This Mipcom 2022 is a good mixture of opposite sensations: the return to full traditional in-person Cannes events on one hand, with all the pavilions open, most of the companies in their traditional locations, to see again a lot of people for the first time after the pandemic. And many changes on the other hand: less but healthier volume, warm but austere marketing initiatives, and especially a turn on business evolution. If till last year the milestone was original content for SVOD, now is FAST channels for AVOD. Advertisement is back the big aim of emergent media, as 30 years ago.

Organizer RX Fance has confirmed PRENSARIO suppositions: this Mipcom attendance, they say, is 15% less than 2019, when it was about 12.000 people. This would be 10.000 people this fall, but for us is 9.000 attendees. Anyway, they are huge numbers for the post pandemic times, where most of the events have 60%, 50% less presence than the past. But less volume can mean healthier business too, because, as most of interviewed participants remark, the industry members that have come are the good ones. It is easier, faster to interact with the wanted people.

For the first time, many emergent OTTs, AVODs, have booths at Mipcom, to attract content providers and include (FAST) channels in their platforms, supported by advertisement they sell on their own: Samsung TV Plus, Orange, Movistar+, Merzigo, SoFast (Israel) Crunchroll. Samsung for instance is present in 24 markets and at Mipcom it looks for news, fiction and kids channels, to run exclusively in its system.

Now there three big drivers at the content market: co-productions, for players to handle better product in affordable models; original productions exclusive for OTT platforms; and the AVOD/FAST channels wave. The last one is the most recent one, the awaited alternative to SVOD hegemony, with its cross-roads of increasing costs but slower incomes. Advertisement tends to be again the king of content industry in the times to come.

What do broadcasters look for at Mipcom? Marianne Bjorn, TV2 Denmark: ‘Programs with good streaming potential’. Edina Balogh, TV2 Hungary: ‘Turkish series and entertainment formats for free and pay TV’. Margarida Pereira, TVI Portugal: ‘Big formats to produce, both scripted and unscripted’. José Navarro, Canal 13, Chile: ‘Formats and fresh series’. Louse Eberhardt, SVT Sweden: ‘Surprising and funny formats as Avalon’s Taskmaster’. So… new media, local and event programming.

What is new in formats? Nick Smith, EVP formats, All3Media (UK): ‘A new trend are the ‘intelligent realities’, with psychological twists, or where people don’t expect what will happen’. Arjan Pomper, MD, Global Entertainment, ITV Studios (UK): ‘Everybody is intending to take traditional genres to new combinations and levels. The difficult thing is to be really successful on that’. The company launched for instance ‘Loaded in Paradise’, a reality gameshow where in love couples compete for big cash prizes, or ‘Kings of the night’, where celebrities turn to Drag Queens and compete in a famous night tournament.

Nicolás Smirnoff, Fabricio Ferrara, Rodrigo Cantisano

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