Convenciones
The two faces of Mipcom 2012
Today Mipcom 2012 comes to an end with an encouraging outcome, for most of the content industry: many opinions agree that it has been a show as the ones before the global crisis, till 2008. For the first time in five years, the attendance reached 13,000 people, and business volume has grown 15% from Mipcom last year. Though, crisis has not gone away for many European countries. The emergent markets are a strong engine.The event of this Wednesday was the Gala Dinner where Emilio Azcarraga Jean, CEO of Mexican Grupo Televisa, was honored as Personality of the Year by Reed Midem, with the attendance of 200 VIP executives of the industry. The news enhances the unusual relevance that Latin America has taken at this market.
Indeed, U.S. Hispanic Telemundo and France O (France Televisions) have signed an alliance that includes, from the former to the latter, a volume deal of 300 hours per year (for three years) and the selection of a “golden book” of a telenovela to produce in France, while the French company will distribute the ready made material (doubled to French language) both in the French speaking territories (West Indies, Indian Ocean, Martinique, etc.) and in the digital platforms.
Gilles Camouilly, antenna director of France O, remarked: ‘There is a new era on French television, where the TV channels are looking for long productions, and the Latin American distributors are specialists on the matter’.
FRAPA, the format protection and recognition association, offered its annual Format awards. The winners have been: “Best Factual Entertainment”, Lovetown, from BBC Worldwide; “Best Competition Reality Format”, Your Face Sounds Familiar, from Endemol; “Best comedy format”, Money From Strangers, All3Media; “Best Studio Based Gameshow”, The Bank Job, from Endemol; “Best Brand Driven Format”, Fashion Star, from Electus; “Best Scripted Format”, The Kitchen Musical, from Small World IFT; “Best Multi-Platform Format”, Who’s in, who’s out, from Sony.
Middle East: Fady Ismail, general manager at O3 Productions, MBC Group, said: ‘The best thing that happened to Arabic drama, is the Turkish drama, which has been able to break through the wall of conservatism in the Arab world’.
Spain: what is happening to the pay TV market, in the new DTT era? Sergio Ramos, programming director, History Channel: ‘The strategy is to keep business working till the situation gets more stable. Some of the current DTT channels will not survive this crisis, and we want to take a DTT license that gets free, then. Now, we are making a ‘restyling’ of the channel’.
Eastern Europe: Jovan MIlenkovic, Prava I Prevodi, Serbia: ‘For the former Yugoslavian territories, we are looking for TV series from Scandinavian countries, from Germany, from France. There, we’ve discovered, they have very good products, as the Studios ones’.
Difficult times? Arthur Yezekyan, president Shan TV, Armenia: ‘We’ve suffered an unexpectedly drop in our revenues this Summer, about 50%. We’ve cut many own production projects for two months, but we are producing content again’. Mathieu Bejot, president at TV France International, which gathers medium and small independent French producers: ‘Business is tough, nowadays’.
Yesterday we told that in Hungary, advertisement pie will be down again (10%) this year. Ricus Jansequers, SVP international programming Prosieben.SAT1 (Germany) for Central & Eastern Europe: ‘We don’t expect a recovery of the region in 2013. Hopefully, in 2014. Though, we are investing in new channels as in Hungary, betting on the future’.
Nicolas Smirnoff and Fabricio Ferrara