Viewpoints: Acquisition strategies
Orsetta Violante Balsamo
Head of Acquisitions
Endemol Italia
Italy
What are your acquisition strategies in 2009?
Our strategy focuses on tracking the international market, cultivating strong, established relationships with main format distributors, and carefully exploring and spotting emerging companies with new ideas and high potential.
What products are you looking for?
For major networks we mainly search successful game shows and Prime Time studio-based shows (reality, talent, people and variety), targeting the family audience and the 25-54 age group. For the satellite channels, we look for low budget and non studio-based shows. Generally speaking, the need for low budget shows is increasingly obvious.
Can you name the most successful titles that you acquired this year?
Apart from third party returning series such as Wheel Of Fortune ("Ruota della Fortuna"), Celebrity Farm ("La Fattoria"), "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" in its classic version and Musical Chairs version ("Chi Vuol Essere Milionario"), we produced the talent show "FloorFiller" ("Italian Academy") and a revamped version of the musical game show "Name That Tune" ("Sarabanda").
What products will be in demand during MIPCOM 2009? Please give us your opinion.
I believe that there will be a greater demand of low budget, original, long running series.
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