Welcome back to a new episode of the Inside Content podcast! To kick off the new season, I am joined by by ZDF Studio’s Director of Unscripted, Linette Zaulich to discuss unscripted content, AI and building audiences on social media.
ZDF Studios is known for world wide program distribution, international co-productions, program acquisition as well as the merchandising of strong program brands in its own name, for German public broadcaster ZDF and international third parties. Joining in 2018, Linette is responsible for the sales of non-fictional productions to worldwide acting online platforms(VoD/B2C/FAST). Prior to ZDF, Linette was Production Manager for the production companies k22film and Off the Fence, where she handled budgeting and managing film productions as well as finished programs localisation into German.
On the episode, we dive into the world of unscripted content distribution, discussing the challenges and opportunities of selling content internationally vs. locally to VoD and FAST platforms. We also chat about how to stay ahead of market developments in FAST and AI, the importance of localised content, and building social audiences on TikTok and YouTube.
Topics discussed:
- An overview of Linette's role at ZDF
- The key differences of selling content locally in Germany vs. abroad and the challenges of each
- Staying ahead of market developments such as FAST and AI when distributing content
- How to navigate channel cannibalisation
- Future predictions for FAST development in the US and Europe
- FAST in Germany
- Content localisation
- Finding and building audiences on social platforms such as YouTube and TikTok
- AI and content discoverability
- ZDF's main focus for the rest of 2024 and beyond
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