Going from U.S. indie film to lead sales for the BBC’s commercial division isn’t a path well worn, but it is the one Janet Brown has taken.
After a career at the likes of Film Buff, Gunpowder & Sky and Warner Bros. Discovery predecessor WarnerMedia, Brown boarded the British pubcaster’s BBC Studios wing in 2022 to lead sales in the Americas and rose to unify all non-UK sales as President of Global Content Sales last year. Her challenge is now finding the best route to market for titles as varied as Doctor Who, Bluey and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, while launching new titles at markets such as MIPCOM and BBC Studios Showcase.
Brown is now fast approaching one of her biggest diary dates. This morning, BBC drama Reunion will get its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. At the same time, Paramount+ with Showtime and CBC in Canada have bought the show, as I revealed earlier this morning.
The series, which stars Matthew Gurney as a Deaf former convict struggling with life outside after leaving prison, “a man on a real journey of self-actualization and with a complex drive,” comes from Adolescence producer Warp Films, whose team Brown says are “fantastic, proven producers coming off an incredible year.”
Brown says the deal is instructive of a buying market where folk on both sides of the deal are acting with more “intention” than ever before, and everyone is looking for shows that are truly authentic and can be marketed to audiences who need to feel connected. “It’s not same sellers’ market it was a few years ago, and we’re all trying to work with budgets that are different from what folks were used to,” she says. “People aren’t going to acquire just for fun. There has to be intent. They need to know what a show can do for their brand.”
Intention, she says is a “good theme that’s reflective of the BBC group perspective that we are backing the best of British storytelling.” In terms of sales, it means Brown’s team will “intentionally choose the producers we work with, the projects we support, and how we introduce them to to buyers and ultimately audiences.
For BBC Studios Global Content Sales, part of this manifests in connecting buyers with producers such as Warp, and staying on top of what’s coming down the line by communicating with key production execs such as Mark Linsey and Matt Forde, the British execs who are leading BBC Studios scripted and unscripted in Los Angeles.
“From the moment of knowing what content is coming in, we work very closely with colleagues in production,” says Brown. “In terms of relationships with producers, we all work together, so they get the full benefit of the studios.”
Reciprocally, Brown says BBC Studios Global Content Sales staff are “privileged to work with a group of producers who are very savvy, not just with creative relationships but also commercial ones,” and notes that both sides “exchange market information.” She points to how Clerkenwell Films, another production house in the stable, used its own close relationship with Netflix to land Baby Reindeer, but that BBC Studios will be shopping its next project. “We’re all in it together,” says Brown.
BBC Studios has a large catalog and last year produced another 3,300 hours, but that has not stopped Brown’s lazer-focus on drawing value out of the titles at her disposal. “There isn’t so much quantity that we can just rely on luck or be passive,” she explains. “That is aligned – Reunion doesn’t happen by chance.” The strategy appears to be working – in the BBC annual report, published in June, BBC Studios’ combined production and sales profit was £228M ($306M) on revenue of £2.1B. That’s still a distant way from the overhanging target to double revenues to £3.2B by 2027-28, but the figures are nonetheless impressive.
Evolving marketplace
Since Brown took her new post nearly a year ago, she has focused on shaping her team to respond to the evolving market. Earlier plans to hire a London-based EVP, Global Content Sales have been shelved, we understand, with Brown saying there has been a “pause on how we address that.” Her team are assessing who is buying locally, regionally or for multi-territories, and drilling down on the shows that are working best, such as BBC and Netflix co-pro A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, perennial kids hit Bluey and Doctor Who (which, despite speculation about it’s future, remains a key part of the commercial framework).
At MIPCOM next month, BBC Studios will be launching several new shows, including Charlotte Regan’s unconventional eight-part Scottish crime family drama series Mint, which is from subsidiary producer House Productions and Fearless Minds, and stars Emma Laird alongside Sam Riley, Laura Fraser, Lewis Gribben, Lindsay Duncan and newcomer Ben Coyle-Larner. “We’re very excited to be working with House on it,” says Brown. “It’s fun, exciting and dynamic. It is in the early stages, but we’re so excited to be taking it out. It will be a big focus at MIP.”
Elsewhere there will be Waiting For the Out, the adaptation of Andy West’s memoir written by Dennis Kelly about a philosopher teaching prisoners concepts such as dominance and free only to have his own pas unravel. Deadline first told you about it in March, and confirmation followed with the news Josh Finan would star.
Another major priority is W1A and Twenty Twelve successor Twenty Twenty Six, the John Morton comedy starring Hugh Bonneville – another we revealed news of this summer. Crookhaven, meanwhile, is a coming-of-age drama based on J.J. Arcano’s bestselling books that stars the likes of Dougray Scott and Claire Forlani. On the natural history side, two-part doc Matriarch (working title) tells the story of a 54-year-old alpha-female chimpanzee, while Kingdom is a six-parter filmed over four years in a single Zambian river valley. There are also unscripted shows such as Rob and Rylan’s Passage to India, a three-parter starring TV personalities Rylan Clark and Rob Rinder.
MIPCOM Cannes remains a key launchpad for BBC Studios, along with its annual BBC Studios Showcase in the UK in February – the event that led to the creation of the now-established London TV Screenings. While some question the value of the trade-centric MIP in a market of co-productions, enhanced acquisitions and pre-buys, Brown – who has a unique take having only been attending since after the pandemic – says it is “still an important touchpoint.”
Ultimately, it comes down to “what’s helpful for buyers,” says Brown. “In this market, where people manage their budgets carefully, they also their manage budgets far out.”
The trick, it seems, is knowing to whom you seed your shows, and went to seed them. Later, it’s about how your show rolls out. “I come from indie film,” says Brown, drawing a parallel between that world and the increasingly complex universe of options to launch a TV series. As such, she knows that, “Windowing is the life blood of how a piece of content meets audiences in various different ways.”
“For a while in the so-called peak TV era, some of that windowing was parked for an upfront deal,” she continues. “From a BBC perspective, we’re proud that not only did we did not put all eggs in that basket, but we retained a full sales team throughout, and were not dependent on one upfront global deal. We’ve maintained a mixed economy.
“I say that because it’s almost like a 3D matrix. You’re not just windowing, but you’re windowing in territories. You might have one windowing strategy among different territories in your first window, and the second window could be different. It’s getting more complex, but there are, frankly, more interesting deals being done.”
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