Banijay boss on why YouTubers couldn't have made Peaky Blinders

Times

4 hours ago

Marco Bassetti has been struggling to extricate himself from the huddle gathered to watch the Italian executive speak at London's inaugural South by Southwest, the tech, film and music festival that has made the trip across the Atlantic.
It turns out that arranging to meet the boss of Banijay Entertainment — the television production juggernaut behind Peaky Blinders, MasterChef and Big Brother, to name but an eclectic few — 15 minutes after he was due to come off stage was a touch optimistic.
Predictably enough, he's just had a grilling on the company's potential interest in a takeover of ITV's studios arm, among other things. It's a move the French production house is rumoured to have been exploring, but which he is as reticent about when I ask as he was when he was on stage.
• French media group Banijay considers bid for ITV
We meet for lunch at Boundary Brasserie, a laid-back bar-restaurant in Shoreditch, chosen for its close proximity to the Rich Mix indie cinema and arts hub where Bassetti has been sparring with Jordan Schwarzenberger, co-founder of Arcade Media, which represents The Sidemen, a YouTube group that has built up a loyal following among Gen Z viewers, a cohort that is increasingly eschewing television in favour of 'snack-length' online content.
'I like Jordan. He's a very interesting guy and to be honest I have a lot to learn [from] him and [from] what he's doing, much more than I can teach him about the past,' he says, shortly after taking a seat at our corner table on a glorious sunny afternoon in east London.
The session, titled Building a Powerhouse, was seemingly designed to pit the old guard versus the new, although it's a characterisation he doesn't think is quite right. 'There are two different businesses,' Bassetti, 67, says diplomatically. 'One is a very new business, another one is a traditional business for premium content.'
It is the 'premium' element in scripted TV that is still the differentiator between the likes of Banijay and the YouTubers, the Italian executive says.
Yet for Banijay, which makes its money by pitching ideas for shows to TV and streaming executives, the emergence of the so-called creator economy, where influencers and online personalities can deliver content straight to their audience, is a direct challenge to its business model. YouTube and TikTok are said to be not just drawing audience numbers, they are also giving creators a shop window to take proven concepts to major streamers.
It's not quite that simple, according to Bassetti. For a start, there is an inherent issue for those creators that rely on a single, dominant platform like YouTube, that dictates — and can easily change — the terms of business. There is also the key-person risk: 'It is not really based on the IP or brand but it is based on the face.'
He is less concerned right now about the direct impact on Banijay, but acknowledges that the rise of YouTube is a 'huge threat' for the 'big traditional broadcasters … for each cent that is going out of digital advertising television investment, in most of the cases it is going to YouTube.'
He says 'the biggest competitor of ITV is not Netflix, it is YouTube, by far', noting the video platform's decision to start hosting longer-form content, which could tighten the screws still further.
Neither of us has yet looked at the menu when the waiter appears but Bassetti insists he can choose on the spot. We both opt for a relatively light lunch. They've sold out of tuna tartare so Bassetti orders a classic tuna niçoise, while I choose the chargrilled peach salad along with a couple of burrata salads, focaccia and french fries to share.
A producer by trade, Bassetti has been chief executive of both Banijay Entertainment and Live, two of Banijay Group's three arms — the third is an online gambling business — since 2013. From Paris, he now oversees Europe's largest producer and distributor of television shows, which has expanded rapidly through a series of acquisitions that has taken the number of labels in its stable to 130 globally, 20 of them in the UK.
He prefers to talk today about the general merits of scale, refusing to be drawn on the topic of ITV. 'We believe that scale is important, it can create value for everybody. So any kind of merge in the future, with us, without us, I think that can create value.'
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He got his start in TV more by luck than any well-engineered designs on his part — a far cry from most looking to break into the notoriously difficult industry, I point out. 'Different times,' he replies.
A chance meeting with the manager of a local TV station while in his second year of university studies landed him a part-time assistant role near where he was studying in Milan. The station was among the first wave of private TV channels springing up in Italy in the late 1970s.
He knew nothing of the practicalities of the job at first, he admits, but the offer of 300,000 lira a month — roughly £5,500 even in today's money — was far too tempting. 'So, I said, why not? I can invite my girlfriend to a better restaurant. I can buy another motorbike.'
After graduating, he went full-time at a national station. But it was his time at Endemol, which he joined to oversee the launch of the independent TV producer in Italy in the late 1990s, that has proven most instrumental. It was there that he met Stéphane Courbit, the founder and chairman of Banijay Group, who eventually poached him, with the pair later working to acquire the Dutch-based production company several years later.
Few have as good a bird's-eye view of the pressures facing the industry as Bassetti. After a post-pandemic boom in spending, traditional broadcasters have been particularly badly hit by a downturn in TV advertising and the rising cost of production, which has delayed the recovery from the Hollywood writers' strike in 2023.
In general, commissioners are more 'picky', he tells me as our plates arrive, but they are more 'keen to experiment' with new formats than they have been during the past two years.
Even among the major global streaming companies, while Netflix is in a 'super position', others are more cautious, as they focus more on profitability.
Investment in more expensive, scripted TV has naturally been more badly hit. About 75 per cent of the content Banijay produces is reality. Bassetti thinks the shift on screen towards unscripted will continue. For streamers it will be a case of retaining audience by building out their catalogues; for public and commercial broadcasters it will be part of a push to attract viewers.
But what does all this mean for the quality of TV? 'If quality is how much money you put on the screen, it's true. There is less money on the screen today than in the past.'
However, it's slightly more nuanced, he tells me. 'It's not a matter of reality TV, it's a matter of which kind of language you use to tell a story, it's another way to tell a story. That's what it is. I don't see [there is] an overuse of reality. It's a language.'
Perhaps it's not his place to say what's trash or not, as long as it grabs the audience. 'That's my point,' he shrugs.
Are eyeballs more important than critical success? 'For us, the most important thing is that there will be a recommissioning of our shows. So, maybe, it's more eyeballs.'
He points towards Big Brother, which became a global phenomenon. Tame by today's standards, but it raised eyebrows in some quarters and ushered in a new wave of TV. When Bassetti — then running the Italian business of Endemol, the show's producer — tried to bring Big Brother to his home country, it took a joint meeting with a Roman cardinal to morally reassure the TV station's devoutly Catholic commissioner to give the show the green light. 'Imagine how much it was criticised. It was huge. It's still there,' he reflects.
As the plates are cleared, it transpires that Bassetti has a flight to catch back to Italy in a little over two hours. But the laid-back boss still reckons we have time for an espresso.
TV-wise, he's personally into comedy or Scandi noir, and also gives a nod to the Belgian-French novelist Georges Simenon, inventor of Inspector Maigret, whose work he is currently listening to on Audible. He's also a big sports fan — naturally football, but also tennis, cycling and skiing. He used to compete in the slalom, skills honed through an upbringing near Lake Maggiore on the south side of the Alps, close to the Swiss border.
Despite the numerous invitations, he's not a fan of awards ceremonies or glitzy red carpet events: 'The Emmys are super-boring, you stay there, sitting there for hours, clapping, speeches.'
What about the show he wishes he had made? In reality, it's Traitors, for scripted it's Downton Abbey, he says. 'There is fantastic storytelling, a fantastic script, but also the concept is very good.'
Age: 67Education: degree in political and social sciencesCareer: executive producer for Mondadori's Retequattro and Mediaset, 1980s; founded La Italiana Produzioni, 1986; founded Aran, 1989, and also chief executive of Pearson TV Italy, 1994-1997; founded Endemol Italy, 1997; became chief operation officer of Endemol Group, 2007, later president and then group chief executive; founded Ambra Multimedia, 2012; joined Banijay Entertainment as chief executive, 2013Family: Married with three children and two grandchildren
Tuna niçoise £19Chargrilled peach salad £12French fries £6Rosemary focaccia £42 x burrata salad £242 x Diet Coke £82 x espresso £6
12.5% service charge: £10.67
Total: £89.67