Streamers mirroring broadcaster strategies to retain audience

The growing focus on profitabilty rather than subscribers among streamers will see them adopting strategies more commonly associated with broadcasters as they seek to retain audiences.

That’s the view of senior execs here at Conecta Fiction & Entertainment in Spain, where partnerships and co-productions have taken centre stage as producers look to adapt to lower budgets and diminished demand.

“The industry feels like it has got back to normal, the streamers are now looking to make profits rather than just grabbing audience share,” said Johannes Jensen, head of scripted business at Banijay Entertainment, who added that demand for local shows was surging and pan-industry cooperation growing.

During a panel exploring emerging business models, Jensen said the past two years of turbulent industry recalibration had now settled and was resulting in more cooperative models emerging.

“Things are opening up. We know that we can’t all totally own everything anymore, we need to share and a lot of the streamers understand that too,” Jensen added, pointing to Netflix’s landmark deal to carry TF1 channels revealed earlier this week as an example of new thinking in practice.

That deal underlined an increasing prevalence among streamers to offer squarely local content to audiences, with resultant deals often allowing producers to keep a greater share of rights.

Former Beta Film exec Eric Welbers, who is now chief exec at financier Bravado Media Group, added that while the US pull-back on spending is evident in countries such as the UK where trans-Atlantic copros had been common, the emergent new-look landscape is offering opportunities to European producers.

“With the US [not producing as much], there are more holes in the market. There are whole genres that they are not really providing to buyers anymore and that means opportunities for us.”

An increasing prevalence among streamers for shorter-run series was also noted, with Mathieu Ageron, producer at France’s Nolita TV, pointing out that films are seemingly being prioritised above series in his country by streamers.

Juliana Algañaraz, the former Endemol Shine Brasil boss who is now founder and chief exec at Sao Paolo-based producer La Reina, highlighted a similar trend towards shorter-run series in her home country, albeit with telenovelas of around 40 episodes becoming increasingly popular rather than the 100-plus episodes more normally associated with the genre.

Jensen said there is also an increasing focus on daily drama at Banijay and Welbers agreed that streamers’ attempts to capture and retain audiences is pushing them into behaving more like broadcasters.

Jensen pointed out the growing number of daily shows on streamers, with Disney+ commissioning Return to Las Sabinas in Spain and Netflix ordering Tout Pour La Lumiere in France.

“And I think we’ll see more of this because it is cost-effective and it keeps those audiences coming back. It’s going back to broadcast,” said Welbers.

Ageron added that packaged projects are now a key part of the strategy to get greenlights from commissioners in France, whilst also allowing for potentially quicker decisions.

“If you as a producer can go in with a script and with talent attached and a plan, then that makes a huge difference. And the same goes for distributors [when seeking deficit financing], if you can put it all together in advance then that is a strong package and you have more leverage.”

Algañaraz added that advertisers are also becoming increasingly interested in investing in scripted projects in Brazil, and Jensen admitted that the fluctuations of the market are resulting in a wide array of financing models.

“Creativity in storytelling is vital, of course. But it’s now almost as vital to have that same creativity when it comes to financing your shows.”