Tuning In The Global Village : Investors Ask: How Does It Play in Peru and Paris?

CANNES, France —  Before the amazing proliferation of cable and satellite programming and the consequent decline of the major networks in the last few years, the ruling philosophy of American television was simple.

If a program such as “Dallas” or “Dynasty” was a big hit in the United States, that was enough. Anything that came later in the way of foreign sales was all gravy--a happy accidental bonus. Few concessions were made to foreign tastes and interests. Let the Asians and the Europeans and the South Americans have the leftovers.

But no more.

Today, more often than not, it is the global market that makes or breaks a new idea. Producers can no longer afford to make programs with a uniquely American appeal. Foreign financial backing is a necessity before producers get a green light.

“The only way that you can really get a decent return on your investment in a production is to produce an exportable product,” Michael Solomon, president of Warner Brothers International Television, said in an interview here. “The U.S. alone is not enough to pay for a product anymore because the networks are only paying anywhere between 50-75% of the cost of production.”

The trend toward international marketing and co-production has radically changed the shape of the television business. It has also created a new, still-unrealized, Holy Grail for the business: the search for a program that truly bridges international borders; a program just as at home in Lima as London.

Nowhere was the hunt for the perfect international program more obvious than at the annual MIPCOM television market convention here last week. (The acronym stands for Marche International des Films et des Programmes pour La TV, La Video, Le Cable et Le Satellite, which is one of five principal world television programming markets.)

This year, more than 2,000 buyers from 84 countries showed up at this Cote D’Azur resort town in search of new programs for their networks or for programs in which to invest as co-producers.

“In one concentrated area you have all the representatives of the tele-media world,” said Solomon, 54, whose first job in the business was loading film canisters into trucks in New York City. “In one 16-hour day of business I can see people from 15 to 30 countries and make deals for more than $100 million.”

More than ever, the emphasis this year was on programs with a broad international appeal. This meant fewer comedies, which seldom travel well internationally, and more animated features, nature documentaries and youth-oriented dramas tied to music.

The television executives have discovered that rock ‘n’ roll is a language spoken around the world. As a result, many of their program outlines sound almost identical.

The London-based Movie Acquisition Corp., for example, advertised its new series “Catwalk” as “portraying the lives of six kids struggling to find themselves in the world around them. Drawn together by their passion for music.”

Meanwhile, “The Heights,” the new show by Spelling Television recently launched on the Fox Network, was described by its promoters as “eight kids from a tough working-class neighborhood bound together by one aim--to pursue a dream of success in rock ‘n’ roll.”

In her program titled “Global Youth,” Dallas-based television personality Jennifer Smith travels around the world to interview rock personalities and talk about teen-agers’ concerns such as safe sex, school and problem parents. The program has been sold to networks in Turkey, Germany, Spain, South Africa and several countries in Asia.

“Paradise Beach,” a new daily soap opera set on the gold coast beaches of Australia and distributed by Los Angeles-based New World International, is built, according to its promotion, on the theme that “kids all over the world fantasize about running away to the beach.”

The program has an Australian co-producer (Village Roadshow Pictures) and American, Australian, and French characters. The lineup may change if some interested Italian companies join “Paradise Beach” as European co-producers, said New World President Jim McNamara, candidly revealing the kind of thematic adjustments that can take place in the global marketplace. “I will probably change the French character to an Italian--a smooth Italian.”

McNamara added: “For about the last seven years we have been thinking about the international marketplace. When we analyze a show, we try to think of the global appeal as opposed to just whether it will play in Peoria.”

Here at Cannes, “Paradise Beach” was pushed hard for the Northern European market, where McNamara figured viewers might want some sunny relief from the long and dark European winters. His first words to a group of potential Scandinavian investors were: “Think about Jan. 15 in Stockholm.” The sale was quickly concluded after that, he said.