Category Archives: Exports
Thursday 19th January 2012
Overseas Performance Matters The Report makes one obvious point about film that is too easily forgotten. From 72% of the box office for films made exclusively with UK money to 86% of the box office for co-productions, all successful films in which Britain is involved must get over ¾ of their revenue overseas. That should not be a surprise. If a middle sized country is to be a player in a global world, it must have premium products and services that get most of their revenues from somewhere … Read more…
Tuesday 30th August 2011
I was fortunate to hear Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google, speak at the Edinburgh Television Festival and to attend the Question and Answer session the following morning. Schmidt posed one big question — in my view a massively important one: why hasn’t a country like the UK built large technology companies? (He reminded us that the first commercial use of a computer was at the headquarters of J. Lyons, once famous for its tea shops, in West London). For the audience of British TV Executives the question took a … Read more…
Posted in
AVMS Directive,
BBC,
C4,
Communications Bill,
European Union,
Exports,
Globalisation,
Google,
Media,
Ofcom,
Regulation,
Sky,
TV,
You Tube
Friday 10th June 2011
We are in the middle of a large project for the European Commission and just beginning to see the picture that is emerging from this work — that is a picture of Europe’s audiovisual industries seen from a pan-European perspective. We find, as before, a series of cultural islands, with some island clusters — the Scandinavian countries act like a kind of cluster as do the countries that share the same language, France, Belgium, parts of Switzerland, for example. The UK is part of a more complex structure … Read more…
Thursday 12th May 2011
There is going to be a new Communications Bill in the UK soon. The lobbying has started. That may be interesting outside the UK too, especially to other European countries. The UK’s regulatory system is highly regarded in Europe and the BBC is the aspiration of public broadcasters everywhere. Just out is a paper called Creative UK, written by Robin Foster and Tom Broughton and commissioned by Channel 4, ITV, PACT and Sky. It has a simple two-part message: the UK audiovisual sector is a “success story” in … Read more…
Tuesday 8th March 2011
The main question addressed in this series of posts has been: how do I identify a market for my content? And the emphasis has not been on home markets, but external markets, in other words, exports. I have emphasized a knowledge-based approach (hope that does not sound pretentious.) I observe that the traditional approach to sales is: show of your wares, attract as much attention as you can, build relationships. All essential, but knowledge can make it even more effective. First question about the country or market you … Read more…
Tuesday 15th February 2011
Last week I tried to say something about the very basics of content that sells. You have something they want and they cannot do it themselves. But this is entertainment. What people want is mysterious and highly personal. How can you generalize? That’s what we try to do. Last week I suggested that one of the things that excite people is a place where they would like to be. One of the reasons US content is so popular – but only one – is because it has been, … Read more…
Thursday 30th December 2010
Release It, Legally and Soon – at least that would be one simple message coming out of our work on Piracy. But it’s far from a complete answer, for some content is not particularly prone to piracy. And anyway, Piracy is simply a secondary consequence of a technology that enables simultaneous global access to new content. (Each new distribution technology offered new opportunities for piracy: rogue employees at Hollywood studios have been stealing DVD masters and duplicating them for years). But our clients, some of whom are global companies, are people with property to … Read more…
Wednesday 8th December 2010
In my post on November 23rd, I wrote about the way Hollywood studios had coped with both the recession and a collapse in DVD sales in 2009. They did it by boosting international sales. For the Westminster Media Forum on Monday Nov 23, I tried to think about what we could learn from this. It was especially useful to hear from David Moody, Head of Strategy at BBC Worldwide, before I spoke. BBC Worldwide is the nearest thing we have to a Hollywood studio. < (Where the Hollywood studios are concerned, we … Read more…
Tuesday 23rd November 2010
I have written posts about the way the Hollywood studios countered the recessions before (October 24). The chart on your left tells the story in more specific terms. It is an interesting story, one that I hope has lessons for others. In 2009 the sales of DVD’s by the Hollywood studios collapsed. The collapse was dramatic and quite sudden, dropping by nearly two thirds between 2007 and 2009. But, amazingly, their total revenues did not collapse. Revenues dropped, but not by nearly the same mount. Why?< Because the … Read more…
Tuesday 16th November 2010
Those in or near to Government who read this blog have hinted that the department responsible for broadcasting is now ready to move on to thinking about how to grow the UK content industries. After all, we are told– frequently – that one of our national assets is “creativity”. That is certainly the mantra of the person reported to be the Government’s economics guru, Richard Florida. A Conservative is not going to be dirigiste, of course. Anyway, the Florida message is work with what you have got. He pushes … Read more…
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