Information

May 23^rd, 2003 

Barry Kiefl’s International Programming Report

Highlights 

• Prime time drama has remained the largest and most important program genre in Europe, Australia and the U.S.  

• In the past 5-6 years, reality/game shows have had little effect on the amount of drama scheduled by European and Australian broadcasters.  

• Over the last five years, the number of hours devoted to domestic drama has increased or been stable in Europe while it has decreased in Australia.  

• Prime time drama audiences remain strong in all countries studied but audience fragmentation due to new channels is starting to have an effect in almost all countries.  

• There is a fair amount of foreign (mostly U.S.) drama on European television but there is also a very substantial and growing domestic component, especially in prime time viewing hours.  The value of European domestic drama is estimated at more than $4 billion.  

• Over 50% of the prime time drama is domestically produced in Germany, France and the U.K. and overall domestic drama is at its highest level in history.  

• Major European countries differ in the drama format they produce (e.g. Spain does a lot of series while Italy relies heavily on mini-series). 

• Penetration of cable TV is generally lower in Europe than it is in Canada.

• DTH penetration has grown recently but it’s still a minority choice among European audiences.

• DVD and 16:9 wide screen TVs have become popular consumer items in the past 12 to 18 months: “indicators that the potential for high definition digital TV may soon come to fruition”.  

• Over the last 4-5 years, people are spending an increasing amount of time watching TV in most European countries.  

• Public TV channels continue to be significant players (commanding at least 30% of the viewing audience) in most European countries; public broadcasters compete fiercely for audience ratings.  

• Combined, European public and private broadcasting net revenue in 2000 amounted to 60 billion euros, (more than 94 billion Canadian dollars) which is much bigger than the Canadian industry but smaller than the U.S. industry.  

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Date Modified: 2003-05-23

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