At Series Mania on Thursday, Cathy Payne, CEO of distribution company Banjay Right, said it’s “tough out there” in the post-peak market for scripted content.
“It’s difficult to finance scripts, especially in high-end films,” she said. “In a market where two years ago you might have been able to take more risks, now you want to see that backed.” In general, with the market and the changes, people are more Conservatively; there is not a great deal of risk.
“When we look at financing a show, it’s not about having the money to produce the first season, I have to think about how to finance this for three to five seasons,” she added.
In this climate, “you just have to find a way to work,” Payne said. “As someone once told me: ‘You’ve got to be kind of feisty,'” she added. You just have to think: “How am I going to get funding for these programs?”
“You will have to live within the means of what is available, but that will require a change in attitude, as well as on the part of broadcasters in how they are commissioned,” she said.
Working closely with partners will be a key part of managing these challenges. “We have to be more aligned now with our partners,” she said.
“You don’t want to prevent people from creating unique stories that jump outside the box,” she said. “If I think about my career, and I’ve been doing this for a while, the two hardest shows we’ve ever had to sell are ‘Peaky Blinders’ and ‘Black Mirror,’ and look where they’ve gone. So, you have to have a long-term[show]. As you deal with the reality of the world now, you can never overlook that creative genius and what it will bring.
Quality doesn’t depend on budget, Payne said. “Some of our best-selling products in our catalog may not be the most expensive but it’s all about the content, story, characters and execution, and that can work at different levels of budget.”
She added that she was aware of several projects in the UK behind major producers that were having difficulty attracting financing because in the US market “that financing is not there at the moment, but it will come back.”
She said streamers were showing more flexibility when it came to rights packages, taking certain windows and taking specific territories, rather than all the rights worldwide.
At the same time, streamers are moving toward more mainstream shows that have broad appeal. “In a market where the situation is fairly tough, there was less risk. People are looking for broad audience content, whether you are a streamer or not,” she said, citing her experience of recent TV shows in London.
Looking to the future, she said: “Specific financing will be a big challenge and will continue this year. We will have to adopt (new) models and we will have to get our partners and broadcasters on board.”
“For producing shows, we’ll look at making those budgets manageable and whether you can do more support, bringing partners together, making sure you’re aware of all the different soft money schemes available. At the moment, there’s definitely a fairly strong focus on genre, “That’s where he wins most commissions, but it’s about how you finance it. If it’s a great idea, it will find a home.”