Features


Hungry for horror

What is whetting the appetite of horror fans? Zombies? Demons? Monsters? Jesse Whittock looks for answers from the key broadcasters, producers and distributors behind the best fear-inducing shows on television On Friday, October 9, 2015, around 15,000 people flooded into Madison Square Garden in New York City to attend an exclusive event for the season […]

SVOD rewrites the drama script

In three years Netflix and its SVOD counterparts have turned the TV drama world on its head. Whereas the Holy Grail for a drama producer was once a US network commission, now a global order for Netflix, or an Amazon pilot, is becoming the greatest prize What’s the difference between pitching a drama series to […]

Spanish fiction: dramatic times

With the country’s recession now over, Spanish TV producers are cautiously resuming plans for growth. More international coproductions, greater involvement from pay TV operators in original fiction, and several  overseas adaptations of local drama series are all leading to renewed confidence in Spanish drama production. TBI reports from Madrid The green shoots of recovery are […]

TV’s Big Questions: is linear TV dead or dying?

At the recent CES show in Las Vegas, YouTube’s chief business officer Robert Kyncl forecast online video will overtake linear TV by 2020. Netflix boss Reed Hastings has said that all viewing will be online within 20 years. The prognosis for linear TV is grim. Or is it? We asked the industry. For Peter Higgings […]

TV’s Big Questions: has 4K truly broken through?

There was a buzz around ultra-high definition television coming into 2015, but did the medium have the impact many expected? For Naked Entertainment’s Simon Andreae (below left), it was a resounding no. “How many people got a 4K set for Christmas? Not many,” he says. MoMedia boss Lucas Bertrand has a similar view. “It’s not […]

Writer’s Room: Sharon Horgan

Irish comedy star Sharon Horgan on the quirks she and production partner Clelia Mountford found working in US TV after launching their UK-based production firm, Merman, in the States The difference between working in the UK and US can be summed up in two words: craft services. Affectionately known as ‘crafty’, this service provides sets with […]

Justice landmark for Middle East drama

There is a tradition of local drama in the Middle East, but Heart of Justice is the first time an original legal procedural has come out of the region, and Qalb Al Adalah as it will be known locally is being billed as the biggest TV series ever out of the United Arab Emirates. With […]

NATPE 2016 in review

Zag Zag Productions Danny Fenton provides the low-down on last week’s NATPE market in Miami There are few things as tempting in January as Miami especially when you’re leaving the sub zero temperatures of London and when you add in the Natpe TV industry market to boot it’s hard to say no. This was my […]

TV’s Big Questions: what is shaping the world of content?

Platforms, technology and marketing aside, what really drives the international TV industry is content. We asked a selection of execs from around the world for the shows that they feel are pioneering, brilliant or genre-defining. In the world of docs, Simon Chinn from Man on Wire prodco Lightbox says 2015 was the year of the […]

Attention shifts to Europe as NATPE Miami wraps

The bosses of NATPE Miami hailed this week’s event a success, flagging the a-list conference line-up from all sections of the entertainment business, and adding that the upcoming NATPE Europe event will become more producer-focused as it returns to Hungary. Outgoing NATPE boss Rod Perth, who is being replaced by former Reed exec J.P. Bommel, […]