Alex Mahon, Bibiane Godfroid & Bouchra Rejani on Diversity, Media Trends

The MIPCOM keynote schedule opened today with a wide-ranging conversation between Channel 4’s Alex Mahon, WeMake’s Bouchra Rejani and Newen Studios’ Bibiane Godfroid on leadership styles, trends in the media business, implementing diversity initiatives and more.

“There is more demand for content than ever,” said Mahon, CEO of Channel 4, in her remarks during the Women in Leadership keynote super session. “We are all overwhelmed by choice; when we go into any platform, AVOD or SVOD, what should I choose? This leads to choice paralysis; the overload of choice leads us often to go back to the same thing. So you get this peculiar mix where we all want to try new things, broadcasters and streamers want to find new things, but people want to choose things that are really big and marketed as well.”

Mahon added that what’s working well in streaming also works in linear television: “The big hits are the big hits across both. If anything, the streamers are now looking for bigger and bigger shows that work in every country. They’ve moved away from niche.”

For Godfroid, CEO of Newen Studios, the biggest challenges today are finding the right talent for shows and acquiring scale. “We tripled the turnover in three years,” she said. “We are creating a big company with the same DNA because the objective is to make cross-fertilization, cross projects between the different companies.”

On whether Newen is looking to acquire additional production companies, Godfroid said, “There are some countries in Europe we are not in.”

Meanwhile, Rejani, founder and CEO of WeMake, said the company has benefited from its small size. “When we launched the company, our vision from the start was to address the streamers’ needs. The streamers and the high demand for content is a huge opportunity.”

The conversation then moved to diversity and inclusion, with Godfroid noting that more than 50 percent of Newen Studios’ senior management is female. “I am creating a diversity and inclusion committee. And we have to implement more of that inclusion.”

“For me, promoting diversity and inclusion has been a long fight,” Rejani said. “To be honest, I think the French TV landscape has slightly changed under the pressure of what the U.S. is doing and pushed by the streamers. There is a growing demand for diversity and inclusion, but we are very far from what we have to do. What can we do to fight for better representation of French society? We’ve seen a big rise in racism. What we can at least do is push for the next generation to do what we were not capable of doing.”

Mahon said quotas and targets are key. “Ultimately, if we fail to change, we will not be appealing to the audience. The streamers don’t work with new talent, they work with established talent.”

“We still have to work out how to work for better equality,” Rejani said. “How can we help the youth to have hope, that they can at the end have inspirational stories that resemble them?”