EbonyLife CEO Mo Abudu has called out TV’s gatekeepers, saying they must stop the excuses and begin to order African show with global budgets.
In a keynote interview at Mipcom Cannes this morning, Abudu argued commissioners needed to order more programs with Black or African narratives, and that their budgets need to begin to mirror those of big-ticket titles such as Netflix’s Stranger Things.
Her company has development deals in place with the likes of BBC Studios, Netflix, AMC and Idris Elba‘s Green Door Pictures, but Abudu said content commissioners remain reticent to order Black or African shows en masse. “I continue to see very little on TV for me as a woman of color. One wonders why,” she said.
“Look at the pyramid of local content versus global content: Where are African or black shows sitting? Probably at the bottom,” she continued. “How many Black or African global shows are there, with a global budget? In order for you to be able to tell the stories and compete effectively with stories being told around the world, you have to allocate decent budgets.
“We are doing the best we can with the resources that we have, but that’s not to say there aren’t bigger stories we want to be able to tell. You are restricted by the budgets for the stories that you tell, and that’s the frustration and the challenge. A bigger story means a bigger writer, more expensive talent – all the things that attract audiences to a show.”
However, she said the fact streamers such as Netflix and Prime Video were now actively searching for African stories provided an opportunity and hope for the future. You can read our exclusive in-depth feature on African streaming here.
Abudu said some execs would often have “a ready list of responses” why they would not commission shows from diverse content creators. “The real challenge is maybe that commissioners are risk averse,” she added. “They would rather tell something similar to what they’ve always been used to telling.”
The widely respected exec added biggest challenge for African content creators “is getting through to the gatekeepers and commissioners, because ultimately they are the ones who decide what ends up on our TV screens.
“They’ve decided people like me shouldn’t be represented on television and their stories should not be told.. [and] wome of them are just note ready to listen. They just need to have an open mind and be ready to listen the fact there are stories that exist outside of Europe and America.”
Abudu said she was not making a “charity case” but flagged it was virtually impossible for a show with a $1M per ep budget to compete with one at the $10M pricepoint. She noted that breakout shows such as Squid Game have proven hits can come from anywhere and added: “I’m not saying, ‘Give me the Stranger Things budget, but I am saying we are going to need bigger budgets to compete globally.”
“This is not a charity case, it’s a business case,” she said. “There are 1.4 billion people living in Africa right now. By the year 2050, one in four people is going to be an African. The median age on the continent is 19 and they need to see content that speaks to them. There is a market there.
“There’s a lot of comfort in just dealing with the status quo, because traditionally that’s what [commissioners have] always done.”