Intro
So as if my life wasn’t busy enough, I’ve decided that I miss writing on here and so I’ve decided to do more of it. I don’t know how long it will last this time, but as always I’m optimistic. In order to keep pushing, I’ve decided to adopt a framework which I call 5 things. It’s a framework that makes you write about 5 things that recently made you think deeper about the world around you. So without much a do, let’s get started.
Apprenticeship Is Bae: This past week I listened to a really good deadline podcast where high powered Showrunners including Greg Berlanti showed up to discuss the issue of how the writers room seed talent and is one of the most fruitful investments in US television. As you probably know, a key issue of the US Writer’s Strike is related to the writers feeling that they are losing opportunities to properly apprentice because the writer’s room is endangered (The Children of Tendu podcast is a good resource if you want to learn about apprenticeship as relates to TV Writing.) The view is that without the apprenticeship, the fount that drives the entire business will dry up. I’m pretty much fully onboard with the apprenticeship philosophy fully and have started to intentionally look for avenues and opportunities to build out the next generation of talent in a systematic manner. We tend to focus on training in Nigeria, but I’m not really sold on it. I’m not against training per say, and i believe that it can be useful, but I don’t really think that it is the real game changer in our industry. To my mind, like pretty much any crafts business the Film and Television business is an apprenticeship business at heart. Whilst there is a lot of book learning and theory involved, mastery usually comes from the continued application of the craft under the mentorship of talent who has come before. Filmmakers should continue to seek out opportunities to practice their craft because that is where the true breakthrough will come from as they seek to achieve mastery.
The Gilded Age of Media: One of the most difficult truths to swallow about out the entertainment business is that it’s an outlier business. The FT wrote an article highlighting a recent report by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority that found that only 1% of Artists putting their music on streaming platforms reached 12 million streams in a year which made them about $15,000 and to make matters worse 60% of all streams were recorded by only 0.4% of Artists. We sort of see this in practice, if I asked the average listener what they listen to, it will be a mix of mostly the big hits. This is the complication with abundance, even though there is choice, people tend to gravitate towards the outliers because at the end of the day entertainment and media is a social endeavour.
To bring it home, the Nigerian YouTube renaissance has been a key experiment in this regard. Nollywood on YouTube is approximating the frisson of creative activity reminiscent of late90s/Early00s Nollywood. It is pretty clear to those of us following that YouTube has emerged to be one of the more dominant distribution networks for monetised filmed content in Nigeria despite our low CPMs and what not. Every months hundreds, maybe even thousands, of films are uploaded on the platform and its very clear that only a few gain significant traction. When you talk to Producers, everyone believes that they’d be in that outlier position if they were given a chance but the fact remains that this is not really the case. It’s pretty hard to cover every title because YouTube is huge, but from my preliminary research, there are 10 or so film titles that have garnered up to 10+ million views, with ~100 that have done 5+ million views and then another ~500 or so that have crossed 1+ million. You can even see the variation amongst the titles released by the consistent outlier brands such as Ruth Kadiri, Uduak Isong, Chinneylove, Emem Isong and others. YouTube Films are one of the places where the future of Nollywood is being built and this is truly beautiful to see.
Peru Para: Peru crowned a new box office king. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts did $15m in grosses, taking over from Avengers Endgame which had just under $15m in grosses. Peru did this with just ~700 screens according to available information. Contrast this with South Africa with ~800 screens whose top grosses — the same Endgame and Lion King — did around $7m. Both countries have the same average ticket price of roughly $3 — $4 and both countries have similar GDP/capita of around $7,000. Countries like Peru are like a call to action for me, they show that it is possible to drive attendance and occupancy to build a strong cinema culture.
The Cost of High Cost Of Operations: Thinking about Peru led me down a path af thinking about using GDP per capita as a proxy for affordability. Nigeria has an Average Ticket Price of $3 — $4, but our GDP/capita is roughly $2,000. Peru and SA have similar ATPs but their GDP/Capita is much higher. A country that has a similar GDP/capita to Nigeria is India but it’s Average Ticket Price is $1.5. It would clearly give an attentance boost for us to move our average ticket prices to $1.5 (N1k) but its hard to see that happening. Given the COVID overhang, and the usual cost of operations madness in Nigeria afflicting the average cinema, those prices aren’t coming down. Which means that the addressable market for cinemas is definitely limited by pricing to the more affluent Nigerians (whatever your definition). It also means that given that this market is most susceptible to be disrupted by streaming, you usually (not always) need to spend more to attract this audience to the theatre. It’s the same vicious cycle that increased the cost to serve the theatrical audiene which led to all those $200m — $300m films in the US flopping in the past year. Like the US, Nigerian cinema is also going through the same moment — how do you continue to attract the theatrical audience given the constraints. As they say the reward for successfully and continuously doing hard things is usually great. The people who see this crisis as an opportunity will benefit greatly in the long run.
Much Ado About Scripted Formats: Reviewing the latest Netflix charts, it is clear that Fatal Seduction will be joining Unseen as the second Netflix released South African series that will reach the milestone of over 50 million hours viewed across the globe. Both shows are remakes — Unseen of the Turkish Show Fatma and Fatal Seduction of the Mexican Show Dark Desire. Wura and Crime and Justice: Lagos were two recent shows released by Showmax in Nigeria. Wura is a Nigerian remake of The River the acclaimed South African show, and Crime and Justice: Lagos is the Nigerian extension of Crime and Justice, a Kenyan show. Formats historically are bread and butter in scripted content — The Office, The Good Doctor, Law and Order etc etc. The list goes on and on. There is always initial pushback about formats, and whether they can ever be the source of original work. However like any adaptation, it’s what you bring to it, and what you are allowed to do that determines the success or failure of a format. Obviously formats are a way to derisk as they provide a steady diet of tested IP, and this is something that gets more and more titles made. Something that is demonstrably true is that great creatives are able to work within the medium of formats to speak new truths.
Conclusion
So there you have it, five things that mattered to me this recently. Hope they made you think. As always leave questions and comments.
Laters
