Interview: Richard Halliwell, Atrium

It’s been nearly two years since Atrium TV – a drama commissioning club for telcos - was first announced to the world at MipTV in 2017.

Then – and now – the premise of Atrium sounds simple and, for telcos, highly attractive.

A membership club made up of 15 regional telcos and OTT players, Atrium sources high-end, big budget drama projects with an average price of around US$5m an hour and shares them with club members, who can then decide if they wish to invest and licence the series for their territory.

The idea, says Atrium chief executive Richard Halliwell, is that it helps regionally specific telcos compete with global streamers like Netflix for top quality drama content.

Regional telcos and OTT players, he explains, can’t directly fund high end dramas like The Crown as they can’t amortise costs internationally as the global streamers do. “How do you drive subscribers if you can’t afford to put big names up on posters in the way Netflix can?,” says Halliwell.

Since launching, Atrium has signed up leading telcos worldwide, including BT TV (UK), Televisa (Latin America), Viaplay (Nordics), Orange (France), Movistar+ (Spain), Deutsche Telekom (Germany), Iflix (Asia/MENA), Sky New Zealand, Antenna (Greece), NewFilm (Russia), BigFlix (India) and Yes TV (Israel). Exclusivity is the key as there is only one club member per territory.

Together they can, says Halliwell, “circle the wagons” and jointly fund big budget shows – at a cost that is appropriate to their local market.

“It wasn’t our assumption that most of our members would be telcos, but that is just the way it has worked out. They are getting into this space and thinking…