Vin Di Bona is Chairman, Creator and Executive Producer of Vin Di Bona Productions, which has made America laugh for nearly two decades. He talks with the Copyright Alliance about the successes and challenges of being a producer.

Tell us a little about Vin Di Bona Productions.
“Vin Di Bona Productions is a small television production company best known for America’s Funniest Home Videos, the longest running primetime program on ABC – we are going into our 19th season. That means there are college freshmen who have never known a world without America’s Funniest Home Videos. In addition we have done shows such as the dramas Voices from Within, Touched by Evil, and For the Love of Nancy that told the story of Nancy Walsh as she and her family battled anorexia, the mockumentary series Sherman Oaks for Showtime, and others.

We’re a small company that has been able to navigate the changing television landscape. Over the past few decades there have been changes in media ownership rules, the growth of cable and satellite television, and of course the explosion of video online. Hopefully we can continue to find ways to make a living entertaining people for a long time to come.”

How did you get started?
“After graduating from Emerson College I worked as a producer and director at WBZ in Boston for nine years. In those days there was a much stronger commitment to original, local programming and we created some terrific shows – including the first commercially sponsored African-American magazine show in the country. I moved to Los Angeles where I had the opportunity to produce Entertainment Tonight (where I hired Mary Hart) and shows like Battle of the Network Stars and the first season of MacGyver. Nearly 20 years ago I was able to bring America’s Funniest Home Videos to television, and the rest as they say is history.”

What is your biggest challenge as a producer?
“The ongoing challenge for any producer is to create programming that viewers want to watch and which advertisers or others are willing to financially support.

The biggest single challenge Vin Di Bona Productions faces is online theft. We have developed a strong brand through hard work. We go to great lengths to ensure that we have the legal rights to everything in our programs. Unfortunately a lot of the online universe does not share our commitment to doing the right thing, and clips from our shows routinely show up on websites like YouTube, Veoh and others. These sites are valued at more than a billion dollars – value that has been built in part on content they did not have the rights to, and that asset value is not being shared with the copyright holders. An ongoing challenge for Vin Di Bona Productions, and for the entertainment industry as a whole, is how to ensure those who take the risks in bringing programs to television get rewarded for their successes. If anyone can take anything they like, without doing any work or risking anything, pretty soon it will not be economically feasible to create the new programs to begin with.

Imagine you have always wanted to own an apple orchard. You study the market for apples, look at the cost of land, figure out how many apples you would have to grow and sell to make a profit, and decide the risk is worth it. You grow the trees, hire people to pick the crops, convince local stores to carry your produce, and begin to see some return for your work. Then a group of kids comes over your fence, takes your apples, and sells them for half what you charge, gets rich, and shares none of the profit with you. That’s pretty much the situation we’re in.”

Why is it important for the creative industries to have a strong pro-copyright voice in Washington and elsewhere?
“If the creative industries don’t stand up for copyright no one else will. “

Why did you join the Copyright Alliance?
“The Copyright Alliance is the only organization that has brought together large and small creators from a wide range of industries to advocate for our shared concerns. The Copyright Alliance supplements and supports the work of individual companies like Vin Di Bona Productions and industry groups like the Motion Picture Association of America. If the Copyright Alliance didn’t exist, someone would have to invent it.”

What do the next few years hold for Vin Di Bona?
“Among other things, we’re looking forward to the 19th season of America’s Funniest Home Videos on ABC and increasing our online presence through www.Reality.tv. You may have also read that we’re bringing Masquerade, a long-running Japanese program, to the U.S. The program features contestants using props and costumes to present visual illusions, such as an airborne soccer game. This show strikes me as being the most original concept in television that I’ve seen since ‘Home Videos’. It’s already become a cultural phenomenon in Japan and I see that potential here.”

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 12:27 pm by admin and is filed under creators, economy, internet, licensing, p2p, q&a. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.