At a market in the spring, the head of acquisitions watches the first ten minutes of eight crime dramas in one morning. Two are worth a second look. One fits the channel's Tuesday slot, and the sales agent hints that a rival broadcaster is interested. By the evening a price for two runs over three years is on the table. The head of acquisitions is the person who buys programmes that someone else has already made.
What a head of acquisitions does
A channel cannot fill every hour with its own commissions. Commissioning is expensive and slow. Bought-in programmes (feature films, foreign series, documentaries) are cheaper per hour and ready now. The head of acquisitions finds them, judges whether they suit the audience, and negotiates the deal. Sellers are sales agents and the international arms of studios and distributors. Much of the buying happens at TV markets and festivals.
The head of acquisitions works closely with the scheduler, who knows which slots need filling, and with the channel controller, who sets the overall mix of original and bought-in programmes. Sometimes they buy a project before it is made, a pre-buy, which helps the producer raise the rest of the money. That is part of financing for many independent films.
Responsibilities
- Track what is available on the market and what is coming
- Watch screeners and decide which titles suit the channel
- Negotiate the licence fee, territory, number of runs and licence period
- Agree pre-buys of films and series still in development or production
- Manage the acquisitions budget across the year
- Hand the deal terms to business affairs and rights teams
- Keep track of when licences expire and what can be renewed
How the role touches the budget
The head of acquisitions manages a large budget of its own, separate from the commissioning money. Every title has a licence fee, and the deal decides how much use the channel gets for it. Terms such as the number of transmissions, the period, the territory and whether streaming is included all change the price. A pre-buy also touches the producer's budget, because that money appears in the producer's financing plan and often comes with delivery requirements that cost money to meet.
How people get into the role
Many start as an acquisitions assistant or coordinator, logging titles and screeners, and work up through acquisitions executive. Others come from sales, so they know the market from the selling side. A wide knowledge of films and series, and good contacts with sellers, count for a lot.
At a distributor
Film distributors and sales companies also have acquisitions teams. There the job is to buy the rights to a film for a territory, release it in cinemas or online, and earn the money back. The skills are the same, but the risk is larger, because the distributor pays for the release as well.