UKTV is finalising its acquisition plans following a series of meetings at the LA Screenings, as it continues to ramp up the amount of US drama it buys.

Hostages

Controller Emma Tennant and director of acquisitions Catherine Mackin led the broadcaster’s team in LA, and Tennant says the overall pattern of this year’s pilots was different from 12 months ago.

“It’s not been a standout year,” she admits. “There are quite a few good shows but there are not many standout shows. Last year you could identify four or five shows everybody would go after, that were right for different channels. There’s only a couple like that this year. Having said that, there wasn’t much that was awful. Last year, there were a couple of great shows but there were also a couple of stinkers.”

Tennant is too professional to identify specific titles but last year was the year of Nazi clock baby drama Zero Hour and Cult, a youth-skewing crime series about a youth-skewing crime series. Both were quickly cancelled.

UKTV, a joint venture between BBC Worldwide and US channel operator Scripps Interactive, has bought a lot of first-run US content in the past two years, from Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour to Beauty And The Beast and Perception.

After a few days in LA, the team started compiling their wishlist of shows to bid for and the channels they would fit.

“We don’t want exactly the same types of shows that we currently have on but something that extends off them, and we want the same audience to back them,” Tennant said.

Dave is searching for a light-hearted show that could be paired with Suits, while Alibi is searching for a replacement for Body Of Proof, which was recently cancelled. It is a better year for comedy across all studios, agreed Tennant and Mackin.

UKTV has previously shied away from acquiring US comedies, but is eyeing the possibility of pairing Suits with two male-skewing 30-minute sitcoms and is looking for Mindy Project-esque female-skewing comedies for Really.

Although Tennant admits acquiring for Really isn’t a priority, it could make an audacious bid for Chuck Lorre’s Anna Faris-fronted comedy Mom or Will Arnett’s The Millers, which has a prime spot in CBS’s autumn schedule, running behind smash hit The Big Bang Theory.

Undoubtedly the show that most buyers were talking about in LA was Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., despite Disney forcing buyers to sign a non-disclosure agreement before screening it. Could UKTV lodge a cheeky bid for the superhero series?

“Someone is going to come over in a Spiderman suit and chop your legs off just for talking about S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Tennant joked.

Getting In At The Beginning

As competition to acquire the top US shows increases – from Sky’s deep pockets, new broadcasters like TLC, or Netflix’s digital ambitions – UK broadcasters are ingraining themselves in the US development process at an early stage.

Sky Living, for example, got on board NBC’s Carnival Films-produced Dracula reboot ahead of its commission, and UKTV found time in LA to meet with producers setting up new projects.

“We’ve done meetings with companies that are pulling stuff together for cable,” Tennant said. “This would make sense, especially if they’ve got the right script and talent.”

UKTV Serious Buyer

Hollywood’s perception of UKTV has shifted hugely in the past two years. The studios saw it as a purchaser of second-run rights and library content, but now want to discover what it thinks of their current slate.

Broadcast sat in on meetings with executives including Warner Bros International boss Jeffrey Schlesinger and CBS Global Distribution Group chief exec Armando Nuñez, where they attempted to gauge the shows UKTV is eyeing, which slots it is looking to fill and how much content it plans to buy.

Warner Bros’ Hostages was a popular choice among many of the British buyers and the Toni Collette-fronted political thriller was discussed by UKTV, while Tennant admitted that her guilty pleasure was Disney-distributed relationship drama Betrayal, based on Dutch format Overspel.

UKTV is set to bid for a number of shows and it was keen for the studios to keep it aware of interest or offers from rival networks.

“Studios take us more seriously since we started buying bigger,” Tennant said. “We bought Alcatraz, Grimm and Suits and had success with Body Of Proof and Rizzoli and Isles, all within a year or two. The perception has changed.”

Topics