01 Oct 2000

RTL Group has many connections to Big Brother, but some of them are more obvious than others.

The Luxembourg broadcasting giant did not create the reality show - Dutch producer Endemol did that. But RTL has achieved great success in licensing the record-breaking format. In Germany its RTL 2 station captured about 35% of the audience share among 14-to 29-year-old viewers last season.

The show earned about DM50m (£15.4m) in advertising revenue against a production cost of DM27m.

RTL 2 is so pleased with the results that it plans to bring Big Brother back next season and have its sister channel RTL air a "week-in-review" of the show on Saturdays as a way to spread the audience draw between the two networks. And RTL in Germany will also offer more reality programmes, including Der Frisoer, a reality show that takes place in a Cologne hair salon, as well as The Bus - another Endemol-format that has been described as 'Big Brother on wheels'.

The reality-based show has caught the world by storm. While commentators debate why a show that features unknown people doing very little for a long time is compelling, TV networks across Europe have been scrambling to create the next Big Brother. So why do people watch it? Probably because it is live and un-scripted, so it is unpredictable. It is also the ultimate local programme, attractive to a youth audience who want to see themselves in action. And if the producers get the mix in the house right, there is bound to be human drama and lots of it.

These elements are also what makes RTL Group itself compelling to observers.

The company was only created in July with the complex, three-way merger of Audiofina, Pearson Television and CLT-UFA - itself a joint venture between Germany's UFA (part of the Bertelsmann group) and Luxembourg's CLT. This mix of nationalities - which includes executives from Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany and the UK, - creates quite a cocktail. Media watchers around the continent are leaning forward in their sofas to see how the plot will turn out.

And the drama is compelling: Will the merger stick? Will the company make money? Will it be able to leverage its position as Europe's biggest broadcaster, and take on big US players, both in Europe and in the US, the biggest TV market in the world? Stay tuned.

In the language of Big Brother there are four players in the house (at least that the cameras can see!). They are:

'Dashing' Didier Bellens - the CEO and a man who has a track record of working with highly clever and difficult people. Didier must be a delegator and make everyone in the house sing to the same song sheet, whatever language they speak.

Bruno 'The Fact Man' Chauvat - at the recent press conference announcing the first half results is was Bruno who could rattle off how much money had been saved when the Germany RTL stations (RTL, RTL2, Super RTL and VOX) inked programming agreements among themselves. As managing director it is Bruno who has to try and bring this discipline to a pan-European level, to include stations from across the RTL group, from M6 in France, Channel 5 in the UK to RTL 7 in Poland.

'Enterprising' Ewald Walgenbach - his role as chief operating officer is to make the machine work and understand who might get in the way. So while M6 in France has a 26% operating margin and the German RTL-brand stations are doing very well, Channel 5, RTL Klub and Vox are only just breaking even and RTL 7 in Poland is in dire need of a resuscitation.

Margins are now 15.6% across the group, up from 12% in April. The goal is to raise that to 20% within three years. Therefore, enterprising must be Ewald's first name.

Richard 'The Lionheart' Eyre - since taking the advisable parachute route out of the UK's beleaguered ITV, Eyre has had to give a shove to a business that may have a lot of classic formats but is short on new home runs.

He's scored some early points by getting Didier to agree to triple the programme making budget, which will include commissioning the 11th series (can you believe it!) of Baywatch, but should also allow the programming unit to take some risks on new shows. RTL is bringing a corporate spin to its boardroom version of Big Brother.

It recently upped its stake in Antena 3, Spain's biggest commercial broadcaster, putting it alongside Telefonica Media, which already holds a 47% stake in Antena 3. And 'Dashing' Didier has bigger plans in mind - to work closely across Europe with Telefonica Media's CEO Juan 'Of A Kind' Nieto, possibly on setting up joint acquisitions across Europe. Didier says he could raise Euro6-7bn of debt to make further acquisitions.

RTL Group's version of Big Brother has one big difference to the TV show - the company's idea is for all the key players to stay together, not to vote each other out. The prize is to consolidate the broadcaster's position as the biggest in Europe, and then become a major new media player and take on the world's biggest TV market in North America. There are no live, hidden cameras recording RTL's every move, but if it had put just one camera in a couple of board meetings this year, the company might have another reality TV blockbuster on its hands.