Why international streamers want to go local

The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have always had local television content and culture largely to themselves – but even that is set to change, writes Ray Snoddy

By any standards Game of Thrones is an international television phenomenon. Millions have watched the HBO show around the world across eight series and 73 episodes and the grand finale was a tribute to the power of live television.

More than 3.2 million sat up to 2am to find out on Sky Atlantic who would take the Iron Throne, with 500,000 more watching in the morning, numbers rarely if ever reached outside the domain of live sport.

There has been nothing like it since 1980, when 83 million Dallas fans worldwide waited through an eight–month long cliffhanger to find out who shot JR Ewing.

As with JR, the end is never quite the end and a Game of Thrones prequel set thousands of years in the past is already under way.

There are those who will never be into fire-breathing dragons burning people alive – ever – but for those who have embraced the violent medieval fantasy, the passion, and the need to engage, spreads outwards far beyond the television screen and the weighty box sets.

Nowhere can this be seen more dramatically than in Northern Ireland where most of the series was filmed, including The Dark Hedges, Ballintoy Harbour and Portstewart Strand.

Northern Ireland Screen deserves high praise for devoting most of a year’s budget to attracting HBO to the new Titanic studios in part of the old Harland and Wolff shipyard.

A film and television industry has been created as a result, a powerful development metaphor for exchanging a dying Victorian industry for the new gold of media.

The Northern Ireland tourist industry has received a massive boost from fans – particularly the Japanese – who want to follow the trail and see the hills where the battles were fought and the gruesome murders committed.

If you want to see the international impact of Game of Thrones you only have to go to Mary McBride’s bar in the Co. Antrim village of Cushendun, which has one of the 10 specially carved doors from the series fronting the toilets.

In they come for selfies in front of the toilet door.

Every day throughout the year coach loads of fans arrived to see the sea caves, where in the second series Melisandre gave birth to a shadow creature, and where in the penultimate programme Jaime runs Euron through.

(My daughter and son-in-law have bought a near derelict Cave House which includes the caves but that is another story.)

As the dragon breath cools until the prequel – if there are going to be dragons rather than dinosaurs in the prequel – what are we left with?

The enduring power of fiction turned into a properly funded and expertly filmed television drama series by HBO that can reach a world audience.

Even the fact that more than 1 million have signed a petition asking for the final series to be re-worked because they didn’t like the writing is a testimony to the levels of engagement that have been stimulated.

If you are looking for one of the most important underlying trends in television, it comes when the international, the universal, is combined with a sense of the local – something rooted in place.

Game of Thrones has probably accidentally benefited from a strong sense of place – Croatia as well as Ulster.

But you can see that powerful international streamers such as Netflix have already come to similar conclusions – combining the local with universal appeal through series such as The Crown.

More localness is on the way from Netflix – something that should alarm the likes of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, which have had local television content and culture largely to themselves since the invention of television.

As Netflix told a House of Lords committee last week “localised content is increasingly a priority” and have already recruited some of the production executives that could make it happen.

Another large straw in the wind is the fact, according to The Guardian, that Netflix is close to leasing studio space at Pinewood.

One positive industrial impact of Brexit has been making the UK more attractive as a production destination when the devaluation of the pound against the dollar is combined with the existing skill base.

When you have 150 million subscribers worldwide, and growing, Netflix has the ability to direct its production commission to any major market it chooses.

The numbers are already scary. This year Netflix will make or co-produce 221 television shows and films in Europe, up from 141 last year. More than half the $1.5 billion price tab is devoted to original programming.

The issue is not what happens this year, but what the outcome will be if the rising trend of local European Netflix productions continues on an upward trajectory.

Maybe the Scandinavian countries might provide some helpful suggestions.

A new report from Ampere Analysis on Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) in the Nordic countries highlights intriguing characteristics – they have the highest SVOD rates in Europe, but the Netflix market share is low.

The American company has an average of 71 per cent share of the streaming market across Europe, but only 49 per cent in Scandinavia.

There are obvious reasons why it should be so – language, strong homogenous local culture and populations that may be on the small side for original, local Netflix productions.

Equally obviously the Nordic countries have a vice-like grip on Nordic Noir.

The gap between 49 per cent and 71 per cent is still big enough to leave a why question hanging in the air.

As Ampere concludes, local flavour in still key in the Nordics even in the most highly penetrated streaming marketing.

And what they plan to do next is also instructive – moving on from the base of Nordic Noir to develop comedy and period drama.

That maybe is the lesson for the additional competition coming down the line for existing UK broadcasters from an increasingly local Netflix: be really local rather than faux local while still hoping for local international breakouts such as The Bodyguard and Killing Eve.

Surely they can continue to do better at universal localism than American interlopers.

For now the time is short for Games of Thrones deniers to work their way through the box sets with all their Ulster localness – before the prequel arrives.