Past winners of US awards ceremonies such as The Emmys or The Golden Globes have demonstrated how little the opportunity is for third-party sellers to acquire premium US scripted content. This is either due to the high levels of vertical integration from US studios onto their own services, or the prevalence of Global SVOD Originals in the nominees.
Distributors of UK content have found opportunities in previous TV seasons to fill the gap left by US studios, but examining the latest BAFTA TV Award winners however, Show Tracker reveals how some of the same acquisition challenges for buyers of US content also exist for the most award winning British TV.
Two of the best Drama Series nominees were commissioned by global SVOD services, ‘Top Boy’ for Netflix and ‘Slow Horses’ for Apple TV+, limiting any opportunity for acquisition for likely many years to come. BBC Studios saw two series get nominations for Best Drama. ‘The Gold’, co-produced with Paramount+, resulted in the SVOD taking up the show in many markets, limiting the opportunity for local buyers. ‘The Gold’ was not promised to SkyShowtime markets like Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands, leaving it to be picked up third party broadcasters like TV4 in Sweden or NPO in The Netherlands. The opportunity to acquire future seasons of ‘The Gold’ may grow as it has been reported that Paramount will not be co-producing its second season.
BBC Studios’ other Drama nominee, the longer running crime drama ‘Happy Valley’, demonstrates the opportunity BBC Studios takes to vertically integrate its own series, licensing the latest season of the show to BBC First in Australia and BBC Player (Amazon Channel) in Germany. Outside of this activity, the show has seen AMC enter as a co-production partner for season three, resulting in both its Acorn TV and AMC+ becoming the new first window home of the series in US and Canada, with the show’s previous two seasons originally licensed to Netflix.
Outside of these markets there has been some opportunity for local players to acquire ‘Happy Valley’. The series is prominent enough to attract the attention of both Canal+ in France and Movistar in Spain, their respective markets’ most prominent Pay TV operators. Sky in Italy more recently became the first window home of the third season of ‘Happy Valley’, where, like North America, Netflix took its prior two seasons.
Comedy reveals a slightly different situation for some series, although Disney+ Original ‘Extraordinary’ naturally found its home on the same SVOD in all markets except the US where it landed on Disney’s Hulu. More recently Disney+ has successfully licensed a second window of the series to ITVX in the UK. Meanwhile, A24’s TV distribution arm came out strong with ‘Dreaming Whilst Black’ in the running and ‘Such Brave Girls’ winning Best Scripted Comedy. While traditional targets of British comedies like SVT and CBC have acquired these series, A24 has succeeded in finding slightly more non-traditional buyers like OCS, who following the end of their volume deal with Warner for HBO series is acquiring from a wider variety of distributors.
The opportunity is clearly stronger for local buyers to acquire award winning UK content over US content, shows like ‘Big Boys’ have yet to be picked up in any Show Tracker markets for instance, nonetheless, some of the same issues seen from US series remain. Both studio owned and Silicon Valley SVOD services are commissioning more British series for their services, while even British distributors feel some pressure to support their own services abroad through vertical integration.
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