By Bill Roberts
BANFF – Few aspects, if any in the entertainment industry, are more important than the carving up of rights and intellectual property.
It is a minefield for the layperson, with every license ideally carefully defined – even in the case of a sales deal where there is no grant of rights to the agent, careful detailing of which rights an agent can sell on behalf of an IP owner requires strict clarity.
This includes term, territory, language, sub-licensing and assignment and more. Other than being the price of democracy, this is why our business needs lawyers.
In the Banff World Media Festival (BWMF) session titled Media Leaders 2022: Future Forward, intellectual property (IP) and rights became a hot topic.
This panel included: Bing Chen (above, top left), president and co-founder of Gold House, Michael MacMillan (top right), CEO of Blue Ant Media, Erin Junkin (top, centre), partner and co-head, scripted television at WME, and Patrick Vien (bottom left), group managing director, international at A+E Networks.
Our moderator was Karla Pita Loor (bottom right), executive vice-president, enterprise inclusion and social responsibility at Banijay Americas.
MacMillan, whose company just launched a suite of FAST channels on LG Channels in North America, got right down to business with “whoever gets to own the IP and get the economic benefit from it (wins)… distribution and rights are key… while others believed that we’d all end up dealing with the Big Five and streamers, Blue Ant believes that mid-sized organizations can flourish and be good partners.”
Vien took a step back asserting that “our big brands are doing well and growing… with 1,500 to 2,000 hours of production and show development underway… talent is key in our franchise building business.” He cited deals with Mick Jagger, James Brown and Leonardo DiCaprio plus the example of A+E Studios producing the series hit The Lincoln Lawyer for Netflix. “This is definitive television,” Vien said.
Junkin, who is the only female department head of television at a major talent agency, offered that “my clients have benefitted many new streaming services and hundreds of new projects… but I sense that what’s happening now for streamers and conglomerates (that MacMillan referenced) is a stepping back to assess… when I used to see eight or nine bidders on a specific content (project), in the last few months I haven’t seen that.”
Chen, formerly with YouTube and Google, has a great blog and describes himself as “an impact founder, investor and new world builder, leveraging storytelling and systems to deliver greater socioeconomic equity.”
Chen took another perspective on ownership, noting 51% of film theatrical receipts are “owned” by Black, Latino and Asian audiences, so we should look outside of North America, like Asia, and learn from the success of Korean films such as “Parasite”.
“Plus, four years ago there was more TV product than TV time to air it… so the best companies like Disney+ (developed rights) in other commercial areas like extensions of content with experiences and products,” he said. (Think Mandalorian games and Wanda dolls.)
Junkin jumped back in warning that “when it comes to IP we don’t want to become like the film business where it’s all about library owners and networks that are vertically integrated with their own production companies… the TV biz should be about writers and other creators and producers… new consolidation is coming (but we need) great indie producers and packaging is key… diversity needs development pipelines… or there will be potentially fewer new shows if less projects are put into that development.”
Our moderator brought up that Blue Ant Media was the coproducer for Hoarders: Canada in a deal with A+E that provided rights participation for MacMillan’s firm at the backend, and as the session drew to a close there was general agreement with Vien’s view that “we need to acknowledge that our attention to diversity has really only been a journey of the last two years.”
MacMillan may have had his hand up to speak to the IP deal on Hoarders, which is the first ever commission of this acclaimed series outside of the U.S. but he ended up speaking to the latter comment about diversity, saying: “we have a lot more to do regarding diversity and multiculturalism, so I’m a bit concerned enough we have self-congratulating moments at confabs like this.”
Somehow we then segued into “streamers moving into six or eight episode series… with fewer second seasons for series,” according to Vien. Most of the panel put that down to “search fatigue” and, said Chen, “people are now spending 20 to 40 minutes searching and that’s too much.”
MacMillan piped in that “streamers don’t need a second series… a six to eight episode rollover works for them… what they need is (variety) and a steady flow of reviews and media coverage to reinforce their monthly steamer subscription fees (revenues).”
Finally, speaking of rights and IP, the panel recalled the financial interest and syndication rules (fin-syn rules) that were imposed in 1970 by the FCC in the U.S. to prevent the big three TV television networks from dominating TV rights and monopolizing the television landscape, including a prohibition on those three (ABC, CBS and NBC) from airing syndicated content that they had any financial stake in.
That legislation was revolutionary for the balance of power between huge networks and true independent producers. In fact, the networks ditched their studios, creating a real separation between production and distribution.
But then mysteriously nobody on the panel asked the obvious question: is that what we need to do now to protect our rights?
Hmmm… watch this space.
Bill Roberts is a contributing editor at Cartt.ca.
Photos of panelists borrowed from the Banff World Media Festival’s website.
