While this week’s Water Cooler is being posted, foot traffic at MIP-TV in Cannes is slowing down, and the disassembly has begun, with workers already tearing down the flamboyant booths that illuminated the market for three full days (even though, technically, today is the last day).
For the first time in many years, most days at MIP-TV were warm and sunny (with the exception of Day 2, which saw a bit of rain).
To summarize this year’s edition, one might call it “swell”: there were plenty of stars on the Croisette and in the heavens with clear skies at night; there was a good number of buyers, especially from Europe as expected; a record number of pavilions (over 30) and a good supply of new programs. According to preliminary numbers, there were 11,000 participants from 102 countries, 5,000 sellers and 4,000 buyers, of which about 1,000 were VoD.
In previous years, there’s been a burst of people in the beginning of the event and a noticeable slowdown. This year, there seemed to be a moderate but consistent buzz around the aisles.
Noticeably there was a strong Chinese, Middle Eastern and Russian presence with top-level executives in attendance, like Channel One’s Konstantin Ernst from Russia and Rotana’s Turki al Shabanah.
Interestingly, in advance of its role as County of Honor at MIPCOM in October, Mexico saw high attendance numbers, with some 30 Mexican companies present at MIP.
The great many seminars were not followed by VideoAge’s reporters, but what we did follow was the aftermath of the booth number changes. There was some confusion, but overall participants grinned and beared it.
There were also a great number of parties, mostly concentrated on Day 1 (Monday) and Day 2 (Tuesday) of the market, which caused people to run from one event to another without break. Curiously, one could meet almost the same people at all the different events.
Among the aforementioned stars making appearances on the Croisette were Maggie Gyllenhaal (star of BBC Worldwide’s The Honourable Woman), 50 Cent (an executive producer and star of Starz’s Power), Kim Cattrall (a star and executive producer of Tricon’s Sensitive Skin) and even the grandson of the last king of Italy, Emmanuel De Savoie.
In addition to flaunting its newest star, 50 Cent, Starz had a busy market with the Monday Keynote Address from its CEO Chris Albrecht, who took the stage with British producer Colin Callendar to chat about co-productions (and their challenges).
Among the news that broke at MIP-TV were two interesting announcements from Azteca — the first was that the company is partnering with Cisneros Media Distribution and AfricaXP to launch a telenovela-themed channel for Africa known as Romanza+Africa. Azteca also announced that it’s entered into a deal with Astro, South East Asia’s leading pay-TV broadcaster to produce and distribute telenovelas.
MIP-TV 2015 will take place April 13-16.
For more information, check out all three MIP-TV Dailies at http://www.videoagedaily.com.
The complete April issue of VideoAge is also available online at http://www.videoageinternational.com/pdfUploads/issuearchives/.
