Sony Attacks Insular Hollywood

The US film and television production industry is losing ground in Europe and risks missing opportunities in Asia and Latin America because of its insular and complacent attitudes, according to a senior Sony executive.

Hollywood must shed its self-congratulatory and short-termist views and invest more in foreign production and distribution, Jeff Sagansky, newly appointed president of Sony Pictures Entertainment, said at the weekend. ''In my view, Hollywood is coming awfully close to missing the international boat and letting a great opportunity sail right by while talking about what a great ride it's going to be,'' he said.

Opportunities offered by relaxation of European state broadcasting monopolies and the US cable revolution were missed because of ''Hollywoodcentrism'', he told a conference at the University of California at Los Angeles.

 

''Ten years ago, Dallas and Dynasty were number one in prime-time throughout Europe,'' he said, and many other US shows had in those days been scattered all over peak viewing hours.

Now they had been pushed by local content to the fringes of peak viewing schedules - if they appeared at all. ''The giants of Europe - Kirch, Mediaset, Carlton, Granada, Canal Plus and TF1 - are now firmly in charge of Europe's entertainment future,'' Sagansky said. France made an average of 135 films a year, compared with nearly 430 in the US.

The UK film industry funded 53 films in 1995, up from 17 the year before. Six of the top 25 pictures shown in Germany last year were local comedies, and the German-language share of the market almost doubled to 17 per cent.

Sagansky turned on critics who have mocked his troubled Japanese-owned Columbia and TriStar studios for seven years, and attacked the conventional wisdom that the Japanese did not understand Hollywood.

Urging studios to follow the example of US investment banks which 10 years ago established successful global networks by sending their best managers abroad, Sagansky said almost a third of SPE's staff was overseas and most of this year's budgeted expansion would be in non-US ventures. It had started investing in foreign TV channels two years ago and was already producing 1,500 hours of Indian-language programmes, Sagansky said.