TV Confab Takes On a Foreign Flavor

NEW ORLEANS â€”  While local station managers from around the U.S. lined up to get their photos snapped with Playboy bunnies and celebrity attorney Johnnie Cochran, the British contingent weighed in with a member of the royal family--Prince Edward.

Edward Windsor (as the Prince prefers to be called in his professional capacity as a television producer) was in New Orleans for the largest annual meeting of U.S. TV programmers with his fledgling company Ardent Productions. But it was his royal title that brought a crush of conventioneers to the British Pavilion.

Dismissing the throngs trying to get their picture taken with him as “an occupational hazard,� Windsor said that getting the same attention for Ardent’s mix of documentary and drama at this quintessential American convention was not an easy task. “This market is completely different from the U.K., and it is difficult for anyone who is not from the U.S. to stand out.�

Even as changes in the U.S. marketplace are causing some major TV suppliers to question the need for appearing at this buying bazaar, the gathering of the National Assn. of Television Programming Executives is increasing in importance for foreign programmers.

International participants with less promotional power than Prince Edward were also out in force at the convention, which over the last decade has grown from a market primarily for local U.S. television stations buying new programming into a market encompassing cable programmers, new-media players and international buyers and sellers.

The number of international participants rose 10% this year, with more than 3,200 of the 20,000 convention participants coming from outside the U.S. Pavilions for the Italians, Germans, Canadians, Spanish, British and French promoted their national television programming.

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NATPE President Bruce Johansen said there are more foreign participants at the convention each year and that they are getting smarter about marketing themselves.

“There was previously a certain naivete; there was the idea that if I put up a booth at NATPE I could sell my shows to the U.S. Now the international participants are realizing that they can only sell to certain parts of the U.S. business, like cable or PBS,� Johansen said. “Even the Brits seem to have learned to market the same way as the Americans have. Just look at the brilliant coup they pulled off in getting Prince Edward here.�

French producers were also at NATPE for the seventh year in a pavilion hosted by TV France International.

“There is a small opening in the U.S. market for French television, particularly in animation and documentaries,� said Alain Modot, president of TV France International. “Beyond the U.S. market, we are also finding NATPE is a good place to meet other international buyers from Latin America, Asia and even other Europeans we can sell our programming to.�

Documentaries in the wildlife genre have been a draw for such U.S. cable networks as the Discovery Channel, which buys French, German and Scandinavian programs for its domestic cable channels. Some American broadcasters, however, still tend to stereotype what a European company can bring to a production, according to Catherine Lamour, director of documentaries at French pay TV giant Canal Plus.

“We have only been able to succeed in producing for the U.S. programs like ‘The Pin-Up Girl’ or the ‘History of the Bikini,’ which we produced for Showtime. We saw both series as serious historical documentaries, but they were really perceived by the U.S. buyers as a French program that could be used as sexy late-night programming for cable.�

International financing has become a significant proportion of the budgets for syndicated action shows such as “Baywatch� and newer offerings such as “Team Knight Rider� from Universal and “Battleground Earth� from Tribune. NATPE remains the best place for distributors such as German powerhouse Kirch Group to decide which new U.S. shows they’ll back.

International participants come to buy as well as to sell, which Jim McNamara, president of Universal Television Enterprises, says has changed the mission for the studios at NATPE.

“Years ago, international was not part of NATPE; now we bring all our international sales staff to this market and we see the key buyers from around the world. They come to look at new product and to develop a feel for what is going on in the U.S. market.�

Indeed, copying the trends in the U.S. market is what many international buyers come to the convention for, according to Andrew Macbean, chief executive of British distribution company ITEL. “There is a lot of theft or at least inspiration, which many European executives take away from the market.�

Aside from the British, who consistently sell programming to PBS and cable, most international sellers at NATPE need financial help for their enterprises.

For example, the French companies exhibiting under the TV France International umbrella have their NATPE exhibition costs subsidized by government export bodies, as do many of the Europeans in national pavilions at NATPE.

Windsor, meanwhile, declined to comment on the U.S. television career of his former sister-in-law Sarah Ferguson, who on Wednesday became the new spokeswoman for Weight Watchers. He ruled out the possibility of fronting his own talk show--�I don’t think that’s really me�--but his company arranged to distribute a six-part documentary series through CBS Enterprises’ distribution arm Eyemark Entertainment.