MIPCOM Turns 25

Guest commentary from Paul Zilk, the president and CEO of Reed MIDEM.

The international television industry has gone through so many changes in the past 25 years that the vocabulary we use today would have been mostly unrecognizable to delegates at the first MIPCOM, back in 1985.

In its 25th-anniversary edition this year, MIPCOM is offering screenings of the latest mobile applications and online games; it is hosting a conference track about connected entertainment; there will be a panel on micro-payments; and a keynote address will speak of television and digital media. It’s like Back to the Future—a film that, coincidentally, was released the year MIPCOM was born, when 2,500 delegates headed to Cannes for the inaugural event. The Back to the Future trilogy contrasts the simplicity of times past with the complex, high-speed nature of life in the future. And that is a perfect analogy for what our industry and MIPCOM have both become.

The international multiplatform content industry today is characterized by the possibility of receiving programming at high speed—anything, anytime, anywhere, on (nearly) any device. That is great news for the consumer, but it poses huge challenges for the modern-day broadcaster who, 25 years ago, operated in an industry with rules that were much simpler. Channels were funded either by the state, or by advertising. Independent broadcasters that were bankrolled by brands made more money if their programs attracted more viewers; healthy ratings battles kept them on their toes and forced commissioners and producers to find new and challenging forms of programming.  But as terrestrial broadcasting’s dominance opened up to cable, satellite, pay television and then the digital era, a multitude of new channels sprang up. Major broadcasters found that delivering monster ratings was an increasingly difficult task.

As niche broadcasters, MTV and its older brother CNN had marked the start of the fragmentation of the television audience even before the birth of MIPCOM.  Advertisers back then were still playing the numbers game and had much to learn about niche audiences. It was one of MTV’s tasks to persuade advertisers to target niche demographics. The dissection of the once amorphous tele­vision audience had begun. But who could foresee the advent of TiVo, VOD and YouTube and how they would change the advertising industry forever?

Since 1985, MIPCOM has been a mirror image of how the television industry has developed. It has welcomed new, thematic channels dealing in everything from history to cooking to sports or music. It has seen channels such as Nickelodeon, Disney Channel or Eurosport develop as international brands.

MIPCOM witnessed the explosion of the indepen­dent production sector in the late ’80s and early ’90s, as companies jostled to feed the ever-growing plethora of cable and satellite channels. The market has played host to numerous larger-than-life executives and loyal friends such as Paramount International Television’s former sales supremo Bruce Gordon, Beta Film’s Jan Mojto and RTL Group’s self-effacing CEO and MIPCOM 2004 Personality of the Year Gerhard Zeiler (who famously refused to take the VIP entrance to the Opening Night Cocktail that year and happily lined up with all the other delegates). 

And there have been moments of pure comedy. One such episode occurred when a senior U.S. studio sales executive, attending a “final” sales meeting with an Eastern European buyer, failed to do his cultural homework, which would have told him that a shake of the head meant “yes” and a nod meant “no.” Not surprisingly, his final selling price was significantly lower than the one his junior had already agreed upon with the bewildered acquisitions executive just a few hours earlier!

So what of MIPCOM during this period of evolution and revolution? It has moved with, and often ahead of, the curve, particularly with respect to the ways in which the industry has been growing internationally. Today, MIPCOM claims the world stage, with companies from over 100 countries represented in Cannes.

MIPCOM has welcomed new players in the entertainment sector such as the telecom giant Orange or the advertising powerhouse Publicis Worldwide. Via its extensive conference program, the market has debated issues such as green programming, discussed when the Internet will provide solid revenues for programming, and enthralled delegates with keynote speakers such as Michael Eisner, Greg Dyke, Jean-Marie Messier and Sir Martin Sorrell.

In the ever-changing world of entertainment, one MIPCOM constant is… Cannes. Since MIPCOM’s elder sister MIPTV first took place on the Côte d’Azur in 1965, this unique town has been a graceful, mostly sunny host to both events, and the delegates who have traversed La Croisette now number in the hundreds of thousands.

MIPCOM’s promise to those delegates is to continue to innovate, and to provide outstanding and valuable business, educational and networking opportunities that serve one of the most exciting industries on this planet. In this always-morphing world of entertainment, that commitment remains as steadfast as ever.