The Week at MIPCOM

World Screen recaps some of the highlights to come out of this year’s MIPCOM.

Save for an unfortunately timed rain shower on Monday night—as a bevy of stars was hitting the Red Carpet—the weather this MIPCOM had delegates (and organizers) breathing a heavy sigh of relief. (It was, after all, just a year ago that torrential downpours wreaked havoc on the area a day before the market’s opening.)

But every market must have a weather story, and this time around, at least for those of us who arrived early, it was the unsettled skies that had plenty of seasoned travelers battling airsickness–and dealing with their flights being diverted on that rainy Friday before MIPJunior. By Monday though, turbulence horror stories were quickly playing second fiddle to deal-making, screening, negotiations and trend-spotting as almost 14,000 executives descended on Cannes to finance, sell, buy and promote a slew of new shows. Laurine Garaude, the director of the television division at Reed MIDEM, announced at a closing press conference that delegates hailed from 108 countries and included almost 5,000 buyers, some 1,500 of which were representing digital or on-demand platforms.

Garaude also referenced the star power of the keynote lineup, including Personality of the Year Shonda Rhimes. Her session with our own Anna Carugati, World Screen’s group editorial director, filled the Grand Auditorium, had attendees on their feet applauding and was hailed by many as the most enlightening, and moving, session of the market. In her long conversation with Carugati, Rhimes weighed in on her evolution as a writer and showrunner and her approach to the creative process. Her transition from movie writer to TV writer was a challenging one. “I would spend 300 days doing nothing, 40 days thinking, 15 days writing and one day celebrating the fact that I had written something. Suddenly you have to churn out a script every eight to nine days, and you have 300 people working for you. And you have to run a writers’ room and know what you’re doing. It was zero to 3,000 in an instant.”

On when and where she writes, Rhimes said, “As long as I have headphones on my head and music in my ears, I can write wherever I am…. My assistants will tell you [that] I say all the dialogue aloud when I’m writing, very passionately, and I act it all out. It’s embarrassing.”

Carugati also interviewed Disney/ABC’s Ben Sherwood following his keynote address on Tuesday. “We believe in a commitment to the very best storytelling,” Sherwood told delegates in his keynote, which began with an anecdote about Disney’s long history in France. “Serving global audiences is more important than ever. Today, everywhere we turn, we face profound challenge and disruption around the world.”

He referenced the terrorist attacks in France and the “tumultuous” presidential campaign in the U.S. as reflections of “these complicated times. There’s so much talk of building borders and walls. We believe as storytellers that we would do well to remember our global heritage and our traditions. We should meet this unsettled moment by doing what we have always done best, creating connections and understanding through the unifying power of great storytelling.”

Great storytelling was also the focus of the keynote by Susanne Daniels, the global head of original content for YouTube. “YouTube is a place where individualism thrives, diversity flourishes and where new genres and content formats are launched every single day,” Daniels explained. “It’s where a new generation of entertainers share their personal stories to a world that is eager to listen and talk back. I truly believe this is the evolution of television—a platform where distribution is democratized, and where global communities drive what’s popular.”

YouTube is not “planning to mirror Netflix or Amazon in bringing TV to digital, or recreate the programming themes of MTV,” she said. The video-sharing site has a simple thesis, Daniels said: “Identify YouTube’s most engaging stars and top genres and invest in the content that fans tell us they want. In other words, let our community drive our content.”

As for how all this content from traditional and new platforms is being monetized on the global market, the landscape for all-rights deals appears to be shifting. Mediaset’s Zelda Stewart, Stan’s Mike Sneesby, UKTV’s Alexandra Finlay and Bonnier Broadcasting’s Cathrine Wiernik weighed in on buying trends at the Acquisition Superpanel: Global Strategies session. Organized with World Screen, the panel saw the programmers talking about rights negotiations and windowing in the four competitive markets they operate in—Sweden, Australia, the U.K. and Italy—with World Screen‘s Carugati. At the end of the session, they were each presented with a World Screen Content Trendsetter Award for their contributions to the media business.

Catch up on all these stories and more on WorldScreen.com, where you can also read our recaps of the week’s formats, drama and factual programming news. Look out for our MIPJunior and kids’ programming news recap tomorrow.