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A panel moderated by the European Audiovisual Observatory at Seriesmania on Tuesday considered four key trends in series production in Europe.
Warning display?
Gilles Fontaine, head of market intelligence at EAO, said there are warning signs that the number of seasons being produced is on the decline, first in the United States and possibly in Europe as well.
The number of seasons in the U.S. rose steadily from 2015 until 2022, when it peaked at 422 seasons, but that number dropped to 516 last year, according to statistics from FX Content Research. Is it a short-term effect of the strike or the beginning of a long-term recession? Meanwhile, the number of seasons in Europe increased from 426 in 2015 to 873 in 2022, according to EAO statistics.
Pandora Gagnon da Cunha Telles, producer at Portugal’s Uqbal Films and vice president of the European Producers Club, said the situation was complex and some signs were contradictory. There were signs of contraction in some countries, such as Poland, Germany and the Nordic countries, but in France, Portugal and other countries implementing the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which requires investment by streamers. It was done. Local production shows signs of the opposite trend: rising production levels.
Lucía Recalde, Head of the Audiovisual Industry and Media Support Program at the European Commission’s Creative Europe Media Programme, responded to a question about whether she was alarmed by the prospect of a recession. I threw it. Sustainable? ” She replied, “Maybe not.”
She said the amount of time it takes a person to consume all the professionally produced content available on streaming platforms is 350 years.
“This is the level of competition that all media companies face today in the so-called attention economy,” she said. “We see streamers becoming more cautious in their investment decisions, as the main criterion is profitability rather than subscription-based. We also see that broadcasters, who are still the main commissioners in Europe, are losing out on advertising revenue. I can see that you are suffering from this.”
He said this could be interpreted as a warning of a market correction. “The question is how do we prepare for it,” she says.
winners and losers
The second trend, featured under the banner “Winners and Losers,” compares broadcaster-commissioned programming with streamer-ordered programming, showing the “huge differences” between the two, and shows that broadcasters can Fontaine said it’s a stronger supporter of content.
Streamers tend to concentrate their performance in a small number of countries, with winners including producers from Spain and the UK, followed by France, Italy, Sweden and Poland, with Germany, Benelux and other European countries far behind. My grades are not good.
“Streaming is changing the landscape of production in Europe,” Fontaine said.
Recalde says the challenge is to move towards truly European programming, while Gagnon Da Cunha Teles benefits from the global distribution that streamers have built to identify stories that can be heard around the world. I said that is the key.
How strong is the industry?
The third trend discussed was raised under the theme “How strong is the industry?”
Mr Fontaine said that despite news suggesting that production markets are becoming more consolidated, research suggested the market remained highly diverse.
Large broadcast groups still generate only about 30% of total production time, while independent companies account for the rest, with smaller independents supplying 56%.
New entrants to the field also have a significant presence, suggesting a healthy turnover rate. The number of producers who produced the first series accounted for his 43% of all producers and his 20% of the total time. The share of production time produced by the top 10 producers has not increased, Fontaine said.
“There are signs of consolidation, but the situation remains very diverse,” he said.
Gagnon da Cunha Telles said the key to creating a sustainable business is generating enough profits to develop new programming and invest in the cash flow of new projects. “It’s important to remember that more than half of the shows that producers develop never make it into production,” she says.
Both Gagnon Da Cunha Teles and Recalde emphasized the need for production companies to build a catalog of IP and develop a portfolio of series while retaining the rights, in order to attract private investors into the sector.
Is co-production enough?
The fourth trend was presented under the banner “Is co-production enough?” Fontaine observed that the number of co-productions for television series has not grown and is still much lower than for movies. Although the number of co-productions between countries that share the same language, such as Germany and Austria, is decreasing, the number of true international co-productions is increasing.
Gagnon da Cunha Telles said he learned a lot through co-productions such as Amazon Prime Video’s first Portuguese-Spanish co-production, Operación Marea Negra. But she added that in television you have to move quickly, and procedures governing production incentives can sometimes slow down the process. “We need a lighter system,” she said. She also emphasized the need to find stories that work in different markets.
Ricciarde appealed for a broader concept of collaboration, not just co-production, but extending it “upstream and downstream” to include, for example, co-authoring and co-development. “We need to talk less about co-production and more about collaboration, the collaboration that happens in the writing stage, the development stage, the co-production stage. And why not? – in the distribution and promotion stage.”
Gagnon da Cunha Telles commented that “collaboration” is fine as long as it does not involve taking rights away from the producer.
The session was moderated by Suzanne Nikolchev, Executive Director of the European Audiovisual Observatory, along with Fontaine.
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