Overseas Distribution : Marketing and Sales 1960 to 1989
 
The accounts of program production and some of the people involved, roughly cover the period of the 1960s and into the 1970s. Before going further, it is sensible set out some account of the way an audience on television stations was found for programs both up to this point and beyond.  
 
The use of film in the Overseas Information Services in the early years from the 1940s onward had been developed for what was termed “non-theatrical” audiences. These were for film shows to audiences discovered or invited by Embassies or High Commissions or for films offered to schools or interested groups and organizations. In the early days few films to be offered to these audiences were produced by COI. They were  usually acquired by COI from industrial and other sponsors of documentary films in the UK in the form of distribution rights for specific countries.  The COI also acquired overseas rights for a number of cinema films. 
 
 Posts were supplied with a library of appropriate films. This service continued well into the 1980s. Starting in the early 1950s some Posts, particularly in North America, offered suitable films to local television stations. This situation eventually led to the production of programs designed for television, rather than the non-theatrical audience. In turn this led eventually to the work described so far. 
 
The issue for the Overseas Television Services was that there was little point in making any programs unless there was a reasonable expectation of them being seen by audiences, hopefully substantial audiences, in the target countries. The link between the COI as program producers and the local television stations lay with the information staff in the local Embassy or High Commission, otherwise known as the Post.  As with any organization which has numerous local entities, the staff in Posts varied   a good deal in their effectiveness. Moreover there was frequent movement of information staff between Posts that could affect the relationship between a Post and the local television station. Some information officers were very efficient and good at maintaining and improving relations with local television station managers, other much less so. 
 
 Thus obtaining television transmissions, that is persuading a television station manager to accept a program or series of programs , then find a place in the broadcast schedule and to actually transmit it, was down to the Information Officer in the Post. The deal with the television station was that the programs on offer were free of charge. However it was understood that the choice of making a transmission and the time of that transmission was at the discretion of the station manager.  
 
There was considerable competition for available free airtime between a number of countries. Our competitors for transmission times were countries such as the USA, Russia, France and Germany who were also producing material that they hoped television stations or cinemas would use. The Russians were noted for producing long, rather stodgy documentaries, American programs had a tendency to be  rather didactic. In some countries and in some television stations, there were shelves of programs, accepted by the station manager out of politeness, which were very unlikely ever to be transmitted. 
 
The common factor was that all material was given free of charge to the station with no guarantee of usage. This depended to a large degree on the relationship between the personnel at the television station and the information staff. Other factors might be the way a particular country offering programs was viewed politically by the television station or the authorities controlling the station. However the nature of the material on offer was also, happily for COI, an important factor. If the material was seen to have been produced in a television context and could be used as a series and had some entertainment value, its chances of use moved up the scale. 
 
In the case of the USA and Canadian Posts with well staffed information sections, getting along side station managers was not too difficult, when the programs on offer were attractive as for instance in the case of Topic, British Calendar and later London Line. However, as demonstrated earlier, defining attractiveness and combining it with the imperative of meeting at least one or more of the information objectives of the Overseas Information Services was never that easy, it was a problem always to be wrestled with.  
In other parts of the world new television station were appearing. In Latin America the series Telerama Britanico (1958-) in Spanish and Portuguese consisting of a single topical  item of around 5 minutes in length was rapidly taken  up and led to the series This Week In Britain. As noted earlier this series was produced in a number of editions both for Latin America, the “Old Commonwealth” of Australia, New Zealand and Canada as well as an for an edition for Sub-Saharan Africa. In all these countries the series was well accepted because the material could either be used as a self standing item or as an item in a locally produced magazine program. The latter use was popular since it gave the audience the impression that the local station had a London based correspondent, which was good for the prestige of the station. An important key to finding an audience was to find a formula which appealed to television station managers not because they had any especial affection for the UK but because it helped their ratings and their local prestige. 
 
The knowledge by the Posts and thereby the COI of the actual use of  program material from country to country was variable. The main factor that influenced information coming back to the UK lay partly in the nature of the television station(s) in a given country. Were they very new and rather disorganized, or were they well established and kept good records of the material they transmitted. Were the individual information officer(s) in the Post effective, did they know what the stations were transmitting, were they in close contact with the stations? Some information officers were enthusiastic about the new medium, others less so, more inclined simply to have faith in traditional diplomatic relations.  Sometimes the rise and fall of usage of programs in a given country could be seen as individual information officers moved from Post to Post. 
 
Clearly it was important for the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office and COI to know what was actually happening.  In theory it was possible for a pattern of usage of programs to be seen from the annual service reports of all information activity sent in by Posts to the Foreign Office and copied to COI. Memory suggests that these reports were not collated in any meaningful way by COI and were rarely passed to the COI program producers.  Effectively they were a good example of a service report that were sent in, briefly scanned and then filed away. It was not because the production staff were uninterested in what was happening to programs, it was a consequence of the material arriving from Posts in a seemingly haphazard way, arriving in the Distribution Section in a variety of formats and staying there. 
 
A much more useful and interesting source of information was the result of a decision in the1960s by COI and described elsewhere by Adam Leys, to add a caption at the end of each London Line program inviting viewers to write in if they would like more information about anything they had seen. The caption simply gave a Box Number in London.  The caption was also later used in Living Tomorrow and its versions.  
 
The caption quickly led to a stream of letters, many more than was expected, so much so, that eventually three clerical staff   headed by Maureen Irving  who were dealing with the correspondence. Some of the value of the letters, particularly those to Living Tomorrow, lay in enquiries about specific pieces of technology that could be passed to the Department of Trade and cited as evidence that the programs did indeed support the export effort. 
 
Other, more general letters, often started “last evening at….. I saw on my television station….. your program about….”. Such letters were invaluable since they gave us very specific information about where and when programs were being shown and how they were received in terms of audience appreciation. This very specific information was much more valuable than the rather general statements in the annual Post reports. Sadly they have not survived the passage of time. 
 
 In the mid 1970s Adam Leys was asked to take over the Distribution and Marketing operation of Films and Television Division. He initiated what was to become a very new approach to the distribution of the overseas television programs and which, more importantly, helped to ensure audiences.  It was nothing short of a revolution since he proposed moving away from the hitherto normal practice of giving programs away free of charge, to one of selling programs to television stations using the mechanism of the international television market place.  
 
 The title London Television Service  was adopted as an umbrella title for the "marketing" of the COI overseas television material. 

The marketing team in 1987 consisted of Angela Rea (Head of Marketing and Sales) Jackie Huxley    (Sales and Marketing Executive for Europe Australasia and the Far East) David Faulkner (Sales and Marketing Executive for Canada United States, South America, Middle East North Africa, India and Pakistan" Malcolm Flint (Sales and Marketing Executive for Africa Central America and Japan)
 
 The essential point is that it marked a change in the approach to the television stations. For as long as all programs were offered free of charge, we could not assume that transmissions would automatically happen. To counter this uncertainty we had long recognised that to improve chances of transmission, we had to spend time and effort trying to package government information programs so that they did not look like government information programs  that they looked like good entertaining and informative programs, coming from an island off the coast of Europe. 
 
The proposal that Adam put forward was that if the programs were entertaining and thus were well regarded by television stations, then how big was the step to asking them to pay for them?  If the stations paid good money for the programs, it was a reasonable certainty that they would transmit them. Moreover they would transmit them at a time when there was more likely to be a substantial audience. 
 
The proposal for this departure from traditional practice was cleared with the Foreign Office. Implicit in the proposal was that contact with the television stations would no longer be through the Embassies or High Commissions, but direct between COI and the television stations. This was a not inconsiderable departure from the tradition whereby all government communications in a foreign or commonwealth country went through the Posts. Yet when the proposition was put to the Foreign Office it seemed that not an eye was batted, we were told to go ahead. There was some, though not a great deal of resistance from Posts to this change. 
 
Adam Leys writes: 
 
In the seventies I was moved into another job, and I still don’t know whether it was because I had been promoted to my level of incompetence, or because they wanted me to give a kick in the pants to a crucial but moribund area of work – the latter, I like to think.  I moved to take over ‘Distribution’, which until then had been the mechanics of sending out the right prints to the right overseas ‘posts’ at the right time.  The Posts – the embassies and High Commissions – passed on the films to their local television stations. It was a clumsy process, and many posts were bad at it.  Often the films were just sent with a driver, with no effort to talk to the television station, and no effort was made to see if they were actually used. Embassy people often did not watch their local television much. 
 
My predecessor had been once to visit the big international television sales event in Cannes, and had recommended that it might be worth following up.  I went in my turn, and was amazed. Here were television buyers from all over the world, including, crucially, many of the countries to which we were sending films to be given out by the embassies.  It seemed clear to me that if they were able to buy programs they would not think well of stuff they got free, and would soon learn to dismiss it as valueless propaganda.  We were already in a crowded ‘free’ market, with very poor quality material from Russia and China and other countries being offered free too.  We needed to mark ourselves out in a different way, so I returned to London and wrote a paper proposing that we should now start to sell our programs in the market place, not in order to make money or even recover our costs, but to get distribution to countries that were increasingly turning against free material. 
 
Once again, the COI and the Foreign Office were surprisingly quick to back this.  For the Foreign Office it was actually a big step as they could see that they were effectively cutting their posts out of the distribution chain.  The extra costs were agreed, and the next year I had a small team in Cannes, with a professionally built exhibition stand, in the maelstrom that is MIP TV, (Marche International de Programmes de Television).  My team were, of course, basically administrative staff from the Distribution Section of Film Division, mostly quite young, and they were brilliant.  We had no idea what to charge, other than that we needed to sound the market, and though we had debated and discussed and practiced negotiating skills, and the details of contracts – including such things as territory boundaries and repeat rights – we were truly innocents.  We were trying to achieve distribution, not cash, but needed to charge a market rate to have credibility.  
We had one ace, a member of staff who turned out to be the ideal sales person as she had absolutely no shame. On our small stand we had a television and some chairs, to play out the films we had brought, stacks of leaflets about our programs, and a cupboard full of videotapes.  We had also taken a lot of innocent government films on road safety and other stuff, produced for use in Britain, to pad out the offering.  
 
On the first morning our ace – as she turned out to be – spent a lot of time with a visitor, showing lots of these older films, and then came to me to say I had to look very serious, as she had negotiated a price for a bunch of old films but had said she wasn’t sure if her boss would agree it, so I was to look very serious and then agree.  She named the figure, which was outrageously high and I had to get inside the cupboard as I was laughing so much.  This set the scene everyone cheered up, and learned to aim high. We came back from Cannes with remarkable sales into territories where the programs had not been before, as well as to countries where they had notionally been available free.  A bunch of junior clerks in the civil service became television sales people in the South of France, and we had a lot of fun, but looking back it is the nerve of the Foreign Office which impressed me – they got the idea and backed it. Having a lot of fun is, to me, the abiding memory of this time.  There were frustrations and irritations, and the running conflict with the hidebound side of the civil service was ever present, but perhaps in a reaction we who were in production tried to be more smart, less respectful than anyone else.  
 
Some people moaned about the restrictions of being in a propaganda service, but the restrictions were not really onerous, and I think that in many ways we had as much freedom as we would have had in some parts of the BBC or other broadcasters.  It was sponsored film making with a difference, the difference being that the sponsor had a totally hands-off attitude, did not ask for synopses in advance, did not see scripts, did not always even see the finished programs.  Of course the COI management filled some of that role, but it was remarkable, nonetheless.  In a funny way, these were golden days, long gone. 
 
John Hall writes: 
 
Evidence exists that this new initiative was successful and continued to be so. It is found in a contemporary note written in September 1978 by Peter Coldham who was then Head of Marketing (Adam Leys had moved on) addressed to Arthur White the then Director of Film Division. Peter Coldham said: 
 
The unit (as a separate entity) was set up in September 1976 with a staff of five information grades with some clerical support. Its brief was to explore the possibilities of expanding existing distribution of films and television material through the use of commercial openings. All we knew at that stage was that a few other countries (Canada, Netherlands) were operating with some success in this field and that television stations were beginning to close their doors to free material. 
 
The experiment has worked well beyond what was expected of it. Countries previously closed to us (Scandinavia) and some important networks (West Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan) have become customers and are happy to pay full commercial rates or our material. 
 
Sales are made either by direct negotiation with the users or by employing agents who work on a commission basis. Royalty fees, where we negotiate direct, are now arrived at by experience, though originally we took the “Variety”( a major media publication) list as a guide. We have also become responsible for non-theatrical print sales and have been able to build this up to a current annual turnover of $55,000 a year despite the existence in many parts of the world of free-lance film libraries. 
 
Though the prime objective has always been to expand distribution, the return to the Exchequer has been far from negligible: in two years our total for television and print sales has reached more than £100,000. 
 
It has to be recognized that these successes have been achieved with material which is not specially tailored to a commercial market, and we still have some way to go in persuading Departmental sponsors that the market must now dictate our program structure  if we are to retain a worthwhile presence on television screens. The financial returns are important to us primarily as a barometer of usage. 
 
It may be useful to set out some of the factors which have impeded progress, not because they rankle but because these same elements seem likely to be present when other COI material is offered for sale. 
 
History and policy have obliged us to operate an uncomfortable “dual” system: free and paid for services operating alongside each other with some resulting embarrassments. The position improves as the Foreign Office, having become more convinced of the effectiveness of a sales policy, throw more weight behind it. 
 
Our biggest potential market is the USA but while BIS New York continues its nervous attempts to create a credible role for itself, no really vigorous sales effort is possible there. 
 
Government account systems are very badly adapted to service trading accounts and there is little incentive to make more sales or larger profits, particularly since the earnings are not re-cycled. While we benefit from operating commercially we also suffer some of the penalties such as bad debts – but without the resources to do much about them. 
 
The use of a separate trading name – London Television Service – has proved a great asset since it puts us in a situation where new are able to distinguish ourselves from the “propaganda give-away” image which COI enjoys. Judged on our experience it takes at least two years to establish oneself in the market place, to know one’s buyers and agents, to create a confident price structure and develop appropriate skills. 
 
Sales and sales enquiries grow organically. From an initial level of about 25% we are now devoting about 60% of our total resources of manpower to servicing existing contracts and customers. This imposes severe limitations on the extent to which we are able to seek new markets or expand existing ones. 
 
The Marketing and Distribution Services continued to prosper long after Peter Coldham’s note. Evidence for this can be found in a document circulated to Posts in June 1987 called  “A Short Guide to COI Films and Television Distribution Services for Information Officers and Commercial Officers in Posts”. It described all the moving picture services available to Posts and included information about the different videocassette systems then in use. 
 
In the section of the guide headed London Television Service, the guide notes that: 
 
LTS is a specialist production and distribution organization set up to handle the promotion and marketing of British documentary programs, commissioned by the FCO. The programs are for sale throughout the world to television, cable, satellite and non-theatrical outlets. 
 
It has been recognized that television material, which does not have an overtly political message, should not be given away to overseas television stations but should be paid for as a viable commercial commodity. Experience has shown that television material that is purchased will be screened whereas free material cannot be guaranteed a showing. 
 
Our pricing structure is flexible. Our brief is to assist your information and commercial effort by distributing films and videos on British expertise in every field of endeavour to as wide an audience as possible. But because of our well defined activities over the past 11 years, LTS is now internationally recognized as a signifcant source of saleable broadcast program material. 
 
The LTS television sales catalogue lists all out television programs, most of which are produced by our production team based at COI. Featured prominently in the catalogue is “Perspective” our popular science and technology series of half-hour programs made especially for television. Each year, LTS makes 13 new programs in the series that, in summer 1987, consists of 5 series or 65 programs. Selling to over 55 countries world wide.  
 
Other series sold by LTS include  “A Woman’s Place”, “The Sea in Their Blood”, ”Towards a Better Life”, ”Insight”,” Images” and “In The Sky” – all programs looking at the British people and our way of life. To balance this list, we also acquire some titles, mainly on sport. 
 
​English, French, Latin American Spanish and Arabic versions are available for all principal programs produced in-house at the COI. 
 
LTS has a network of agents, some for television, others for the non-theatrical market that are usually locally-based and may operate on an exclusive or non-exclusive basis. We also have a branch office in Canada, based at the High Commission in Ottawa. In some areas of the world we sell direct and we meet most of our agents at least once a year, either at the international selling markets we attend, or when they visit London, or on individual selling trips which our staff undertake from time to time. 
 
That the sales were achieved was a remarkable tribute both to the sales staff and to the program producers In concluding this section it is important to say that when London Television Service was set up it was not simply with the intention of making money, there were no financial targets to be achieved. It was simply a device to find and maximise an audience. Yet there is an irony implicit in the notion of a department of the British government, producing television information material about Britain, then selling this information material to television stations in well over 60 countries. 

BAck to selection