearned respectable ratings. Its firstappearance, a 30th anniversary specialthat aired in January, earned a 15.5 rating(percentage of the nation's 95.4 milliontv homes) and a 24 share (percentage ofthe sets in use.) The program wasranked No. 5 among all specials thataired during the 1994-95 television sea-son, which ended in April. The NBCdebut won its time period. NBC's otherSpecials telecasts were Secrets of the WildPanda, which averaged an 11.0 rating/17share and Great White Shark, whichearned a 10.7/17.

In Japan, the company's documentary

Kelly: National Geographic picks its shows "kind of carefully"


25

COVER STORY

Tourell: Move to London is part of a strategy to

Wolves of the Sea drew about 16 millionviewers, Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hye-nas earned a 17% audience share forCanal Plus in Spain, and National Geo-graphic fare averages a 14% audienceshare on Germany's ZDF. Generally it isthe big animal shows that pull in thehighest ratings in international markets.Exploration and archaeology shows tendto be more difficult internationally asthey are usually too people -oriented.

The domestic ratings aren't as high asthe top network dramas,, but neither arethe costs. Although one downside to theprogramming is that it tends to attract alarge number of the 50 -plus demograph-ic, which is not a strong market withadvertisers.

And like network dramas, the naturalhistory programming sells well interna-tionally. According to Kelly, most,although not all, of what the companyproduces sells well abroad. Wildlife andadventure programming sells, thoughprograming with a distinct domestictopic may not.

For the future, the company is look-ing to create projects for the under -40crowd, which typically goes to a lot ofmovies, but tends not to watch non-fic-tion programming.

In addition to the new kids' series forCBS, Kelly said National Geographic isreadying another for "the Barneycrowd," and expects to announce abroadcast outlet for the project in thenear future.

"We also looking at other new non-fiction series of various kinds," Kellysaid. "Drama is another area. We have a

develop international presence

small group working in Los Angeles onseveral different projects, as a way for usto reach the 40 and under crowd."

According to industry statistics, 75% ofthe theatre -going public is 40 and under.It's that audience, which will watch amovie, but not tv, that Kelly wants. Andif he can't get them athome, he's hoping to lurethem in at the theatres.National Geographic isdeveloping a feature filmproject that will be a naturalhistory film, with an adven-ture bent. He's also lookingat developing an Imax film.

However, as NationalGeographic enters its fourthdecade, it's doing so withmore competition thanever. Cable's DiscoveryChannel produces 1,600hours of original program-ming each year, of which alarge portion is natural his-tory. Arts & Entertainmenthas some, and ABC pro-duces about five hoursannually through a partner-ship with one of Kelly's oldcronies at National Geo-graphic, Dennis Kane.

"It always goes back tothe programming," Kanesaid of National Geograph-ic's success. "It's the qualityof the program, and thequality of the organization.They've got some goodpeople and a brand name."

Discovery's Clark Bunting also admitsto being "a big fan of National Geo-graphic. They do an awfully good job."He too is overseeing the production of atheatrical natural history project.

The progress of the international tele-vision team is opening up new doors forthe society. In France and Spain majordeals for books and magazines came offthe back of television's presence. InJapan, television was an important ele-ment in the successful launch of the firstforeign -language edition of the maga-zine.

These days National Geographic isvery much a part of new media frontiers.It is currently part of a video -on -demandtest in Singapore, though it has yet to seeany of the results.

A channel has been proposed in therecent past, and the proposal will keepcoming up. But so far the answer hasbeen negative. In the end it all comesdown to branding. The society does nothave enough of its own programming fora channel and is not prepared to riskdiluting its brand through acquired pro-grams. Ultimately it is the power and themessage behind the brand that is Nation-al Geographic's global objective. Notworld domination of the televisionscreen. 0111

Mission PositionNational Geographic Society 1993

Revenues ($000s)Members' dues and contributions 221,459Educational programming and materials 136,333Advertising 47,624Investment and related income* 13,686Corporate, foundation and other support 4,654

Total 423,755*Figures do not reflect market activity

Expenses ($000s)

Printed educational information 347,772Electronic educational information 57,285Scientific research and exploration 6,324Classroom geography programs 10,138Community outreach 6,272Other expenses 40,455

Total 468,245

Net loss before market activity 44,490

Source: Report Of Programs 1993-4

(most recent figures available)


26

TBTELEVISIONBUSINESSINTERNATIONAL

YEARBOOK '96READ ALL OVER THE WORLD

BUT IT'S THE a r.'i1C1W THAT

GETS YOU THE BUSINESS!

Now being compiled

The NEW Producers & Distributors Listings

HIGHLIGHT YOUR COMPANY LISTING IN THE '96 EDITION

Complete the entry form and return to TBI before August 20

Fax: +44 111 352 4883/352 9657

No Entry Form?

Call Dominic Schreiber on +44 171 352 3211

LEGISLATION

AnotheThousands of films and

tv programs which havefallen into the public

domain in the U.S. couldbe back in copyrightnext year. Adrienne

Halpern explains why

Readers with long memories will recallthe wrangling over the UruguayRound of the GATT trade negotia-

tions around a year and a half ago. Theupshot of the sometimes bitter argu-ments traded across the Atlantic, overwhether audiovisual productions shouldbe included in the agreement, was thatthe U.S. and Europe would have to agreeto differ.

Culture wasn't, however, entirelyunaffected: Due to a little -noticed butsignificant provision of the UruguayRound Agreement Act signed by Presi-dent Clinton on December 8, 1994, thou-sands of copyrights to foreign -mademovies, tv programs and sound record-ings which had fallen into the publicdomain in the U.S. will be restored.

Motion pictures which will no longerbe open to free exploitation includesome milestones of the cinema: Godard'sA Bout de souffle (Breathless), Renoir'sLa Grande Illusion, and Fellini's 8 1/2.Thousands more titles and libraries couldbe affected; U.S. authorities expectbetween 30-50,000 notices of intent toenforce restored copyrights to be filedwith the U.S. copyright office annuallyfrom the time the new rules take effect atthe beginning of 1996.

The Act creates an extraordinaryopportunity for European and other for-eign copyright owners at a time whenthe stock of independent movies is highand digital technology promises a host ofnew distribution outlets.

The most important change to U.S.copyright legislation is that protection -for any restored work which qualifies -is automatic. Works which are restoredwill be protected for the remainder of

Films back in copyright include cinematic milestones such as A Bout de Souffle

the term of copyright that the workwould have otherwise enjoyed in theU.S. (generally, for motion pictures andother "works for hire" and for pre -1978works, a period of 75 years from releaseor publication; for other works, life ofthe author plus 50 years).

The U.S. Copyright Office has takenthe position that the automatic -restora-tion provisions take effect January 11996, a date that has been confirmed by

a Presidential proclamation.To qualify as a restored work, a for-

eign work must be an original work ofauthorship that is not in the publicdomain in its source country, but is inthe U.S. public domain for one of thefollowing reasons: Non-compliance with U.S. statutoryformalities, (such as failure to renew thecopyright, failure to register within thefirst 28 -year period of copyright with

0Ua)

0To.0

.0I-


28

LEGISLATION

respect to pre -1978 works or publishingthe work without a proper copyrightnotice). Lack of subject matter protection inthe case of sound recordings fixedbefore February 15 1972. Lack of national eligibility, such aswhen the work is from a country withwhich the U.S. did not have copyrightrelations at the time of publication.

In addition, the work must have atleast one author or rightholder (in thecase of a sound recording) who was, atthe time the work was created, a nation-al or domiciliary of an eligible country,defined as a country other than the U.S.that is a member of the World TradeOrganization or the Berne Convention orthat is subject to a Presidential proclama-tion extending copyright restoration toworks .of that country based on recipro-cal treatment of U.S. nationals or domi-ciliaries.

Finally, if the work was published, itmust have been published first in an eli-gible country and not published in theUnited States until more than 30 dayslater.

Copyright in a restored work vests ini-tially with the author or initial righthold-er of the work as determined by the lawof the source country of the work.Assignments, licenses and other disposi-tions of an interest in the copyright in awork are to be given effect according tothe terms of the disposition agreement,

taking into account the expectations ofthe parties and relevant laws. This seemsto leave open the possibility of conflict-ing interpretations by the author and theparty that was granted rights and mayresult in lawsuits to determine who holdsthe restored copyright in a work.

In general, the remedies provided bythe Copyright Act are available for actsof infringement commenced on or afterthe date of restoration. In order toachieve a degree of fairness, however,the act includes some protection for"reliance parties" who have relied on thepublic domain status of a work. Essen-tially, reliance parties are those whoused a work both before and afterDecember 8 1994 in a manner thatwould have constituted infringement hadthat work been protected by copyright inthe U.S.

The act gives reliance parties a one-year grace period which begins to runfrom the date the reliance party receiveseither actual written notice of theowner's intent to enforce the recapturedcopyright or constructive notice throughthe publication in the Federal Register ofa list of notices of intent to enforce filedwith the Copyright Office. The CopyrightOffice plans to publish the first such listin May 1996 and then at regular intervalsof four months or less. During such aone-year period, a reliance party maysell off previously manufactured stockand publicly perform or display the

La Grande Illusion: Unexpected cause for rights holders to celebrate GATT

work, or may authorize others to do so.However, during that year, the relianceparty may not make further copies of thework. Without such notice, reliance par-ties are free to continue making and sell-ing copies of the restored works in theU.S.

The act also attempted to ensure fair-ness for those who created "derivativeworks" based on a work which at thetime of creation was in the publicdomain in the U.S., such as a remake ofthe European motion picture that wasreleased in the U.S. without a propercopyright notice, or which was not prop-erly registered and renewed, by provid-ing that such derivative works may con-tinue to be exploited for the duration ofthe restored copyright if the relianceparty pays to the owner of the restoredcopyright "reasonable compensation" forsuch use.

Beyond the basic requirements that anotice must identify the title of therestored work (including an Englishtranslation and any alternative titles bywhich the work is known) and be signedby the owner of the restored copyrightor the owner of an exclusive right in thework or by the owner's agent, the proce-dures governing the timing, form, con-tent and treatment of the notice varydepending on whether the owner pro-vides actual notice or constructive notice.

For example, a notice may be filedwith the Copyright Office only duringthe 24 -month period commencing on orafter the date of restoration, while anotice may be served on a reliance partyat any time after the date of restoration.A filed notice is effective against anyparty, while served notice is effectiveonly against the party served. A filednotice is effective against all infringinguses, while a served notice must specifythe uses to which the owner objects, andpresumably does not start the one yearsell-off period for uses not specificallyidentified in the served notice.

The Copyright Office is required topublish regulations governing the filingof notices of intent to enforce and theregistration of works in which copyrightis restored by October 1 1995. Owners ofrestored copyrights may begin filingnotices of intent to enforce on January 11996. It is advisable for copyright ownersto file their notices as soon as possibleafter that date to begin the running ofthe grace period for reliance parties.

Adrienne Halpern is an attorney at lawfirm Loeb and Loeb, New York, specializ-ing in entertainment and copyright law


29

LEGISLATION

User FriendlyChanges in European copyright legis-lation will impact on the tv businessthroughout the 15 member states of

the European Community (EC) and theEEA territories of Norway and Iceland.

The aim behind the EC's directive onthe duration of copyright was originallyto harmonize this aspect of the laws ofthe member states. In Germany, copy-right lasted for the life of the author plus70 years, while France had recentlyextended its life plus 50 years rule to lifeplus 70 years for music. Most of theother member states gave protectiononly for life plus 50 years.

All the EC had to do, apparently, wasto decide whether to require the Ger-mans and French to reduce their termsor to require the other members toincrease theirs.

The latter was the option chosen,although eyebrows were raised at theslim justification given for it: thatincreased life expectancy meant that aterm of life plus 50 years was now inad-equate to protect two generations of anauthor's heirs. The public interest in hav-ing unrestricted freedom to use worksafter a reasonable period did not appear,to many commentators, to have beengiven sufficient weight.

In the UK - one of the countrieswhere the 50 -year term applied -a num-ber of public domain works will havetheir copyright revived until 70 yearsfrom the death of their authors, includingthe works of Rudyard Kipling, ThomasHardy, DH Lawrence and Beatrix Potter.All UK works still in copyright this yearwill gain an extra 20 years' protection.

Despite its aim of harmonizing nation-al copyright rules, the directive giveswide discretion to member states as to itsdetailed implementation. The term ofcopyright itself is to be harmonized uni-formly, but such issues as who is to owna revived term, and what protectionshould be given to a person who hadcommenced use of a public domainwork which is now to have its copyrightrevived, were left unresolved.

It is now clear that there will be con-siderable disharmony between memberstates in the way they deal with theseissues. For instance, Ireland and mostothers will award the revived term ofcopyright to the author's heirs; the UK,

European regulations on copyright are being brought intoline. But, report Stephen Edwards and Laurence Brown,national definitions of ownership will still vary

by contrast, will in the absence of a clearexisting agreement on the issue award itto the person who owned it when itexpired or, if the copyright was subjectto an exclusive license at that time, tothe exclusive licensee. Film and televi-sion producers, if they held ownershipor exclusive licenses of the works ofauthors who had contributed to theirproductions (as they frequently do), willaccordingly gain ownership of anyrevived term. As regards extended copy-right, the UK is to award the additionalperiod to the owner, as at probablyNovember 1995, of the existing copyrightterm. Other features of the UK's imple-mentation plans (which are still in draftform at the time of writing) that canclearly be seen to favour users are these: If a film or program includes or is anadaptation of a revived copyright workand that work was included or adaptedat a time when it was in the publicdomain, the revived copyright will notbe infringed by continued exploitation ofthe film or program (provided therevived copyright work was included inthe film or program before July 1, 1995or pursuant to arrangements madebefore that date). Any act done in pursuance of anagreement entered into prior to January1, 1995 will not infringe a revived copy-right. The agreement referred to heremight, for instance, be an agreementunder which a broadcaster commis-sioned a producer to make a seriesbased on a novel then in the publicdomain. Even in the absence of such an agree-ment a user may be able to exploit arevived copyright work, under a licenseof right subject only to payment of suchroyalties or other payments as may beagreed or, in default of agreement, befixed by the Copyright Tribunal. Thisfreedom will not be available, however,if a licensing body is able to grant alicense for the use in question. As to extended copyrights (that is,copyrights which had not expired and

which will be extended by 20 years),again a bias in favour of users can beseen, in the provision that any agree-ment which was effective for the dura-tion of the original period will continuethroughout the extended period. Likewise, again in relation to anextended copyright work, any act doneduring the period of extended copyrightin pursuance of an agreement enteredinto before January 1, 1995 is to be treat-ed as licensed by the copyright ownersubject to payment of royalties or otherpayments as may be agreed or fixed indefault of agreement by the Tribunal. Where the owner of a revived copy-right work cannot be identified or foundby reasonable enquiry, exploitation willnot constitute infringement.

Until a body of understriding andpractice has been built up over the nextfew years, it seems likely that a gooddeal of time and money will be spent incoming to terms with the disharmonythat this directive will leave in its wake.Film and television producers and dis-tributors may take consolation, however,in the potentially vast increase in thelength of copyright protection that filmsand programs will in future enjoy in theUK and other EC countries. Throughoutthe EC the term of copyright in a filmwill run for 70 years from the end of theyear in which the death occurs of thelast to die of the following people: theprincipal director of the film, the authorof the film screenplay, the author of thefilm dialog, and the composer of musiccreated specifically for and used in thefilm. Producers and distributors, particu-larly those with substantial archives ofolder films, will need to review theirholdings to ensure that they will havethe necessary information on these indi-viduals to hand if and when they needto prove the subsistence of their rights.

Stephen Edwards is a partner and Lau-rence Brown is a solicitor at RichardsButler, London, specializing in entertain-ment law


30

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Tel: (44) 171 410 5353Fax: (44) 171 413 8327

MininThe

GOResearchers for TheCold War and ThePeople's Century,both massivedocumentary series,are scouring theworld's archives forthe perfect clips toillustrate stories ofhistoric sweep. TimWestcott talked tothe producers aboutthe art and scienceof film research

This December will mark100 years since theLumiere brothers made

the first public display ofmoving pictures. Since then,the world's film archives havebeen accumulating a massivestore of audiovisual memory- film reels, still photographsand tapes. Now, almost anyanniversary known to sched-ulers can be commemorated,evoked or analysed by thevisual media with a plentifulsupply of yesterday's footage.Unlike old newspapers, oldfootage increases in valueevery day.

Dann Moss, president ofarchive company TimeSpan'sproduction arm, TimeSpan

Entertainment, described hiscompany's holdings as a"mine" which it is just startingto exploit. As well as devel-oping its own productions fortv and video (see box, p.41),TimeSpan is hoping to capi-talize on anticipated strongdemand for material fromproducers working on arange of projects whichdepend, to a varying extent,on archive material.

One of the biggest seriesin- the works right now isTurner Productions' 20 -parthistory of the Cold War,which, according to executiveproducer Jeremy Isaacs, isplanned to include about 12hours of archive material.

It's obvious a series likeThe Cold War, which willattempt to tell the story of theglobal power strugglebetween the West and theSoviet Union over a 40 -yearperiod, must draw heavily onarchive. But using archiveisn't a production quick fix.The task of tracking downsuitable material from sourcesall over the world, selectingfootage which is appropriate,and then clearing the interna-tional rights is complex, timeconsuming and potentiallyexpensive.

Isaacs, who produced theseminal historical series TheWorld At War for Thames TVin the 1970s, said the serieswould "almost be the story ofour lives. We want to give itsome sort of epic narrative

sweep." Thebiggest editorialchallenge is how totell the story: whetherto concentrate on nar-row themes, such asintelligence, or on theimpact of the ideologicalconflict in particular regionsof the world.

Isaacs and his London -based team, which includesThe World At War veteranMartin Smith as series produc-er, opted for a narrativeapproach so that the 20 -partseries will unfold chronologi-cally. "Every good programshould tell only one story,"said Isaacs. The film sources,moving from black and whitenewsreel in the early days tothe color images of morerecent news footage, will becrucial in conveying the pas-sage of time. "You film wit-nesses, remembering whatthings were like 50 or 20years ago. In that sense, itenables you to catch history."

The series budget of$600,000 an episode - orclose to $12 million overall -provides for 200 to 300 weeksof film research.

The only series compara-ble in size to The Cold Warare the handful of milleniumprojects which are at variousstages of development. Isaacshad previously developedone himself, Century, whichfigured in Carlton Television'sapplication for an ITV fran-chise but was never commis-

sioned.ABC andNHK arejointly pro-ducing aseries, whileTurner and CBSboth ponderedsimilar projects.

At this stage, ThePeople's Century, a co-production between theBBC and WGBH in Boston,is furthest forward. The 26 -part series is due to start air-ing in the UK this Septemberand in the U.S. next year. TheBBC's version will featurebetween 40% and 50%archive, while WGBH is aim-ing for around 60%.

According to Peter Pagna-menta, executive producer forthe BBC, there will be at least25 minutes of archive in anyone program. Sources formaterial, because it is aninternational series, are allover the world, and, since theseries goes back to 1900, the


33

FOCUS: ARCHIVES

BBC's own massive archivewill not come into play untilthe episodes covering the lat-ter part of the century.

Pagnamenta: Popular experience

"We have a rather differentcut on the century thanstraightforward political, mili-tary or diplomatic history,"said Pagnamenta. "We're verymuch concerned with popularexperience and with the greatchanges seen from the pointof view of ordinary people.

(The series) uses a differentrange of archive film from

what people mightexpect."

Social change will,therefore, be just as

important as the"film of treatiesbeing signed

and greatleaders meet-

ing."Research

is a keyele-

mentin

the

production, and the BBC tookthe step, a rare one thesedays, of appointing a full-timeresearcher as part of the pro-duction team. In addition,specialist researchers werehired to seek out specificmaterial.

Research costs, whichincluded sending oneresearcher to Beijing for sixweeks to view and agree aprice for footage for anepisode on the Cultural Revo-lution, are a sizeable part ofthe $13 million budget. SaidPagnamenta, "Just the costs ofgetting them there, looking ata lot of stuff we don't want touse and the technical costs oftransfer become enormous.The more original the archiveis, the more expensive itbecomes to find it."

The producers of theacclaimed series PromisedLand should have had an eas-ier time given the narrowergeographic focus of theirseries, a six-parter on themigration of five million blackAmericans from the ruralsouth to the urban northbetween 1940 and 1970.

Series producer AnthonyGeffen said, however, thatstarting out they faced anenormous problem- in thatsource material for the storyappeared to be virtually non-existent in the major archives."The whole reason this storywas so little-known is thatthere was very little noticetaken of it by documentaryreporters and photographersand other people."

Researchers for the seriesinterviewed thousands ofpeople who had taken part inthe migration, through themgaining access to thousandsof personal photographs.Records of the Farm SecurityAdministration proved to beanother goldmine.

Much of the best footagecame from out -takes -

material cut from filmsbecause "at the time,

they weren't interest-ed in black folks,"said Geffen. Reelsof film showinglaborers at work

were found in the loft of oneplantation house.

Promised Land aired onthe Discovery Channel (whichco -produced the series withthe BBC) earlier this year toan excellent critical reception.USA Today's reviewerenthused: "It plays like apage -turner."

Such reactions were testi-mony to the producers' suc-cess in stitching together acompelling narrative fromtheir widespread sources. Thetask of constructing a seriesout of ready-made footagedoesn't, of course, end withthe research. Isaacs said it isimperative that The Cold War,which is destined, at least inthe U.S., for airing on a com-mercial network, be "watch -able" as well as educational.Geffen added: "What wenever tried to do is just to usearchive to illustrate. There's areason to use archive, espe-cially when it's a meaningfulpart of the story."

Discovery, seeing thevalue of co -producing a high -quality series of the typewhich used to be associatedwith public service broadcast-ers, was keen for PromisedLand to be made on film,despite the expense.

Zvi Dor Ner, WGBH exec-utive producer of The People'sCentury, said his intentionwas "to find footage which isrelatively fresh, which hassome emotional content, tech-nically as well as we can do.It is a high -end series. We'regoing after the best."

The question of viewer tol-erance of black and white,sometimes grainy footage isanother which producershave to take into account.Cinema Europe: The OtherHollywood, a six -hour serieson the early years of themedium in Europe, is madeup almost entirely of clipsfrom silent films. The qualityof the pictures is strikinglygood. Producers KevinBrownlow and David Gill hadpreviously made several pro-grams on the silent cinema,including Emmy award -win-ning series on Charlie Chaplin


34

and Buster Keaton. Telecinetechnology has made theirwork easier; because earlyfilms had fewer frames persecond than in modern times,it used to be common for tvreplays to look speeded upand jerky. This can be reme-died by simply playing thefilm at the correct speedthrough a telecine. The use oftape rather than film alsohelps retain the quality of theoriginal films.

Most of the films whichmake up the series havenever been seen on tv and inthe course of research, whichtook 18 months, several filmswhich were officially thoughtto have been lost were "redis-covered" in private archives."Our problem was where tofind the best available print.Films were copied andrecopied. It's one thing tryingthe access the material -

another trying to access thebest," said Gill.

Although much of the con-tent of the series came frompublic film archives inEurope, a lot of the archiveswere in private hands.Brownlow believes that asmuch as two-thirds of theearly European cinema (theseries covers the period up to1933) has been lost. Film stu-dios, distributors and rightsholders have made little effortto maintain or preserve filmsthey own; some don't evenown copies of films to which

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they hold the rights. "People ownthe rights and are quite happy totake the fees, but don't invest any-thing in the material," noted Gill.

"Some companies are very meanin what they allow you to use inquantity, particularly the studios. Wedepend heavily on personal relationsand goodwill," said Patrick Stanbury,Gill and Brownlow's partner inseries producer Photoplay Produc-tions.

The cost of archive material isstarting to reflect its increasingimportance in historical film -making,as well as the more commercialapproach of rights owners. Geffen,who has been using archive materialto make documentaries since theearly 80s at the BBC, said the cost ofrights has gone up every year for thelast five to seven years.

Libraries are inevitably keen topromote themselves as a one -stopshop for documentary filmmakers.It was rumored that Turner wasconsidering a deal withReuters (which owns rightsto a Russian archive calledTrinity Bridge). But Isaacssaid he would resist the"blandishments" oflibraries. "A lot of thefootage is in thepublic domainsuch as theNational Pub-lic Archive.The rightscharge isnil. The

librariescan't beat

that."He added

that the pro-ducers have

"almost a moral -certainly a profes-

sional - responsibili-ty" to draw on as many


36

International

Archive SalesShould you need sequences from a Nobel Peace Prize

Award, footage of a polar bear, glimpses of the

midnight sun, historical footage, nordic skiing events

or anything related to Norway, you can count on

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Ms. Mette Huck - Archive Sales Executive

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Corporation

sources as possible.The problem with

single -library deals,according to filmresearcher JaneMercer, is that"no singlelibrary holdseverythingyou want.You mayget 70-80%

fromone

source,but the

best bits,the bits you

really want,will be some-

where else." Mosssaid of the TimeSpan archives:

"We'd like to think wehave a definitive

archive,but the key tomaking a good production

is understanding the smallerarchives and the other greatjewels that are out there."

Major historical documen-taries are not the only sourceof business for archives.Locally -made, studio -basedshows which use archive area different economic proposi-tion than the big factualseries. In a lot of these cases,the use of ready-madefootage fits in with a tighterbudget.

How'd They Do That?, aseries produced by Telepic-tures for CBS in the 1993-4season, used a range offootage to explain, for exam-ple, how film stunts are done.Grundy Worldwide, whichacquired European formatrights, is now working on asecond series for the BBC andis producing three shows for

TF1.

Theuse of

archivefootage gave

vital back-ground to the

explanation seg-ments and saved

the program from apreponderance of

"talking heads," saidEarl Durham, one of the

producers. "Everything I'veever done I've tried to use

archival footage because tome it broadens and givesbreadth to a piece. Usuallyshows that tell you howthings work bore you todeath."

Although Durham hesitatesto call the genre either cheapor easy, he said: "Budgetswere very tight." Reality serieshave gone out of vogue onU.S. network tv, apart fromABC's long -running America'sFunniest Home Videos, yetDurham believes they will beback "because they're thebest and the thriftiest kind oftelevision."

One of Europe's leadingindependents, Endemol Enter-tainment, acquires footage formany of the shows it pro-duces for Dutch tv, and it'snow looking to acquire rightsfor Germany, Spain and Por-tugal. "We use everythingfrom commercials to hiddencamera clips and reconstruc-tions from (CBS show) Rescue911," said Hedy vanBochove, vice president,acquisitions and develop-ment. Endemol also has anon -going agreement withWTN for its entertainmentfootage and bought Beneluxrights to offbeat factual seriesTilt 23 1/2 from distributorFox Lorber. Rather thanscreening the whole series,Endemol cherry -picked clipsfor use in its lottery showPostcodejackpot.

Endemol is planning toexport many more of its

New RichesCountries like Poland have only recentlyopened huge archive collections to theworld, Chris Dziadul reports

Telewizja Polska's (TVP) archive company was formed in1986 and has since grown into one of Poland's largestprint and audiovisual archives. Owned by the Polish

state, it includes all programs produced by public broadcast-er TVP over the past nine years and contains at least 9.4 mil-lion items.

The company, called Osrodek Dokumentacji i ZbiorowProgramowych (ODiZP) in Polish, joined the InternationalAssociation of Television Archives (FIAT) as a full member in1994 and in the same year provided access to around650,000 clips. According to Ewa PodgOrska, ODiZP's deputydirector, demand for TVP's programming has grown consid-erably in recent years; its customers include local indepen-dent producers, cable operators and - on an internationalbasis - companies from all over the world, with Japan andFrance particularly well represented.

TVP itself is able to draw on material contained in severalother Polish archives, including Wytwornia Film:5w Doku-mentalnych i Fabularnych (WFDiF) and Filmoteka Naro-dowa. The former, which was formed in 1949, initially dealtwith documentary film and newsreel production, but in the1960s expanded to feature films and became one of thecountry's leading studios.

.

WFDiF - otherwise known as the Documentary and Fea-ture Films Studio - currently has a comprehensive archivewhich includes over 4,095 films produced from 1944 to thepresent date, along with all Polish newsreels made over thesame period, 41,462 documentary items and 353 foreignfilms. It also contains valuable historical items detailing theFirst and Second World Wars and more than 1,000 depositedfeature films produced in Polish film studios. The library iscatalogued and thousands of additional meters of film fromin-house productions, purchases from private collections andforeign archives are added each year.

Filmoteka Narodowa came into being in June 1955 as theCentral Film Archive and was renamed 15 years later. Fund-ed solely by the state, its collection currently includes around15,000 mostly Polish made films and is chiefly accessed byTVP, schools and universities. Films made between 1918-41,however, are invariably sought after by foreign broadcastersin Israel and the U.S. (such as a Polish -language channel inChicago). They are also among the most valuable, since 90%of all Polish silent movies and around 35% of talkies pro-duced during that period have already been lost.

shows and some of the for-mat deals could travel as well."We are interested in footageformat deals in countrieswhere we're placing shows,"said van Bochove. "It's a bitmore than a local wrap-around, but it's not a com-pletely self -produced show.

Even though it's quite expen-sive to clear the rights, it'scheaper than shooting yourown footage." MI

Archive pics reproduced withthanks to: CNN, Atlantic Produc-tions, Polygram, BBC, PhotoplayProductions, France 3


38

Film and Television Collections inEurope

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whatever you're looking for, no matter what you starting point!

Coverage includes Eastern Europeand the CIS

The MAP -TV Guide contains information on sources and archives in 40European countries, including Eastern Europe and the CIS for the

first time ever in print.

April 1995 671 pages Hardback 1-85713-015-4 £75.00

Special discounts for MAP -TV and BUFVC members!

TEL: 33 88 56 68 45 FAX: 33 88 56 68 49

INA NEWS:THEMATIC ACCESSTO THE NEWSARCHIVES OFFRENCH TELEVISIONFor news editors and magazineprogramme /documentary producersEvery two months the INA NEWSbulletin, supplied complete with aviewing cassette, provides a selectionof news archive items to settomorrow's news into perspective(anniversaries, forthcoming events,social trends...)

FREE SERVICES ON SIMPLE REQUEST :

BROADCASTERS AND PRODUCERS OUTSIDE FRANCE

Service INA NEWSService des Cessions de Droits Audiovisuels -Commercial International4 avenue de I'Europe -94366 Bry-sur-Marne Cedex - FranceTel (33/1) 49 83 28 34 - Fax : (33/1) 49 83 25 96

DES IMAGESD' ARCHIVES

POUR I_

\\Ir) P'

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E

FRENCH BROADCASTERS AND PRODUCERSService INA NEWSVideotheque d'actualites - Centre Pierre Sabbagh83 - 85 rue de Patay - 75013 Paris - FranceTel. (1) 44 23 12 40- Fax: (1) 44 24 94 17

INA

Expertsolals to

our II 3 St

e world's largest television footage resourceII

Library Sales

ririrj WORLDIDEIaa'g"'a TELEVISI

WON

TV Footage; Stockshots; Fillers;Magazine Programme Itemsand TV Archive Production

BBC Worldwide Television, Library SalesWoodlands 80 Wood Lane

London W12 017

Tel: 0181 576 2861/2862Fax: 0181 576 2939

FOCUS: ARCHIVES

The Price Of Gold

I

If the original purpose of archiving was to preserve and maintain moving images for posterity,rising demand has transformed most libraries into businesses as well. By Tim Westcott

TimeSpan Communications, a property company thatbranched out into archives last year with the purchase ofthe Grinberg Film Libraries, spent over $10 million on the

acquisition and on restructuring. But that price seems compara-tively modest given the ratecard cost of clearing an hour offootage - $250,000. Over the Atlantic, the British Pattie news-reels were bought for $8 million from the administrators aftertheir previous owner went bust four years ago. British PattieNews, according to joint managing director Robert Jackson, isnow turning over $5 million a year.

The cost of rare footage, such as the Zapruder film ofKennedy's assassination, or performance footage, such as any-thing with Elvis Presley in it, can go well beyond the scope ofmost documentary budgets, One producer compares the taskof clearing rights for highly -prized footage to buying a Picasso.Feature film clips are also pricey: In People's Century, WGBHhad to give up on using a 40 -second excerpt from CharlieChaplin's Modern Times because the fee named was equivalentto one-third of the budget.

Otherwise, the cost of footage is pretty much dictated bysupply and demand. Clearance for all territories and all media(broadcast tv, cable, video and CD -Rom) in perpetuity entailsthe highest fees, but is a requirement for most productions des-tined for the international market.

Libraries are, however, ready to be flexible about their ratesif the producer is buying in bulk. Moss said TimeSpan's ratecard prices would drop significantly for producers buying sev-eral hours of footage. In addition, TimeSpan will help to trackdown footage from other libraries and negotiate a cheaper rate.

Reuters, according to head of library Pam Turner, is not onlywilling to negotiate, but looks for "equity" in large productionsit is supplying - that is, a share of distribution revenues. Thecost of accessing the London -based news agency's archive isalso significantly lower for productions based in Europe.

(Another bonus for European producers is Map -TV, part ofthe EU's Media fund. It has supplied development loans toover 130 projects since 1991. To qualify for funding, produc-tions must have at least 20% archive content.)

Rather than following the route of many libraries andexploiting archive by creating video, Reuters decided to devel-op its own tv productions, such as a weekly newsreel programfor BSkyB. France's publicly -owned INA is planning to go onestep further than Reuters, taking a significant equity interestalongside France 3 and A&E's History Channel in a documen-tary network planned for French cable.

Moss said TimeSpan aims to expand its own productionfrom 15 hours a year this year to 45 hours by 1997. He is nego-tiating with Turner over one project TimeSpan has in theworks, a ten-hour video history of the 20th Century.

The incentive for a broadcaster to work with an archivecompany turned producer is massive savings. British Pattie canmake a one -hour documentary from its archive for $11,000 to$19,000 - using footage that would cost $75,000 for a broad-caster to clear, according to Jackson. British Pathe has a strate-gic alliance with the BBC - whose archives of 450 million feet

of film and tape start roughly where those of British Pathe end- and has co -produced with British indie Primetime and videocompanies BMG and THE.

Broadcasters and producers are accumulating their ownarchives of tv programming and footage. Trans World Interna-tional (TWI), the production company owned by sports mar-keters IMG, makes programs ranging from daily sports newspackages for CNN and ESPN to documentary series like TheOlympic Century and The People's Game. As well as its ownfootage, the London -based independent can draw on theOlympic archive which it represents and manages and others,such as the archive of world football federation FIFA.

Archive owners are also investing in replacing the oftenlow -tech process of accessing archives with more state-of-the-art systems. Most are moving towards computerized, cross-indexed systems rather than card indexes. Moss said that with-in a year the entire TimeSpan archive would be converted todigital tape, making possible rapid delivery via satellite to any-where in the world.

RSPB

BirdsNATURALLY

Stunning bird footagefrom award -winning

RSPB films

Also :

Animals Plants Habitats Scenics

ContactsSarah SaundersLesley Norman

RSPB Film LibraryThe Lodge, Sandy,Bedfordshire,SG19 2DL, UK

Tel : +44 1767680551

Fax : +44 1767692365

The Royal Society forthe Protection of Birds


41

Rqi:terrd chard i/ 110 21/707i,

FOCUS: ARCHIVES

TBI's Guide To Archives WorldwideAlpa International

20, rue Escoffler - Bat 26, 94220 Charenton,France

Tel: +33 1 43 76 00 03Fax: +33 1 43 76 02 08

Alpa houses a collection of skiing materialand medical images.

Antena 3 Television

Avendia Isla Graciosa, s/n,28700 S.S. de los Reyes, Madrid, SpainTel: +34 1 623 0854Fax: +34 1 654 84 17

The archive was set up in 1989 at the sametime as the inauguration of the private televi-sion company, Antena 3 Television.

April Television

Birger Jarisgaten 55, 115 45 Stockholm,SwedenTel: +46 8 208 920Fax: +46 8 208 933

Representative for Archive Films in Sweden,Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Hous-es material from Nat Geo, Timescape, Rockand Roll music collection of the 50s and 60sand the Lennart Nilsson Medical Collection.

Archive Films, Inc.

530 West Street, New York City,NY 10001, USATel : +1 212 620 3955Fax: +1 212 645 2137

Archive comprising all types of archivalfootage from 1896 to 1970 including footage

from silent and feature films, newsreels,industrial and educational. Affiliated offices inAmsterdam, Cologne, London, Milan, Madrid,Paris, Stockholm and Tokyo.

Associated Press TV (APTV)

The Associated Press House, 12 NorwichStreet, London EC4A 1BP, EnglandTel: +44 171 353 1515Fax: +44 171 583 0207

Established in 1994, the APTV libraryarchives all material on Betacam SP video-tape. Access is via a free text -retrievaldatabase.

Australian BroadcastingCorporation

Box 9994 Sydney, 2001 NSW, AustraliaTel: +61 2 950 3269/3267Fax: +61 2 950 3277

The ABC's library started in 1956 and nowhouses 50m feet of film and video material.As well as Australian items, there is materialon nearby regions such as Antarctica andAsia Pacific countries and an extensivewildlife collection.

Austrian Film and Video Ltd

Siebensterngasse 19,1070 Wien, AustriaTel: +43 1 523 8276Fax: +43 1 523 0398

The archive consists of footage of newsreelsand cinema magazines since 1949. Since themid 1980s the company has been producingfilms about Austria and topical films for for-eign tv companies.

B BC Worldwide Television

Library Sales, Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane,London W12 Orr, EnglandTel: +44 181 752 5824Fax: +44 181 576 2939

The BBC archives hold 400 million feet andcovers BBC output since 1948 with a limitedamount of pre-war originated material; over150 videotapes from the mid -60s onwards,and a videocassette collection of pro-grammes dating back mainly to 1981.

B ritish Movietonenews

Rank Laboratories Site, North Orbital Road,Denham, Middx UB9 5HQ, EnglandTel: +44 1895 833 071Fax: +44 1895 834 893

This collection houses over 5,000 newsreelscovering the period 1929-1979. As part of theworld's largest newsreel organization thelibrary has extensive international coverage.

B RTN - Television Archives

A Reyersiaan 52, 1043 Brussels, BelgiumTel: +32 2 741 3720Fax: +32 2 733 5815

Has programs dating from the start of Belgiantv in 1953 and collections covering the periodfrom 1930 onwards, and different territories,especially Central Africa

British Pathe News Ltd

Pinewood Studios Road, Iver Heath,Bucks, SLO ONH, EnglandTel: +44 1753 630361Fax: +44 1753 655365

Central Library ServicesWorldwide: images include ancient cities, remote

tribes and exotic animal kingdoms. Intriguing

Midlands news footage dates back to 1956.

NMNow includes all CARLTON footage

Tel: 0121 643 9898 Fax: 0121 616 1088Central Broadcasting is a Carlton UK Television Company

on \I I

/

CENTRAL

1

DIAMOND TIMENow representing major music archives.International Right Clearance & Research

MUSIC PUBLISHING CLIPSSampling Feature FilmSynchronisation TelevisionMechanicals NewsreelPublic Performances Stock Footage

RECORD COMPANIES

PHOTO RELEASES

TALENT & ESTATES

UNION & GUILD OBLIGATIONS

COPYRIGHT STRUCTURES FOR NEW TECHNOLOGIES

New York: Diamond Time (US) Limited, 73 Spring Street, Suite 504, New York, New York 10012, USA. Tel: 212 274-1006. Fax: 212 274-1933London: Diamond Time Limited, 16-26 Rosemont Road, London NW3 6NE, England. Tel: 0171 433 3355. Fax: 0171 794 8383

EXPERIENCE THE DIFFERENCE!

THE SPORTS VIDEO LIBRARYTRANS WORLD INTERNATIONAL (UK) INC.

-HE AXIS CENTRE, LEVEL 5, HOGARTH BUSINESS PARK, CHISWICK, LONDON, W4 2TH.TEL : (44) (181) 233 5500/5300 FAX : (44) (181) 233 5301

ABCKM

International

ABCSTOCK

FOOTAGELIBRARY

The Australian BroadcastingCorporation has collected

more than forty million feetof material covering 4000subject headings, rangingfrom News, Public Affairs,

Wildlife, Science, Australiana,The Environment, Sports and

Personalities - both localand overseas. We are local

agents for Reuters/Visnews,and Quantas footage.

For more information please contact:

SYDNEY (02) 950 3269(02) 950 3284Fax (02) 950 3277

MELBOURNE (03) 524 2273(03) 524 2271Fax (03) 524 2304

As well as libraries in:

BRISBANE (07) 377 5398ADELAIDE (08) 343 4601PERTH (09) 220 2945HOBART (002) 35 3333DARWIN (089) 433 222

FOCUS: ARCHIVES

International news archive dating from 1896to 1970 covering political, social and techno-logical advances, cultural and world figuresand events that shaped the 20th century.

Bulgarian National Television

29 San Stephano Street, 1504 Sofia,BulgariaTel: +359 2 44 34 21Fax: +359 2 46 35 38

Established in 1964, earlier tv material in thearchive dates back to the beginning of Bulgar-ian broadcasting in 1959.

Canadian BroadcastingCorporation/Societe Radio Canada

PO Box 500, Station A, Toronto,Ontario M5W 1E6, CanadaTel: +1 416 205 7608Fax: +1 416 205 6736

The CBC's archive has Canadian and interna-tional news from 1952, which is added todaily. Footage is shot on film from 1952 to1975 and from then is shot on tape.

Central Office of InformationFootage File

Hercules Road, London SE1 7DU, EnglandTel: +44 171 261 8951Fax: +44 171 261 8555

Archive has footage of social history, industri-al, geographical, scientific and political, pro-duced by the Crown Film Unit and COI overthe last 60 years.

Central Independent Television

Central House, Broad Street, Birmingham, B12JP, EnglandTel: +44 121 643 9898Fax: +44 121 616 1088

Collection features news and regional materi-al from 1956 to date and all programs pro-duced by Central Independent Television from1982 to date.

Czech Television Archive

Ceska televize, Kavci hory, 14070 Praha 4,Czech RepublicTel: +42 2 423326Fax: +42 2 6121 2885The archive of the former Czechoslovak tv,since 1993 the Czech Television Archive, col-lects audiovisual material dating from 1953onwards.

Danish National Film Board

27, Vestergrade, 1456 CopenhagenDenmarkTel: +45 33 13 2686Fax: +45 33 13 02 03

Established in 1939, the ministry of culturefunded Statens Filmcentre is a national filminstitution which supports the production andpurchase of all visual genres, including docu-mentaries, short films, video experiementsand children's films.

Danmarks Radio

TV-Byen, 2860 Soberg, DenmarkTel: +45 35 20 38 50Fax: +45 35 20 38 08

The Danish national broadcaster's tv archiveincludes programs broadcast from 1951 tothe present. DR also owns a historical archivemade up of private collections dating from1896.

Education and Television FilmsLimited

247a Upper Street, London N1 1RU. EnglandTel: +44 171 226 2298Fax: +44 171 226 8016

Archive covers all aspects of history and lifein USSR, China, Eastern Europe, Vietnam,Korea, Mongolia and Africa.

Diamond Time Ltd

16-26 Rosemont Road, London NW3 6NE,EnglandTel: +44 171 433 3355Fax: +44 171 794 8383

Music on video from the 1970s to the pre-sent with historical additions going back tothe 1930s.

Fernseh Allianz

Studio Hamburg, Jenfelder Allee 80, D-22039Hamburg, GermanyTel: +49 40 6688 5445Fax: +49 40 6688 5399

Music shows made for German tv from 1965to the 1980s featuring rock and pop acts.

Gaumont Film Library

24 rue Jacques Dulud, 92200Neuilly-sur-Seine, FranceTel: +33 1 46 43 23 30Fax: +33 1 47 38 12 18

Television Business Intonational July/August 1995

44

FOCUS: ARCHIVES

The archives of Gaumont, founded in 1895,include feature films and cinema newsreelsdating from 1897 to 1973. The collection,which holds 150,000 titles, is not beingadded to.

German Federal Archive

(Bundesarchiv - Filmarchiv)Fehrbelliner Platz 3, 10707 Berlin, GermanyTel: +49 30 8 68 11Fax: +49 30 8 68 13 10

West and East German film archives, housedin Koblenz and Berlin respectively, are in theprocess of being merged in Berlin. The Bun-desarchiv, one of the largest in Europe,includes 900,000 cans of amateur, documen-tary and feature films, news and currentaffairs.

Greenpeace CommunicationsVideo Library

5 Baker's Row, London EC1R 3DB, EnglandTel: +44 171 833 0600Fax: +44 171 837 6606

The video library holds footage on Green -peace International campaigns and environ-mental issues. Subjects include marine andtoxic pollution, atmosphere and energy, nucle-ar issues.

Grinberg Film Libraries

630 Ninth Avenue, New York City,NY 10036, USATel: +1 212 397 6200Fax: +1 212 262 15321040 North McCadden, Hollywood,Ca 90038, USATel: +1 213 464 7491Fax: +1 213 462 5352

Acquired last year by TimeSpan Communica-tions, the Grinberg library includes the Pattieand Paramount newsreel collections and anumber of specialist collections. TimeSpanrecently signed a five-year deal with ITN torepresent its archive in the U.S.

Image Bank

111 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10003, USATel: +1 212 529 6700Fax: +1 212 529 888917 Conway St, London W1P 6EE, EnglandTel: +44 171 312 0300Fax: +44 171 394 9111

The Image Bank is the leading stock librarywith 66 offices worldwide. Among the 200companies it represents are MGM, Turnerand the Audubon Film Library.

Independent Television News

The Television News Archive, 200 Grays InnRoad, London WC1 8XZ, EnglandTel: +44 171 430 4771Fax: +44 171 430 4453

Collection consists of full coverage of UK &world events from 1955 to date, including allITN news programs for IN, Channel Four andSuperchannel, ITN documentaries and specialprojects. UPITN and WTN programs from1967 to date.

Institut National de ('Audiovisual- INA

4 avenue de ('Europe, 94366 Bry-sur-Marne,FranceTel: +33 1 49 83 20 00Fax: +33 1 49 83 25 85

The collection houses footage of news, publicaffairs, and sports holdings, some 40,000hours of film and video material, coveringFrench and international currert events since1949.

International Video NetworkLimited

107 Power Road, London W4 SPL, EnglandTel: +44 181 742 2002Fax: +44 181 995 78712246 Camino Ramon, San Ramon, Ca94583, USATel: +1 510 866 1121

The IVNL archive comprises over 100 traveldestinations, sporting action and adventureshots. Local culture, dance art and foodfootage is also available.

London Weekend Television -Images

The London Television Centre, Upper Ground,London SE1 9LTTel: +44 171 620 1620Fax: +44 171 261 3456

The collection consists of all LWT programsfrom 1968, as well as stockshot footagefrom LWT's current affairs and features pro-grams from the late 1970s to the presentday, retrievable from a fully indexed and com-puterised catalog.

Lumiere Pictures Ltd

Pinewood Studios, Pinewood Road, Iver,Buckinghamshire, SLO ONH, EngandTel: +44 1753 631111Fax: +44 1753 655813

Tekvision Business International July/August 1995

45

Archive

For four decades ITN

Cameramen have been on

location at the world's

main news stories.

The product of their work is

now held in Central

London on 80,000 hours

of film and video

tape...and forms

one of the most complete

collections of television

news pictures anywhere.

A team of sales

researchers work seven

days a week to retrieve

footage to match

producers' needs...and

their budgets.

ITN

200 Gray's Inn RoadLondon WC1X 8XZ

Telephone: (44) 171 430 4771Fax: (44) 171 430 4453

FOCUS: ARCHIVES

focalTHE FEDERATION OF COMMERCIAL

AUDIO VIS1'./k1. LII3RARIES LTD

./.0c. I/ pi, wir,/,/,/i/mam/ /7,70,/op,'

(Ohl(0111:bilV 1'

10(..-11,pmrides a central sourceolInformation on the library

collections and services °LIMY' byits membeiN. This information

is freely available tonon members.

FOCAL keeps loll informed on chan,f4esrig/IS ChY117111CC

MO 11)C 1(11(',1 1('(

110)1/1/uurl 1101'SlelleIN

TEL/FAX:. (0)181 423 5853FOCAL. PO 130X -122. HARR011-

MIDDLESEX. 11..41 .3)1V 1K

BELGIANTELEVISIONARCHIVES

Ei BELGIUMFLANDERSCENTRAL AFRICA

F A X : 32 2 733 58 15PHONE : 32 2 741 37 20El It T N l(f43 BRU SSELS

Archive includes extensive catalog of over2,000 feature films dating from 1925onwards. Also keeps tv series from 1950onwards and stock footage library.

The National Film Archive

Narodni Filmovy ArchieNarodni 40, PO Box 1001, 1121 Praha 1,Czech RepublicTel: +42 2 2422 7137Fax: +42 2 2422 7744

Archive was established in June 1943. Fictionand non-fiction (documentary, popular sci-ence, newsreel, animated) films made duringthe period from the beginning of Czech cine-ma (1898) up to the present are held.

National Film & TelevisionArchive - London

21 Stephen Street, London W1 1PL, EnglandTel: +44 171 255 1444Fax: +44 171 436 7950

Collection houses over 146,000 titles datingfrom 1895 to the present day including: fea-ture films, shorts, documentaries, newsreels,amateur films and television programs.

National GeographicSociety

1600 M Street North West, Washington DC20036, USATel: +1 202 857 7659Fax: +1 202 429 5755810 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10019, USATel: +1 212 841 4460Fax: +1 212 944 48564370 Tujunga Blvd, Studio City, Ca 91604,USA

Tel: +1 818 506 8300Fax: +1 818 506 8200

Archive has 10 million feet of 16mm originalfilm out -takes from 25 years of National Geo-graphic television specials, explorer and edu-cational films including a wide variety ofwildlife, adventure, exploration and archaeolo-gy, scenic, exotic people and places.

New Zealand Television Archive

Television New Zealand Ltd, 100 VictoriaStreet West, PO Box 3819, Auckland,New ZealandTel: +64 9 375 0941Fax: +64 9 375 0872

TVNZ's archive features a diverse range ofNew Zealand scenery footage as well as cov-ering the whole spectrum of natural historyfootage - Antarctic shots on the one hand and

South Pacific footage on the other - all ofwhich can be transferred to any medium.

NOS

P.0 Box 26444, 1202 Hilversum, Nether-landsTel: +31 35 778037Fax: +31 35 775318

NOS Sales handles the distribution of tv-pro-grams and archive material of all Dutch publicbroadcasters, such as AVRO, TROS, VARA,NCVR, KRO. The Dutch newsreel archive ofPolygon is also part of the NOS collection.

NRK - Norwegian BroadcastingCorporation

NRK TV International - Archive Sales, N-0340Oslo, NorwayTel: +47 22 45 96 78Fax: +47 22 45 73 10

Collection houses NRK's productions fromthe 1960s to the present date. Also, theNews Reel Library of Norwegian Film - 1941to 1963 and an archive of various events inNorway - 1905 to 1940.

Olympic Television ArchiveBureau

Axis Centre, Level 5, Hogarth BuSiness Park,Burlington Lane, Chiswick, London W4 2THTel: +44 181 233 5353Fax: +44 181 233 5354

Administered by Trans World International,this archive contains official footage from theInternational Olympic Committee and coversthe entire history of the Olympic Games.

ORF - Austrian BroadcastingCorporation - Television Archive

Wurzburgassasse 30, 1136 Wien, AustriaTel: +43 1 878 78 23 80Fax: +43 1 878 78 27 39

This archive comprises all the programs ofthe ORF since its foundation in 1955.

Oxford Scientific Films

Lower Road, Long Hanborough,Oxford OX8 8LL, EnglandTel: +44 1993 881 881Fax: +44 1993 882 808

Collection houses over one million feet ofmaterial including: Natural history, specialeffects, high speed, timelapse, science,macro, micro and landscapes. There are also250,000 color transparencies.


46

PHENOMENAL FOOTAGE

News anc newsreel footage, feature film clips and archival stock footage of all types, fully catalogued, copyright cleared,and available at our nine offices worldwide. For a free broCiure call or fax the office nearest you.

Archive

Archive Films (U.K)London: 171-383-0033

Fax: 171-383-2333

Archive Films (Japan)Tokyo: 03-3406-9055

Fax: 03-3406-9066

ARCHIVE FILMS -STOCK FOOTAGE LIBRARY

212/620.3955Films, Dept.TBI, 530 W 25th St. NewYork, NewYork 10001 USA Fax 212/645-2137

Archive Films (GmbH)Koln: 0221-36-20-23Fax: 0221-36-41-12

Archive Films (Scandinavia)Stockholm: 08-20-89-20

Fax: 08-20-89-33

Archive Films (France)Paris: 01-40-3247-47Fax: 01-40-32-47-57

Archive Films (Espana)Madrid: 01-564-53-78

Fax: 01-564-60-72

Archive Films (Italia)Milan: 02-70635445Fax: 02-70638669

Archive Films (Netherlands)Amsterdam: 020-644-6788

Fax: 020-644-5975

A Century of Footage1896 1995

More than one hour of moving imagesMore than two hundred stills taken from footage

This CD-ROM will tell you more aboutwhat we have got in our archives than any written text

To order your free copy of the SVT archive presentationA Century of Footage, please call or send us a fax

The CD-ROM is available in both PC and Mac formats

Sveriges Television AB, Film & Video SalesS-105 10 Stockholm Sweden 7.

SVERIGES TELEVISION Phone 46 8 784 74 40 Fax 46 8 784 33 00 I "

FOCUS: ARCHIVES

you have

a problem

with using

archive tbotage

in your

programmes.

We have a

revolutionary

electronic

dirt, dust

and blemish

concealer which

can make the

material look

cleaner than

when it was

originally shot.

find a

solution

-MIINN/ IIMI Ilr

2 Golden SquareLondon W1R 3AD

Tel 0171 439 7138

Pathe Television Archive

24 rue du Docteur Bauer, 93400 Saint -Owen,Paris, FranceTel: +33 1 49 48 15 15Fax: +33 1 49 48 15 10

Archive comprises: Newsreels from 1895 to1980; silent and feature films from 1895 to1989; and tv programs from 1960 to the pre-sent day.

Radio Telefis Eirean - RTE

Library Sales, RTE, Donnybrook, Dubin 4,IrelandTel: +353 1 2083111Fax: +353 1 208 3096

The RTE archive contains all transmittednews items from 1985 and a collection ofarchive film of Irish interest acquired frominternational news agencies and localsources.

Reuters Television Library

40 Cumberland Avenue, London NW10 7EH,EnglandTel: +44 171 510 6444Fax: +44 171 510 8568

Collection houses an international newsarchive dating from 1896, including news-reels and the Visnews Daily Television NewsServices 1957-1992 and Reuters TelevisionDaily News Services.

RTBF IMADOC

Boulevard Reyers, 52,1044 Brussels, BelgiumTel: +32 2 737 24 62Fax: +32 2 737 22 79

Archive has programs made by the RTBFsince start up in 1953: 45,000 cans of docu-mentary, feature films, news and currentaffairs, science and education.

Rete Televisive Italiane SpA

(A Fininvest Group company)International Library Sales Head Office:Via Marconi, 27 20090 Segrate Milan, ItalyTel: +39 2 210 25586Fax: +39 2 210 28476

The RTI archive has over 30,000 video tapesof stockshots coverage covering all main Ital-ian and international events from the late1970s to date, plus programs produced byFininvest's three national networks since1980.

Royal Society for the Protectionof Birds (RSPB)

The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire SG19 2DL,EnglandTel: +44 1767 680551Fax: +44 1767 692365

Bird footage from RSPB films. Also animals,plants, habitats and scenics.

Sports Video Library

Axis Centre, Level 5, Hogarth Business Park,Burlington Lane, Chiswick, London W4 2THTel: +44 181 233 5500/3500Fax: +44 181 233 5301

Library has footage of TWI events coveringgolf, tennis and soccer, test cricket, gymnas-tics, show jumping, skating, snooker, etc.

Steven Spielberg Jewish FilmArchive

Law Building, Hebrew University,Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, IsraelTel: +972 2 812 061Fax: +972 2 322 545

Established in 1970, this archive includes theIsrael Database Filmography Project, whichgathers information on all films dealing withthe Jewish/Israeli experience.

Survival Anglia Limited

Anglia House, Norwich, NR1 3JG, EnglandTel: +44 1603 615 151Fax: +44 1603 765 886/7

Library houses 10 million feet of natural his-tory film shot on 16mm. Footage is in colorand available for television, cinema, commer-cial, educational and non -theatrical use.

SVT - Swedish Television

Library Sales- S105 10 Stockholm, SwedenLocation - Oxenstiernsgaten 26Tel: +46 8 784 7440Fax: +46 8 784 3300

The collection comprises all SVT's produc-tions covering all aspects of Swedish socialand working life. Also available, the newsreelLibrary of the Swedish Film industry and Swe-den's principal sports footage

Television Business International luly/August 1995

48

'94/95 ASIA/PACIFIC SATELLITE BUSINESS DIRECTORYPublished by MLE Inc.

350 pages containing satellite business information on the world's fastest growing economies.

Divided into 12 chapters detailing the satellite superhighways of the Asia/Pacific regionof the world. Concluded by directory listings by country. All important companies in the business fieldof broadcasting and communications, satellite equipment manufacturers and distributors,CATV/SMATV manufacturers, satellite operators and consultants are listed with full contact details.

'94/95 ASIA/PACIFICSATELLITE BUSINESS

DIRECTORYCompiled by th 3 Staff of the

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Chapter 4: The Asiasat and Apstar

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Chapter 7: The Tongasat, Rimsar and Unicom

Satellite Systems

Chapter 8: The PanAmSat Global Satellite System

Chapter 9: The Columbia and PacifiCom Regional

Satellite Systems

Chapter 10:A Tale of Two Satellites - Thaicom-1 & DBS-1

Chapter 11: Satellite TV and Radio Services

(ITU Region 3)

Chapter 12: Directory Listings by Country

PLUS... General Index Personnel Index Directory of Products and Services

PRICES UK £55 EUROPE £60 REST OF THE WORLD £70

For your copy call, write or fax your order to the books department at:21st Century Business Publications Ltd,

531-533 Kings Road, London SW1.0 OTZ, UK Tel: +44 171 351 3612 Fax: +44 171 352 4883

BRITISH PATHE NEWS.IF IT WENT ON, IT WENT IN

The world's major events,captured as they happened, make thisfamous newsreel archive an invaluableresource for producers and researchersalike. 50 million feet of film - from 1896 tothe 1970's - capture the events that shapeda century. State of the art catalogue andretrieval systems give access to all thesegreat moments in time... in no time at all.

Contact Larry McKinna at British Pathe News,Balfour House, 46-54 Great Titchfield Street,

London, W1P 7AE,Tel: 0171 323 0407. Fax: 0171 436 3232or Ron Saunders at British Pathe News,Pinewood Studios, Pinewood Road, Iver Heath,

Bucks, SLO ONH.

Tel: 01753 630361. Fax: 01753 655365

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ORIGINAL"Time Sixties Beat "

Al&BEAT -CLUB

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The "BEAT CLUB" archive represents 19hours of Rooinnd Pop music at its best

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-41,kre and influencing today's'tastes and emotions.

The "BEAT CLUB" Archive is an importantmpilation with an enormous historic andrtainment value. It was a crucible for the

usic video explosion of the eighties.

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available for footage use andfor compilation co -productions.

Fernseh Allianz GmbHStudio Hamburg

Jen felder Allee -80D 22039 Hamburg

Tel: 49-40-668854-45Fax: 49-40-66885399

FOCUS: ARCHIVES

Televisio de Catalunya

P.O. Box 30300, 08080 Barcelona, SpainTel: +34 3 499 9426Fax: +34 3 473 1438

The video library contains all programs pro-duced by TVC from 1984: news, sports, docu-mentary, entertainment.

Thames TelevisionInternational Ltd

Teddington Studios, Teddington Lock, TW119NT, EnglandTel: +44 181 614 2800Fax: +44 181 614 2964

The collection houses a whole range of pro-grames by Thames from 1968. A total of200,000 films and videotapes are held in thearchive and extracts can be supplied on anyfilm or videotape format.

Timescape Image Library:Energy Productions

12700 Ventura Boulevard, 4th Floor, StudioCity, CA 91604, USATel: +1 818 508 1444Fax: +1 818 508 1293

The largest collection of modern specially -shot color footage in the world. Particularlystrong on footage of America, including allmajor cities, landscapes and landmarks.

Universal Video Corporation SRL

Via Reguzzoni 15, 20125 Milan, ItalyTel: +39 2 647 3612Fax: +39 2 643 0471

Italian history and current affairs of Italy andEurope. Black and white footage from theLumiere Brothers films up to the present. His-tory of aviation and the conquest of space.

Worldwide Television NewsCorp.

The Interchange, Oval Road, Camden Lock,London, NW1 7EP, EnglandTel: +44 171 410 5200Fax: +44 171 413 83021995 Broadway, New York, NY 10023, USATel: +1 212 362 4440Fax: 1 212 496 1269

WTN's principal collections are housed inLondon and New York and include worldwidenews coverage from 1963 plus stockshots,sport, environment and entertainment newsfootage.

WPA Film Library

16101 South 108th Avenue, Orland Park, 1160462, USATel: +1 708 460 0555Fax: +1 708 460 0187

One of America's foremost sources of histori-cal and contempary moving images, with over12,000 hours of footage unavailable else-where.

YLE Finnish BroadcastingCompany

TV1/TV Archives, Radio & Tv CentreRadiokatu 5, PO Box 10, 00241 Helsinki,FinlandTel: +358 0 14801Fax: +358 0 1483 862

The archive holds historic footage dating from1906 onwards, including Finnish newsreels,documentaries and feature films.

Yorkshire Television

The Television Centre, Kirkstall Road, LeedsLSJ 1JS, EnglandTel: +44 113 438 283Fax: +44 1532 445 107

Collection has regional news material cover-ing most of Yorkshire region, and all pro-grams produced by Yorkshire TV from 1968to date - including documentary, drama andchildren's.

ZDF Central Division - Archive,Library and Documentation

Postfach 4040, 55100 Mainz-Lerchenberg,GermanyTel: +49 6131 704700Fax: +49 6131 70 49 41

The German public broadcaster's completeprogram stock is housed in the library.

The archives listed in this section are mainlytaken from two sources: 1. Film and Televi-sion Collections in Europe: The MAP -TVGuide (published by Blueprint). For moreinformation, contact The British UniversitiesFilm & Video Council, Tel: +44 171 7343687, Fax: +44 171 287 3914. 2. TheFOCAL (The Federation of CommercialAudiovisual Libraries Ltd) Members' Guide.Contact Focal on Tel/Fax: +44 181 4235853.


so

PROGRAMMING

PRODUCT NEWSBuyers In Murderous Screenings BattleIF it didn't quite end up with blood on thecarpet, the bidding activity surrounding Fox'snew series Murder One at the May/Junescreenings in Los Angeles was by all accountsthe most intense for some years. The fiercecompetition was partly a tribute to expecta-tions of the Steven Bochco-produced show,which recounts the story of a murder trial, andpartly the increased willingness of broadcast-ers to put money on the table to secure Holly-wood product at pilot stage.

Marion Edwards, executive vice president,international television, at Fox, said there wascompetitive bidding for the show "in everysingle market." ABC has committed to 22episodes of the series. The BBC and RupertMurdoch -owned BSkyB reportedly paid acombined $250,000 an hour for the UK broad-cast and pay-tv rights.

Although Edwards wouldn't confirm whatbroadcasters paid, she said the show wasattracting "higher license fees than the norm."

"It seemed as though everyone wantedMurder One wherever they came from," saidAlan Howden, head of acquisitions for theBBC. "It's a very well -crafted piece of work.There's an element of risk about whether itwill hold the audience's attention... We'll haveto make sure we get their interest early on."

MCA's American Gothic: Screenings hot property

Howden said that although they have madejoint bids in the past, this time BBC and Skynegotiated separately. The other UK broad-caster bidding for the series was Channel 4,which instead opened its chequebook forMCA's American Gothic.

Colin Davis, president of MCA TV Interna-tional, said the pubcaster had "paid the high-est price ever for a one -hour series." The SamRaimi-produced series, airing on CBS, alsosold to RTL in Germany, RTVE, Mediaset,Canada's WIC and Australia's Network 10.

Other hot series were Fox's Space: AboveAnd Beyond and Paramount's J.A.G., CBS'sCentral Park West and Warner Bros' The Clientand Charlie Grace.

According to Rainer Siek, head of CBSEnterprises, Central Park West sold every-where in Europe with multiple bids in France,Germany and Italy, and to Canada, Australiaand New Zealand. NHK in Japan was interest-ed in the series, the glamorous saga of a NewYork publishing family. ITV in the UK, whichwanted the series, demurred at doing a jointdeal with BSkyB, which had already boughtthe show. ITV, one of the biggest networks inEurope, came away without buying anything.

Siek said he had been pleasantly suprisedby interest in Caroline in the City, a sitcomwhich NBC has given a prime site in its sched-ule between Seinfeld and ER. He said theshow had sold in all English-speaking territo-ries, to Germany and Scandinavia. "It's notimpossible to sell comedy series, but moreand more, buyers wait until you have two sea-sons of a proven series and then they mightbuy it and strip it."

MCA's Partners sold to the same territoriesas American Gothic, while Touchstone sitcomIf Not For You sold to the BBC.

Overall, buyers and distributors said thescreenings were getting bigger, better orga-nized and a crucial element of broadcasters'year-round battle for viewers the world over.Around 800 buyers were in LA over the threeweeks of the screenings.

"The screenings have come a long way.Years ago they used to be a happening forSouth American buyers," said KlausLackschewicz, head of ARD Degeto. "It hasbecome a seller's market. You have to get inthere first."

The Cartoon Network hasunveiled its first pre-school pro-

gramming venture, a partnership

with the Children's Television

Workshop (CTW). They will devel-

op Big Bag, a weekly, commer-

cial -free program which will fea-

ture a Muppet characterdesigned by Jim Henson Produc-

tions - the first collaborationbetween Henson and CTW since

Sesame Street. The 13 -part

series will launch on the Cartoon

Network in May 1996 as part ofa two-hour block airing at week-

ends. The 55 -minute show will

combine original, co -produced

and some acquired domestic and

international animation.

Film Roman has sold the UKrights to animated series TheTwisted Tales Of Felix The Cat to

ITV and The Children's Channel.

ITV will air the series simultane-ously with CBS from the begin-

ning of September, with the

satellite channel launching the13x30 -minute series from theend of the month. NBC has formed a joint ven-ture with UK sports promoter Par-

allel Media Group to supply liveand recorded sports programs for

its international networks. NBC

Super Sports will be managed by

Parallel Media, which is already

supplying a sports strand to Euro-pean satellite network NBC

Super Channel. Chairman is Dick

Ebersol, president of NBC

Sports, with Parallel's DavidCicilatira as chief executive. NBC

Super Sports will also supply

NBC Super Channel Asia, due to

launch on August 5, rolling out toNBC affiliates in Mexico andLatin America. Events featured in

Europe will include NCAA basket-

ball, PGA golf, Davis Cup tennis

and American college football.Advertisers will be offered a glob-

al buy for airtime and sponsor-ship, including the U.S. network.


51

PROGRAMMING

Nelvana has pre -sold its $5.2million animated children'sseries Blazing Dragons to the

UK's ITV network and signed up

French and German partners.

David Ferguson, the Canadian

company's director of co -produc-

tion, said the 13 x 30 -minuteseries was fully financed and

though he wouldn't say who the

its partners were, said Nelvana

had worked with them before.

Devised by former member of the

Monty Python team, Terry Jones,

Blazing Dragons is set in the land

of Camelhot, where the good

guys are the dragons, the bad

guys are the knights and the

round table is square.

The Southern Star Group andFilm Australia have formed an

alliance to develop and producedrama projects currently in devel-

opment at Film Australia. Ron

Saunders, the creator of FilmAustralia's Johnson and Friends,

The Girl From Tomorrow and

Escape From Jupiter, will join

Southern Star Entertainment tohead up new venture Southern

Star Pacific in mid -July.

Warner Bros. InternationalTelevision Distribution has

teamed up with animation pro-

ducer Fred Wolf to co -produce 26

episodes of the half-hour animat-

ed series The Fantastic Voyagesof Sinbad the Sailor. WBITD will

handle worldwide distribution forSinbad, its first internationallyco -produced animated series.

Marvinia Anderson has joinedKushner -Locke International as

president of its tv distributionarm. Anderson, who will report to

Gregory Cascante, president and

CEO of Kushner -Locke Interna-

tional, was previously head ofworld sales for WIN.

Star PI Warms Up Production Activity"THE t irst episode took 12 hours to tape and70 hours in post production, but it's all part ofa learning curve," said Star TV's head of pro-duction John O'Loan, talking about Kriket, itsIndian gameshow production.

A 30x60 -minute co -production betweenStar, Grundy Productions and United Televi-sion (UTV) - of which News Corp subsidiaryTwentieth Century Fox owns 5 OD/o - Kriket isairing on Star Plus and, despite a few initialteething problems brought about by an initiallack of local tv-making experience, a secondseries has already been commissioned.

Kriket may be one of the pan -Asian broad-caster's earlier forays into the field of originalproduction but it won't be the last. O'Loansaid that for Star Plus in India alone, around900 hours of programming is being planned,with six new infotainment and light entertain-

ment shows already in the pipeline.India and Taiwan are Star's biggest markets

in terms of ad revenue. In Taiwan, the pan -Asian broadcaster produces a twice weekly,45 -minute talkshow for the Chinese Channelcalled The SuperTalk Show plus a number ofproductions for music channel Channel V.

This year it is also making a foray intodrama, co -producing a Mandarin -language30x60 -minute drama called Fist Of Fury withHong Kong terrestrial ATV, which will air theproduction in Cantonese. Two other largedrama co -productions with ATV are also in thepipeline, said O'Loan. Elsewhere Star is work-ing with Thai cable operator Thaisky on origi-nal productions and has a joint venture withFilipino company Viva to make Tagalog -lan-guage films. Conversations have also begun inIndonesia.

Alliance Looks South Of The BorderCANADA'S Alliance Communications Corpora-tion, the country's premier independent pro-duction house, was last month reported to benegotiating separate deals with U.S. compa-nies Liberty Media and Turner Broadcasting.

TCI's programming subsidiary Liberty Mediais believed to be backing an Alliance bid forthe broadcast assets of John Labatt Ltd, on theblock following the sale of the brewer to Bel-gium's Interbrew. Under Canadian ownershiprules, Interbrew is obliged to sell the broad-cast interests: sports network TSN/RDS, 80% ofthe Canadian Discovery Channel and 25% ofpay -per -view channel Viewer's Choice.

The sale, valued in the $780-820 million(U.S.) range, is expected to be completed bylate July. Industry sources say Liberty would

put up $160 million, with Alliance raising$100-130 million from pension fund backingand $550 million in debt.

Meanwhile, Alliance, which has beensearching for a U.S. deal that would providesynergies and cash for expansion, is said to bediscussing the sale of a 20% stake (the currentmaximum permitted foreign ownership) toTurner.

Analysts regard the possible deal withTurner as more favorable for Alliance than thebid for the Labatt interests, given the debt loadinvolved. If the deal goes through, Alliancecould be expected to gain access to Turnerprograms and increase co -production activity.

Alliance itself did not comment about eithernegotiation.

Granada and Yorkshire Concentrate SalesIN the latest phase of concentration to hit theUK's ITV system, two of the biggest ITV com-panies, Granada LWT and Yorkshire TyneTees TV, are to merge their international salesoperations.

The new entity, jointly owned by the twocompanies and based in London, will belaunched at Mipcom. A name still hasn't beenchosen.

YITIT managing director Bruce Gyngellwill be chairman and Nadine Nohr, currentlyhead of sales at GLWT, will be director ofsales. A chief executive is due to beannounced shortly.

Nohr said the entity would have "some-thing like 7,500 hours of active programmingto sell," making it the biggest UK distributorafter the BBC. The merger will bring a rangeof product such as police dramas Prime Sus-pect, Cracker and A Toucb Of Frost and docu-mentary series First Tuesday and World InAction under the same roof, giving the distrib-utor "greater clout and a competitive advan-tage in the marketplace," said Nohr.

The merger would also enable pint devel-opment of merchandising and new mediaactivities, as well as making potential invest-ments in start-up broadcast ventures easier.


52

PROGRAMMING

DR Banking On Support For Major DramaDANMARKS Radio (DR) is currentlyproducing Scandinavia's mostexpensive film or television venture-a 12 -hour costume drama about JCJacobsen, the founder of the Carls-berg brewery.

Bryggeren (The Brewer), a co-production between the pubcasterand independent producer NordiskFilm, is budgeted at Dkr100 million($19 million), weighing in with acast of 4,200 and an Oscar -nominat-ed director, Kasper Rostrup. Filmingwill take one year with the firstepisode due to air on DR at Christ-mas 1996. Vital extra cash camefrom the Kabelfunden (which fundsco -productions by Scandinavian pub -casters) and a sponsor, Den Danske Bank.

By law DR cannot sell spot advertisingtime, but it is allowed to sell program sponsor-ship - regarded by many as just another formof spot advertising.

Exploitation of the connection with DenDanske Bank, which is investing $2.3 million,will be limited. On -screen, the bank receiveseight second static credits before and aftereach program - the most allowed by Danish

The Brewer: Bank supplied 10% of budget for sponsor credits

regulations. The bank won't be featured ontrailers. And while potential for off -air PR andpromotional activity is enormous, it is restrict-ed by mutual agreement.

Television production deals of this size arerare in any country - let alone one as small asDenmark, and producers are often suspiciousof the motives of potential sponsors.

The series probably would have been madeeven without sponsor support.

CNN International is to pro-duce at least one hour a day ofcurrent affairs and entertainmentprogramming for India's statebroadcaster Doordarshan under

an agreement signed last month.

CNNI will be transmitted to aclaimed 16 million cable tv view-

ers in India via Doordarshan's

transponder on the Insat 2Bsatellite, making it the first for-eign network to use an Indian

transponder. The feed will

include one and a half hours ofDoordarshan programs on week-

days and two hours at weekends.Turner International has appoint-

ed Bhaskar Pant, previously at

the Sony Corporation of America,

as its president in India. Solomon International Enter-prises (SIE) and Canal Plus have

signed an agreement to handle

international distribution for ani-mated series TerraTopia. The 26 -

part series, produced by Los

Angeles -based TerraTopia Produc-

tions, will be available in fall1996, and will be accompanied

by a CD -Rom series developed by

Virgin Sound and Vision.

We are the partners who canhelp you get off the ground.

The Svensk Text International Group is by far the largest and most experiencedsubtitling organisation in Europe. Together with associated companies in Denmarkand Norway, it produces subtitles in seven countries for well over 25,000 hours oftelevision, video and cinema annually. While the core business of the Group is sub-titling, it also offers dubbing, transmission services and specialised subtitling andtransmission equipment.

For subtitling, speak to Nils-Olof Westberg at Svensk Text

MediaDubb International is a company in the ST International Group specialisingin voice dubbing of animated features and series. In January 1994 the companymoved to new premises, which have three fully digital studios, one large enough todub full length feature films. A fourth digital studio will be put into production inJune. In 1994 MediaDubb dubbed some 500 episodes of animated series intoSwedish and administrated the same number for dubbing into Norwegian andDanish by subcontractors.

For dubbing, speak to Per-Hakan Westberg at MediaDubb.

TVT (Scandinavian TV Traffic) is a specialised playout house using a highly auto-mated system of robotics and digitised hard disks. TVT can handle any client'straffic and transmission requirements. It can uplink directly to satellite and is oneof the first companies in Europe to use the digital MPEG-2 transmission format.

For traffic and transmission, speak to Kersti Winbiad at TVT.

\Subtitling International Sweden

SvenskText ABBox 11092, S-100 61 Stockholm, Sweden.

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DATA

Micro EconomicsMMDS, or microwave distribution, offers a cheap and quick way of carrying tv channels toviewers. Digital compression could make it even more appealing. As Jean -Luc Renaudreports, operators in the U.S. are well ahead of the game

Transmitting television services hasalways been an expensive business,whether it's via terrestrial broadcast,

cable or satellite. Receiving televisioncan be onerous as well, especially whena home satellite antenna and decoder arerequired. It is, thus, no surprise that tele-vision - multichannel television, in par-ticular - made a late entry, if at all, intothe less well-off countries.

Many of those developing countriesare not sitting idle, though. Over 35 ofthem are deploying what is known asmultichannel microwave distribution sys-tems, MMDS for short. But MMDS is notthe preserve of the Third World. Theadvantages of the technology haveseduced 175 operators in the UnitedStates who are currently serving about700,000 subscribers. Western Europeansmight be forgiven for not taking MMDSseriously - yet. With the exception ofIreland, no country in the region hastaken up the technology on a commer-cial basis. Only in Eastern Europe iswhat the Americans call wireless cabletaken seriously. At the latest count, somethree million subscribers in 57 countriesare served by MMDS systems.

But what is MMDS? Simply put,MMDS is a technology capable of dis-tributing up to 50 tv channels terrestriallyover -the -air using much higher frequen-cy bands than conventional tv broadcast-ing. Signals for MMDS delivery at thetransmitter site originate from a variety ofsources: satellite, terrestrial and cable -delivered tv services in addition to local-ly -originated services.

On the technical side, the MMDSchannels are transmitted from an omni-directional or directional antenna havingextensive line of sight in all directions.The range of a transmitting antenna canstretch up to 60 kilometres depending onthe broadcast power and the topograph-ic conditions. Transmission power usedranges from 1 to 100 watts - consider-ably below the transmission powerrequirements of VHF and UHF terrestrialbroadcasting stations.

At the viewers' end, a small rectangu-

lar parabolic -shaped antennareceives polarized signals. Themicrowave signals are thendown -converted to standard orcable VHF or UHF channel fre-quencies. The tv signal is thenfed directly to a tv set or a set -top converter, and can be scram-bled.

What is the attraction ofMMDS? The fact that many coun-tries have deployed MMDS sys-tems goes a long to explain theattractiveness of the technology:low cost and fast start-up.

Exact dollar figures may varyfrom country to country. AndrewKreig, vice-president of Wash-ington -based Wireless CableAssociation International (WCAI)provides the following estimates:each of the single transmittersused to transmit up to 50 chan-nels costs from $250,000 to$400,000, including duplexersand backup spares. Tower con-struction, antennas and installa-tion will cost from $20,000 to$80,000. The MMDS downlinkantennas and receivers forimport of programming typicallycost about $80,000.

Cost figures per MMDS sub-scriber make for comfortablereading when compared with the costsof alternative network transmission tech-nologies. Kreig estimates that connectinga customer to a broadband optical fibrenetwork comes to just under $2,300(based on a 40% service take-up). In thecase of an hybrid fibre/co-ax network,the cost per subscriber is down to$1,900. But, the cost per subscriberserved by an interactive MMDS systemoffering telephone as well is as low as$1,000 (Figure 1).

Gerard Korahnke, R&D manager atantenna maker Tonna Electronique, cal-culated the cost of bringing 12 tv chan-nels to the home in France. The cableoption would cost $800 per subscribinghousehold, satellite would cost between

Table 1: Comparison of cost elements

Broadband Optical Fibre SystemHome Customer*

Fibre to trunk and feeder: $250 $625 Digital broadband switch: $100 $250 Fibre distribution and node: $400 $1,000 Coax drop and home wiring: $150 $150 Install home terminal: $250 $250 Storage units: Total Cash Cost: $1,150 $2,275

Hybrid Fibre -Coax System Replace trunk with fibre: $250 £625 Upgrade coax distribution: $250 $625 Upgrade home installation: $50 $50 Install home terminal x 1.3: $500 $500 Switching systems: $40 $100 Storage units: Total Cash Cost: $1,090 $1,900

Interactive MMDS System, with For 100,000 customers: Home install/antenna, etc: Home terminal unit (1.33): Total interactive: Nodal transmitters $270k @: Central headend facilites: Interconnection system: Total with full telephony:

TelephonyPer customer

$290$550$840$100

$55$105

$1,000

* Based on 40% subscriber market penetration

$1400 and $2700, but MMDS would costbetween $550 and $650. Terrestrial over -the -air broadcasting is cheaper - $470per home - but, in its present configura-tion, the network can only provide aboutsix channels.

U.S. engineering consultants Baylin &Berkoff estimate that, to serve 50,000subscribers, a cable TV system wouldcost in the region of $50 million, where-as the figure for a MMDS system wouldbe about $15 million.

Introduced in China in 1990, MMDS isnow seen as the medium of choice toreach rural communities. Already 700,000households in the capital Beijing areserved by an eight -channel 50w transmit-ter. There are currently 24 networks serv-


54

DATA

ing on average 100,000 subscribers.Some of the regional MMDS networkstransmit in a 80km radius. Installationcosts turn out to be $30-35 per sub-scriber.

In Mexico City, MVS Multivisionbegan operation in 1989 and has close to300,000 wireless cable customers - a 12 -fold increase from its level in 1990. Theoperator predicts 540,000 in the country,including 420,000 in Mexico City.

The Panafrican Rebroadcasting Net-work (Panafnet) - a private consortiumwhich seeks to promote the diffusion oftelevision in Africa through MMDS -unveiled a low-cost integrated MMDStransmitter at a trade fair in Dakar, Sene-gal, last month in collaboration with theFrench-speaking TV5 Afrique channel.Panafnet aims to establish 36 MMDS net-works within the next three years, fore-casts between 250,000 and 350,000 sub-scribers.

Another important factor that makesMMDS operations attractive is the com-paratively short set-up time. Systems canbe deployed in as little as four months.

Digital compression is certain to boostthe fortunes of MMDS. Indeed, com-pared with conventional terrestrial andsatellite broadcasting, MMDS can supportinteractive and transactional servicesmuch more easily. In so doing, MMDSmay become an essential component ofthe so-called information superhighway.

Bell Atlantic and Nynex recently madethe largest single investment in wirelesscable history, providing $100 million offinancing for CAI Wireless Systems. TheU.S. telcos said they were willing tomake this investment because ofprogress in digital compression that willallow wireless to offer more than 100channels, including advanced services.Wireless cable is seen by telcos as anearly entry strategy for video, allowingthem to begin providing multichannelvideo programming and building a cus-tomer base in their telephone serviceareas before they can finish buildingwired systems.

It could well be that the transition todigital may revive the European fortunesof MMDS - even in its analog version.That is at least the hope of the engi-neers, operators, service providers andmanufacturers who gathered in Metz,France, in May, as part of the DigitalMicrowave Multipoint/MultichannelPropagation (DIMMP) project - anundertaking of the European Union'sRACE industry support program. At thisoccasion, an interest group was set up,tentatively named Broadband WirelessAssociation.

Digitization also excites the MMDSoperators in the United States. Theindustry recently set up a new R&Dgroup - the Wireless Cable DigitalAlliance - to develop digital technologies

none of the existing MMDS operations inEurope uses this band, and in all thosecountries who have allocated this band,no commercial MMDS operations areplanned - with the exception of the UK.

Table 2: The Proportion Of Total U.S. TV Households Served By Various Distribution Methods

MMDS

0.6%101 -tad

OS%

CJIII64.7%

1995

SMATV

0.9%

2.1/

Non -Subs

31.2%

Non -Subs

16.2%

for over -the -air delivery of multichanneldigital video programming and other ser-vices. The alliance plans to developwireless technologies that will enableconsumers to receive 150 to 300 chan-nels, including near video -on -demandpay -per -view offerings. Interactive ser-vices also are on the agenda.

Prototype chip sets for digital wirelessare expected to be ready this month, andprototype full set -top boxes by July. Set -top boxes are expected to cost about$350 per subscriber, and current pricesfor digital headend equipment are asmuch as $20,000 per compressed pro-gram channel. The price of headend isexpected to drop to $8,000-$10,000 perchannel quickly.

Whatever the video delivery mecha-nisms, the transition to digital is certainto be a complex and slow process, butworth it.

An industry generally prospers oncetechnical norms and standards have beenagreed by as wide an international com-munity as possible. Equipment can bedeveloped for the mass market andeconomies of scale can be gaitied. Whatis the prospect of that happening to theMMDS industry? If the wide variety offrequency bands used by MMDS opera-tors across the world is any indication,this prospect is not great.

True, in 1990 the European confer-ence of postal and telecommunicationsadministrations (CEPT) agreed on a rec-ommendation that the 40.5-42.5 GHzband be the frequency band *tbr MMDSthroughout Europe. The irony is that

Frank Lambert, from the SpectrumManagement Lab of Telediffusion deFrance, surveyed through a question-naire the regulatory situation in theworld. His findings are telling: Ireland,Iceland, the Czech Republic and Roma-nia have commercial services in thelower frequency band (2.5 GHz or 2.1-2.2 GHz). Hungary and Romania operateservices at 10 and 12 GHz. These coun-tries appear to have emulated the suc-cessful Hong Kong MMDS system atthese frequencies. Sweden has a special-ized MMDS service at 17 GHz providinga point-to-point link for other media.

No non -European country hasexpressed any interest in the 40 GHzband which means that, should progresscontinue in Europe along this path, theemergence of a global standard, particu-larly for digital MMDS in terms of fre-quency usage, will be hindered.

The U.S. is the only non -Europeancountry which is conducting researchinto MMDS at frequencies above 10 GHz.This is at an advanced stage with asmaller commercial models already inplace at the 27.5-29.5 GHz band. InEurope, only Belgium and Slovenia havefollowed the U.S. into this area.

This wide range of frequencies doesnot bode well for the establishment of aninternational MMDS band. WhereasEurope has a lot of work in front of herto reach a continent -wide standard, theU.S. is already a vast market under onestandard. Economies of scale for massconsumer MMDS receivers will certainlybe realized.


55

ADVERTISING LONDON

Rupert Murdoch said publicly in 1993that satellite tv posed "an unambigu-ous threat to totalitarian regimes

everywhere." The Chinese governmentrewarded the magnate for his candourby banning satellite dishes.

For satellite tv, let us read "free tv," inwhich programs and advertising areuncensored. Free tv is indeed a powerfulorgan. It appeals to the democratic mind,but how free does tv remain when toomuch power is concentrated into a singlepair of hands?

That is the question of media concen-trations, or rather the double question,because two distinct sets of issues areinvolved: on the one hand, economicissues of fair competition, and on theother, mental health issues of influence,plurality of opinion, etc, etc.

Sometimes national debates focus oneconomic issues, sometimes on mentalhealth, but nowhere can they have ragedmore tempestuously or with better rea-son over both in modem times than inItaly. Not only do Berlusconi's tv stationsdeliver him the lion's share of televisionadvertising revenues, but also he becamePrime Minister with their help.

Unhappily for him, the tv stationswhich helped him to power were unableto keep him there. Worse still, his fallfrom grace at the turn of the year coin-cided with a constitutional court rulingagainst his ownership of three channels.His political rivals must have smelledblood as they pressed for the June refer-endum, which contained three questionsaimed at dismantling the Fininvestempire. All they wanted was a yes toeach.

But what a terrible miscalculation.The public said no to each, with 57%voting against the key proposal thatwould oblige Berlusconi to sell off twochannels within a year.

Among the many reactions, Berlus-coni's opponents objected that they hadbeen undone by the media influence thatthey were seeking to undo. In the battleof advertising slogans, the No campaignfired 520 salvos on the Fininvest chan-nels versus a meagre 42 from the Yescampaign. None was fired on Rai, whichdelivers the other half of the nationalaudience, because Rai cannot accept

Who Controls

The Mass Medium?

BY TOBY SYFRET

political advertising; and the plug waspulled early on the Yes campaignbecause every time a Yes ad appeared itwas sandwiched between two No ads.

It is easy to infer a case of mass brain-washing by Berlusconi; and maybe thatis true and reprehensible. Yet, otherquestions need to be asked before wejump to this verdict. For instance, pre-cisely what extra influence was Berlus-coni able to exert from advertising on hisstations that no independent big adver-tiser could have achieved? Or what extrapromotional support from their programsbeyond what his opponents couldachieve on Rai? Just how was the Finin-vest factor so special?

Assuming we find Berlusconi guilty,we must ask whether the sole fault lieswith his media concentration, or otherfactors, such as the current advertisingcontent laws.

The threat of undue influence doesnot proceed only from the Goliaths of

media. A minority pressure group iscrusading to "sanitize" American tv

In any case, the threat of undue influ-ence on public opinion does not pro-ceed only from the Goliaths of media.Consider now another news story coin-ciding with the announcement of the ref-erendum results in Italy. This other storyis about a small group - small in Ameri-can terms - claiming more than one mil-lion supporters, which calls itself theAmerican Family Association. Its politicalagenda includes a crusading mission tosanitize (for want of a better word)American tv. Among its scalps, the AFApersuaded PepsiCo in 1989 to ditch itsmulti -million advertising contract withMadonna after accusing her of appearingon a blasphemous video, and it isalleged that many U.S. advertisers avoidprograms which the AFA finds objection-able.

Now the AFA has launched a nationalpress campaign in which it has targetedUnilever as a leading sponsor of "sex,violence and profanity" on U.S. televi-sion through its association with pro-grams like NYPD Blue, which havehelped to "open the doors to sexualnudity on primetime tv," says the adver-tising copy. The advertisements list allUnilever's products in the U.S. andenjoin the public to boycott them.

In some ways the potential influenceof this minority - whether right or wrong- appears the more insidious. It mayonly require minority active support anda spot of bad publicity to stop Unilever'ssupport of a tv program which manyAmericans presumably like and findunobjectionable. At least Berlusconi cam-paigned for majority support.

And lastly, spare a thought for theItalian public. Market researchers lovetelling us ad nauseam how today's con-sumer has become a more sophisticatedrecipient of advertising.

If they really mean that, perhaps weshould also admit the tiny possibility thatthe Italian public listened (how couldthey not have listened?) to the No ads,and voted with intelligence. lull


56

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In 1967just 550 came to see us

10Now we're counting in

tens of thousandsWe're not inclined to talk aboutnumbers - quality is more

important than quantity. The fact is theright people come to IBC - they alwayshave from that modest start in 1967.Serious people - creative executives- technical directors - topengineers - managers - and nowfinancial controllers as well.

In other words - decision makers.

Of course there is a reason for this -the right people started IBC in 1967,for the right reasons, and right peoplerun it now.

If you are one of theright peopleYOU HAVE -0 0,0TO BE AT ../

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I B C 9 5 ! 10°RIGHT? ikts) Amsterdam

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