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April 2014
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11,000 television and digital executives including some 4,000 buyers descended on Cannes for the
51st edition of MIPTV. With The New Age Of Storytelling a key theme, MIPTV witnessed the
continued development of high-end drama and formats originating from around the world, strong
co-production activity, an emerging international market for online content creators — reflected in
the successful launch of MIP Digital Fronts and a coming together of online and offline players
miptv
iDEALS
Deals show active global marketplace
DYNAMIC deal-making around
completed shows, formats and coproductions, not to mention a few
high-profile channel launches and
corporate acquisitions, underlined MIPTV’s undisputed status
as the engine room of the new
global entertainment economy.
Drama, as always, was in strong
demand. High-profile deals saw
MGM sell Fargo to Soho New
Zealand and eOne sell AMC’s
Halt and Catch Fire to Canal+
and HBO Nordic. Similar scale
deals included All3Media International’s Anzac Girls to Globo/
GNT Brazil and TV2 Denmark;
BetaFilm’s Velvet to Rai Uno
and M6; and Tandem/Lionsgate’s Sex, Lies And Handwriting to Bell Media Canada, TFI
France and Pro7Sat1 Germany.
BBC Worldwide screened its
new political drama series The
Honourable Woman starring
Maggie Gyllenhaal, who took
part in a Q&A after the screening. Just hours after screening
BBCWW reported sales to Norway and France.
There was also good news for
Atlantique action series Transporter, which has sold to a range
of markets including Italy, Turkey and Latin America.
Business in the factual TV arena
was equally brisk, with BBC
Worldwide selling titles to TVB
Hong Kong and VOD platform
Tencent in China. Other companies to report strong trade included Off the Fence, which
sold a slate of factual shows to
Hubu Media Group in China;
TCB Media, which secured a
range of deals with SBS Belgium, TV4 Sweden and Nine
Network Australia; Zodiak
Rights, which unveiled a content
partnership with Ovation; Prime
Entertainment Group, which licensed packages to Chello Central Europe and My Sport
Channel; and GRB which sealed
agreements with broadcasters in
Asia, Africa and Europe.
UK-based distributors continued to be strong performers in
this genre, with Shine International selling Educating York-
shire to broadcasters including
TVNZ, SVT and ABC Australia
and DCD Rights selling music
and documentary programming
to DirecTV Latin America,
Globosat Brazil and Phoenix
Satellite TV China. There was
also interesting news at France
TV Distribution, which signed a
multi-year factual output deal
with Red Bull Media-owned
Terra Mater Factual Studios.
ARTE, too, had a successful
market, licensing documentaries
to Italy’s Channel 50.
A key feature of deal-making at
recent markets has been diversification in the kind of companies buying and selling content.
A great example of the new
breed of deal-making was Red
Bull Media House’s sale of 150
titles to Korea Telecom’s VOD
service Olleh. Another next-gen
partnership saw Fuji TV licence
Japanese drama to Crunchyroll
for Europe and the Americas.
Linked to this expansion in
deal-making has been an increased appetite for volume arrangements. ITV Studios Glob-
Anzac Girls (All3Media International)
al Entertainment, for example,
sold more than 500 hours of
content to digital platforms and
TV broadcasters across China
and Thailand, including the
crime drama Endeavour. Deals
included a multi-year drama
output deal with Tencent and a
deal with Thai pay-TV broadcaster Next Step for 300 hours
of factual TV.
The Honourable Woman (BBCWW)
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miptv
iDEALS
NEWS IN BRIEF
ITALIAN public broadcaster RAI
unveiled plans to restructure its
commercial arm RAI Trade. The
new company will be given an
expanded remit and a new name,
to be unveiled in the near future.
The enlarged entity will launch in
July and is to be headed by CEO
Liugi De Siervo, currently a
director at RAI Trade.
HI-5 WORLD, the company
behind kids franchise Hi-5, has
entered into a co-production
venture with KRU Studios to
produce a localised version of the
show in Malaysia. Production on
25 episodes will start in July
2014 for broadcast later this year.
GERMANY’s ZDF has teamed up
with BBC Worldwide to
co-produce One Planet, a natural
history series that will be made
by the BBC’s Natural History Unit.
The 6 x 60-minute series follows
a previous partnership between
the two on Frozen Planet.
AFRICA’s Cote Ouest sold more
than 200 hours of content at
MIPTV. Titles covered the
animation, entertainment and
drama genres, an example being
120-episode soap opera Windeck
which was licensed to the
Multichoice platform in South
Africa.
BBC WORLDWIDE sold period
drama The Musketeers to a
range of partners including NT1
for France, SPI International for
Central and Eastern Europe. It
also struck a deal with Netflix for
multiple territories for the first
season and the upcoming
second series.
Endeavour (ITVS GE)
Kids deal-making was also busy.
DQ Entertainment and Method
announced a second series of
Peter Pan for ZDF, France TV,
De Agostini and Tele-Quebec,
while 9 Story Entertainment revealed a slew of international
partners for Camp Lakebottom
including Disney. Other noteworthy kids deals included Saban Brands’ Julius Jr. to Disney
Junior in Italy; BRB International’s Canimals to Hulu Kids;
PGS Entertainment’s Super 4 to
Cartoon Network in Italy and
LatAm; and Red Arrow International’s Esio Trot to ARD.
Normaal’s Peanuts production
will be distributed by France TV
Distribution while UK indie Zig
Zag revealed that it has acquired
Japanese format Ultimate Brain
to remake for children’s BBC
channel CBBC.
As the above kids deals demonstrate, global pay-TV broadcasters
continue to be hugely-important
customers for content creators.
Other illustrations of this saw
Turner take Platinum’s Matt Hatter Chronicles and D-Rights’
Beast Saga for its Asian services.
Some international deals cross
both genres and territories.
Among the most strategically
significant alliances to be announced during the market was
Modern Times Group’s content
partnership with SPT, which
covered film and TV content for
the Nordic market.
Channel launches included Azteca and Cisneros Media Distribution’s partnership with content distributor AfricaXP to
Continued success for the sniffer
THE SNIFFER, a drama series about a detective with an acute sense of
smell from Ukranian producer Film.UA, sold to France on the eve of
MIPTV. The series, which was selected by The Wit for one of its Fresh TV
presentations during MIPTV, has also sold well in Ukraine, Israel,
Kazakhstan, Belarus and the Baltic territories, and was Russia’s
highest-rated TV series in 2013. “The Sniffer is the most successful
product we have produced,” Film.UA CEO Igor Storchak said. “The story
is both special and simple and we believe it will find success with local
producers in Europe and North America.”
The Sniffer,
from Ukrainian producer Film.UA
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launch Romanza+Africa, a telenovela channel targeting English-speaking audiences in Africa. MIPTV also saw Vice Media
and Fremantlemedia launch
food channel Munchies.
Other deals of significance included the company acquisition
of Eagle Rock by United Music
Group.
There was a 4K co-production
deal involving Chinese producer
Rare Media and French company
Camera Lucida to make 4K documentary Moon for Planete+
and France Televisions. A reminder that home entertainment
is still a significant market for
content owners was Gaumont International Television’s deals for
supernatural drama Hemlock
Grove with Shout!Factory and
Kaleidoscope.
miptv
iMIP DIGITAL FRONTS
Industry welcomes Digital Fronts launch
MIP DIGITAL FRONTS, the
new international screenings for
original online video — which
launched the international digital content markteplace — featured a series of MIP Digital
Fronts showcases. Sessions on
the first day of the two-day event
featured YouTube presenting
some of the most popular performers on its multi-channel networks (MCN), illustrating what
the video-sharing website can
do for creative talents.
A session hosted by Michael
Stevens, the US creator/presenter of YouTube channel
VSauce, featured a number of
artists
including
Rhett
Mclaughlin and Link Neal, of
the Rhett & Link comedy duo;
Jack and Finn Harries, direc-
tors at Digital Native Studios
in the UK; and Ana Kasparian, host of the popular US online news service The Young
Turks. “Our audience is a huge
part of our content; you’ll get
an immediate evaluation of
your shows from them, and
they will hold you to account,”
Kasparian said.
“Working with brands has
helped our company, Digital
Native Studios, experiment and
learn to improve the quality of
shows on our YouTube channel
JacksGap, which has three million subscribers,” UK brothers
Jack and Finn Harries, said.
UK video-games devotee Joseph Garrett used MIP Digital Fronts to announce the
launch of an online kids-ed-
ucation channel, which will
be created with YouTube
multi-channel network Maker Studios.
The new channel will be an offshoot of Stampylonghead, Garret’s existing kids entertainment
YouTube channel, which is
based on the Minecraft video
game and has more than 2.3
million subscribers.
Of the new venture, he said:
“Minecraft has an open sandbox that you can create in and
watch videos. If you take that
engagement and put it in the
education space, the young audience will relate to it.”
Garret and American musician
Chester See were presented as
“two of the most talented performers that mainstream TV has
Modern times
YouTube’s Michael Stevens
Digital Native Studios’ Jack Harries
VICE Media only really set its mind to
becoming an online multichannel entity
two years ago, but at this MIPTV it
launched a food channel, to go alongside
news and sports channels also on
stream this year — bringing its total to
eight.
“You can’t really call yourself a modern
media company, like a Time Warner or
whatever, unless you have a sports play,
unless you have a news play, unless you
have a music play,” Eddy Moretti,
vice-chief creative officer said.
“Increasingly things like food and travel
are important to these media companies
as well.”
Vice’s food channel, Munchies, is a joint
venture with FremantleMedia. “There’s a
real passion among kids for food. These
days, it’s cool to cook. Kids with tattoos
do it,” Moretti said.
One such tattooed guy is rapper Action
Bronson, whose Munchies show, F*ck,
That’s Delicious, takes viewers on a
culinary and musical tour of the world,
exploring local cuisines from New
Zealand to Croatia.
Digital Native Studios’ Finn Harries
Maker Studios’ Rene Rechtman
Action Bronson
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miptv
iMIP DIGITAL FRONTS
never seen,” by Rene Rechtman, president of
international at US-based Maker Studios.
During Rechtman’s MIP Digital Fronts presentation, he said the two Maker Studio artists
personified how on-screen entertainment has
changed.
“We’re in a very special time right now. We’re
democratising media,” he said. “We’re one of
the first companies to be at the cross-section
of technology and creativity. There’s a fundamental shift happening and we can’t ignore it.
And we do it for 5% to 10% of the cost of
traditional TV.”
Jimmy Lee is the post-production arm of
agency Sid Lee, best known for its work
with Adidas. Creative executive PierreMathieu Fortin was at Digital Fronts to
screen some of the work his company had
done both for TV and the web. “Brands
want exposure, and broadcasters want
amazing content,” he said.
As of 2012, Cirque de Soleil took partial
ownership in Sid Lee. “It was an amazing
venture for both of us. Cirque was already a
client,” Fortin said. Sid Lee manages Cirque’s
brand, expansion, and stage sets.
Edward Averdieck, the entrepreneur who joined forces with singing superstar Peter Gabriel to pioneer some of the early online-music ventures, is now CEO/co-founder of
CueSongs. “We want to create a level-playing
field between those who work for major
broadcasters and those who work in online
TV,” he said. “I am here at Digital Fronts to
see the networks that we are trying to reach.”
Gabriel is the majority shareholder in CueSongs, which aims to license music by hit artists and major publishers, worldwide, at reasonable prices.
Dailymotion presented two of its most popular content providers at MIP Digital Fronts:
Marawa the Amazing, a hoola-hoop performer who is currently the world record
holder, having danced while supporting 160
hoops; and action-and-adventure sports specialist David Carlier, who founded the Freeride World Tour back in 1996.
The session, which was opened by Marc Eychenne, vice-president international content
at Dailymotion, and chief marketing officer
Damien du Chene, featured a video compilation of some of the platform’s most popular
performers.
According to du Chene, Dailymotion now
has so many content providers that choosing
two to be at MIP Digital Fronts was virtually
impossible: “They create the passion on the
platform, and we are incredibly proud to have
been able to co-produce so much great content,” he said. “And our commitment to coproduction will only grow now that we have a
700 sq m studio in Paris. And the first person
to use the studio, before it was finished incidentally, was Marawa.”
Twitter makes TV better, Roy says
Twitter’s Deb Roy
IN HIS Media Mastermind keynote speech
Twitter’s chief media scientist Deb Roy told the
MIPTV audience that the company is a “force
multiplier” for television viewing, delivering
“the social soundtrack for TV”. He continued:
“The biggest, most pervasive medium ever
invented — television — is being intertwined
with a global social medium, Twitter.”
He argued that “Twitter makes television
better”, and that taking attention away from
the TV screen to a second screen doesn’t
automatically mean that first screen is
diminished.
He suggested that Twitter has three key
defining properties: “It’s live, it’s public and it’s
conversational. We use it in the moment to talk
to everyone who cares to listen. And we use it
to converse: to exchange words… A
synchronised social soundtrack for whatever is
happening in the moment, as a shared
experience.” Soundtracks were originally
designed to enhance the film experience:
rather than being a threat, he said. “I’s hard to
imagine today what E.T. would have been like
without the soundtrack. Jaws, without the
soundtrack was a silly robotic fish splashing
around in the water!”
He moved on to whether Twitter drives people
to tune in to TV shows — can it bump up the
ratings? Roy showed a graph of tweets per
minute about a Japanese news programme,
when the Twitter volume suddenly spiked
when the news anchor mentioned that a story
was coming up about a prominent actress,
5
with the editorial team also tweeting this
message. “If we look at what happened in the
next few minutes, the tune-in on TV almost
doubled,” he said.
Roy spoke of the need for an “emerging
standard” in measuring TV, using the social
signals; Nielsen is working on a Twitter TV
Rating chart in the US.
He introduced Twitter’s TV Amplify scheme. “A
new capability that has been engineered
essentially to augment and add to the organic
social soundtrack,” as he described it. The
case study was the NFL: audiences watching
American Football matches while using Twitter.
Amplify helps the NFL send out tweets with up
to 30 seconds of video of just-aired content
from television, complete with a pre-roll
advertisement. The idea: people who aren’t
watching the live event on TV can see what just
happened: and potentially then tune in. “To use
Twitter to broadcast and potentially extend the
reach beyond the set of people who were
watching the programme,”
Roy concluded with a challenge to the
creatives in the MIPTV audience: “I actually
think the real puzzle in social TV and what’s
happening with Twitter and television comes
down to storytelling,” he said. “So the
challenge and the opportunity is in the hands
of storytellers in how to tap into this new
creative storytelling, and evolve storytelling”.
Creatives should be prepared to “look to the
data, and to really go and pioneer potentially
whole new genres” of television.
mipcom
iMIP DIGITAL FRONTS
Optimising the online experience
SNAKE Eats Crocodile, a MIP
Digital Fronts session featuring
Rightster’s Charlie Muirhead
and Sam Barcroft of Barcroft
Media, examined video optimisation.
Muirhead kicked off by talking
in detail about Rightster, which
has existed for some three years.
“As a business, our focus has
been creating a partnership with
content creators, traditional media businesses and new media
businesses, allowing Rightster to
be the one-stop shop for all the
digital back-end and monetisation,” said Muirhead. The slogan
is “upload once — commercialise everywhere.”
Muirhead said the big challenge
online is fragmentation. Between
content owners, audience and
online publishers, there’s a lot
competing for the right to exist,
the right to time.
“People tend to think that online video is just a depository to
push content into. It’s not true.
You have to promote it and get
excited about it,” said Barcroft,
whose company produces clips
and shows that have generated
over 250,000 comments so far
this year. A few examples include Cheetah Chases Impala
(six million views), Flying Lion
(31 million views), and Snake
Eats Crocodile (24 million
views). “Barcroft are the content experts, incredible at picking out these stories,” said Muirhead. “Our job is to make sure
all those experiences get shared
across platforms.”
Charlie Muirhead
and Sam Barcroft
Digital studios take centre stage
DURING the MIP Digital
Fronts digital studios showcase,
Collective Digital Studio, SXM,
Smokebomb, What’s Trending,
Bigballs Films and others
screened their latest shows and
formats in a presentation hosted
by What’s Trending co-founder
Shira Lazar.
Collective Digital Studio’s Paul
Kontonis introduced Video
Game High School, an action/
comedy series about “best
friends, first loves, and landing
that perfect head shot”. It’s a coproduction with Rocket Jump, a
firm founded by YouTube star
Freddie Wong. Season three is
being shot at the moment, shot
in a mixture of 24 and 48 framesper-second. Collective is now
bundling up the first three seasons in a 17 x 30 minute package
for distribution.
SXM, showed its The Comment
Show — an interactive talk-show
that’s made available on music
video network Vevo. SXM produces shows for various online
networks, as well as for brands
— Samsung is one of its clients.
Smokebomb
Entertainment
vice-president and digital/creative director Jay Bennett and actor, writer and director David
Hewlett showed State Of Syn, a
sci-fi thriller that runs across
multiple platforms and devices.
“It’s a series, it’s an app, it’s a
Google Glass game and it’s a social experience,” Bennett said.
Vuguru showed its scripted series Play Nice, which is being
sold at MIPTV by FremantleMedia. Vuguru CEO Larry
Tanz said that five years ago
MIPTV delegates saw the best new original online videos at the MIP Digital Fronts showcases
6
“digital was not really a place
people were going for premium
programming, and now we’re
seeing some of the best shows
on digital platforms… who have
really jumped from what we
consider as digital content to
television content.”
miptv
iSTARS AT MIP DIGITAL FRONTS
David Hewlett stars in State
Of Syn, Smokebomb’s
award-winning transmedia
storyworld set in the future
where technology reigns
Ray Wise, star of innovative branded content
comedy series for Chipotle, Farmed And
Dangerous
Hoola-Hoop World Champion
and Dailymotion star, Marawa
the Amazing, performed at the
company’s presentation at MIP
Digital Fronts
Actor, musician, comedian and
YouTube star Chester See was in
town with Maker Studios for
MIP Digital Fronts
Shira Lazar, co-founder and host of What’s Trending, the
award-winning, Emmy nominated, daily live interactive online show,
was in Cannes for MIP Digital Fronts
Ana Kasparian, co-host and producer of US-based
online news programme The Young Turks, was in
Cannes to take part in MIP Digital Fronts
7
miptv
iKEYNOTES
Industry leaders take the Cannes stage
LEADING executives from all
areas of the international media
presented during MIPTV’s series of Media Mastermind Keynote talks.
Early in the week Jan Frouman,
group managing director of Red
Arrow Entertainment, presented the company’s new series,
Bosch. He was joined on stage
by the series’ producer Henrik
Bastin, author of the Harry
Bosch series of crime books Michael Connelly, and actor Titus
Welliver who plays homicide detective Harry Bosch.
The full series of Bosch was
commissioned by Amazon Studios after the pilot won rave re-
views from Connelly fans. Frouman praised Amazon’s pilot
model: “Amazon makes the pilot available to its user audience
for a period of time, whether it’s
a month or two months, and
they gather data,” he said. “It’s a
transparent process, as opposed
to a backroom negotiation.”
In a separate keynote later in the
week, Roy Price, director of
Amazon Studios, disclosed that
it had produced 24 pilots and
given the go-ahead for the production of 11 high-end series.
“Our priority is great shows for
Amazon customers,” he said.
“People are interested in original ideas and engage with that,
which is why we started Amazon
Studios in the first place.”
Tuesday afternoon featured Studiocanal chairman and CEO
Olivier Courson and Tandem
Communications president Rola
Bauer. Courson described how
his company had been set up as
an alternative to US studios:
“US production is amazing, but
mainly focused on the domestic
market. Our domestic market is
Europe, so we begin with European stories and talent.”
Bauer said Courson’s emphasis
on European talent was a key
reason why Tandem joined the
Studiocanal family. But she
stressed the group was not turn-
ing its back on North America:
“Every time we develop something we try to find stories that
will transcend boundaries. Shows
like Crossing Lines and Labyrinth are proof that European
content can cross the pond.”
Starz CEO Chris Albrecht
talked about how difficult it is to
make international drama coproductions work. For Albrecht, whose recent projects at
Starz have included Black Sails,
The White Queen, The Missing
and Power, successful co-productions usually have “a central
vision agreed on at the outset,
trust between partners and a
producer you can rely on”. In
Studiocanal chairman and CEO Olivier
Courson (centre) and Tandem
Communications president Rola Bauer,
with moderator Le Film Francais’
Francois-Pier Pelinard-Lambert
Red Arrow group managing director of global
production and distribution group Jan Frouman
Actor Titus Welliver (left), writer Michael Connelly and Bosch producer Henrik Bastin
8
miptv
iKEYNOTES
addition, “they need time, because there are so many stages
of the process where there is potential for disagreement”.
Chairman and CEO of Publicis
Groupe Maurice Levy sees no
real potential for conflict with
the traditional TV industry in
the fact that advertising agencies are increasingly making
content: “We are storytellers
about brands, so we are in the
advertising business, and the TV
industry is in the entertainment
business. But it’s true that a lot
of the directors come from our
world, and a lot of them make
great adverts alongside successful careers in film and TV. There
is a long list of great film direc-
tors, such as Ridley Scott and
Alan Parker, who have shot
commercials,” he said.
According to Deb Roy, Twitter’s
chief media scientist, Twitter
Amplify has the potential to
drive users to live TV broadcasts. “It opens up a new pathway from content producer to
audience,” he said.
Taking the example of an American football game, he said Amplify would allow the NFL to
embed a 30-second clip of justaired footage in a tweet directly
targeted at a Twitter user who
was engaging in a hash-tagged
conversation — whether or not
they were actually watching the
Chairman and CEO of
the Publicis Groupe
Maurice Levy
TV. “It’s the ability to take tiny
bits of TV and use Twitter to
broadcast them and extend the
reach,” he said.
According to YouTube’s global
head of entertainment Alex
Carloss on-demand and online
video are competing with every
other source of entertainment
these days, rather than with each
other. “Today no one cares
where the content comes from,
it just has to be good. The fact
that over 60% of the views for
our creators’ videos come from
outside of their home country,
and that 91% of the audience
for K-Pop videos is outside
South Korea, proves that.”
Starz’ Chris
Albrecht
Amazon Studios’
Roy Price
YouTube’s Alex Carloss
9
miptv
iMIPCUBE
SESSION FOCUSES
ON BETTER STORIES
BIG DATA is like teenage sex,
Magine’s Mahesh Kumar told
delegates at the MIPCube
Talk, A Date With Data:
Everyone Thinks Everyone
Else Is Doing It, But No One
Really Knows How To Do It.
But the director of special
projects at the Swedish
cloud-based OTT service
said: “It’s a great time to be
in the media industry
because of data,” adding:
“The real holy grail will be
how to tell better stories,
powered by data.”
Julian McCrea of the UK’s
Portal Entertainment told the
MIPCube audience that data
can help tell stories better
especially for those
companies which, unlike the
big studios, don’t have the
budgets to research viewers’
reaction to a new release.
IBM business development
executive Odile PerraudinJuillard told of the company’s
data-powered robot Watson,
which is built to understand
the English language
including slang and curse
words. Watson was recently
used to challenge winners of
the game show Jeopardy, and
won. “We’re now moving
ahead to develop a system
that can understand and
anticipate what an audience
is looking for,” she said.
Magine’s Mahesh Kumar
Closed-door debate on data
THE DIGITAL Minds Summit
held at the Carlton on the first day
of MIPTV, was a closed-door educational and executive think tank,
gathering together some of the
sharpest minds in the media industries. The event, which was examining how to create actionable intelligence with data, featured speakers
Scott Button of Unruly Media,
Eric Scherer of France Televisions
and Altimeter Group’s Susan
Etlinger chairing the session.
“There were several important
conclusions to be gleaned from
today’s session,” Etlinger, an analyst at Altimeter Group, said. “It
became increasingly clear that we
in the US tend to focus a lot on
game mechanics, by that I mean
who is winning, who is losing,
and who just acquired who. But
what needs to be taken into consideration are the real human issues, like how to build a company
to make the most out of data,
while respecting privacy and not
losing the trust of the public.”
The solution lies, says Etlinger, in
more communication between
departments: “Ultimately, creatives need to learn more about
the kinds of data available, and
data crunchers need to learn
more about understanding data
in context. There needs to be
more interplay between the creative and quantitative sides of the
business.”
Online video moves into mainstream
DURING the MIPCube session
A Fireside Chat With The Gamechangers, Brent Weinstein,
head of digital media, United
Talent Agency, told the audience
that new media companies, including What’s Trending, Machinima, AwesomenessTV, Tastemade, and FailBlog “are the
media companies, not of the future, but of the present”. He added: “The access they have to huge
audiences is something that no
one would have expected just a
few years ago.”
What’s Trending was born from a
desire to “make a broadcast-quality format” because web shows
lacked the reputation of strong
production. But it also had to be
authentic and interactive for web
audiences, the company’s co-
founder Shira Lazar said, adding:
“The sky’s the limit for companies
like ours who were there from the
beginning, and who have credibility in the digital realm.”
Ben Huh of Cheezburger, which
promises “videos, pictures, text, a
multi-format way of delivering a
way to make you laugh every single day,” said: “We’re one of the
largest destinations on the net.”
Cheezburger recently raised $35m
in venture capital funding —
partly on the strength of its halfbillion pageviews per month. Failblog, a sister channel, is a top-five
YouTube channel. At Cheezburger headquarters, 50 people are
employed in the service of “curating humour”.
Vimeo’s Kerry Trainor said creative professionals drive the major10
ity of the platform’s growth.
“Vimeo was the first site to offer
true HD streaming over the net,
and that solidified its relationship
with professional high-quality
creators,” Trainor said. “But the
exciting next-phase is building
revenue for creators. We’re only
taking 10% of the revenue and
our commitment to creators won’t
ever change.
“We believe the ad-supported
economy will continue to grow
but I also believe that advertising
is only one business model. The
opportunity for great creators to
charge directly for their work is
exciting, and we want to power
that market. If you want to charge
$15 for 20 minutes of content, go
ahead. There are creators doing
it, and doing well.”
miptv
iMEETINGS OF MINDS
Delegates share co-pro knowledge
THE THIRD international drama co-production summit in the
Carlton hotel brought together
many of the leading decisionmakers in the business. All together, around 60 key figures in
the co-pro sector used the closeddoor Summit to make new contacts and explore the potential
for developing projects.
One of those attending was Peter
Benedek, co-founder of leading
agency UTA. Speaking to the
MIPTV News, he said: “It was a
really useful exercise, involving a
terrific group of international executives. Even those of us who
have a lot of experience have
much to learn about how to put
together co-productions.”
That positive assessment was
echoed by Philipp Kreuzer, MD
of Bavaria Media: “There’s a lot
of curiosity in this area so the
Summit was a great opportunity
to catch up with people you already know and to make new
contacts. I thought there was a
good mix of producers, commissioning editors and distributors.”
A closed-door event, the Summit
was supported by UTA, Telefilm
Canada and the Canada Media
Fund. Among the companies taking part were the BBC, Starz, TF1,
ZDF, HBO and DR Denmark.
UTA’s Peter Benedek: “Even those of us with
experience have much to learn”
Future Of Kids TV Summit makes debut
MIPTV 2014 hosted the first-ever
Future Of Kids TV Summit —
sponsored by Shaw Rocket Fund
and SK Broadband — an event
that brought together over 120
senior children’s entertainment
executives to address key issues
surrounding digital disruption in
kids’ creation and distribution.
Talks were given by key players
in the kids sector, including
Aardman Animations’ Daniel
Efergan and Hopster’s Nicholas
Walters. Interlude’s Yoni Bloch
demonstrated his online interactive web application Treehouse.
Journalist Stuart Dredge gave a
presentation in which he discussed how “Apps are creating
networks for children’s TV, almost by stealth. Rovio is making
Angry Birds cartoons, but it’s
also licensing shows to distribute
within its apps.”
The first Future Of Kids TV Summit at MIPTV
11
miptv
iMIPDoc
MIPDoc hosts top names in factual
MIPDOC is where co-financing
and co-production, as well as a
unique global factual content library, come together. The event
offers two days of conferences,
keynotes and screenings, alongside access to top decision-makers in financing, commissioning,
distribution and production.
MIPDoc keynoter Dean Possenniskie, A+E Networks managing
director EMEA, said the group is
in rude health as it marks its 30th
birthday, and ready to take on
new challenges.
“In my four years at A+E, we’ve
been focusing on international
markets to drive growth,” he said.
“A+E’s recent takeover of the
joint venture channels it runs in
Italy and Asia is part of its plan to
wholly own its assets, and launch
more channels fast. It’s not a
strategy for the UK market,” he
said. But in many of the European and Asian markets, “where the
option arises to take ownership,
we will.”
MIPDoc speaker, Sam Toles,
Vimeo’s newly appointed vice-
“Vimeo is the Bloomingdale’s of
VOD to YouTube’s Walmart.”
He added: “We have the best-inindustry VOD player. We had
168 million unique visitors in
January alone. And while YouTube has 100 million free plays
to 10,000 purchases, on Vimeo,
the revenue share works out the
same: $55,000 for their producers and $54,000 for ours.”
Toles’ role is to help producers
maximise their audience by customising and marketing their
Vimeo sites. And he has $10mworth of marketing help to give
those who have raised $10,000
through crowd funding.
“Marketing is about converting
viewers to buyers,” he said. “So a
successful crowd-funding campaign for a project demonstrates
that it already has a committed
audience, and these are the ones
we can help.”
MIPDoc Keynote, Paul Welling,
head of channels for Discovery
Networks in Central & Eastern
Europe, Middle East and Africa
(CEEMEA), introduced ID Ex-
Tabloid presenter Jerry Springer
Dean Possenniskie, A+E Networks managing
director EMEA
president of content acquisitions, told MIPDoc delegates:
Focus on Israeli docs
The weekend
by numbers
NATIONAL Geographic Channel’s
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
was the most requested title at
MIPDoc this year. Unsurprisingly, in
the year of the 100th anniversary
of the outbreak of World War I, war
docs were also popular with
Warsaw 1935 3D (Warsaw 1935
— Newborn) and 14 - Diaries Of
The Great War (Looks Distribution)
placing second and third.
At MIPFormats, the mostrequested programme was
gameshow format Are You For
Real? from Israeli producer Gil
Productions.
Some 1,535 delegates attended
MIPDoc and MIPFormats this year,
screening a total of 22,720 factual
programmes and 1,674 formats.
tra, the new female-skewing mystery and suspense channel from
Discovery Networks CEEMEA.
On stage he introduced TV presenter Jerry Springer, whose new
show Tabloid premiered on the
new channel from April.
MIPDoc International Pitch winner
ISRAELI docs are thriving, said Danna Stern, head of acquisitions and
programming at Yes DBS Satellite Services during the MIPDoc session on
Israel – part of the Focus On Israel series of events held in Cannes this year.
The “lean and mean” Yes is pioneering innovative ways to fund factual
programmes using crowd funding, crowd sourcing and social media.
For docs about already well-covered topics, producers must seek out new
angles. Unique access helps. For her award-winning feature-length doc
The Gatekeepers, Cinephil producer Philippa Kowarsky persuaded six
former directors of the notoriously secretive Shin Bet to speak on camera.
And in his highly personal doc The Green Prince, director Nadav Schirman
convinced a junior Hamas member who spied on his own father for Israel,
to be interviewed, along with his Israeli handler.
A LEAK In Paradise, about Rudolf Elmer, a former Swiss banker and
whistleblower who exposed tax evasion, won the MIPDoc International
Pitch. The film is available for pre-sales from Belgium’s Ventes–CBA/WIP
Sales.
Thierry Detaille (right) with
Ove Rishoj Jensen, who
chaired the competition
Danna Stern, head of
acquisitions and
programming at Yes
DBS Satellite Services
12
miptv
iMIPFormats
Formats: talent gives way to scripted
MIPFORMATS, which runs
concurrently with MIPDoc over
the weekend before MIPTV, is
the world’s largest gathering for
the formats community.
This year it brought together
world-class keynote speakers
and panelists, new talents, curated screenings, case studies and
targeted matchmaking events.
According to the annual Formats Survey, scripted is on the up
and singing and talent shows
may have peaked. Changing media-consumption patterns and
the digital landscape are seeing
online consumers preferring to
binge on drama rather than formats. There are more formats,
but not more money, and the balance of power is shifting to new
territories, for example Israel,
Turkey and Scandinavia. And IP
theft remains a key concern.
According to DR Denmark’s
Rasmus Ladefoged: “I’m tired of
seeing classic formats with a new
twist being hailed as gamechangers,” he said. “We are looking for something truly original,
and a gimmick bolted-on to an
old format is not going to be it.”
Keynote speaker Marco Bassetti, CEO of Banijay Group, used
the MIPFormats stage to announce that the French superindie is partnering with former
Endemol North America head
David Goldberg to launch Banijay Studios North America.
Bassetti ended his keynote with
some advice for tomorrow’s format creatives. “There’s a lot of
attention being given to the digital space and the connected generation who don’t like to watch
TV,” he said. “It’s important to
bear in mind that you are storytellers and there are a lot of people who still want to lean back
and listen. Content can be delivered in any way, but there always
needs to be a good story.”
The perception that the formats
industry is creatively stagnant
annoys Rob Clark. “I think the
industry is extraordinary creative
at the moment,” said FremantleMedia UK’s director of global
entertainment development in
Banijay Group’s Marco Bassetti
FremantleMedia UK’s Rob Clark,
Shine’s Gary Carter
his MIPFormats keynote. “There
are a lot of great formats around
and I think this MIPTV will
demonstrate that. It’s just the cyclical nature of television. Nothing’s ever dead — it’s just how
you retell the story.”
Clark said that FremantleMedia
looks for three “central tenets”
in a format: cultural transferability, returnability and scalability. He also said that formats
needed a digital strategy.
In answer to interviewer Ben
Hall’s question about how important financial fire power is in
terms of getting a format off the
ground, Clark said: “Very important. Broadcasters don’t have
the same balls that they used to.
That’s understandable, given
that the pressure to succeed is so
great and failure is so expensive.
So they often want a format
that’s worked somewhere else.”
Discussing The Next Big Thing,
Shine chairman Gary Carter referred to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s
Black Swan theory which states
that people use hindsight to pass
off the unusual as predictable. He
said: “The next big thing is a
Black Swan event, and the small
number of Black Swan events explains almost everything in the
world of non-scripted television.”
MIPFormats International Pitch
THE MIPFormats International Pitch this year was won by Australian company The Feds for Zombie Boot Camp.
The format took the top prize of up to €25,000 in development money from sponsor Warner Bros International
Television Production. In the format, 16 contestants fight their way through repeated zombie attacks, testing
their skills in everything from skull protection to improving bullets. “To win, all you have to do is survive,” said
Lisa Gray, head of content for Australia’s The Feds. Her colleague, producer Claire Marshall, added: “It’s a fun
way of looking at the end of the world.”
13
miptv
iFORMAT SALES
Israel riding high on formats
Following the mob
BRISTOW Global Media acquired
Canadian format rights for
reality show Mob Wives from
Electus International. The show,
which airs on VH1 US, follows a
group of women whose
husbands or fathers are doing
time for mob crimes. Bristow
also picked up Canadian format
rights to You, Me And My Ex
from Armoza Formats.
Still got the X Factor
Keshet’s Boom! sold well in Cannes
WITH the Focus On Israel series
of events bringing much attention to this small but hyper-creative country, it didn’t disappoint
where format sales were concerned. Every day saw deals for
Israeli companies including Keshet, Reshet, Dori, Armoza Formats and A Capella.
Among the many deals were the
sales of Keshet’s Boom! to Fox
and TF1, Reshet/ITV’s Game
Of Chefs to Vox Germany,
Dori’s Power Couple to SIC
Portugal and Armoza’s I Can
Do That! to partners in markets
including France and Thailand.
There were also deals for Keshet’s hot format Rising Star and
Armoza’s Do Me A Favour
while A Capella’s key deal saw it
enter a global distribution alliance with Nordic World on new
format The Big Picture.
While the headlines went to Israel, Asia’s format creators were
also high-profile at this market.
On the second day of MIPFormats, the Palais’ Auditorium A
was packed out as producers
and distributors from around
the world were introduced to the
most creative of Japan’s new
formats in Treasure Box Japan.
As the week went on, those formats became a feature of MIPTV deal-making. A good example was Fuji TV’s Whose Side
Are You On?, which was picked
up for international exploitation
by The Gurin Company.
China’s growing importance as
a creative force was also evident
at MIPTV. Armoza teamed up
with JSBC China to launch format Celebrity Battle to the international market while ITVS GE
linked up with China’s Star Media on Sing My Song, a show
that has been drawing a huge
audience on domestic channel
CCTV3 (see photo below).
All of which brought a strong
reaction from the format sector’s established players. BBC
Worldwide sold the format for
Dancing With The Stars to
Planet TV Slovenia, meaning
the show has now been licensed
to 50 countries. Dutch format
giant Talpa Media, meanwhile,
sold its breakout hit Utopia to
Pro7Sat1 Germany.
Celebrating 50 years of Dancing With The Stars: Planet TV’s Igor Gajic (left), Antenna Group’s Nick
Pawsey, CEMA’s Magdalena Garbacz, BBCWW’s Paul Dempsey and dancers from the French version of
the show, Christophe and Coralie Licate
DESPITE growing competition
from rival formats, Syco/
FremantleMedia International’s
The X Factor continues to do
good business. Antena 1
Romania and STB Ukraine both
renewed the show this week, as
did channels in Albania and
Kazakhstan.
Other format deals saw Canale 5
Italy secure a dating makeover
show from Electus International
and FremantleMedia acquire
rights to MTV classic show
Punk’d from Katalyst Network
and Viacom. Another big story
from FremantleMedia saw it team
up with Dick De Rijk, creator of
hit format Deal Or No Deal.
On the scripted format front,
one of the market’s top stories
was a joint-venture between
Channel 4 UK and Xbox to create Humans. The show, produced by Kudos, is based on
SVT’s Real Humans.
Star media’s Vivian Yin (left) with ITVS GE’s Mike Beale and Maria Kyriacou
14
miptv
iNEWS
The homeland of hit formats
ISRAEL, which has recently
spawned global format successes
Prisoners Of War, In Treatment
and Rising Star, was highlighted
during a series of Focus On Israel events during MIPTV.
As part of this special focus, Keshet Media Group CEO Avi Nir
gave a keynote speech in which
he explained why this small nation is having such an impact on
the international content market.
Part of it, said Nir, is that “Israeli audiences are impatient. They
like innovations and see through
the mechanics of TV shows very
quickly. Our success is down to
the fact we keep them on their
toes, keep surprising them.”
Tuesday morning at MIPTV saw
a series of sessions that expanded
on Nir’s insights. In a session entitled How To Create Successful
Scripted Formats/Dramas, Yoram Mokady, vice-president of
content at cable platform HOT,
said the country’s low budgets inspired creativity: “If you have a
low budget you have to come up
with a good story because you
can’t cover it up with bigger production values.”
Format pioneer Avi Armoza said
the format model means foreign
broadcasters can “buy three years
of development, and the best Israeli scriptwriters sitting together
for seasons one and two. They
can get quickly into something
fully written and developed.”
The Wit’s Virginia Mouseler also
explored Israeli creativity in a
session entitled Fresh TV From
Israel. Introducing delegates to
the hottest content from the
country, she said: “There is an extra complexity… psychological
layers that are very interesting.”
Israelis also cite the entrepreneurial and innovative nature of
their society as key factors in the
country’s success. This subject
was covered during a separate
session entitled Innovation Seminar: From Start-Up To TV.
Speakers included Frank Melloul, who recently launched the
international news channel i24news from out of Israel.
Innovation was also a key theme
for Israeli musician, talent show
judge and digital entrepreneur
Yoni Bloch, who was a speaker at
MIPTV’s first-ever Future Of
Kids TV Summit. Bloch is CEO
and co-founder of Interlude, a
digital media company that designs, develops, markets and enables the creation of interactive
Avi Armoza: foreign broadcasters can “get quickly
into something fully written and developed”
videos. Bloch used his session to
demonstrate online web application Treehouse, which allows
people to tell their own stories
via interactive videos.
Another Focus On Israel panel, Innovation Seminar: From Start-Up To TV, was moderated by Zig Zag’s Danny Fenton (left) and featured i24 News’ Frank
Melloul, SatLink Communications’ Doron Revivi and Screenz Cross Media’s Eli Uzan
‘The 4K market is moving forward’
THE FEEDBACK from MIPTV’s 4K/Ultra-HD sessions, presented in partnership with Sony,
was positive, with the general
consensus that momentum is really beginning to build for this
new era of content production.
Chris Forrester, moderator of the
4K track, said: “The Screenings
were fantastically well-attended.
There’s a real sense that the 4K
market is moving forward. Compared to this time last year, costs
are down and a wider range of
content is being filmed in 4K.”
According to Forrester, “Producers and broadcasters are making
more content in 4K because they
NHK’s Junko Ogawa: finding out “what level of demand there is for 4K”
15
know it won’t be too long before
4K TV sets become affordable.
In the meantime, 4K productions
can be shown in cinemas and
public places like shopping malls.”
MIPTV’s 4K Screenings showcased some impressive work
from the likes of NHK, the BBC,
FIFA, SPI International, Done
& Dusted, Colossus Productions
and St Thomas Productions.
Junko Ogawa, head of NHK’s
content marketing division, said
her company had produced a lot
of 4K content: “We have projects
like The Great Barrier Reef, Human Life: Our Amazing Cells
and Sakura Housara which are
our attempt to find out what level of demand there is for 4K from
the market.”
miptv
iINTERNATIONAL DIGITAL EMMY AWARDS
Awards focus on social media
THE International Academy of
Televison Arts & Sciences announced the winners of the International
Digital
Emmy
Awards at a ceremony on Monday night attended by more than
300 international executives from
the television, broadband, and
mobile industries.
The event was organised in
partnership with MIPTV and
sponsored by the Bell Fund of
Canada.
Winners came from Kenya, in the
Children & Young People category; Australia, in Fiction; and the
UK for the Non-Fiction category.
The Pioneer Prize was presented
to YouTube, with Alex Carloss,
head of entertainment, accepting
on behalf of the company.
The winner in the Children &
Young People category, Shujaaz.
FM Reloaded, from Kenya’s
Well Told Story, is a multi-media
communications platform that
inspires young people to become
entrepreneurs and raise awareness about challenges they encounter in their daily lives. The
project won the category for the
second time. Shujaaz.FM, the
first instalment, won in 2012.
The winner in the Fiction category — #7DaysLater, from the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Ludo Studio P/L — is
a digital crowd-sourced comedy
series that challenges Australia’s
most popular YouTube creators.
D-Day: As It Happens, made by
Windfall Films and Digit London for UK’s Channel 4, is a 24hour event in which viewers follow the lives of seven real people
in 1944, across TV, the web, and
Twitter, in real time. It won the
Non-Fiction category.
“This year’s Emmy winners masterfully demonstrate the perfect
use of social media to leverage a
great story — be it for social
change, revisiting history or just
pure entertainment,” said Bruce
L Paisner, president & CEO of
the International Academy of
Television Arts & Sciences.
Daley Pearson, creator, writer, director,
producer, Ludo Studio
Esphan Kamau and Rob Burnet of Well Told Story
Kim Plowright, executive producer, Windfall Films, and Joe Myerscough
Bruce Paisner (far right), president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, presented medals and certificates to the 2014
International Digital Emmy Awards nominees. This year’s shortlist includes nominees from 10 countries
16
miptv
iLOOKING AHEAD
Mexico prepares for MIPCOM honour
IN PREPARATION for Mexico
taking on the mantle of Country
Of Honour at MIPCOM in October, ProMexico, the trade and
investment arm of the Mexican
Ministry of the Economy, hosted
the opening night party for MIPDoc. The event featured a
10-piece mariachi band and a
welcome speech by Alejandro
Delgado, ProMexico’s chief of
the grants division and international relations.
“We hope to achieve two main
things through Mexico’s turn as
the Country Of Honour,” he
said. “The first is to build awareness among Mexican producers
about the importance of attending events such as MIPCOM,
and we are already making significant progress in this area. At
MIPTV 2013 there were 11 Mexican companies, and this year
that figure has tripled, with 29
companies on the Mexican pavilion plus several of the larger
companies with their own stands.
And currently we estimate that
One of the highlights of the MIPDoc
Opening Party was the mariachi band
Alejandro Delgado, ProMexico’s chief of the
grants division and international relations
stages and production facilities
that are the equal of anything in
Los Angeles and Canada. But
most importantly we have the
right products for any and every
market around the world.”
ProMexico also organised Snack
And Screen at MIPDoc, in which
nine documentaries from Mexican producers were screened.
Mexico is home to more than
1,500 audiovisual companies and
there will be around 50 companies at MIPCOM.”
He said Mexico wants to make
the international TV community
aware of the depth, quality and
richness of Mexican programming, storytelling and creativity.
We are strong across every genre,
from documentaries and drama
to animation, through to post
production, plus we have sound
Where the industry is going next...
ON THE final day of MIPTV, a
panel of industry experts
summed up some of the key industry trends at the market.
Among these was Red Arrow creative partner Omri Marcus who
said that six selfies-based formats
had been on show at MIPTV this
year. Moderator, Reed MIDEM’s
James Martin, also picked up on
the link between mobile and TV
by saying a growing number of
formats are using apps in real
time, such as buzzing Spanish format The Shower.
Lisa Gray, winner of the MIPFormats International Pitch
competition earlier this week for
The Feds’ Zombie Bootcamp
project, stressed the importance
of multiplatform presence: “You
can’t just come up with a TV format that’s going to be on one
screen today.” She also pointed
out that such a presence is a great
way to getting people to come
back to the TV show each week.
Strategist Angela Natividad noted that broadcasters now see the
difference between mere audience figures and fans’ engagement, two distinct results that
need to be analysed separately.
She took the example of show
Broad City, whose executive producer Amy Poehler was on stage
at MIPTV this week: it used to
be an online show, but is now
broadcast on TV, because Comedy Central saw its potential in
Mary-Ann Halford of FTI Consulting, brand consultant Angela Natividad of Darewin, Lisa Gray of The
Feds, Omri Marcus of Red Arrow Entertainment and Reed MIDEM’s James Martin
17
occupies third place in the Latin
American subscription television
market. The country currently
produces 100,000 hours of television programming per year,
which has been sold to 100 countries and translated into 30 languages. The result is that the
country’s media industry exports, which are growing at 8.3%
per year, account for 3% of country’s total GDP.
terms of engagement. “In order
to have your show commissioned, you now have to have social media in its DNA right from
the beginning,” she said.
A lot of engagement can be
achieved via YouTube, as numerous YouTube-related sessions at
MIPTV showed, partly because
online producers can rapidly
adapt their content based on the
feedback they get from viewers.
Despite this, FTI Consulting’s
Mary Ann Halford was not convinced about TV’s ability to learn
from YouTube: “The TV industry is still focused on orders, numbers, what the best trends are, and
who the best writers are.”
All speakers agreed that one of
the most notable internet players
at MIPTV this year was Vice. But
we may only be at the beginning
of a new era that will see all kinds
of content emerge online, be it
user-generated content players
like Slow TV, or Dog TV, which
announced a deal with Discovery
Communications, at MIPTV.
miptv
iSTARS
Meet the A-listers
Leading on-screen talent came to MIPTV to promote their
newest work. Our cameras were there to met them
Kim Cattrall took part in a Fireside Chat at MIPTV to discuss her new project Sensitive Skin, in which she
stars and co-executive produces, for Movie Central and The Movie Network. Sensitive Skin is produced by
Rhombus Media and Baby Cow Productions and distributed by Tricon Films & Television
Writer and director Hugo Blick (left) with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Andrew Buchan, stars of the new
political thriller The Honourable Woman, in Cannes with BBC Worldwide
Best-selling author Michael Connelly was in town with Red Arrow Entertainment, distributor of new crime series Bosch, based on Connelly’s
work. Red Arrow’s Jan Frouman was joined on stage at his MIPTV Media Mastermind Keynote, by Connelly, executive producer Henrik Bastin
and actor Titus Welliver, who plays Bosch
Cecile Bois, star of French police drama Candice Renoir, was in
Cannes with Paris-based Newen Distribution
Jerry Springer joined Discovery
Networks’ Paul Welling for his
MIPDoc Keynote. Springer’s new
show Tabloid is destined for Discovery
Networks CEEMEA’s newly launched
ID Extra channel
Comedian and writer Amy Poehler (centre) was at MIPTV for the Comedy Central Broad City Keynote
showcase alongside the creators, writers, executive producers and stars of both the original web and TV
series, Abbi Jacobson (left) and Ilana Glazer. Poehler is executive producer
18