Bestselling Content Reflective of Pandemic Outcome

In her experience, Asian buyers have always been discerning, and have their finger on the pulse of their audience’s content interests. Over the last few years, they have had to juggle increasingly varied demands as well as readily available and increasing competition both domestically and internationally, said Pooja Nirmal Kant, Chief Executive Officer of Still Road Media. “A good portion of the bestselling content today is reflective of the changes we’ve experienced globally as a result of the pandemic. Consumption trends are becoming increasingly more localised, so finding content that has local relevance as well as wide appeal is imperative – especially in a market as eclectic as Asia Pacific,” she elaborated.

The company has experienced an uptick in demand for home, lifestyle, and food content. At the same time, adjusting to a new way of living and working has had a knock-on effect on the demand for shows in the survival and thriller categories. The demand for natural history in the region has historically been high and this is a trend that has remained stable, according to Pooja. Instead of focusing on certain territories specifically, Pooja preferred establishing meaningful, mutually beneficial, and long-lasting relationships with buyers across the region.“We believe that all territories across the wider APAC region are strong growth markets, whether these be established or emerging – indeed, this is a message we highlight to our BESTSELLING CONTENT REFLECTIVE OF PANDEMIC OUTCOME content provider partners in Europe and North America,” she said. When it comes down to the deal making process, she said her company is “more creative and flexible” to buyers’ needs, rather than be hampered by traditional windowing of rights.

During ATF, she aims to raise awareness among buyers of Still Road Media’s content offering. ‘One Wild World’ is a natural history documentary that is produced using hundreds of hours of footage from the Newsflare catalogue, which is constantly being added to and expanded from many different sources beyond professional film crew. The result is “a varied and quite raw look at nature worldwide,” as Pooja put it. She is seeking co-production partners to get the series into full production. Other titles include the scripted drama ‘Pulse’, a world created by the visionary Oscar, Palme d’Or and BAFTA winning VFX team behind ‘Skyfall’ and ‘Harry Potter’, and the Pamela Anderson ‘Home Reno’ show that follows the star, as she returns to her roots on the coast of Vancouver Island and embarks on a restoration project. “We are incredibly excited to announce this as Still Road Media’s ATF debut! We are delighted to be exclusively representing content from Corus Studio’s, Abacus Media Rights and Woodcut International, and have carefully curated content packages to meet the needs of the APAC content buying community,” said Pooja.