The Week at MIPTV

MIPTV attendees certainly could feel the impact of climate change, literally and metaphorically, last week. The rain felt like it would never end. It was windy and cold—with the turbulent weather system putting even more pressure on transport hubs already reeling from strikes. And the market itself is changing.

Speaking to reporters as the event came to a close on Thursday, Laurine Garaude, director of the television division at Reed MIDEM, noted, “This has been, in many ways, a milestone MIPTV. We committed to and delivered a production, development and distribution market all in one.”

Garaude was referring to the combination of MIPTV, the inaugural CANNESERIES festival, MIPDoc, MIPFormats, the MIPDrama Buyers Summit, the first In Development and an expanded Junior@MIPTV, delivering a reported attendance of 10,000 delegates from 102 countries. The event instituted some “strategic developments” this year, she said, beginning with “embracing the change in the market: production and distribution are now tightly knit together. This is a fact and it’s accelerating. This is why we introduced In Development.”

The collaboration between MIPTV and CANNESERIES was a two-day creative forum to “fast-track international drama productions around the world. There were some 600 participants, over 300 projects were submitted and 12 projects were pitched.” Among the highlights was the Meet the Showrunners! session with Deutschland 83‘s Jörg Winger, 1992‘s Ludovica Rampoldi and Nobel‘s Mette Bolstad that was moderated by World Screen’s Anna Carugati.

The other strategic development for MIPTV this year was the addition of the CANNESERIES festival to run alongside the market, consisting of public screenings and a competition. Harlan Coben, acclaimed author and creator of The Five and Safe, told World Screen that we’re living in a golden age of global television, with shows from around the world featured in the competition. “MIPTV reflected this by being a powerful business platform and showcase for content from around the world, at all stages of development,” Garaude said.

CANNESERIES, meanwhile, by being open to the public, reflected “the power of the fans, discovering these programs live in front of the professionals,” Garaude explained. “The idea of linking art with business is so pertinent today.”

She noted that “there are things we need to fine-tune—we’re aware of that—but this was season one and there are many seasons to follow.”

The shifting dynamics of the industry were also on display in the MIPTV conference agenda. The first Media Mastermind keynote, on Monday, was from Weidong Yang, president of China’s Youku and Alibaba Digital Media & Entertainment Group. He talked about how original series are driving the Chinese online video platform’s paid subscriber base in his keynote, which was followed by a Q&A with World Screen’s Carugati.

There are 579 million online video users in China, Yang noted, 8 percent of the global base. “This huge number of users asks the industry for many more new ideas that need great imagination. It creates a fantastic opportunity for our industry. And more and more users are willing to pay for high-quality content.”

He added, “In today’s ever-changing world, it’s difficult to know what the audience of tomorrow would like. We cannot simply just use the experience from the past to predict. Successful models from the past are not necessarily going to be popular in the future. As such, we need insights of every vertical consumer group. In order to capture their attention, we need to tailor our shows to surpass their expectations, use new visual aesthetics and adopt new ways of expressing the content.”

Yang stressed the importance of personalized content and recommendation systems to help audiences find what they want to watch. “If they can’t find the content quickly, they will give up, move on and leave our site. AI and data have bridged the gap between users and their content. They help us to define consumers, identify their needs and guide content creation. Empowered by AI and data, we can analyze the consumer and predict their behavioral tendencies. We call it ‘Hollywood meets Silicon Valley.’ We need to innovate in our story creation and set up new models to further define those vertical categories while raising content quality, including the visual experience, storytelling and format quality.”

On Youku’s international requirements, Yang said, “We need drama series and variety show formats and also animation. The international production quality is still more advanced than our local productions. We will catch up, but the global major players can help us to improve our production quality through cooperation. We are starting to explore the possibility of co-producing variety shows, drama series and animation.”

Garaude said that the importance of Asia was demonstrated across the schedule, with sessions on Chinese formats; leading producers from Korea, Japan and India; and a keynote by Astro’s Rohana Rozhan.

MIPTV also featured a keynote address from ex-BuzzFeed executive Matthew Henick. Now the head of content strategy and planning at Facebook, Henick weighed in on the “art and science of making entertainment” and addressed the opportunities for content creation and distribution on mobile.

“There’s more money for content than ever before,” Henick said. “But the problem is that it’s very hard for new entrants in distribution to come up in these spaces.”

The Facebook exec went on to say that there’s more content creation happening globally than ever before across other mediums, outside of television and film. “None of this is making its way to television and film. It’s happening on the 2.4 billion smartphones in the world. This number is supposed to double in the next three to five years.”

Television, Henick noted, is a “closed creative system. It’s hard to break in as a new creator. Further, mobile is social. Television is not a social device, it’s a window. Phones are more than a window. Smartphones allow us to converge creative, distribution and technology. The next leap is going to be social entertainment.”

He said in the future, when content is being created, there will be two “scripts,” one for the show and one laying out “what your audience is going to be doing with your content. It also opens up the opportunity for constant engagement. You’re not confined to a programming schedule. And the consumption is active. It’s not a lean-back experience.”

Henick continued, “This is all about creating content specific to where your distribution is. And this changes everything. The pitch process becomes much different. You need to be able to take an idea and make it specific to the place you’re pitching it and you probably won’t be able to pitch it to 12 buyers at once. It also makes monetization more difficult. And how do you extend [the content] globally if you’re trying to window?”

Social entertainment “makes IP more valuable than ever before.” The challenge, he said, is windowing. “They’re not going to be determined by chronology and geography. If you post a video to YouTube and want it to perform, you have to make sure it goes to every country and once. So we should start thinking about funnels, not windows. You want as many people to see your content as possible and still get compensated for it. And then as you find segments of the audience that are more connected to it, you find different ways to draw more money from them.”

Vertical Networks CEO Tom Wright talked about making content for social-media platforms in his MIPFormats session, which focused on the Snapchat hit Phone Swap. Channel 4 chief Alex Mahon, meanwhile, touted the power of broadcast television and big brands.

The key thread throughout the week, Garaude noted, was the importance of partnerships and creative development. She also discussed the suite of MIP-branded events, with MIP China coming up in June, MIPCOM in October and then MIP Cancun in November. “Our MIP events span the year. At any time of the year, we bring opportunities for new business around the world.”

Catch up on these stories and more on WorldScreen.com, where you will also find our formats, drama and factual recaps.