Studio Report Card: Columbia TriStar TV

Col TriStar TV eyes global growth

By VARIETY STAFF

SPECIAL REPORT
Youth is the watchword for network development at Columbia TriStar TV, as the studio has clicked with teen hits like the WB Network's "Dawson's Creek." The Columbia TriStar TV Distribution syndie arm, buoyed by distribution fees from the off-network sales of "Seinfeld," branched out in a big way into original cable production after a number of strikeouts on the firstrun syndie side. While lack of guaranteed distribution for Columbia's domestic TV product remains a huge challenge, in August, Sony Pictures Entertainment became the first of the U.S. majors to court the fast-growing domestic Hispanic aud by acquiring the Spanish-lingo Telemundo web. COLUMBIA TRISTAR TV PARTNER PROBLEMS: As one of the only remaining TV studios not allied with a broadcast network, Columbia TriStar TV often has to cede partial ownership of its shows to get them on the air. That was the case with its promising frosh series "King of Queens." CBS demanded ownership in the show at the 11th hour in May in exchange for a pickup. If the show goes the distance, Sony will have to share the profits with the Eye web. That may be the main reason that Sony Corp. of America chair Howard Stringer initiated alliance talks with CBS in 1998. Although nothing came of them, and foreign ownership limits may be prohibitive, such a network alliance may be inevitable in order to compete with companies like Disney-ABC and News Corp.-Fox Broadcasting, which have guaranteed outlets for their product. PILOTING SUCCESS: Sony makes up for its distribution problems by producing more pilots than any other studio, with the hopes that at least some projects will stick. The strategy has worked. Columbia TriStar TV president Eric Tannenbaum also sees some advantages to partnering with networks on certain shows because they pay some of the production costs. "It remains harder and harder for us to get real estate," he said. "The business and the economics are tough, so it's harder to get shows on and to get an audience. Making the network a partner means laying off some of the risk." Despite its lack of distribution, Sony has had a phenomenal year with its teen shows, including the WB's hot drama "Dawson's Creek." Sony's renewal of Fox's slow-building, young-adult hit "Party of Five" was rancorous, but guaranteed a backend sale for the show on the Fox O&Os. Columbia will launch a spinoff with Jennifer Love Hewitt next season. The "Days of Our Lives" renewal process with NBC also was tense, so much so that Sony came close to accepting an offer from Disney-ABC to move the veteran sudser to the Alphabet web. The two sides ultimately hammered out a five-year deal to keep the soap on the Peacock web. What the studio needs most now is some hit comedies to replace the fading "Mad About You" and "The Nanny." Low points for the year include the cancellation of freshmen series "Fantasy Island" on ABC and "Mercy Point" on UPN. THINK GLOBAL: Underscoring Sony's increasingly global view of the TV biz, the studio acquired the troubled U.S. Spanish-lingo network Telemundo and its stations in partnership with Liberty Media last year. Studio brass, led by Jon Feltheimer, president of the Columbia TriStar TV Group and exec VP of SPE, aim to turn Telemundo into a synergy hub, with Col TriStar producing Spanish-lingo fare for the web and exporting it to Sony-owned channels in Latin America. En Espanol versions of "The Dating Game" and "The Newlywed Game" already are airing on Telemundo. TV vet Peter Tortorici was named prexy of Telemundo in August, and Nely Galan was tapped as programming chief. Sony aims to revamp Telemundo, making it a hipper, younger-skewing competitor to the dominant U.S. Spanish-lingo web, Univision. And in so doing, the studio is hoping to gain a toehold in the market for movie and TV fare aimed at the bilingual Hispanic aud, which is the largest segment of the fastest-growing minority group in the country.

-- Jenny Hontz and Cynthia Littleton

SYNDICATION HIGH POINTS: Columbia TriStar TV Distribution, headed by prexy Barry Thurston, made a concerted effort in 1998 to broaden its scope beyond syndication. And yet, the division wound up making syndie history by inking megabucks deals for "Seinfeld." Col TriStar TV Distribution (CTTD) virtually auctioned off the rerun rights to "Seinfeld" last spring when the renewals on the first round of "Seinfeld" syndie deals came up. "Seinfeld" is now projected to gross upward of $1 billion over the first 10 years of its syndie life cycle, which began in 1995. In Gotham and L.A. alone, stations agreed to pay about $80 million apiece for the rerun rights to "Seinfeld" over a five-year term beginning in 2001 -- by far the highest price ever netted for an off-net property in the nation's top two TV markets. A few months later, CTTD inked another record-setting deal for the cable rerun rights, hauling in $180 million from Turner's TBS. CTTD handled the off-network sales for the Castle Rock-produced sitcom, and thus has been awash in distribution fee coin from "Seinfeld" ever since NBC's smash sitcom moved into Monday-Friday syndication in 1995. Although overshadowed by the buzz about "Seinfeld," Col TriStar's CBS hit "The Nanny" also made its syndie bow last fall. LOOKING AHEAD: With an eye to the future, CTTD plunged into the growing market for original cable programming last year with the launch of three well-received series: "Oh Baby," a single mom comedy for Lifetime; "The Net," a cyber-actioner for USA Network based on the 1995 feature pic; and the sitcom "Rude Awakening" for Showtime. CTTD also produces "AXN," a caught-on-tape clip series that is produced in half a dozen different tongues for export to overseas channels, including Sony's AXN (for action) channel. Domestically, "AXN" runs as a nightly strip on the Fox Family Channel. CTTD's push into the cable arena came after the division faced a number of strikeouts in firstrun syndication in recent years, most notably the costly venture into latenight TV with "Vibe," which was yanked in August. The talkshow "Ricki Lake," the first syndie strip the division launched after it was formed in 1992, remains the stalwart in CTTD's firstrun stable.

-- Cynthia Littleton

CABLE Sony, which owns only one cable channel, the Game Show Network, is a pipsqueak in cable compared to giants such as Time Warner, Disney and Viacom. Game Show Network has struggled since it began on Dec. 1, 1994, finding it almost impossible to get cable operators to sign up for the channel because it was a standalone: Sony couldn't package it with other cable networks like Viacom and Time Warner can do with their stables of cablers. But Game Show, which is part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, has survived the lean years, and Sony confirms Paul Kagan Associates figures that show the network finally racking up a positive cash flow by the end of 1999. "Jeopardy!" is one of 65 gameshows representing more than 50,000 episodes owned by Sony, which serve as the linchpin for the Game Show Network. Harvesting rollout commitments from cable operators like John Malone's Tele-Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. and Cablevision Systems Corp., Game Show Network says it now reaches more than 15 million homes, including satellite-dish owners who subscribe to DirecTV, Primestar and EchoStar. The circulation growth over the last two years has yielded big increases in license fees from cable operators: The negligible $3.1 million in cable-operator fees for 1997 vaulted to $14.3 million this year, with an estimated $20.6 million projected for 1999, according to Kagan. Advertising revenues have also shot up commensurately, from $4.3 million in 1997 to $14.9 million this year, with another $22.3 million forecast for 1999. Future growth for Game Show may be restricted to digital programming tiers on cable systems, which tend to repel subscribers because the tiers cost an additional monthly fee on top of the basic-cable rate. But Andy Kaplan, executive VP of CTTG, says the company's huge inventory of gameshows and its four-year head start on any potential competitors are a strong guarantee that the Game Show Network will stand unchallenged as the dominant quiz-show channel in cable.

-- John Dempsey

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