From The Hollywood Reporter:
Past haunts as Euro TV turns to classic fare
April 15, 2005
By Mimi Turner
LONDON -- It's official: Nostalgia television is back. Many of the most-watched TV shows of the '70s and '80s are being dusted off, revamped and funneled back onscreen for a new generation of viewers in Europe.
All over Europe, slots are opening up for such evergreens as "Dynasty," "Magnum, P.I.," "The A-Team" and "Knight Rider."
Whereas a decade ago library shows were shorthand for television filler, they now are playing across a slew of digital channels and slots in a much more sophisticated and evolved market.
"Gone are the days when any channel could bang out filler; the market has gone through that stage, and now every part of the schedule is much more competitive," says David Clarke, channel controller of U.K. digital net Bravo, a young-male-skewing channel that airs "Knight Rider" and in the past has aired such shows as "Airwolf" and "The Fall Guy."
"We did some focus groups with young male viewers and found that people have a real affinity with these shows because they already have a relationship with them," he said. "Viewers get more excited about nostalgic shows."
Added SBS Broadcasting Netherlands channel head Patrice Tillieux: "There's a lot of emotion and affection about these programs. The audience already has a familiarity with them and has already built a relationship with them, and that makes a difference."
SBS is in the process of rolling out the Netherlands-based I Love channel across satellite, cable and DTH platforms in the region. The channel will air a solid flow of evergreen shows including "Hawaii Five-O," "Dallas," "The A-Team" and "Magnum, P.I."
With a budget of less than $5 million a year and programming already covered by the broadcast group's existing contracts, there is an economic rationale to the project, as well, at a time when SBS is making the transition from a free television group to a multirevenue broadcaster.
"We could see the launch of I Love in other territories, perhaps Belgium," Tillieux said.
Jeffrey Schlesinger, president of Warner Bros. International Television Distribution, said that some of the start-up stations are "going to be hard pressed to establish an identity for themselves -- you can only have so many general entertainment channels." But programming with name recognition can help a new channel stand out from the crowd. "From that point of view there will be a growing opportunity to sell more library programming that the main stations may not be too interested in," he added.
The success of such boxoffice remakes as "Charlie's Angels" and "Starsky & Hutch" has itself triggered a slew of retro reinventions, including an upcoming theatrical version of "Dallas," a new NBC Universal formatting of "Kojak" and the forthcoming Joss Whedon-directed project "Wonder Woman."
There's a sense that television has been caught up in the tailwind as well, with programrs taking a new look at their catalogs for projects to reconceive.
"As a business we tend to focus on new product development, and it's right that we should do so, but when you're in the licensing business we also started to think about how we could reinvigorate some of our most treasured assets and bring them back to a new audience," Buena Vista International Television managing director Tom Toumazis said.
BVITV recently unearthed "Moonlighting" from its archives and digitally remastered the original Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis starrer.
"I don't think 'Moonlighting' could have been broadcast as it is from a quality point of view," Toumazis added. "It needed digitalization, the visual was too rough for the digital television world, and the audio needed some cleaning as well."
"We restored it visually frame by frame and cleaned up the audio; it was quite a long process, but we sold it to Paramount Comedy Channel, Kirch in Germany and ABC1 in the U.K."
Buena Vista now is working on the reinvigoration of '70s lovebug show "Herbie" in advance of the upcoming movie starring Lindsay Lohan.
Rereleasing a television show on the coattails of a theatrical revamp is one way of generating an initial audience for a program, but it's not always a guarantee of success, Bravo's Clarke cautioned.
"DVD releases or a movie remake always add to the mix, but first and foremost it has to be a good show in itself," he said. "It has to be something that a viewer will commit to spending time watching again and again."
Added Clarke: "We had a look at 'Starsky and Hutch' when the remake was out, but we thought it wasn't perhaps as good as we remember it. You can ride the wave of interest, but it's short-term and quite limited."
Elsewhere across Europe, nostalgia television is finding a place as part of a more mixed schedule.
Despite several new channels launching in France at the end of this month as the first wave of the digital terrestrial rollout, few are making classic U.S. reruns a central plank of their programming.
NT1, a startup channel from AB Groupe, has "Street Legal," "Due South," "Adrenaline" and "Bad Girls" on its schedule.
W9, the new digital channel from commercial network M6, has a show called "Funky Cops" that is '70s-inspired but not considered an evergreen. The channel also will air the 1998 sci-fi series "Chameleon," the Gena Lee Nolin action series "Sheena" and "From the Earth to the Moon," directed by Tom Hanks.
One solid buyer of vintage U.S. series is TMC, until now a cable and satellite channel that is migrating to digital terrestrial.
Co-owned by AB Groupe and TF1, TMC ranks eighth among French thematic channels, with an audience share of 1% among those French households that subscribe to at least one pay TV option.
Channel chiefs are hoping this share will increase significantly with the passage to free terrestrial broadcast, but with only 35% of the French territory initially covered, no one is prepared to make ratings forecasts.
TMC is inaugurating a new early-evening block every weekday called the Gold Trilogy, which will comprise three classic U.S. shows: "Kojak," "Ironside" and "The Wild Wild West." The channels also screen "Mission: Impossible" and Canadian show "Halifax."
"These are quality series which have proved themselves," TMC's Gregoire Lebouc said. "They don't age, they're well written and well acted. There's a strong demand -- we know from viewers' letters."
There are likely to be further outlets for vintage U.S. shows when the second phase of digital terrestrial bows in the fall, with some 15 pay channels becoming available. These have not yet been selected by France's broadcasting authority, so it's too early to know which channel proposals will make it.
As Germany's digital rollout picks up the pace, the big unanswered question is the potential demand for niche channels packed with evergreen product.
Universal Studio Networks, Disney Channel Deutschland, Sony Pictures Television International, MGM and German indie Kinowelt operate niche digital channels that rely heavily on library product, mainly feature films. On the series side, USN's Sci Fi Channel has scored small but significant audience numbers with reruns of "Battlestar Galactica," "Buck Rodgers" and "Star Trek," while the group's action and suspense label 13th Street fills its schedule with "Law & Order" repeats.
Past haunts as Euro TV turns to classic fare
