Product placement, AFP, international co-pros and licensing deals helped producers squeeze more value from their programmes in a flat year for commissioning. Kate Bulkley reports.

As 2011 draws to a close, UK independent producers must be hoping it was not a one-off.

The past 12 months has been the light at the end of the tunnel after the hard times of 2009 and 2010, with more commissions (not a lot, but some) coming through as broadcasters replenished their relatively bare programming cupboards and Channel 5 fired up its commissioning engines.

The financial gap between the broadcasters’ contribution and the total cost of a commission also stayed relatively stable, according to anecdotal evidence from Pact.

Although the absolute number of UK independent commissions was relatively flat, UK indies were much more proactive about international co-productions, programme sales and formats.

“The world is beating a path to our door for good content and we are taking advantage of that,” says Pact chief executive John McVay.

However, the anticipated flood of paid-for product placement on UK TV screens after a rule change took effect at Easter has so far resulted in only a few deals, including Nationwide’s bank-branded ATM in Coronation Street.

But making product placement legal has kick-started more activity around advertiser-funded programming (AFP). A new financial benchmark was set recently with the announcement of a £5m deal between Discovery, Shell Oil and ad agency JWT for an adventure series to be produced by North One Television.

“The change in product placement rules has put content on more agency and brands’ radars and makes the initial conversations about ad-funded content much easier,” says Sally Quick, head of commercial partnerships at UKTV, which this year signed a six-figure product placement deal with genealogy brand Find My Past for an eponymous series on its Yesterday channel.

“We have done five ad-funded series this year, up from three in 2010, but the big change is the value, which is up 65%. The game-changer for us was getting AFP on a Freeview channel with Find My Past and Rebel X Fighters [funded by Red Bull] on Dave.”

“Product placement has brought the two sides together,” says Lime Productions managing director Sean Marley.

“We have had conversations with a number of brands about Hollyoaks for 2012. I am confident we’ll do a couple of big deals soon, and once one or two hit the market, others will follow.”

Tax breaks

Smaller indies, meanwhile, are searching out new sources of programme finance and taking advantage of tax breaks and funding deals in Canada, Australia and Ireland (via Section 481), as well as tapping the biannual European broadcaster funding lottery run by the European Media Fund, according to rights.tv managing director Andrew Baker.

International co-productions are also in a healthy state - Death In Paradise, the British detective drama set in the Caribbean, for example, was co-produced by BBC1 and France Télévisions and made by Tony Jordan’s Red Planet Pictures, Kudos Film & TV and Atlantique Productions, with BBC Worldwide negotiating the funding.

“People are being more creative about putting budgets together,” says Andrew Ledger, relationship director at Barclays Corporate, which holds the production account for Death In Paradise and mitigates the foreign currency risk.

Barclays says it has cash-flowed twice the amount of money for TV productions this year compared with 2010, largely the result of more commissions from ITV and Channel 5, which traditionally only pay out on delivery.

Some indie producers are also expanding their merchandising activities. It helps if you have a hot show: Lime had to appoint a licensing agent this summer to deal with the demand for products related to The Only Way Is Essex, from clothing and beauty products like make-up and hairdryers to the more standard DVDs, books and calendars, most of which will hit stores this month.

The opportunity is worth more than £500,000 but, of course, it doesn’t all go to Lime’s bottom line.

“We suddenly feel at home in the licensing world,” says Marley.

Catch-up and VoD revenues are also becoming more signifi cant for producers and Baker says both C4 and C5 are willing to look at secondary windows for programmes that are closer to the primary transmission, giving rights owners the potential to earn more, sooner.

With the much-heralded YouView and Netflix launching in the UK next year, even more digital money could be on the table.

Twofour managing director of digital media Lisa Opie says producers need to think more like creative agencies that work on retainer fees and take a bigger margin on the project.

She adds: “Of course, creating intellectual property and exploiting it down the line isn’t going to go away, but I think delivering a well-structured idea and crafting that for various platforms is very important.”

 

Timeline: A year in production finance

February
Advertisers can now pay broadcasters to feature their clients’ brands in UK-produced shows, with the exception of children’s TV, news, current affairs, consumer affairs and religious programmes

A Nescafé coffee machine (below) becomes the fi rst ever item to be promoted through product placement on British television when it appears on the set of ITV’s This Morning in a three-month deal thought to be worth around £100,000

April
US VoD player Netfl ix makes its fi rst investment into original content, paying $100m (£63.9m) to license House Of Cards

June
UKTV signs product placement deal with Brightsolid for genealogy show Find My Past Transparent Television becomes the fi rst indie to use a new production fi nancing model established by Barclays and Channel 5 in which funding is released in 25% instalments through the production process

October
ITV agrees a product placement deal with Nationwide to feature a branded cash machine in Coronation Street Indies say inter national revenues climbed in 2010, with exports rising by 13% to £1.4bn, according to the annual TV exports survey

November
Oxford University and Sheffi eld Doc/Fest gear up to launch a global study into the advertiser funded programming market, led by Pretend TV chief executive Alex Connock YouTube kicks off content talks with UK indies, having formed a division that will effectively act as an AFP broker

 

Case Study Celebrity Big Brother’s Disney Deal

Endemol featured Disney film Fright Night in the Big Brother house in one task for the housemates that involved eating a lot of garlic.

The prize was an invitation to an in-house screening of the film.

Disney also ran advertisements for the fi lm in Channel 5’s commercial breaks around Celebrity Big Brother, and members of the public who won a competition featured in print publications including the Express (owned by C5 owner Northern & Shell) were invited to join the housemates for the screening.

“Advertisers don’t want to just place their product into a programme, they want to place strategically and be able to do other media as well to explain it to the consumer,” says Claire Heys, director of brand partnerships and licensing at Endemol.

“When we did all the development work around BB we wanted to do something with a film premiere, so we went to all the movie studios and Disney and Carat [Disney’s agency] were really interested.”

The collaboration allowed Endemol to “move our editorial up a notch,” she says, with the housemates talking about the fi lm and going into a screening without clips of the film ever being shown. It was a different way for a film to advertise but it worked.”

During the CBB Fright Night screening episode, there was a 364% increase in searches for Fright Night, according to research carried out by Carat with Google.

“There are definitely more advertisers willing to start conversations around advertiserfunded programming now they can use product placement as part of their armoury inside an AFP deal,” says Heys.

“We will see product placement come into its own next year because advertisers are allocating media spend for it.”