For another year, the Emmy nominees for both outstanding Drama and Comedy are revealed by Show Tracker to be nearly impossible for international services to acquire as a result of them either being vertically integrated by studios onto their own services, tied up in volume deals, or developed for global SVOD services with a footprint in every major market.
Warner’s premium drama slate is either going to HBO Max overseas or to its existing volume deal partners, although previous recipients like OCS in France have had to reckon with the launch of Warner Pass as an Amazon Channel in the market. Paramount’s Yellowjackets returns for a second nomination in a row, but since last year has now become an exclusive to Paramount+ in many markets that saw its first season come to local buyers like Sky in Germany, Italy and the UK. In markets without Paramount+ such as Sweden it has instead gone to its joint venture with NBCUniversal, SkyShowtime.
AMC meanwhile has done the negotiation work with Sony to ensure ‘Better Call Saul’ can appear on its AMC+ service outside the US in markets such as Canada but has failed to do so for some of its more recent markets, an issue it has had even with Originals AMC themselves distribute. While Better Call Saul mostly airs internationally on Netflix as part of a multi-market deal, one of the few of these deals left that Netflix is engaging in, it instead went to the SVOD Stan in Australia and to Pay TV operator Movistar+ in Spain. Both of these markets currently have AMC+.
Andor represents Disney in the outstanding drama category as the only Disney+ commission in the main running, but this is not the perspective for most international audiences as Disney’s success in comedies this year demonstrates. The studio continues to remain virtually all in with vertical integration, with most overseas markets taking two of their TV series on their SVOD Disney+.
Jury Duty presents the only potential opportunity for third party buyers to acquire award winning titles, with a number of territories yet to premiere the series. However as a Freevee commission it has already been destined for a launch on that service abroad in most markets the AVOD is available, and on its parent’s Amazon Prime where it is not.
All other nominees for both outstanding Drama and Comedy are digital originals for Netflix, Amazon or Apple TV+ with the international first window rights already tied up. Some buyers may potentially be interested in a second window when the typically years-long holdbacks start to expire, but by then these TV series’ exposure on their prolific home services will likely diminish any draw third party buyers might hope for these originals to have on their services.
The ongoing strikes are inevitably set to have an effect on the choice international buyers have on brand new content to acquire when the 2023/24 season starts, but considering how little of the top-tier series are even available to third parties, the availability of award winning series to local services will be just as limited if there was no strike at all. The opportunity is out there for productions operating entirely outside of the US, or special cases such as A24, to carve out a place in the awards to come in 2024, perhaps finally bringing with it the opportunity for local buyers to get the most sought after TV series out there.
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