CANNES – How small media players can survive and thrive against Netflix or Amazon has occupied minds this week at MIPCOM, the annual TV market in the south of France.
So when veteran TV showrunner Tassie Cameron was asked Tuesday during a panel of Canadian content creators in Cannes how she competed against U.S. streaming giant, she recalled a postcard she received a few years ago.
On the card was a cartoon featuring a big fish, a small fish and a giant net surrounding them. Cameron then recalled the caption: "Either get so big you bust through the motherf*cker, or stay so small you swim right through."
And Cameron, who last year launched her own production shingle, Cameron Pictures, along with sister Amy Cameron, said she preferred her company to be small and nimble enough to attract partners in Canada and abroad with whom to make global series.
"We felt there was space in the market for a company that was very small, very nimble, and very flexible, was completely independent and creatively driven, and would benefit from knowing the best talent in Canada," Cameron explained.
Her postcard and competitive position today against streaming giants underlined a debate among MIPCOM content producers and distributors this week: If you can't pay to play like Netflix, how can you effectively leverage partnerships to survive and thrive in an increasingly global business?
Shaftesbury CEO Christina Jennings, appearing on the same Showbiz Success In Today's World panel, insisted Netflix and Amazon were not enemies, but new buyers for her product – and that's allowed a small Canadian player like Shaftesbury to eat its way up the food chain into the global market.
"I sat yesterday in our office with a big poster on our wall… and (someone from) Netflix sat there, stared at this poster, and said, you know what, don't talk about this with other distributors. This may be perfect for us," she recalled.
“It's not about Canada. It's how to create a global campaign to get us more fans.” – Christina Jennings, Shaftesbury
Jennings advised fellow creators to attend foreign TV markets like the MIPs in order to develop highly-innovative business models with international partners and buyers. "It's not the show anymore. It's the book. It's the live experience. It's all of those things. It's not about Canada. It's how to create a global campaign to get us more fans," she argued, as she pointed in particular to social media campaigns for all her shows to drum up fans.
Others, however, prefer to be a big fish in a small pond.
Cineflix Media president Peter Emerson told Cartt.ca that development and production costs for scripted series have escalated in recent years, even as Canadian and other traditional broadcasters have reduced their license fees — while Netflix and Amazon continue their multi-billion-dollar content splurges.
So, Cineflix plays at both ends of the scripted TV market as both a big or small player, as when needed. That means at times producing big-budget dramas like Coroner, which has been sold to the CBC for Canada and NBCUniversal International Networks for much of the rest of the world.
The benefit of a global pay TV deal with NBCU, as opposed to a streaming deal with Netflix, Emerson explained, was Cineflix gets the same simultaneous launch in a lot of territories. Crucially though, NBCU has shorter holdbacks on Coroner, dependent on territories, after which Cineflix is free to sell the show to free TV networks because, unlike Netflix, there's no holdback of the digital rights.
"We had a lot of fun with Netflix and Amazon when they launched, but Netflix wants the whole world now. We will do that deal in certain scenarios, but for a distributor, it's getting extremely marginal.” – Peter Emerson, Cineflix
"We had a lot of fun with Netflix and Amazon when they launched, but Netflix wants the whole world now. We will do that deal in certain scenarios, but for a distributor, it's getting extremely marginal," Emerson told Cartt.ca.
Despite the difficulty in sharing in the upside when selling to Netflix, other Canadian producers are thriving as streaming giants raise their appetite for Canadian and other international fare as they expand globally. A case in point is Vancouver-based Slap Happy Cartoons, which sold their animated series The Hollow to Netflix and, with little fanfare and despite no feedback on audience consumption, recently received a second season order from the streaming giant.
For Slap Happy co-founder Vito Viscomi, the good news is he has a second season for his show. However, he has no audience measurement, or much of anything else datawise from Netflix by which to sell the show on to other international buyers.
"You can't say, here's the proof that The Hollow is doing well," Viscomi told Cartt.ca. The silver lining is Netflix has approached Slap Happy to become the studio for another series the streaming giant wants to commission.
"It's rethinking television," fellow Slap Happy co-founder Kathy Antonsen Rocchio said of today's business climate, as her company increasingly goes online, and to streaming platforms, to develop new business models for new projects.
Other indie producers are equally as happy as Tassie Cameron to be small enough to swim through the net to get to where they have to go.
Christina Fon, executive producer at Montreal-based Rezolution Pictures, told Cartt.ca about developing a limited drama series at the CBC, Littlebird, with other local talent like Hannah Moscovitch, Jennifer Podemski and Catherine Bainbridge.
The series, now in its pilot stage, will be structured as a crime mystery against the backdrop of the Sixties Scoop, or the true-life experience of young indigenous Canadian children in the 1960s being "scooped up," or taken from their families or communities and placed in foster homes or adoption.
Fon told Cartt.ca that Littlebird, should it go to air, promises to be a landmark series for Canada. "It's going to be a revelation for Canadians, and it will also show indigenous communities as resilient and there will be hope," Fon said.
