At the “Series Mania” festival in Lille, France Télévisions, Rai and ZDF announced they are creating a pan-European broadcasting group, Alliance, which will offer viewers high budget drama series.
For Delphine Ernotte, chair of France Televisions, Europe must “take advantage of [its] strengths, [its] diversity and [its] incredible cultural wealth” to compete with large groups like Netflix.
In addition to the French, Italian and German broadcasters, special partnerships have been set up with RTVE (Spain), RTBF and VRT (Belgium) and RTS Switzerland. Alliance is also open to other European public broadcasters who wish to join.
Members of Alliance will benefit from priority and privileged cooperation for international drama series. It will also mean the rights of these series are kept within European public broadcasting services.
Alliance will also help producers identify very early which projects could make good European series, likely to compete with the best international productions in every country and with potential to be broadcast outside Europe.
The first projects 2018-19
Leonardo
First major European project in which France Télévisions and ZDF will team up with RAIA drama series about the man who embodies not only the relationship between Italy and France but who is also, perhaps more importantly, the quintessential European genius: Leonardo da Vinci.
The year 2019 will be the 500th anniversary of his death and this series will be one of the major events in the worldwide commemorations.
Mirage France Televisions and ZDF
Beginning of 2019 in Dubai “Mirage”, a contemporary series with a hint of espionage: Claire, a French expatriate in Dubai, sees her former husband – although he died fifteen years ago. Now he has a new identity. Is it a mirage she’s seeing?
Eternal city RAI and France Télévisions
May 1963, Sophie, a rising young French actress whose dream is to work at Rome’s Cinecittà studios, is found mysteriously murdered in her small flat on the Via Veneto. Is there a link between the death of this beautiful young actress and President Kennedy’s upcoming visit to Rome?
This series will revive in a realistic way Rome’s glamorous, not-so-distant past, when the city was the artistic and political centre of Europe.
At the same time Alliance was announced, the European Parliament passed a broadcasting reform to encourage more European-made productions. It wants to ensure that at least 30% of TV and VoD programme content is European. The reform applies to broadcasters, but also to online platforms like Netflix or Youtube – who will now have to contribute to the development of European broadcast productions, either by directly investing in the content or by contributing to national funds, based on their profits in each country.
Sources: France Télévisions, l’indépendant.fr, cineuropa
