The view from America

We’re now armed with a full half-year of data on the performance of content categories on our UK service and we’re looking at building out our portfolio, both domestically and internationally.

The early signals of success are in horror and nostalgia. We have also seen a lot of positive momentum with true crime and – though it is early days – some good signals on US reality. Tied to that, UK nostalgia programming is generally something we have leaned into.

“There’s a glut of first-run product available in the US because of the strikes and a very active international market”

We want to double down on those categories as part of building a more robust offering in the UK. In the US, we continue to think about how to programme to communities or ‘fandoms’ that are passionate, and those are in categories that align closely to horror and nostalgia. These could be library titles like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which borders on horror but is broadly appealing.

There’s a glut of first-run product available in the US because of the strikes and a very active international market, and we’re having conversations around slightly different windowing models. We are now an attractive place to try something first window when maybe we wouldn’t have been the first call previously.

I like the idea of genre mashups because it gives us the opportunity to experiment. In addition, we’re sitting down with partners with whom we’ve done innovative deals in the co-production and first-run licensing space, such as All3Media International on Boarders or Fremantle on Big Mood.

We want to focus our efforts on figuring out the evolution of those partnerships: perhaps having a conversation about the opportunity, downstream, of a second window in the UK. That is hard because of the terms of trade. But we are evaluating how we can fill the gaps while providers, studios and distributors are challenged with commissioning and funding for original programming.

Category analysis

Generally, there is an appetite for comedy in the partnerships area – we recently launched single-camera half-hour comedy The Z-Suite (pictured top). But the data tells us drama performs incredibly well on our service, so we will look at opportunities in the one-hour prime-time drama space. If those happen to come from the UK, from a co-pro partnership or first-run licensing perspective, then great.

We will also look at thriller and action, and we’ll continue to diversify and look across categories. I would love to find an entry point to horror series, because I think that audience is on Tubi. It’s a genre that doesn’t seem to be going away and where we can get quite clever in how we deploy risk capital.

Something akin to The Creep Tapes, produced by Mark Duplass, which [AMC Networks-owned genre SVoD] Shudder picked up. It’s a little bit irreverent and it’s financed in a creative way.

We are looking to leverage existing IP, where possible – and the sort of horror that could translate to a great TV series.