Gold seen on superhighway
"It's a multibillion-dollar treasure hunt that has these tremendous big-pocket players," said David E. Salzman, co-CEO of QDE, his programming venture with Quincy Jones.
"There are still many pots of gold, but the rainbows are different."
Most panelists at the Kagan Seminars Inc. Motion Picture & TV Program Finance confab said those rainbows will be found in the niche programming that will continue to develop with the expansion of cable and the creation of video-on-demand systems.
Discovery Communications Inc., which owns the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel, is developing a new system, called Your Choice TV, which gives viewers the opportunity, for $ 1 a show, to watch a handful of hit network programs they might have missed during their initial runs.
"We all have our favorite six or seven shows -- be it 'Seinfeld,' 'Saturday Night Live' or whatever," Discovery chairman and CEO John Hendricks said. "In the course of a week, we miss half of those shows."
Your Choice, which also offers PPV movies, allows viewers to watch those programs and gives production companies new revenue opportunities.
With two groups vying to form a new network, program syndicators could be in for a rough ride. But even Keith Samples, prexy of Rysher TPE, the indie syndie that distribs "Highlander: the Series" and "Robocop: the Series," saw a silver lining.
"I'm still a believer that quality programming is trump," Samples said.
Further, although European funding for TV projects is difficult, Guido Corso, who runs the Los Angeles office of the Italian television RAI Corp., said co-production money hasn't disappeared. But to get foreign TV money to back a project, American producers will have to cede some control.
