active TV president Michael McKay spends so much time in Singapore these days he’s seriously looking at renting an apartment in the city state. Overseeing active TV Asia’s Singapore headquarters, which has grown significantly since its establishment three years ago, McKay now jokingly refers to himself as the ‘token gweilo’ in an operation that has been built using exclusively local talent. Operating across a range of genres spanning reality, general entertainment, documentary and sports, the production company was founded in Asia by multi Emmy Award winning producer Bertram van Munster (The Amazing Race) and Michael McKay (The Amazing Race Asia). Together, they have produced major productions in some of the most remote locations on earth. Recent hires vice-president of development Rob Khoo, formerly with STAR, and finance & administration manager Christine Loo, formerly with LucasFilm Animation Singapore join an array of Asian talent that also includes vice-president Serena Lau, producer/casting director Priscilla Yeo and producer Kimberly James. “It might have been easier to import the talent, but our three-year plan was always to recruit and train local talent for the long-term,” explains McKay. “Peter Wery was director of photography for the first season of The Amazing Race Asia alongside local production talent who had worked on the US version of the show, but active TV Asia is truly Asian now.” McKay says that, having discussed it with business partner Bertram van Munster, the decision was always to build the business here, on the ground, in Asia. “Now we can do big-scale local production in the region, using local talent.” McKay is particularly proud to be actively exporting Asian production talent elsewhere in the world. “We just produced The Amazing Race Israel for Reshet using our Singapore-based team.” HaMerotz LaMillion (The Race to the Million) was shot across four continents and premiered 5 February 2009 on Channel 2. active TV has been commissioned by broadcasters to deliver high quality turnkey productions such as Reel Race (Discovery), Short&Sweet (Movie Network’s Movie Extra), The Amazing Race Asia (AXN) and Carols in the Domain (Seven Australia). Of late it has been securing formats such as Hell’s Kitchen Asia (ITV Global Entertainment), Prank Patrol (MarVista) and developing innovative new formats of its own for broadcast, internet and branded content. Asked about winning an Asian TV Award in 2008, McKay says his expense budget is still suffering from the four-day celebrations. “We were very excited to win this award as it was an acknowledgement of the hard work put in by all of our crews on what can be best described as an epic series. There is probably no other show of its type that is harder to produce and for this to be recognized by the judges was a true honour, especially considering the other great shows that were nominated. My business partner, Bertram van Munster, has won six consecutive Emmy Awards for best reality series with The US version, The Amazing Race, but he was truly excited when I called him to tell him we had won.” McKay attributes the show’s award success to the enormous lessons learnt from season one, “So series 2 was a major step up in virtually every aspect. In series one we focused on setting up our local crews and training them, rather than taking the easy way out and bringing in a host of people from the US version (only two or three of us had worked on the American version). In addition, the network (AXN) backed us with greater resources for the second series.” Continues Mckay, “I think awards such as this are really important for a number of reasons. They promote our industry and excellence; they remind us that we are part of a broad and dynamic industry; it is a positive thing to celebrate our individual and collective achievements and it highlights who is producing great stuff. On stimulating TV production in the Asia Pacific, McKay says he thinks The Amazing Race Asia has become something of a pan regional template, “and I am confident its success is encouraging others to try a similar approach which is great news. We need to maintain confidence in our local content and continue to take bold steps, despite or even because of, the economic slow down. There may well be a tendency to go ‘cheap and cheerful’ but I think this would be a backward step for the industry.” “Let me dust off my crystal ball here and predict a growing trend towards locally produced proven international formats. Broadcasters will see less risk in putting their money into proven properties. Further down the track the next progression will be more Asian originated formats being exported to the rest of the world.” “I think the next three years will see some of the smaller producers in the market place merging or being swallowed up by some of the larger players. I think this will be in response to economic realities but also the networks wanting more accountability and reliability against their investment.” “I think funding bodies will need to work more closely with co-productions becoming even more important (as the demand for higher quality and bigger budgets increases). Non-competing Broadcasters in the region will look to work more closely together too, in an effort to achieve some economies of scale. The times ahead are both challenging and exciting.” TVAplus
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