Viewpoints: acquisitions strategies

Kate Sanagan Partner Picture Box Distribution Canada

What are your acquisition strategies?

We attend many of the international markets, like MIPTV and MIPCOM, and look for some product there.  For the most part, though, we tend to first identify the producers with whom we would like to work with and then meet with them to discuss their properties.  We also already represent a number of talented producers whom have upcoming shows that we are involved with at the development stage. 

What programs are you looking for?

High on my radar these days are children's and lifestyle/documentary series that would have good international sales potential.  For children's, I'm specifically looking for animated or teen live-action series that could work well in non-English speaking territories.  For lifestyle and documentary series, we are looking for transformative shows in particular, and ones that have a good dramatic arc.  26 + episodes is definitely a plus as well.

Can you name us the most successful titles that you acquired in 2006?

Hard to say definitively at this point, as the sales cycle is so much longer than just one year, but I would say that the titles we acquired in 2006 that got the most immediate interest would have been our preschool series " Roll Play " (52 X 4'), our lifestyle series " X Weighted " (26 X 60'), " Till Debt Do Us Part " (39 X 30') and the documentary series " Guinea Pig " (14 X 30')

Roll Play

What programs will be in demand at MIPTV 2007?

I think that high-end documentary and lifestyle series will continue to be of great international interest.  As MIPDOC is occurring as well, many of those doc and lifestyle buyers are going to be in Cannes and looking for new programming. For our part, we have entered " Guinea Pig ", " X Weighted ", and " Till Debt Do Us Part " at MIPDOC.