(Special report)
Digital MIPTV, with its 15 minutes buyer sessions, was a good opportunity last month to hear opinions of important buyers worldwide, about which are their programming needs during the Pandemic and the times to come. We resume here some of their highlights, including most of the types and genres of programming:
Julien Degroote, Head of Content development and international, TF1 (France): ‘With the pandemic, people want to have easy-to-watch family shows with good feelings and positive messages. ‘Joyful’ prime time content is what we are looking for. Contestants, celebrities, singing, playing. That’s the formula’.
Kristina Hollstein, director acquisitions & co-productions documentaries/Children & Youth, ZDF (Germany): ‘During 2020, we acquired and coproduced more than 600 hours of content (+40% overall) mostly for our digital channels. History works very well, but depends on the approach: Titanic, Pompei, Egypt, those are the biggest for us’.
Dermot Horan, director of acquisitions and co-productions, RTÉ (Ireland): ‘Viewers want to escape from Covid and bad news. And scripted provides an important part of that mix. Scripted came back and did it stronger. After the lockdown we’ve had the drama Smother, which gave us big recognition. We made a local story but with global appeal, due to the international partners’.
Miranda Wayland, Head of Creative Diversity, BBC (UK): ‘We are allocating USD 140 millions to produce diversity programming in the next three years. We want to make sure that all our audience is reflected in our content’.
Libbie Doherty, head of children’s programming at ABC (Australia): ‘Something that the quarantine taught us is that alliances are essential to strengthen programming. That is why this year we are open to finding that creator of content suitable for our screens such as TV series Parent Up, with Screen Australia and Screen NSW’.
Karni Ziv, head of Drama and Comedy, Keshet Broadcasting (Israel): ‘We are involved in early stages of development, adding key talent before the story takes place. Through them, we precise the top territories for the story. Only after that, we define the best coproduction partners’.
Sahana Kamath, Head of Original Production, VIU, APAC: ‘For an original new pitch, there are three things we keep in mind: mass, premium and differentiation. We want to impact our full audience, so we don’t need niche content; premium is largely associated to the budget, but for us is to find valuable partners for a special vision behind the project. Time is much more important than budget’.
Orion Ross, VP Animation, Walt Disney EMEA: ‘We like to look at new things before anyone, but you don’t need a pilot or a full script. It’s more about talent and ideas. We strive for optimistic shows that work for the whole family. We are looking to co-produce and commission shows that can work on Disney+ and our channels’.
