DISCOP Opens in Budapest

BUDAPEST, June 18: DISCOP
kicked off in Budapest today with some 1,750 attendees, up from the 1,522 who
attended last year, led by a boom in thematic channels across the Central and
Eastern European region, according to the event’s general manager, Patrick
Jucaud.

“The region is fast
expanding,” Jucaud tells World Screen Newsflash. “Especially in the last 12 months—up to 30
new platforms launched, [with] approximately 350 new thematic channels.”

To accommodate increased
demand, DISCOP added an extra floor of exhibition space this year, for a total
of six floors housing distributors from around the world.

One of the key drivers of
growth this year, Jucaud notes, is the increased representation of distributors
from Central and Eastern Europe. “It’s about a 120-percent increase,” Jucaud
says, citing the presence of production and distribution companies from markets
like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Russia and the
Ukraine.

Jucaud also notes that for
many distributors from outside of the Central and Eastern Europe, “this region
has become their number one foreign marketplace.”

A number of international
distributors are at DISCOP this week with several deals clinched before the
market. Endemol sold formats and ready-made offerings to BBC Lifestyle in
Poland, Nova Television Plus in Bulgaria, RTL Croatia and Kanal D in Romania,
among others. BBC Worldwide, meanwhile, announced yesterday the sale of more
than 300 hours of drama and factual-entertainment programming to the Croatian
broadcaster HRT. Christina Muller, the territory manager for Eastern European
TV sales at BBC Worldwide, called the sale the company’s “biggest deal” ever
with HRT. And AETN International announced a range of agreements today with Czech
TV, Poland’s TVP and Ukraine’s STB, among others. Jonathan South, the director
of international content sales for EMEA at the company, says its slate for
DISCOP this year is “stronger than ever.”

Jucaud is now gearing up
for another event, DISCOP Africa, set for February 2009. “We have a group
traveling throughout Africa talking to TV stations,” he says. “What will
jumpstart the market in the region is the fact that advertisers will take part.
They’re the ones complaining that they don’t see enough high-quality
programming on TV and they would like to see better quality programming and
they’re ready to spend money on the broadcasters.”

—By Mansha Daswani