Paul Johnson

World Screen Weekly, April 5, 2007

Director of the Television Division

Reed MIDEM

Paul Johnson has witnessed numerous shifts in the television business in his two decades in the industry. And his biggest challenge today, as the director of the television division at Reed MIDEM, is anticipating those sea changes. Overseeing MIPTV featuring MILIA, MIPDOC, MIPCOM and MIPCOM Junior, Johnson and his team are charged with coming up with the slate of panels, workshops and keynotes that are intended to help content executives make better business decisions. “The challenge is to keep the industry growing,” says Johnson, who joined Reed MIDEM four years ago after 14 years at The Hollywood Reporter, “to introduce practical ways for people to make more money distributing their intellectual copyright. We pull our hair out a lot to make that happen. It’s not an easy job—to be cutting edge every six months is our biggest challenge, and opportunity.”

Being ahead of the curve is a theme that runs across the MIPDOC and MIPTV lineups this April. Johnson cites, in the case of MIPDOC, the return of the International Trailblazers initiative for the second year in a row, recognizing achievements in the factual genre. This year’s Trailblazers are Marshall Curry from the U.S., Larry Weinstein from Canada, Paolo Trombetti from Italy, Uldis Cekulis from Latvia, Jean-Marie Teno from Cameroon, Vincent Moloi from South Africa, Gan Chao from China and Nao Kubota from Japan. “We’re going to be highlighting the fact that they’ve done some incredibly innovative work over the years,” Johnson says.

Johnson also points to the MIPDOC keynote from Al Jazeera’s director-general, Wadah Khanfar. “He’s going to be talking about the launch of Al Jazeera Documentary Channel,” Johnson says. “Al Jazeera is a trailblazer itself—it’s gone from obscurity to global prominence in ten years, which for anyone is a phenomenal achievement. Now they’re reaching out beyond the Arab world and the key message is, We want to co-produce with [international partners] and specifically with Europeans and Americans.”

For MIPTV featuring MILIA, meanwhile, the “Capture Content” theme of the conference schedule will focus on new-media opportunities, with a particular emphasis on advertising. Among the keynote speakers are Joseph Jaffe, the president and “chief interruptor” of the marketing firm Crayon and author of Life After the 30-Second Spot, and Philip Rosedale, the CEO of Linden Lab, which created the Second Life virtual world. Gerhard Zeiler, the CEO of the RTL Group, meanwhile, will bring another perspective in his speech, “Traditional Media Strikes Back.” The other keynote speakers are Jana Bennett, the director of BBC Vision; Ashley Highfield, the director of future media and technology at the BBC; Dr. Hyun-Oh Yoo, the president and CEO of Korea’s SK Communications; and Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the French film director and photographer and recipient of the inaugural Reed MIDEM Green World Award. Arthus-Bertrand, the host of the new Earth From Above documentary series, will discuss: “The Television Industry Can Save the Planet: So Why Not Do It?”

In addition to the conference schedule, Reed MIDEM is working to improve its services with expanded space at the Palais. Following the introduction of the Lerins area at MIPCOM, MIPTV will see the expansion of the Riviera Seaview, and the launch of a new area, Azur, which will be home to among others, Dawn Airey’s recently unveiled company, Iostar.

From expanding services at the Palais to generating a roster of speakers and panels that conference attendees will be excited about, Johnson says he and his team are “trying to create opportunities for more business to be transacted at our market than in the past. We do that across digital media and traditional media, from different regions of the world. We’re trying to make sure that the market is breathing and there’s more energy and excitement every six months.”

And that constant quest to be ahead of the curve is what keeps the job interesting for Johnson. “It’s exciting to work on a day-to-day basis with so many ideas and new perspectives on how to grow the market. It’s like a melting pot of ideas.”

—By Mansha Daswani