On April 9, Richard Grasl, ORF’s Chief Financial Officer, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Ming LUO, Vice President of CCTV, Beijing, for the exchange of expertise and for the coproduction of new wildlife and nature films together with ORF’s celebrated UNIVERSUM strand.

Grasl said, “For more than a quarter of a century UNIVERSUM has set international standards for the highest quality natural history documentaries, and it is especially gratifying to see this recognised by China’s national all-documentary channel, CCTV-9. China’s documentary channel has already broadcast a number of our documentaries, and we are now delighted by the prospect of producing together. Our first cooperation, Triumph of the Tomato, celebrates the hidden wonders of the much loved fruit. In a spectacular film shot on three continents, UNIVERSUM veteran Maria Koller will succeed in persuading viewers that they have never tasted a real tomato!”

Luo adds that, “China and Austria are both countries with a history of creating a brilliant civilisation. Although our two countries are geographically far apart, the people of China are certainly no strangers to famous Austrian composers such as Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Johann Strauss. Today’s signing ceremony marks the start of a new stage of cooperation between the two partners in the area of documentaries. I am confident that our co-production of Triumph of the Tomato will be a complete success. I firmly believe that we will find more and more co-production documentary projects that will help the television audiences of our two countries better understand each other and become better friends.”

On the choice of ORF as co-production partner, Luo tells TV ASIA Plus he was impressed with ORF’s expertise in the documentary field.

“We had no prior co-productions with ORF because we did not have much knowledge about ORF’s documentary production capabilities,” says Luo. “But after more interaction we have now come to realise that ORF’s documentaries carry substance, so we decided to collaborate.”

Head of Universum Andrew Solomon says the MOU presents many opportunities.

“UNIVERSUM has been running for 26 years and represent high end documentary series and increasingly, in order to make programmes around the world with the highest production values, we can’t do it alone. We need international partners, and with the growth in particular of CCTV-9, the alldocumentary channel of CCTV – CCTV was looking to do more production and to get more involved internationally – it’s a wonderful opportunity for both sides to combine resources and to coproduce programmes that we want both our audiences to see and that can distributed around the world,” says Solomon.

Both parties acknowledged that the decision to make the tomato was a surprisingly easy one to make. Luo says both development heads met and pinned down the topic in one seating, without any struggle. Solomon says it was “an almost instant agreement.”

“Chinese audiences love the tomato. It has broad appeal across the country,” says Luo, who believes the universality of the topic will sustain interest. Luo says that the documentary will air on both CCTV-1 and CCTV-9 when completed, and that there are plans to air on more specialty channels on CCTV if the ratings indicate appeal.

On possibly dealing with media regulator SARFT’s (now known as General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television) restrictions, Solomon is not unduly concerned.

“UNIVERSUM is famous for its wildlife programming. Wildlife films tend not to be controversial. We make beautiful films with strong stories and fabulous pictures. I’m absolutely sure that we’ll be able to do better with a partner like CCTV-9,” says Solomon. “I look forward to the conversations with SARFT. I hope that we do have lively discussions with the Chinese government but I do think we can find lively topics that won’t require such “lively discussions” as I think we’re going to find lots of joint topics that will appeal to both audiences. We want to know what interests the Chinese audiences. Part of it is finding out what works.”