Variety: ITV Studios Exec Ruth Berry Says There’s Been a ‘Perfect Storm’ of Challenges Facing TV Drama, but Business Is Still in ‘Rude Health’

Story from Variety:

Many of the on-stage discussions in Series Mania have reflected a TV industry facing numerous stresses and strains and in the midst of a painful transition — especially from the execs based in the U.K. On Thursday, it was the turn of Ruth Berry, ITV Studios president of global partnerships and its new digital entertainment platform Zoo 55.

“What we saw last year was a perfect storm of macroeconomic challenges that were causing people to think about what they were programming, who their key audience was, who the key advertisers they needed to attract to their broadcast business,” she said, speaking on stage in Lille.

But Berry pointed to ITV Studios shows such as “Fool Me Once,” “Ludwig,” “Until I Kill You,” “After the Flood” and “Mr Bates Vs the Post Office” — which this morning landed six BAFTA nominations — as proof that the business was still experiencing “creative success” and was in “rude health.”

Berry also highlighted one of the issues that was pushing producer away from riskier projects to those with more universal appeal.

“One of the toughest challenges for drama is the time lag,” she said. “Because content requires financing and being greenlit, it can often be up to two years before we actually then take it into the market. That lag has been what has been really hard for the latest few years, which is why people are migrating to a safer sweet spot, because that feels like it’s in a comfort zone that mitigates the risk.”

On the dramatic reduction in U.S. co-productions with European counterparts, Berry suggested that it was “probably” cyclical.

“I think the U.S. certainly was part and parcel of that reset and rethink last year around what content they needed, and the U.S. market has been really quite tumultuous over the last year or so when we think about the rise of streaming and limitations around broadcast, what’s happening with cable,” she said, but insisted that the “appetite for great content” was still there.

The dramedy “Ludwig,” she noted, was a “great co-production” with BritBox.