Two of the most important additions of LA Virtual Screenings comparing to previous VS events, have been the full stats of just buyers and genres that now are provided. Here as a complementary article to the main daily report, we develop last stats of types of contents –long or short series, films, docs, etc.– and genres –action, comedy, thrillers, etc.
Type of contents? In the VS events, due to the relevance of Latin and Turkish distributors, there is a good offering of scripted long series, that usually lead the rankings. This time was not the exception, but the market is demanding more short series, films and other options, like unscripted formats, doc & factual and kids. Even, at VS Next (panels and testimonials) one of the most demanding conferences was UK K7’s Entertainment Trends.
Docs and kids, as we said in the daily, grew strongly during the Pandemic, because they are quite easy to produce with safety protocols. The short-form contents still don’t take off, because for broadcasters are difficult to program, and OTTs usually generate broadcaster alike contents. Docs & factual are very demanded now by OTTs, that were focused on just fiction in the past.
Genres? Apart from docs and kids, Suspense & thriller is the big genre of the pandemic, because it travels well to all kinds of territories. We see in the LAVS genre pie, that these three options are better than others as comedies –many buyers say that they are the trend to come– and reality shows, that in the event didn’t have so many options, so they didn’t make many screenings.
Something new, something different? At the daily last Monday, when we displayed the genre trends stressed by buyers, we saw new options as ‘Culture & Humanity’, the new big thing in factual (China); programs with English Voiceover (for Canada), darker dramas for adults (USA), remakes, both scripted and unscripted, Library content for AVOD deals, which are the new systems growing. Real life stories, short content (30-60min) for Russia, and primetime comedies (Greece) as we said. This LA Virtual Screenings has been a good source of genre trends, undoubtedly.
