While MipTV is moving to London, Mipcom Cannes has emerged stronger than it’s been in many years with participation on the rise for its milestone 40th edition.
The TV industry has been hit by a quadruple whammy of the economic slowdown, intense phases of restructuring, a pandemic and Hollywood’s double strike, but instead of dying down, its execs and producers are tapping into new opportunities, notably with unscripted content and tech innovations.
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So far, Mipcom is on track to host more attendees than in 2023, which saw 11,000 delegates from 100 countries hit the Croisette.
“The global TV industry is resilient. It renews itself and Mipcom plays a role in this process by gathering the bulk of the industry for one event, and helping companies tackle new trends, in terms of technology, content or consumption,” says Lucy Smith, head of RX France’s content division, which organizes Mipcom.
Aside from welcoming major players such as Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Tony Vinciquerra, Amazon MGM Studios’ James Farrell and All3Media’s Jane Turton — who will be delivering keynotes — Mipcom will also highlight the convergence of tech and entertainment with a pair of events: a summit dedicated to FAST channels and incorporating AVOD, with speakers from Banijay Rights, BBC Studios and Fremantle; and an AI summit inviting a mix of tech banners such as Google and TV outfits such as Newen Studios and TF1 Group.
“While international distribution is still the core business for Mipcom, we’re seeing more and more participants who are involved in this intersection of content and technology at Mipcom, and they are having a larger role in the industry,” says Smith.
Sally Habbershaw, exec VP for Americas at All3Media Intl., says she’s also noticed a few more AVOD and FAST operators attending and some of the AVOD players are starting to sort of dip their toes into the space.
As many as 3,600 buyers are expected at the Cannes-set industry conference. These include executives from streamers, broadcasters and FAST channels. Smith also pointed to a rise in the number of buyers from Latin America and Asia.
With so-called “peak TV” mostly in the rearview mirror, premium unscripted and soapy entertainment will be the new buzz words at Mipcom. Celebrity-driven formats, reboots of game shows and singing contests are also trending high.
Arthur Essebag, a famed French TV host, producer and founder of Paris-based Satisfaction Group, says broadcasters have been doubling down on unscripted to fill the void left by American series. “There’s a real crisis with U.S. shows. They’re not performing as well as they used to and there’s a shortage that has been exacerbated by the Hollywood strikes.”
Essebag, who’s in business with Fulwell 73, Keshet Intl. and Yes Yes Media, says, “The only programs that can do as well if not better than U.S. series for roughly the same price are game shows.”
Whereas streamers were initially uninterested in reality TV, they’ve now joined the bandwagon and have been increasingly active in that space, focusing on serialized unscripted series.
“Streamers are realizing that those unscripted thrillers can really have a great impact,” says Lucas Green, chief content officer of operations at Banijay Entertainment, which is repping “The Summit,” “Deal or No Deal Island” and “By Land, Air and Sea.”
“They can have really high production values but still come at a much lower price than big-budget scripted [series]. They can be faster to turn around. You’re slightly less reliant on the big-name showrunner and director and Hollywood star and their difficult diaries to find a shooting window,” Green says.
Over at Ampere Analysis, company exec director Guy Bisson says unscripted has been on the rise since the pandemic, especially with streamers, because “it’s cheap to produce” and “cheap to localize.” Also, “multi-episode works extremely well if you drop it weekly or twice a week.”
Bisson says the serialized element of unscripted works well to hook subscribers because the “story is shifting in real time so that entire upswing is driven by those same forces that have affected the scripted market.”
Continues Bisson, “Two to three years ago … profit wasn’t so much on the agenda. Retention wasn’t so much on the agenda and advertising wasn’t on the agenda. The whole return on investment model has shifted from what it was two years ago and we find ourselves today in a market that is saturated, where there’s heavy competition, a need to make money, not just spend money.”
In the backdrop of this rise of unscripted content production, TV players tackling unscripted have also been banking on established franchises, either rebooting or expanding well-known formats, such as the singing contest “Star Academy” and game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” (which Essebag is hosting) on TF1; and “LOL: Last One Laughing,” which has been a massive hit in many territories on Amazon Prime Video, including in France where it’s been expanded into two original spinoffs.
Producers, streamers and broadcasters are on the lookout for unscripted titles that are not only cost-efficient, but that also have the potential to become pop culture events and boost brand recognition.
“Star Academy” fits into that category of blockbuster format that entered pop culture, says TF1’s CEO and chairman Rodolphe Belmer.
Drawing a parallel with the film industry, Belmer says, “What’s happening in television is a bit like what happened in cinema before” due to the over-abundance of TV content on TV channels and broadcasters. “It’s very difficult for new franchises to emerge so there’s an editorial logic that aims to build on franchises that people are already familiar with,” he says, adding that “discoverability, a neologism coined by Netflix, is becoming a major issue in today’s TV industry.”
Belmer notes, “That’s what we’ve seen in the cinema with franchises like ‘Harry Potter,’ Marvel and so on. That’s the logic we’re in the process of duplicating in the audiovisual sector in order to emerge from a plethora of offerings; so when we do unscripted, we try to rely on or revive well-known brands.”
Sheldon Lazarus, co-founder Bitachon 365, the banner behind Paramount+ doc “We Will Dance Again,” says there’s “less and less of big scripted co-productions … because of the way the fragmentation the market is.” He says the market is seeing a “warm comfort blanket in unscripted” and is driven by a sort of “pop culture nostalgia” and an appetite for hard-hitting factual.
Jens Richter, Fremantle’s CEO of commercial and international, says that with the industry in a “reset,” it’s “even more important for people to connect and discuss the current situation in each of the companies or platforms.”
The move of MIP TV to London has made Mipcom “more important,” says Danny Goldman, CEO Omega Global Distribution, because “it’s at a time of the year that sits very well within the overall momentum of sales and distribution.
“It gives a cadence to the sales process and plays a really important role in in bringing buyers and sellers together in one place and allowing the industry to coalesce around issues, trends and maintain the social side of broadcast, which was sadly missing when we had it taken away from us during COVID.”
Will Tapley, head of acquisitions for Sphere Media, says Mipcom traditionally sets the tone for the coming year. “You turn up, you sit in your stand for 10 hours a day, you do back-to-back meetings and then you follow up after the market and hopefully that generates a huge pipeline for the rest of your year ahead.”
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