AgTalk | Show has to be repeatable, transferable and original: Fremantle's Simon Spalding

Simon Spalding, Regional CEO ' Europe and Asia Pacific, Fremantle Media, believes in understanding his audiences better and keeping their preferences at the core while deciding on a format. In an interview with Adgully, Spalding talks about the regional market and the need for more relevant and original content. Excerpts:

Adgully: What potential do you see in the Indian market?

Simon Spalding: For us the Indian market within Asia is a market with the most potential. That is why we came back for the third time and we established our production business here and we have successfully staffed the organisation to take over the production of Indian Idol, India's Got Talent and now to do X Factor. We have a lot of faith in this market. We started with entertainment and we want to further strengthen regional and fiction capability.

Ag: What is the market-wise priority for Fremantle Media right now?

SS: We have different priorities for different businesses , a lot of our original intellectual property seems priority in markets like USA, UK and to a lesser extent in Australia. Denmark and Netherlands also has been important growth centres and contributed more than the size of these markets would have it. Germany on the other hand has a huge fiction business. And as a company we have three main priorities which includes creation of intellectual property, building new capabilities and continuing to focus on our network. We have 22 production companies around the world out of which I manage 16. We want to strengthen those businesses

Ag: What growth plans have you charted for 2011?

SS: We started the business two years ago from zero so our growth is pretty strong but from a zero base it is kind of easy to grow. We will be looking at taking this growth forward with consistency.

Ag: Any focus to enter the regional market?

SS: The primary focus when we set up was to put in place the right infrastructure and secondly was to secure the production of the shows we had already licensed into the market. But the next phase will be about getting into fiction and to do much more in the regional space. There is a lot of stuff in our catalogue that lends itself to the regional model, for eg, a show like Family Feud, you could do multiple language versions of it and that too from a single set. It is all about the volume, if you can get enough volume then the price is very unreasonable.

Ag: What initiatives are you undertaking to nurture talent within and outside of our organisation?

SS: We are a business and we are driven by commercial realities but across a number of fields we try and train people. In territories where we think the talent does not already exist we spend time and energy training them. We also have the graduate program, talent support programs and we also look at supporting our creative thinkers who might not be necessarily from within our organisation. In India we are really a start-up right now and we are still building a base and we will work on those areas when we can.

Ag: Are you looking at partnership with channels besides just GECs?

SS: We already have established value partnership with Sony Entertainment Television and Colors. We would like to work with all the leading channels. Pricing is a bit of challenge and once it is worked out we can work with many more channels. Moreover there is also a limit on how much more can we do when we are handling three big global properties. Hence the fight for good quality people is tough at the moment.

Ag: What expectation do you have from the Indian market?

SS: The do is bring in great ideas to us, the don't is don't try and do it yourself because it is just so tough. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]