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US cable network operators have spent years rolling out their channels around the globe. And now companies such as Discovery and A&E are ramping up their programme sales activities as well, reports John Hazelton
For the past decade-and-a-half, US cable companies have been busy turning their domestic networks into global brands. Thanks to the launch of localised sister channels serving regions and individual territories from Europe to the Pacific, networks like MTV, Discovery and ESPN are today as well known to many international audiences as they are to the North American viewers for whom such familiar cable monikers have long been part of the pop culture landscape.
But even the most globally recognisable US networks do not live by international channel distribution alone. International programme sales have always been an important complimentary business to the international channel distribution efforts of both well established and still maturing US network operations. And now a number of cable companies are attaching renewed significance to their programme sales operations, as they seek to further grow their brands in the increasingly crowded international cable and satellite marketplace.
For an established international network operator like Discovery Communications Inc (DCI), which launched Discovery Channel Europe in 1989 and has since extended the reach of its family of channels to more than 150 territories, "it makes a lot of sense to compliment our network business with a programme sales strategy that drives a revenue stream but also helps extend our brands on cable", says Joe Kennedy, the company's vice president and head of sales and marketing, programme financing and distribution. "When you have the number of networks that we have" - besides Discovery itself, DCI channels include Animal Planet, TLC, Discovery Kids and several others - "and the volume of programming that we have amassed, you have to be in the programme sales business."
If programme sales has, up to now, been a secondary business to channel distribution for many US network operators, Discovery, for one, is taking steps to better integrate its sales business with other aspects of its worldwide operations. Not only is DCI now trying to make greater use of its international networks to help drive its international terrestrial sales - at Mipcom, it will introduce anthropology show The...