John Rossiter de Sony Pictures Television
John Rossiter EVP, Distribution & Networks, Latin America Sony Pictures Television, was at Content Americas looking for diversity for his slate. “Our focus is on content and partnerships and trying to make sure over the next few years that we have diverse local content in Spanish. We’re all working together to make sure we do it,” he said.
“We see the markets always changing and it’s going towards a lot of increase in non-scripted so we’ve been experimenting and diversifying a lot,” he pointed out.
He said that 2022 was a good year for them. “A lot of streamers came in, the AVOD market started, we have a great library of local language products that we were able to do, our productions got away, our channels did well, of course, the market remains difficult, like all over the world. SPT had a strong 2022. We sold a lot of shows that we produced. Our networks have been doing well – AXN ended 2022 at #1. We successfully launched another channel, Sony Movies, and grew our FAST channel business. We’re excited to see that continue.”
He believes that 2023 will be an interesting year. “But we think long term, we have a long term strategy and we’re trying to make sure we focus on content for all platforms or the streamers. Free TV is very important for us, concentrating on formats, local language programming, and looking at comedies and different sitcoms and dramas. We see that there’s room for everyone and I think we made great progress in 2022. Amazing, we couldn’t be happier.”
As for trends, he mentioned that last year, there were a lot of streamers entering the market, and now they are adapting. “There is some ad tier coming to the market. We are also exploring lighter more ad-friendly fare. It will be interesting to see what the larger SVOD and AVOD players are interested in buying.”
