Aussie execs at LA Screenings

Australian TV Executives are in Los Angeles attending the annual LA Screenings.

In attendance are TEN’s Grant Blackley and David Mott, Nine’s Michael Healy and Les Sampson, Seven’s Tim Worner, Angus Ross and John Stephens and Foxtel’s Brian Walsh and Patrick Delaney.

They are part of 1,250 foreign TV program buyers sifting through new network and cable product. The five broadcast networks have greenlit 37 series for the new season, of which 22 are dramas of one kind or another.

The consensus from the US is the US networks have gone back to basics with their commissioning. But the influence of American product on the Australian television landscape has waned dramatically in the past three years. We’re a long way off from the year when Desperate Housewives and Lost were a license to print money. Seven was lifted by the successes of ABC, while CBS content for Nine slipped backwards. It’s been buying up more BBC product as a result of soft US outputs. TEN’s FOX deals have come good.

Nowadays, Australian content continues to dominate Australian television. The Mentalist, Glee, NCIS, The Good Wife, Bones and Two and a Half Men are amongst the better-performing US titles on commercial networks.

“Buyers are looking for the next best TV show, from wherever,” says Sony Pictures Television International’s Keith Le Goy. “And that means from cable as well as broadcast.”

He points out that FOX used to be an ugly stepchild and is now the No. 1 network; the CW’s shows were once undervalued and now travel as well as any. The same, he says, is now true for FX, HBO, Showtime and other cablers, whose content, and license fees, are on par now with those of the Big Five.

SourceL The Australian, Hollywood Reporter