30 V I D E O A G E March/April 2022 the company was generating $150 million a year, of which 70 percent was from the international market, by utilizing its tried-and-true formula of always going to TV trade shows with a new TV program and without a marketing budget. “Spend whatever is necessary,” was reportedly the motto. The integration of Worldvision into Paramount was also meant to save its 10 percent of operating costs. But the process meant that it lost an estimated $80 million in sales. By then Worldvision had 20,000 hours of TV content for international, and 10,000 hours for domestic distribution, of which 3,000 hours were from Spelling. Gary Marenzi, who at that time was president of Paramount International Television, recalled, “When we were asked to integrate the International team and offices, we carefully evaluated [Worldvision’s] personnel and offices.” This was done when Kerry McCluggage was running the Paramount Television Group and Jonathan Dolgen was running Paramount Pictures, which included the Television Group. Marenzi added: “There were some redundancies, primarily in places where we already had offices, but we were able to keep some strategic offices that Worldvision had in Tokyo and Paris, and add some key executives to our team, like Mie Horasawa (Tokyo), Catherine Molinier (Paris), Bruce Swanson (Toronto), and Bill Peck in London.” From almost its inception, Worldvision was also one of VideoAge’s (and other trades) largest advertisers, which allowed Worldvision’s marketing executives to control the narrative. Cohen was also very attuned to the company’s image, to the point of instructing his marketing manager not to place ads facing VideoAge’s My2¢ editorials because of their controversial nature. He also insisted on having experienced journalists interview him, explaining, “I’m not going to teach Distribution 101.” Cohen was himself a marketing maven who orchestrated an appearance of Muhammad Ali at MIP-TV 1982 to promote miniseries Freedom Road, licensed by Worldvision. “We sold Freedom to 50 countries on the spot,” said Cohen. At MIP-TV 1988, he decided to move a celebration for Hanna-Barbera, the animation company whose product was distributed by Worldvision, from a hotel in Cannes to onboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier stationed for a scheduled stop outside the port of Cannes. “Unfortunately, only [Bill] Hanna participated because Joe [Barbera] was afraid of the rough sea,” said Cohen. The ship’s commander asked only $10,000 to host the event and included refreshments and boat trips to transport the guests. Another of Cohen’s marketing stunts was the presence of David Lynch at the Monte Carlo TV Market in 1990 to promote his Twin Peaks TV series. This also had its fair share of drama. Lynch would only go as far as Milan, Italy on his own, so Worldvision had to rent a private airplane for the hop from Milan to Nice, then spring for a car ride to Monte Carlo (as the weather wasn’t good enough for a direct helicopter flight). Cohen was very fond of the Monte Carlo TV Market, which he started attending in 1985 (although his first TV market was MIP-TV 1973), after striking up a friendship with Prince Albert of Monaco. “When I was invited to the prince’s palace,” recalls Cohen, “I asked what it was like to be a prince, and he answered that ‘it had its moments.’ After that, we went to lunch during his next visit to New York. We kept up the friendship until I retired in 2000.” Despite his fondness for it, Monte Carlo wasn’t the market that generated the most sales for Worldvision. “Those were MIP-TV and the L.A. Screenings,” he explained. “Another thing that I amproudof is that I started Tele UNO,” said Cohen. “It was our first and only international cable channel. We ultimately sold it to Sony because management at that time did not want to be involved in international cable channels,” he added. The cable channel for Latin America was under the Spelling Satellite Networks umbrella, and was launched in 1993 in association with Mexico’s Multivision. In 1998, it was sold to Sony’s Columbia TriStar International Television. It became AXN in 1999. Added Maryann Pasante: “I was VP of Sales and I created Tele UNO [for Cohen]. The channel was a tremendous success, distributed in every LATAM country in three languages.” Inside Worldvision, the various ownership changes were viewedwith apprehension. In 1968, at ABC, Cohen went through a failed merger with ITT and an attempt by Howard Hughes to take over ABC. At Worldvision, he experienced the financial hardships of Charter Company (which filed for bankruptcy in 1984) and Taft Broadcasting (which filed for bankruptcy in 1993), the loss of home video to Republic Pictures, and the loss of Hanna-Barbera (H-B) animation product in 1991, when GAC sold it for $320 million to Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) for its Cartoon Network. The prolific animation company was founded by producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera in 1957 and acquired by Taft in 1966. In order to sell Hanna-Barbera to TBS, GAC paid $24 million to Worldvision to buy back the distribution rights of 3,000 half hours of animated product and 350 TV shows. Haimovitz explained: “I had argued that the $24 million for H-B rights was too low and forced the board to retain a third party to help evaluate. That valuation came back at $75 million, infuriating Lindner. Carolco library’s TV rights were then conveyed to Worldvision to bridge the difference and prevent third-party lawsuits. Spelling did not [originally] truly accept the $24 million for H-B rights.” In 1992, under Charter’s ownership, Spelling (following the ousting of Haimovitz, who was replaced with Peter Bachmann) acquired the domestic TV rights to Carolco Pictures’ library of films for $64 million. All this corporate upheaval created some insecurity. “I had to work harder because we were up against the major studios that packaged TV series with big movies,” recalled Cohen. “We didn’t have movies, so we couldn’t package. We had to be good at selling TV series.” There were also other difficult periods, “like during the Dallas negotiation with Thames Television,” he said. In 1985, Worldvision was declared “persona non-grata” in the U.K., after it sold Dallas to Thames Television, with claims that the execs at Thames Television went behind the back of the BBC, the original U.K. broadcasters of the program. Worldvision broke British broadcasting’s cozy system, whereby it was agreed that no broadcaster would poach a rival’s program. Dallas had been getting huge ratings for the BBC, a situation that was upsetting Thames Television execs. Worldvision needed a price increase every year due to spiraling production costs, and the BBC made it very tough. Early in 1984, Thames made an offer of $60,000 per episode. The BBC was paying $41,000 and was prepared to offer just $42,500 for the next season. Thames also offered a life-of-series commitment for all remaining seasons with a yearly 10 percent price increase. At NATPE 1984 in San Francisco, Cohen met with Alan Howden, the BBC’s controller of Program Acquisition, and told him that Worldvision had received an offer for Dallas from another U.K. broadcaster. Howden, however, replied that he was bluffing to up the price, and ignored the warning. When the story was leaked to the press, the BBC cried foul. Thames Television was accused of double-dealing, and Worldvision was considered a company not to do business with. The Dallas saga even raised questions in the U.K. Parliament and went right up to the high court, where it was decided that the BBC would get it back, but on the terms that Thames had offered. Ultimately, Thames never showed a single episode, and its contract was taken over by the BBC. In 1991, Worldvision was invited by Soviet Television to broadcast 20 hours of Worldvision programs during one week (dubbed by the Russians at their own expense), which was eventually viewed by an estimated 150 million people (the Soviet Union was dissolved earlier that year, but the TV network was still under the USSR’s Gosteleradio). That was the first time that so much airtime was devoted to an American TV series. In exchange for the airtime, Worldvision received five minutes per hour, which was then sold to advertisers. At that time, Worldvision was owned by Lindner Jr.’s Great American Communications, which had investments in Chiquita Bananas. Upon hearing of the Worldvision deal, Lindner acquired 12 minutes of airtime for Chiquita in the hopes of resurrecting his banana business in Russia. “After Worldvision was integrated into Paramount, I stayed on as a consultant, and I was sent to Paris to look for possible cable channels. In 2000, I retired, and two years later moved to Boca Raton,” Cohen concluded. VideoAge’s Dom Serafini, HSH Prince Albert of Monaco, and Bert Cohen (Continued from Page 28) Int’l TV Distribution Hall of Fame
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