Video: View From the Top: What Do Buyers and Commissioners Want?

Nat Geo’s Hamish Mykura, Foxtel’s Hannah Barnes, Canal+’s Isabelle Antraygue and ORF’s Andrew Solomon weighed in on acquisition and commissioning trends in a MIPDoc session moderated by World Screen’s Anna Carugati before each receiving a Factual Trendsetter Award.

Solomon is the head of natural history and history at Austrian pubcaster ORF. He oversees two weekly slots on ORF 2, one for blue-chip natural history on Tuesday nights, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and the other for history on Friday evenings.

Antraygue heads up acquisitions and international co-productions for the Planete+ and doc channels at Canal+, as well as buying factual for the CanalPlay SVOD platform.

Barnes is the general manager of the Lifestyle channels at Foxtel, looking after four channels: Lifestyle, Lifestyle HOME, Lifestyle FOOD and Lifestyle YOU. Lifestyle, 20 years old this year, is a “big, iconic Australian brand,” Barnes said.

Mykura is the executive VP of programming and development at National Geographic Global Networks. Based in London, Mykura said his job includes looking for shows to play on Nat Geo outside of the U.S. (171 countries) and, an area that is now taking up more and more time, commissioning into the entire global network.

At the end of the session, which you can watch here, Carugati and Reed MIDEM’s Lucy Smith presented each of the panelists with a World Screen Factual Trendsetter Award.