Answer - when you're the owner of the "World's Worst Driver" TV format. Licensing fees have been pouring in for the format from around the world. Germany set out to find the "World's Worst Cook", Denmark the "World's Worst Husband" and Sweden the "World's Worst Singer" - (presumably not Abba). Next stop for the format owners, Mentorn International, is Japan, where they participated last week in the TiffcomTV contents trade show, along with 7 other UK companies, including BBC Worldwide, Hattrick and Mercury Media.
Eli Mae, the lead for media contents in UKTI Japan negotiated free exhibition space for the UK contingent and worked to bring the brilliance of UK programming to the show for the first time, in collaboration with PACT, the UK trade association which represents the commercial interests of independent feature film, TV, digital, children's and animination media companies.
Intellectual property is everything in the world of creative content, and PACT was instrumental a few years back in securing the right for production companies to retain their intellectual property, rather than handing it over to broadcasters. That has opened the way for commercial exploitation through export, distribution, interactive rights, merchandise, stage rights and more. It's quite a success story: apparently 52% of TV programming minutes around the world are now in formats developed in the UK. An interesting parallel also with the world of print where the FT has bucked the trend by marketing its i-phone/i-pad app direct to consumers from their browser rather than via the Apple i-store. Since the launch earlier this year they've already doubled their circulation and of course are retaining all the income rather than paying a cut to a distributor. A salutary reminder of the commercial importance of protecting and retaining your IP rights.
So, is Japan ready or British TV content? It certainly has massive potential. It's the world’s second largest media and entertainment market, home to high-quality producers of content (film, TV, anime, music, etc) and hardware and one of the largest producers of films. It also has a large and active broadcast, satellite, cable and IPTV sector, and boasts a substantial Internet user base of over 90 million, with more than 70% of households enjoying broadband access thanks in part to extensive fibre optic diffusion. The switchover to digital TV was completed earlier this year and the huge and dynamic mobile Internet market suggests further potential in Japan that may not exist in UK markets.
BBC Worldwide already does good business here with dramas like Sherlock, anything involving royalty and of course their nature productions - the BBC is in the process of creating a virtual reality natural history leisure centre in Tokyo with Sega. They've also worked on some iconic co-productions with Japanese TV companies, including a hugely moving "reconstruction" of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Otherwise UK market penetration is still in its infancy, and competing with a huge boom in Korean content. But all the participating companies at Tiffcom reported strong interest from Japanese distributors, broadcasters and producers.
The new trend for product placement and advertiser-funded programming (already common in Japan but only permitted in the UK since February this year) is opening up other new potential for collaboration with Japanese companies: Dawn McCarthy-Simpson of PACT told us how Nintendo had sponsored the "BRitain's Best Brain" programme in a bid to revive the fortunes of their Brain-Training game. By setting up "pods" in shopping centres around the UK where members of the public competed on Nintendo games to qualify for the show they managed to secure a 20% increase in sales. Next step "Top Gear" sponsored by Nissan?
Japan is a country where quality, excellence and attention to detail is everything, so I'm not sure how the "World's Worst" concept will go down here. The only things the Japanese seem to be bad at are being rude, saying no and holding on to Prime Ministers. I haven't quite figured how any of those might transfer to the small screen yet but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone's knocking on Mencorn's door.
For further information about opportunities in creative contents or any other sector in Japan contact commercial.tokyo@fco.gov.uk.
Sue Kinoshita, UKTI Japan