A Note from the Publisher

Ricardo Guise, the president and publisher of World Screen, on the cancellation of MIPTV 2020.

Wednesday was probably the worst day in my entire professional life—and I have had a long career in this business. An invisible enemy abruptly ended one of our most important editions. For the past three months, we’ve been hard at work putting together a top-notch MIPTV edition—securing important interviews, assigning in-depth articles, beautifully designing each and every page—only to see it all evaporate in front of our eyes.

After Reed MIDEM’s announcement to pull the plug on this year’s MIPTV due to concerns over the fast-spreading Covid-19, we made the difficult decision to cancel the April print edition of World Screen before it went to press.

I made the decision that all companies that placed advertisements in the April (MIPTV) print edition of World Screen would be released from their contractual obligations for this issue. We just do not think it’s correct to force anyone to advertise in an edition that is no longer distributed at the convention it was intended for.

No one is to blame for the spread of this virus, and we are all trying to do our best amid this challenging situation.

The impact of this loss to our small independent company is significant, and we hoped our partners would assist us as we navigate these difficult times.

After spending most of the day (and night) writing to each of our clients who placed an ad in this edition, I was drained, physically and emotionally. But then, something wonderful happened—I started to receive a huge outpouring of support from our business partners (I would like to call them friends). The vast majority have helped us mitigate our losses.

After having a very long and bleak day, I realized in the morning how lucky I am to be in this business and how grateful I am to have such solid support from our partners.

Ricardo Guise can be reached at rguise@worldscreen.com.