Cannes – At the FremantleMedia press breakfast held in the Fremantle village by the French Riveria, CEO of FremantleMedia Tony Cohen, calls it the “best year ever for the international entertainment formats world.”
“There were 99 formats travelling around the world; that’s the highest ever. It was 10 percent up from 2010, and Fremantle was the top company with more of those formats going into more territories than any other company,” announced Cohen.
This year, Fremantle partners net-based companies to supply and distribute content both ways. Earlier this year, the company announced a licensing deal to supply 115 hours of content to Netflix. In March, Fremantle announced a first-look deal with Morgan Spurlock’s production company, Warrior Poets. Spurlock’s made-for-web productions Failure Club (12×60’) and A Day in the Life (16×30’) have appeared in Yahoo! and Hulu respectively. In a surprising reverse, Hulu will now see its first-run content distributed by Fremantle to broadcasters at MIP.
Further treading into the online space, FremantleMedia also announced two new YouTube channels by the end of the year – a pets channel and an educational channel, which are in the works.
Cohen also announces the potential of distributing content to the “Second Screen” – tablets, mobile phones and laptops. He cited the example of apps developed for the US X Factor, which allows polling, voting, chats, exclusive LIVE access and behind-the-scenes look. The latest season of Britain’s Got Talent will follow suit with similar cross-platform possibilities.