Ready for anything

February 6

US distributor CABLEready has been in the game for 16 years, and was at NATPE in Las Vegas last week talking up new programmes as well as a newly invigorated sales approach, writes Emily Brookes.

Things change, observes Gary Lico (left), president of CABLEready “Needs change, owners change, suppliers change, everything changes.” Lico established his distribution company in 1992 working to a business model that would see CABLEready provide and develop original factual programming concepts for US cable and satellite networks and sell finish products to telecasters around the world. CABLEready’s brief remains the same, but the playing field has expanded markedly.

Competition for cable airspace has become much tougher, as cablenets rise in prominence in US TV ratings. More and more producers and distributors have begun to target US cable buyers, both at home and internationally. Recently, for example, How to Look Good Naked – the US version of a UK format peddled by UK-based distributor RDF – became the most-watched premiere in cable network Lifetime’s history.

Meanwhile, there are, in Lico’s words, “so many darn channels around the world now that you almost can’t afford to exclude yourself from anything,” which requires more capital outlay on sales staff, travel and targeted research, as well as a bigger variety of programming.

Still, Lico is upbeat about business – with good reason. Last year, CABLEready’s gross revenue was up by 17%, and the company was named in Inc. Magazine’s Top 5,000 American Small Businesses List. “Last year was a great year for us to grow as a business,” Lico says, and this year he’s looking to better that performance, beginning with a strong showing in Las Vegas. “We don’t usually bring a lot of new programming to NATPE, just by virtue of timing,” he adds, “but this year we happened to have had a few new series, all of which are either in production or about to be in production.”

New outings include men’s HD lifestyle series A GUY’S GUIDE TO LIVIN’ (13×60′), in which adventurer Brian Spencer travels the world searching for the ultimate epic adventure. Game show format CELEBRITY SAYS (65×30′) challenges contestants on how well they know their red carpet trivia, while daily entertainment series HOLLYWOOD 411 (200×30′) promises showbiz scoops, red carpet coverage, exclusive interviews and behind-the-scenes glimpses at current projects.

There’s nothing particularly radical about high-adrenaline adventure programmes, celebrity-centric game formats or gossip magazine shows, but Lico dismisses the idea that buyers will be turned off by tried-and-true genres because of oversaturation. “The more channels you have, the more programming you need, and there are only a few genres to go around,” he points out. “Every show is essentially a variation on one of them.”

He offers an example: “We’ve had several Hollywood shows for years and we’re doing all right with all of them. There’s no decline in appetite for that kind of information because there are so many different layers of it, so many different ways to cover it.”

Safe in that knowledge, CABLEready – which boasts among its greatest successes long-running Bravo interview series Inside the Actors’ Studio – has two other new Hollywood-themed shows on its roster, each with a different focus.

TIMES TALKS (42×60′), which comes to CABLEready by virtue of its exclusive distribution rights to all New York Times Television programming, is a series of indepth conversations with a diverse range of entertainment industry figures from James Taylor to Mikhail Baryshnikov to the female stars of The Sopranos. Canadianproduced STUNT STARS (left, 10×60′), meanwhile, focuses on the dangerous and often unacknowledged work of Hollywood stunt artists.

When it comes to international sales, CABLEready targets “the top 15 or so territories that generate the most money,” says Lico, including the UK, the rest of Western Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. But in an increasingly crowded marketplace, Lico says that his sales strategy is to target not only individual countries, but individual buyers, to provide a personalised service.

“Before we go into any meeting, at any market,” he explains, “we have the client’s schedule down. So we can go in and say, ‘We see you run a crime and investigation block on Saturday nights. We have some documentaries that are perfect for that.’”

As such, Lico has long been a fan of C21’s Schedule Watch premium content strand, and says that he won’t give up on a network if he knows he’s got the right product for it. “If you have a good idea and you believe in it and you keep bringing new information to the buyer, you remain on their radar, so that when things change in your favour you’ll be right there.”

Emily Brookes 6 Feb 2008 © C21 Media 2008

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