Convenciones
MIPTV 2013: MipCube? A global Rubik cube
MIPTV 2013 comes to an end today showing where the content market is heading to: while MipCube has been the special location for the latest new media ventures --cloud TV, Ultra HD 4K-- the deals and disclosures made this week show more and more business combinations, as the well-known Rubik's Cube game.Let’s see what we’ve picked up yesterday (Wednesday): Zodiak Kids has secured many VOD deals, among them with Ace in France, for 270 episodes; with ProSiebenSat.1 in Germany, for its VOD portal Maxdome; with Nordisk in Scandinavia, for its SVOD app service Minbio; and in Turkey with the pay TV channel Smart Cocuk, for its service D-Smart Blu.
CCTV (China) and Venevision (USA/Venezuela) have signed a documentary co-production agreement, including the airing of China Megaproject in Spanish in Latin America, and three Latin telenovelas in China. Another deal: Telemundo (USA) has sold to Imedi TV (Georgia) its successful U.S. version of Forbidden Love, a top Turkish telenovela format from Global Agency (Turkey) broadcast originally at Kanal D.
Pay TV channel distributor Thema (France) has added two local pay TV channels from Comoro Islands and Cape Verde (Africa) to its offer, through satellite platform Eutelsat. Apostolos Triantafyllou, Eutelsat: ‘Africa is a major region for us to increase our revenues from now on’.
Patrick Jucaud-Zuchowicki, CEO at Basic Lead, organizer of Discop West Asia: ‘The epicenter of the content business is moving East. The Middle East and West Asia countries are stable and accessible now, and are growing by 100% every year. Africa is not so strong but evolves fast, too. You may check the evolution of these regions when you see the deals among local players’.
Yumi Shimizu, senior manager international TV Asahi, #1 Japanese broadcaster: ‘The free TV stations are not buying finished product; due to a government normative, we must have a variety of genres (news, docs, general entertainment) and the stations prefer to produce them in-house. The U.S. and Korean TV series, etc., are being broadcast on pay TV and satellite channels’.
Hungary? Tibor Forizs, head of acquisitions at RTL Klub: ‘The ‘constructed reality daily series’ --new actors simulating real stories-- are the new big thing for us: our latest production has reached 30% audience share last week, at access prime time’. Okros Gergely, chief creative officer, TV2: ‘The big talent shows and formats in general, are returning to the origins, to the fire place; rude realities, no stops’.
What do buyers look for at MIPTV? Alan Sternfeld, acquisitions manager of Microsoft Xbox Video Service for Central & Eastern Europe, is buying all types of TV series and telenovelas, especially those produced within the region. Vanessa Tierno, head of acquisitions at SIC Portugal: ‘We need entertainment formats for the main channel and finished products for the new channels we have, female product for SIC Mulher and sexy, young fare for SIC Radical’.
Amiruddin Mohamad, channel managerat RTB1 and RTB4 (Brunei): ‘Filipino and Korean drama series and documentaries‘. Luis Peraza, HBO Latin America: ‘Large-budget independent films’. Walter Sequeira, acquisitions manager, Artear Argentina: ‘Independent films’. Gaye Arman Bickacioglu, programming director at Kanalturk, Turkey: ‘We are producing cooking show Blind Taste’. Liutauras Elkimavicius, CEO at BTV Lithuania: ‘All types of formats, since we have 20 hours per week to produce in-house’.
Nicolas Smirnoff and Fabricio Ferrara