Going from the American independent film to direct the sales of the BBC sales division is not a well -worn path, but it is the one Janet Brown has taken.
After a career in films like movie Buff, Gunpowder & Sky and Warner Bros. Discovery Warnermedia predecessor, Brown rose aboard the BBC Studios British wing in 2022 to direct sales in the Americas and increased to unify all non-UK sales as president of world content sales last year. Its challenge is now to find the best road to the market for titles as varied as Doctor Who,, Bluey And A good girl guide for murderWhile launching new titles on markets such as Mipcom and BBC Studios Showcase.
Brown is now approaching one of his biggest newspaper dates. This morning, BBC drama Meeting Go get his first North American at the Toronto International Film Festival. At the same time, Paramount + with Showtime and CBC in Canada bought the show, as I revealed earlier this morning.
The series, which features Matthew Gurney as a former deaf condemned man in the end with life outside after leaving prison, “a man on a real self-actualization trip and with a complex reader”, comes from Adolescence Producer Warp Films, whose team Brown dit is “fantastic and proven producers that come out of an incredible year”.
Brown says that the agreement is informative of a purchasing market where people on both sides of the agreement act with more “intention” than ever before, and everyone is looking for programs that are really authentic and can be marketed with audiences who need to feel connected. “It is not the same sellers market that it was a few years ago, and we all try to work with different budgets from what people were used to,” she said. “People are not going to acquire just for fun. There must be an intention. They should know what a show can do for their brand. ”
Intention, she says, it is a “good theme that reflects the prospect of the BBC group that we support the best of the British narration”. In terms of sales, this means that the Brown team “will intentionally choose the producers with whom we work, the projects we support and how we present them to buyers and finally to the public.
For sales of global content of BBC Studios, one of these manifests in the connection of buyers to producers such as WARP and remaining above what is happening by communicating with key production executives such as Mark Linsey and Matt Forde, the British leaders who are the main BBC studios have scripted and not scripted in Los Angeles.
“From the moment of knowing what content arrives, we are working closely with colleagues in production,” explains Brown. “In terms of relationships with producers, we all work together, so that they fully benefit from studios.”
Conversely, Brown claims that the staff of the world content of BBC Studios have “the privilege of working with a group of producers who are very wise, not only with creative relations but also commercial relations” and notes that the two parties “exchange information on the market”. She underlines how Clerkenwell Films, another production house in the stable, used her own close relationship with Netflix to land Baby meetingBut that the BBC Studios will shop for its next project. “We are all in it together,” says Brown.
The BBC Studios has a large catalog and last year produced 3,300 overtime, but that did not stop the Focus Lazer de Brown by drawing the value of the titles at its disposal. “There is not so much quantity that we can simply count on luck or be passive,” she explains. “It’s aligned – Meeting does not occur by chance. The strategy seems to work – in the BBC annual report, published in June, the combined profit and sales benefit of BBC Studios was 228 million pounds sterling ($ 306 million) on a turnover of 2.1 billion pounds sterling.
Evolutionary market
Since Brown took her new position almost a year ago, she focused on training her team to respond to the evolution market. Previous plans to hire an EVP based in London, sales of world content has been put aside, we understand, with Brown saying that there was a “break on the way we approach this”. His team assesses locally, regionally or for multi-territories, and drill the programs that work best, such as BBC and Netflix Co-Co A good girl guide for murderThe perennial children have struck Bluey And Doctor Who (which, despite speculation about its future, remains a key element of the commercial framework).
In Mipcom next month, the BBC Studios will launch several new programs, including the dramatic series of the family of the Scottish crime of Charlotte Rejea. MintWho comes from the producing subsidiary of production and fearless spirit, and features Emma Laird alongside Sam Riley, Laura Fraser, Lewis Gribben, Lindsay Duncan and the newcomer Ben Coyle-Larner. “We are very happy to work with House on it,” says Brown. “It’s fun, exciting and dynamic. It is in the first stages, but we are so excited to remove it. It will be a big goal in the MIP.”
Elsewhere there will be While waiting for the exitThe adaptation of the memories of Andy West written by Dennis Kelly about a philosopher teaching to the concepts of prisoners such as domination and free for his own step. The deadline told you about it in March, and the confirmation followed with the news that Josh Finan would play.
Another major priority is W1a And Twenty successor TwentyJohn Morton’s comedy with Hugh Bonneville – another that we have revealed news from this summer. CrookhavenMeanwhile, is a drama of transition to adulthood based on the best -selling books of JJ Arcano which features Dougray Scott and Claire Forlani. On the side of natural history, doc in two parts Matron (Working title) tells the story of a 54-year-old alpha-female chimpanzee, while Kingdom is a six games filmed over four years in a single valley of the Zambian river. There are also unicenized programs such as The passage of Rob and Rylan to IndiaA TV personality with three parts Rylan Clark and Rob Rinder.
Mipcom Cannes remains a key launch for BBC studios, as well as its annual BBC studios showcase in the United Kingdom in February – the event that led to the creation of London television projections now established. Although some people question the value of the MIP centered on a trade in a market for improved co -producements, acquisitions and pre -shopping, Brown – which has a single socket only attended from the pandemic – says it is “an important point of contact”.
In the end, this comes to “what is useful for buyers,” explains Brown. “On this market, where people carefully manage their budgets, they also manage their budgets.”
The trick, it seems, is to know who you are getting your shows and has gone to sow them. Later, this is the way your show is deploying. “I come from the independent film,” explains Brown, traces a parallel between this world and the increasingly complex universe of options to launch a television series. As such, she knows that “the window is the blood of life of the way content meets the public in different ways.”
“For a while, in the era of so-called peak television, part of this window was parked for an initial agreement,” she continues. “From the point of view of the BBC, we are proud that not only have we not put all the eggs in this basket, but that we have kept a full sales team everywhere and that we do not depend on an initial global agreement. We have maintained a mixed economy.
“I say that because it’s almost like a 3D matrix. You are not only on the window, but you split in territories. You may have a window strategy among the different territories in your first window, and the second window could be different. It becomes more and more complex, but there are, frankly, more interesting offers. ”
