This May marks the 50th anniversary of the L.A. Screenings, and in honor of that occasion, VideoAge is celebrating 50 years of international program sales and distribution.
We at VideoAge have observed that despite many international television events celebrating landmarks this year (NATPE, MIP-TV and the L.A. Screenings all hit the half-century mark in 2013), there is little historical documentation or industry-wide recognition of the international program sales and distribution business and the executives involved.
During MIP-TV’s 50th anniversary gala, for example, we noticed that instead of photos of past and current international TV distribution executives being projected on the screens that surrounded the dinner tables, there were photos of international celebrities. And if one looks in any television industry encyclopedia to date (or even sticks with Google), it’s impossible to find much archival information about the international TV distribution business.
As Dom Serafini will point out in his “My 2 Cents” editorial in the L.A. Screenings edition of VideoAge, on the record it’s as if 50 years of international TV distribution business never existed.
In that very same issue VideoAge will seek to celebrate the oft-overlooked side of the distribution business and its executives, with a history of the L.A. Screenings, and, as usual, a comprehensive list of new U.S. network pilots, among other stories.
