Andy Grant OSN+

By Mansha Daswani

WS: What’s your overall programming strategy at OSN+?

GRANT: We are the home of Western content for the Middle East and North Africa, whether it’s movies or top-flight series. We are the home of quality for fans of Western content. We try to ensure everyone in the household has something, so we underpin that with Arabic content. We do make our own originals in Arabic. We also buy long-running Turkish series; they’re super popular in the Middle East. And then we’ve got a very good kids’ selection. We’re Western-oriented, but we’re very much a comprehensive service that offers everyone in the home something.

WS: What kinds of shows drive subscriber acquisition versus those that serve as retention tools?

GRANT: These are inevitably the big noisy shows. In the last year or so, the two big ones have been House of the Dragon and The Last of Us from HBO. They’re big budget. There’s an opportunity for them to continue after the first season. They have the talent. They’re the sorts of shows you could easily imagine on the big billboards. These are the ones that attract people’s attention, and they are exclusive on OSN+, which means people have to sub scribe to get them. And then, of course, the job is keeping subscribers with a regular throughput of quality content and messaging so they know that each week or each month, there’s going to be something they can try out.

WS: The approach to licensing content at the Hollywood studios has been in flux as they roll out their own D2C services. Has that impacted your acquisition strategy?

GRANT: It has. For instance, Disney+ is in the Middle East. We formerly were the home of Disney. HBO is not coming to this part of the world at the moment, so there’s regular licensing there. The withdrawal of a certain amount of content is apparent. We don’t have quite the same level of choice that we would have had before. But we are the leading Western service in the region, so we are the first port of call for all of the studios when they are making their sales.

WS: You mentioned Turkish content. They have been experimenting with shorter-run series. What are you looking for out of that market?

GRANT: We’re still looking for the longer ones. They can get a very loyal viewership that keeps coming back again and again. Our most popular show is Forbidden Fruit. That’s on its sixth season. It runs to 100-plus episodes each season. That’s powerful for us on engagement. It means that a significant chunk of our viewership visits three, four or five times a week to catch up with the show. We drop three or four episodes at a time each week. In the week, it plays out on our linear channels, and then when we drop them on OSN+, they get consumed quickly.

WS: How important is exclusivity? Does everything have to be first-run?

GRANT: There has to be a significant amount of exclusive content. What is the point of somebody subscribing to you if they can get it elsewhere? You’re then competing on technical ability or price. There needs to be hype; there needs to be a significant number of high-profile exclusive titles, whether it’s movies or series. After that, we do take second runs of movies and series. On the library side of things, it’s non-exclusive. It’s having those layers in the content offering, but exclusivity is still very important.

WS: Do you find some shows play better in a linear environment than a streaming one?

GRANT: A procedural like Chicago Fire has a small audience on streaming, whereas it does pretty well on the linear channels. A crime miniseries like Mare of Easttown does well on streaming and linear. Movies are also successful on linear; they are not quite as important to us on the streaming service. The movies tend to perform well initially and then fall away quite rapidly, whereas the series tend to tick along regularly.