MIPTV 2017: twisted trends, smart news

The new event will include an international competence, selecting ten worldwide, unreleased series, with at least 5 celebrities as ‘Grand Jury’; writing residences dedicated to professionals, working on different projects; an University training program for digital series; events for the general public, as more than 200 free screenings; and a co-production forum, with pitching and networking sessions. The date is not confirmed, just ‘April 2018’, and the organization partners are (till now) the City of Cannes, Canal + and Reed Midem.

Twisted trends? Paper formats are back in town. Desperate for original product, big players take risk again to handle projects from the beginning. The move is taking shape in England, Germany, Italy. Co-productions include more steps: creative, development services, etc.

Dramas from not traditional origins go ahead at mostly every region. In Mexico, new channel Imagen is gaining market share with foreign series as Brazilian Record TV Moises, while in Indonesia, ANTV has scaled from half of the ranking to lead the market airing Indian dramas. In many countries, finished products strike back against local production. Also, Mexican Televisa has recovery strength by betting again on traditional telenovelas, replacing edging series.

Russian media industry is 10/12% up this year, Ukraine 15/20% up. Second tier channels of both countries started to produce again, so there is good synergy for all producer levels.

The Asians are producing now thinking of international market. In countries as China they can’t buy foreign rights due to local law, so they co-develop with international companies and then they share distribution rights. In South Korea, they share the Intellectual Property.

Middle East faces a not so promising scenario: due to many civil wars, it is difficult to develop long-term investments, regional players agree. Now, there are good opportunities at VOD services like Iflix, Icflix, Vuclip, Starz Play Arabia, among others and YouTube channels, which scape from mainstream obstacles.

Presented by The Wit CEO, Virginia Mouseler, the session Fresh TV in Latin America, highlighted two trends: new high-end dramas, with less episodes than classic telenovelas. And the popular ‘narco-novelas’ have turned into series focused on politics but with good characters as protagonists, not the villains.

Smart news? Atrium TV enters the market with a ‘commissioning club’ model: it will produce to exhibit through telcos and OTTs, 10 high-end dramas in five years -USD 500,000 per episode adding partners from a community when interested. It was founded by DRG (UK) CEO, Jeremy Fox, former CEO of Sony and CBS, Howard Stringer, and Jakob Mejlhede, head of programming, MTG.

Remember Vivendi’s Studio+? The short premium content app was launched last year in Latin America, Spain & Italy offering high-end 10x’10 dramas. ‘We provide 25-30 acquired series, apart from a similar number of original dramas’, said Aline Marrache-Tesseraud, SVP acquisitions.

Dori Media’s Mememe (Israel) is producing from last year short contents for YouTube channels. Now it is achieving 120 millions of views per month, focused on kids and teens. They expect to handle 15 YouTube channels very segmented: for 3-5, 5-8 years kids, etc. And it is already selling the content packaged by 15-30 minutes for pay and free TV.

For the first time in Cannes, Tencent, one of the leading OTTs in China, has a booth to sell its original series and movies to global buyers. Nippon TV (Japan) sold its second scripted drama series to Turkey, Women, to be produced also by Medyapim/MF Yapim for FOX Turkey: ‘We have found on the Japanese drama a unique vision and tone about women’, the producers explain.

Nicolás Smirnoff, Fabricio Ferrara and Rodrigo Cantisano

MipTV 2017 Coverage
Wrap Up | April 6 | April 5 | April 4 | April 3 | April 2 | April 1