Patrick Jucaud

World Screen Weekly, May 24, 2007

General Manager

Basic Lead

As DISCOP marks its 15th anniversary this year, Patrick Jucaud, the general manager of Basic Lead—the company that organizes DISCOP—and his team are planning new events for the participants attending the market dedicated to the Central and Eastern European TV industries.

Some 1,500 media executives are expected at this year’s DISCOP, which will take place from June 20 to 22 in Budapest at the Sofitel Atrium hotel. That’s a 40-percent increase in attendance this year compared to last year and this bodes well for the distributors that are coming from Europe, the U.S., Latin America and even from Central and Eastern Europe. “We continue to see a growing number of distributors from the region, which is interesting,” says Jucaud. “We see sellers from Poland, Hungary, Russia and the Czech Republic.” In fact, at this year’s market there will be the largest contingent of Russian buyers and sellers, with all the major Russian TV stations in attendance.

To better accommodate this growing number of participants and their business needs, DISCOP will take place over three full days— Wednesday, Thursday and Friday—as opposed to past editions that were only two-and-a-half days long.

This year there will also be a new event, DISCOPRO. “This program will provide participants with an in-depth overview of all the subsidies and production incentives that are now available within the European Union for co-production projects initiated in Central and Eastern Europe,” explains Jucaud. “We are expecting about 200 participants for DISCOPRO, which will take place on Tuesday, June 19, the day before DISCOP begins.”

In occasion of DISCOP’s 15th anniversary, there will be a special dinner party on Wednesday, June 20, with Michael Garin, the CEO of Central European Media Enterprises (CME), which owns TV stations across the region, as the guest of honor. “Because of CME’s history with DISCOP, they have been attending since day one, we felt it was only right to have Michael Garin as guest of honor,” explains Jucaud.

On the evening of Thursday, June 21, DISCOP will hold its Telenovela Gala, this year sponsored by Dori Media Group. Other highlights of the market include a special focus on the Balkans, because the television business is picking up in those markets, most notably in Serbia; and a DISCOP Campus Conference on the power of late-night programming, which, as Jucaud explains, can be extremely effective for both broadcasters and advertisers. DISCOP will offer this presentation in partnership with MediaMetrie.

Jucaud is quite satisfied with the growth DISCOP has experienced in the last 15 years. “I am very happy because I see all these TV stations that started with less than nothing and have become major international television players—that’s a big satisfaction,” he says. “It’s also interesting to see that there are more and more content producers from Central and Eastern Europe taking part at DISCOP. It’s no longer a West versus East type of situation. There are many suppliers that do a lot of business now in their neighboring countries.”

Jucaud is also very satisfied with DISCOP’s relationship with NATPE. “It has been very successful and has allowed us to get closer to the American television industry at a time when it has more to bring to Central and Eastern Europe than ever before.”

—By Anna Carugati