TBI Weekly: Why not all press is good press for TV formats

Siobhan Crawford

The power of a good press release. Headlines raise brand awareness, keep content alive in the market, maybe help a few sales limp over the finish line. But what are they really worth? And what impact do they have?

A good press release can cost you 25% of your intellectual property/backend (plus c. €6k via an agency to get good coverage). Must be pretty bloody powerful right? And what is this press release saying to be so costly?

A couple of months ago at a market a big format commission was announced. The reality: it’s a development. This announcement went out to the world with massive coverage with those famous vague words about ‘production rights’, ‘granted’, ‘partnered with’ – and I even double checked the article and they used ‘commission’, but it is a highly glorified option. Multiple “adaptations” (another buzzword) have been announced since, partly as a result.

When did misleading the market become the most powerful sales tool?

Value…

This deal is not unique, we are constantly told about a format being in 24, 35, 40 countries…and the reality is options and licenses are not being separated because distributors, format owners and channels need the big numbers.

A press release in a valuable country (sorry Europe cover your ears) like the UK, USA, Australia and perhaps to a lesser extent France and Germany *could* bump up your international sales. That is the single most important reason to make the announcements. This is why some of these channels/networks commissioning ask for a percent of your format revenue after they make the sales announcement – the news was their cherry on your pie, so now they are part of it. This can range from 0% (excellent negotiating) to 10% to 25%. The complexities of this arrangement can be made cleverly with loopholes galore and so they should, I have always advocated against sales bumps – but they happen.

If an option is tipped over to a license because of a commission in the US, then an announcement was worth it. If many options are made from an announcement, that wait until a series goes to air before making the commissioning decision then I might question the power (value too) of such an announcement, and so should you.

…vs cost

To get good market penetration on a press release costs real money. Yet some companies make so much noise in the trades it almost acts against them – they shout about everything, the smallest deals with the vaguest choice of words and then radio silence… then new announcements on new titles and radio silence. Have you ever thought about the absence of follow up news?

Another big cost; the widening of the value gap between English language country commissions and ROW, because it is sure as hell not the Finnish commissions getting the headlines… and it is not the Nordic public broadcasters believing their commissions change the fortunes of one format. As a market we are proliferating the problem of English language territories being viewed as the pinnacle.

We also have the double edged sword that announcements can damage sales: the big US announcements mean smaller territories wait to see the localisation and ratings before pressing the trigger on their own series, meaning a collective go-slow.

Perhaps we should only believe the combination of “commissioned a local series” with a specific air date? Are press announcements making the quality of content less relevant? Read it again and think on it a second.

What’s it all for?

Press is powerful – it builds a brand, retains brand awareness, promotes products to a wider audience, informs on personnel and perhaps educates. But the idea of announcing something that is not really there for the benefit of sales… do we just call that a sales technique? Should the press translate ‘sales talk’ to transparency in the market?

Our cursory daily reads of the trades contains misleading announcements about “granting rights”, so let’s burst the BS bubble; it’s an option, a development, a co-operation, but it can’t be all those things and a commission!

Siobhan Crawford is co-founder of Glow Media and has worked in the format business for almost two decades at firms including DRG, Zodiak, Banijay and Primitives