Mipcom 2014: 30 years and shining

The 30th edition of the event joined executives from a record 112 countries and an all-time high 13,700 delegates - including over 4,600 buyers of which 1,300 were acquiring digital and VOD rights.

‘This has been a record-breaking and a particularly memorable 30th edition of Mipcom’, noted Laurine Garaude, director of Reed Midem TV division. ‘We saw extensive deal making and energy on the show floor, with Mexico as ‘Country of Honour’ and a record number of key programme launches, including incredible TV series as The Book of Negroes (eOne, Canada) and Thunderbirds are go! (ITV, UK)’.

Top testimonies during Cannes week? James Murdoch, COO, 21st Century Fox: ‘The merger of Shine, Endemol and Core Media creates a unique global leader in entertainment production. Business will change: current windows model for airing content must evolve or it will become obsolete. Fox’s creative capacities is its best defense against the tech giants such as Google’.

Ted Sarandos, CCO Netflix: ‘Our recent arrival to France and Germany has provided encouraging results about viewing hours per subscriber. We are financing original content (French drama Marseille) and talking about co-productions with Gallic animation companies. We will enter in Asia soon, it is just a matter of timing’.

Ynon Kreiz, Maker Studios (USA): ‘The demand for short-form video content will grow and grow from now, due to the shortened attention span of the millennial generation. With our acquisition, Disney turns to be an edging leader in the short-form segment’. Charles Zhang, CEO of Sohu.com (Netflix equivalent in China): ‘Which are our priorities? To invest heavily in original content, develop in-house online series, increase acquisitions from independent Chinese producers and to begin buying Hollywood movies’.

Jill Wilfert, VP of Global Licensing and distribution, Lego (toymaker, Denmark): ‘Business is 360 for us too: our hit feature film The Lego Movie will move into TV next year, we are also looking at reality competition formats and a Lego-inspired documentary’. Morgan Spurlock (film and documentary maker): ‘I am a ‘platform agnostic’, but I see a strong future in online distribution and short-form formats for documentary and non fiction content’.

Many movie and TV stars were present at the show: Donald Sutherland, Matt Dillon, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Elisabeth Hurley, Louis Gosset, Jr., Aunjanue Ellis, Morgan Spurlock, Aamir Kahn, Tcheky Karyo and Night Shyamalan, among others. Shyamalan moved from film to TV industry because he sees ‘budgets and artistic freedom that are becoming rarer in the film sector’.

The ‘Personality of the year’ was Simon Cowell, from Syco Entertainment and the creator of top Fremantlemedia succeses as X Factor and Got Talent. The latter format was just sold to Mongolia, the last place on Earth to be taken. He said: ‘The success of Got Talent is a proof that the hunger for content, across all platforms, is truly global’.

Mexico as ‘Country of Honour’ meant a big push for Mipcom. The programme, held by Reed Midem and ProMexico, saw a record of 125 Mexican companies in Cannes, comparing to 32 present last year, and was spearheaded by the country’s international powerhouses, Televisa and Azteca. Emilio Azcarraga Jean, CEO Televisa: ‘We went from being highly-dependent on advertising in Mexico, to the leading Spanish-language media corporation in the world. In the process, we have significantly enhanced our potential as a diversified media and telecommunication referent’.

More deals closed during Mipcom? Viacom closed a multi-year agreement with Amazon Prime in the UK, which included UK rights to Kung Fu Panda and Awkward. Mexico’s Azteca pacted with Electus International to take Mexican rights to the US distributor’s Food Fighters culinary reality hit. French pay-TV Canal+ came on board as the first broadcaster to back Italian crime drama Zero Zero Zero from Italian production company Cattleya. 

BBC Worldwide confirmed that the BBC’s Natural History Unit is teaming up with Japan’s NHK to co-produce a new natural history series: Wild Japan. A+E Networks concluded a raft of deals with EMEA broadcasters for Lifetime original movies. These included agreements with RTL in Belgium and Vox in Germany, for instance. 

What can we expect for Turkey ‘Country of Honour’ next year?  Turkey, with Israel, are the two top new potencies of the content market, that took the global market in the recent years building edging production poles. Turkey is a strong referent with its fiction drama series, but it has also moved forward in entertainment formats. It handles 5-6 very strong international distributors, which are reaching more than 75 countries. So, we’ll have fun and many new business hubs in 2015. Malaysia would be the ‘Country of Honour’ in 2016.

Nicolas Smirnoff, Fabricio Ferrara & Rodrigo Cantisano