“The London Screenings Come to MIPTV’s Rescue” read the headline of VideoAge’s March 6, 2023 Water Cooler feature. A year later it makes even more sense.
In 2025, MIP London, the first organized international TV market since the London Multi Media Market (LMMM) of 1982, will take place at the Savoy Hotel.
And that’s not the only film-TV market that has been struggling in its original venue to make a move. The 44th American Film Market (AFM) will move from its traditional Santa Monica, California site to the Palms Casino resort in Las Vegas, Nevada for its next event, set to take place November 5-10, 2024.
This 61st annual MIPTV will be the last one to take place in Cannes, France, which has left the city baffled, with local hotel managers scrambling to figure out how to get new business without an event to replace it in the month of April.
The new MIP London will happen February 24-27, 2025, so contrary to the AFM it will change both dates and venue. The event, organized by the same RX France that runs MIP-TV, will be taking place in conjunction with the London Screenings, February 24-28, 2025. RX France has reportedly committed to two years at the Savoy, and is expecting 1,300 participants at the inaugural edition, with suites, meeting tables, and floor exhibits. If the market becomes successful it will expand into a convention center.
The London Multi Media Market started at the Tower Hotel in September 1982. In 1983, it moved to the Gloucester Hotel, and in 1985 it became the London Market and moved its date to the month of November. In 1987, it became the London Screenings, running November 9-15 of that year.
What is today called the London Screenings actually began in Brighton in 1976 as a BBC Showcase for 25 European buyers. During the 1980s, the BBC Showcase moved around to Sussex, Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Bristol, Stratford-Upon-Avon, and Harrogate before returning to Brighton. In 2012, it found a new home in Liverpool. It went virtual in 2021 and 2022 because of COVID, as so many other events did.
Veteran U.K. TV executive Bill Gilbert recalled that in the beginning, “the BBC TV was anti MIPTV. At that time BBC TV took the attitude that the whole world comes to BBC to offer their programs and no need to go on buying trips to overseas markets.”
When it first started, the London Screenings originally took the slot immediately after the BBC Showcase market, which was then held in Liverpool in February. But four years ago a group of U.K. TV content distributors, including All3Media, Banijay Rights, eOne, Fremantle, and ITV Studios, got together to coordinate and established the London TV Screenings as they’re known today.
An estimated 700 total buyers are invited by the distributors (although the exact number is not clear). In 2022, when the BBC canceled its in-person Showcase due to COVID worries, other distributors took up the BBC’s calendar dates for their London Screenings, which lasted a full week in London.
In 2023, the BBC was back, but with a shorter Showcase that it hosted in conjunction with the London Screenings. Each of the screenings is within a five-minute walk of each other in London’s West End.
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