[Red Moon]

TV boss with the X Factor

Tony Cohen makes TV shows that the world loves to watch: Pop Idol, X Factor, Baywatch and Neighbours. Now he wants to buy rivals and make Fremantle Media an unstoppable force

TONY COHEN slides into his office so quietly you barely notice it. Black suit, white shirt, hooded eyes in a cadaverous face topped by a domed forehead – he looks more like an unkempt undertaker than one of the world’s top television producers.

Yet Cohen is a man who makes the world smile. Turn on prime-time TV in many countries and you will be watching a Cohen product. As chief executive of Fremantle Media, he brings you Pop Idol, American Idol, The X Factor, Neighbours, The Bill, The Apprentice, Baywatch, Britain’s Got Talent, America’s got Talent . . .

You might say Tony’s got talent – he just leaves it to others to flash it about. London-based Fremantle Media, which has close partnership deals with X Factor creator Simon Cowell and Pop Idol co-producer Simon Fuller, now sells more programme brands than anyone else, and has production subsidiaries in 22 countries to back that up.

And that makes money – Fremantle Media’s revenue topped €1 billion (£698m) last year, with Britain emerging as a creative hub for global TV ideas. For some, 53-year-old Cohen is one of the most underrated, and invisible, media bosses around.

But that’s how he likes it. “This is a very collaborative venture,” he says softly. “We are often seeking the best way to do something, or exploit something, or dream up something completely new. It’s not about bureaucracy or direct orders.”

Cohen is a conundrum: born in south London, graduated in English literature from Oxford, he is motorbike-mad and shuns the spotlight yet runs a vastly successful business that requires a real feel for populist taste.

His former boss, Greg Dyke, says Cohen’s gift is to cut through the programming world’s “bullshit”, and get things done. Cowell adds that Cohen is “a man you can trust on a handshake”, something rare in television-land.

Cohen is certainly not afraid to do things differently. He still uses an old Psion Organiser to schedule appointments – in the lightning-quick world of modern media, that’s brave.

He also learns fast. Cohen worked closely with Dyke for two decades, first at LWT, then at Pearson TV, putting together an international production network. That content arm became Fremantle Media when Pearson sold its TV interests to the German media group Bertelsmann seven years ago.

Now the company is reaping the benefits of those buys – including Neighbours producer Grundy in Australia, and Baywatch producer All American in the US – while operating under the umbrella of Bertelsmann’s broadcasting subsidiary RTL.

For Cohen, who could have followed Dyke to the BBC in 2000, Bertelsmann’s “at arm’s-length” approach offers the right balance of freedom and support, and has allowed Fremantle Media to grow fast organically, and by more acquisition abroad.

This autumn the chequebook comes out again in Britain. Facing increasing competition from its European rival Endemol – the Big Brother producer recently bought by a consortium including Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset – Fremantle Media is on the prowl.

“We’re going to spend a substantial amount of money,” says Cohen, “because we have a view about where programming is going. And there are a number of companies which we think are very well placed to help us grow in those genres. Some are genres we are in and want to deepen our expertise in, and some are new ones.”

Sitting in his office high above Fremantle Media’s studios off London’s Tottenham Court Road, he ticks off his points with a quiet logic, drawing on his experience here and in America, where Dyke once sent him to oversee Baywatch.

Hard work watching all those bouncing bits on the beach? Cohen’s owlish eyes twinkle. “We did have a board meeting once about the new shape of the Baywatch costumes. I took a dispassionate view and listened to opinions on both sides, and we left it as it was.”

Then he laughs. Dyke says Cohen’s dry humour and wraith-like appearance provide the perfect antidote to American blather. His only weakness is a tendency to overanalyse.

Where Cohen has been smart is in spotting the opportunities for selling not just series but formats around the world as broadcasters look for proven, adaptable commodities that will win big audiences.

So American Idol - No 1 series in America this year – has variants in Britain (Pop Idol), France, Holland, Australia and Singapore. Britain’s Got Talent is No 1 in the UK this year, and is also made in 10 other countries, with another 10 likely by year-end. Even quirky programmes can get mass audiences – Farmer Wants A Wife is now the most popular show in the Netherlands.

That kind of success is unprecedented. Formats for game shows and quizzes have been sold internationally for decades, but Fremantle Media’s tight control of production in different territories has allowed it to ensure quality and to exploit programmes fully as brands.

“It’s not just about the licensing of formats but the brilliance with which you execute it,” says Cohen. “You’ve got to do it well. These things have been through evolution and are pretty well perfect. You can’t tamper with it, we’re very possessive about that.”

And then you can build on audience loyalty. Over a quarter of the value of the Idol series, co-owned globally with Simon Fuller’s 19 organisation, comes from off-screen income, according to Cohen.

“We do all the merchandising, all the telephony, there’s an Idol Camp – a summer camp where you can learn all aspects of performing – and a website that is the No 1 television website in America – it got 1 billion page impressions last year. There have been Idol cars in Belgium and Holland, Idol-branded perfume in multiple territories. People really like it.”

Just how much profit Fremantle Media makes is not released by Bertelsmann, and the company is vulnerable to key relationships breaking down. A court battle two years ago between Cowell and Fuller over similarities between X Factor and Pop Idol was diffused by Fremantle Media, and eventually settled privately.

That takes deft diplomacy, and Cohen says people like working with Fremantle because they know what they are going to get. “We are scrupulous about fairness and building something together,” he says.

Cowell says Cohen’s ego-free style permeates the whole company. “Every person you meet at Fremantle is nice,” says Cowell, “And that comes down from the top.”

Catch Cohen off-guard, however, and he’ll intimate that he’s not quite sure how he ended up in such a business. Born the eldest son of a meteorologist, and with a mother who harboured specific ambitions for him – “doctor, dentist, lawyer – the usual” – he fell into popular television by chance.

After defying his mother to train as a journalist on London’s local press, he only took a researcher’s job at LWT when he lost a subeditor’s post on the London Evening News. He ended up working for Dyke on LWT’s The Six O’Clock Show.

He says now that his time on local papers was the making of him. “I saw the extremes of poverty in London, I got a taste for what other people’s lives are like, and it made me understand the achievement of writing a good story in The Sun.” For the privately educated Oxbridge boy, it was a grounding that forged his career.

Yet Cohen never lost that sense of academic distance from the populist product he oversaw. Dyke remembers Cohen excusing himself early from The Six O’Clock Show to take evening classes. “And Tony was learning Arabic – he’s a Jewish guy learning Arabic!” Later Cohen became the first television executive to complete the Sloan Fellowship management course at London Business School.

He returned to help Dyke fight LWT’s franchise battle in 1990, and later followed him into Pearson TV. Dyke says that he told Pearson they were a package. “Tony does the thinking, I do the PR,” says Dyke. “But it doesn’t work without the PR.”

Cohen, adds Dyke, gets round that now by being embedded in the no-star culture of the Bertelsmann group, and by relying on others to provide the instinct. He adds that he tried to persuade Cohen to join him at the BBC, but to no avail.

Since then Cohen’s name has been linked to various jobs, including that of ITV chief executive, on the back of a likely buy into the broadcaster by RTL. That hasn’t happened, and Cohen dismisses the speculation. “I’m a producer, I’m not interested in running a broadcaster.”

Really? Some think Cohen could be getting itchy feet. “I suspect he thinks he’s been at Fremantle a long time,” says one friend. Another believes Cohen’s low profile is indicative of his ambivalence about Fremantle’s output – he never got the proper profession his mother demanded.

Cohen says that he is happy just where he is. He has new genres he wants to develop – plans for drama serial formats that can be remade with different casts in different countries – and new ideas for producing online content. The company is just hitting its stride.

Cowell agrees. “He is in a very powerful position. Why would he want to leave? Tony is on top of the world right now.”

TONY COHEN’S

WORKING DAY

THE Fremantle Media chief executive wakes at his home in London’s Clapham at 7am. Tony Cohen eats porridge made with water, then drives himself to work by 8.30am on his Moto Guzzi motorbike.

He runs meetings throughout the day with territory heads, reviewing business, personnel matters and future productions. “A chunk of my day is also given over to communication with staff.” He travels round all the subsidiaries each year to discuss strategy with staff.

Cohen lunches contacts at Elena’s L’ Etoile, Camerino or Signor Grilli. He finishes work at 7.30pm and usually has a stack of DVDs to watch.

VITAL STATISTICS

Born: October 6 1953

Marital status: married, two sons

School: Dulwich College, London

University: Magdalen College, Oxford and London Business School

First job: newspaper reporter

Salary package: undisclosed

Homes: Clapham, Isle of Wight

Car: blue biofuel Volvo S80

Favourite book:The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

Favourite music: Schubert and Bob Dylan

Favourite film: The Third Man

Favourite gadget: Psion Organiser

Last holiday: Venice

DOWNTIME

TONY COHEN says he is a “workaholic” about his leisure time: walking and cycling with his wife, going to yoga twice a week at classes in Clapham, and riding his motorcycles.

“I have a Moto Guzzi and two Triumphs – the love of my life is one I started riding in 1975, a 350cc twin with the original skirt round the back in luminescent blue. The other is a modern Triumph Bonneville.”

He also has a holiday home in St Helens, near Bembridge, on the Isle of Wight. “If I have a particularly difficult problem, it’s a great place to think things through,” he says. “It’s also near the Baywatch Café – I took that as a good sign.”

Source: The Times