YLE buys rights to several HBO series in million-euro deal

New episodes can also be seen on Internet for limited period

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The Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE and the American HBO (Home Box Office Inc.) have signed a three-year contract on the broadcasting of HBO series on YLE’s channels in 2010-2013.
      The deal is a follow-up to a previous agreement from 2007, but broader in content.
      Starting next year, episodes of the HBO series can also be viewed free of charge on the YLE Areena Internet pages for a period of two weeks after they have first been aired on television.
     
There will be more HBO series available for the Finnish viewers than before, and this time around the new series can be aired in Finland only nine months after they have premiered in the United States.
      Previously the waiting period was a year. The new contract also allows the repeat screening of the programmes.
      According to YLE, the price of the deal is a business secret.
      The Head of YLE’s International Programme Acquisitions Tarmo Kivikallio says the purchase price is a small sum compared to how much YLE spends on buying and producing domestic programmes.
     
According to information obtained by Helsingin Sanomat, YLE is paying for the HBO series more or less the same sum as during the previous contract period; in other words, around a million euros per year.
      For this price YLE gets the rights to several new series, plus to those series in the HBO archives, the rights of which have not been granted to any other Finnish television station.
      In this way, for example Sex in the City and Rome will not be seen on any of the YLE channels so long as the commercial television station Nelonen (Channel 4) still has a valid contract on the airing of these shows.
     
Annually YLE spends around EUR 15 million on purchasing foreign TV-series, feature films, and other programmes.
      This figure excludes the rights to large international sporting events. For example for the airing of the Beijing Olympics, YLE paid an estimated EUR eight million.
      For the sake of comparison, YLE spends around EUR 30 million on domestic programmes produced by independent operators.
     
The most eagerly awaited of the new series is the vampire tale True Blood, which has been the most watched HBO series in the United States since The Sopranos.
      Among the purchased programmes is also Steven Spielberg's and Tom Hanks’s World War II series The Pacific.
      Next year’s new programmes will also include the widely acclaimed series The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, about the Botswanan female detective Mma Ramotswe created by the Zimbabwean-born British writer Alexander McCall Smith, many of whose books have also been translated into Finnish.
     
YLE's move into an area traditionally jealously held by the commercial channels in Finland prompted some dismay and disgruntled looks in the business in 2007, and there has been active discussion on the Helsingin Sanomat message boards over "the role of public broadcasting", with the suggestion in some quarters being that it should be "almost anything but" providing imported entertainment.
      The subject is a somewhat sensitive and tangled one, since the commercial channels MTV3 and Nelonen (each of which have several sub-channels) are owned respectively by the Swedish Bonnier Group and by Sanoma Entertainment, part of the Sanoma Corporation.
      Until 2005, MTV3 was owned by Alma Media, the publishers of the Tampere daily Aamulehti and the late-edition tabloid Iltalehti.
      The Sanoma Corporation is of course also the publisher of Helsingin Sanomat and the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Digital TV brings more channels to Finnish TV screens (28.8.2007)

Links:
  HBO, Home Box Office
  Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE (Wikipedia)

Helsingin Sanomat