Videoage International April 2018

I N T E R N A T I O N A L www.V i deoAge.org THE BUSINESS JOURNAL OF FILM, BROADCASTING, BROADBAND, PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION April 2018 - VOL. 38 NO. 2 - $9.75 By Blair Westlake* I n 2015,theEuropeanCommission (EC) set in motion what film, TV producers, and broadcasters alike consider to be a serious erosion of their right to exploit content on a territory-by-territory basis in the European Union by mandating cross-border access to audiovisual (AV) content and services, known as the European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy. In 2013, the European audiovisual industry generated revenues of approximately 83 billion euro (U.S.$103 billion), of which about half of that was spent on content. It has been common practice for content to be licensed exclusively by a territory or country because this typically yields the highest license fees and return on investment for producers (generally, a premium is paid for exclusive rights by a licensee, instead of a licensor having to line up multiple non-exclusive licenses). Similarly, broadcaster and cable/ satellite programmers gravitate to exclusive content and pay the premium associated with such A Greek Tragedy in the Making For Europe’s AV (Continued on Page 26) My 2¢: BBC America: Great news, terrible organization L.A. Screenings to offer plenty of reboots for the new season What’s up doc? Canada keeps up docs production Football’s secret trade leverages lucrative television rights Page 34 Page 14 Page 10 Page 8 M arvel and DC Comics have something in common: superhero Alice Donenfeld. She first became familiar with the comics world through her husband, Irwin, who was the son of DC Comics founder, Harry Donenfeld. She never worked for DC, but she served as VP for rival Marvel, before becoming an EVP at Filmation, a company with a large catalog of DC Comics programs. Later, she went solo with the eponymous Alice Entertainment. AliceDonenfeld in the Int’l TVDistribution Hall of Fame (Story on Page 28) (Continued on Page 24) M ore than200U.S. television critics came together in Pasadena, California for The Television Critics Press Tour, the Television Critics Association’s (TCA) semi-annual January conference, which featured two weeks of non- stop panels, industry parties, and production set visits.  All the major U.S. TV networks were in attendance, as were Public TV (PBS), the streaming service Hulu, andover30cableTVnetworks. There, they faced the critics without fear. However, neither CBS nor NBC had executive sessions, choosing to focus instead on the programs on their schedules. The TCA press tours provide TV TV Content’s Light and Dark Spots Starring at TCA