MIPTV 2023 is showing during its week days a double truth: on one hand, it has grown about 30% vs. April 2022 (the first one after the pandemic) recovering halls, big stands and activities. Many people are satisfied with market traffic and networking. On the other, many executives say that last year doesn’t count and the market is smaller than ever, with 50% of occupation from traditional booth spaces. They see no future. Which one is truer?

The facts: before the pandemic, MIPTV was like Mipcom, it used to occupy at The Palais of Festivales these halls: the main floor, the Rivieras 7 and 8, the Lehrins, the upper floors and some outside booths. Last year, MIPTV 22 took just the Riviera 7 for booths and the Riviera 8 and Lehrins for common spaces. It had all small, standardized booths. This April, it has added half of the main floor for booths + stands at the beach. The Riviera 7 hall looks very well, as in the best times, with many big booths. But the floor generates mix impressions, with many close doors or empty spaces.

What can we say as an average? After the pandemic, all the events have reduced their figures, even Mipcom. So, if MIPTV has grown from last year and many people have a good experience, it depends of each company to continue or not. During Sunday and Monday, PRENSARIO met most of the broadcasters that are usual to see in April. They come with less executives but come. And also we saw a lot of new platforms, most of them with AVOD and FAST channels models. They have very good energy. The whole market is suffering the big SVOD budget reductions… these are times more for collaborations, alliances, than sales and acquisitions.

Buyer testimonials? Nick Smith, head of format developments at All3Media (UK): ‘The new big trend in entertainment is travel & adventure: competitions and realities in natural or savage places’. Richard Vaum, SBT Brazil, for the first time at MIPTV: ‘I look especially for big formats, like ‘Big brother’, with lockdown intrigues, or ‘The Farm’ options, for celebrities’. Nina Mikola, Nova TV, Croatia: ‘Big formats for access and prime time, but really original ones, are difficult to find’. Dragan Petrovic, Visionary Thinking (Serbia/Portugal): ‘We are dedicated to revenue sharing ventures. We push what the content owner proposes and we share the incomes’.

With the aside articles (see below) we tell the main Monday highlights: key notes, format screenings and announcements. They are not many or very strong these days. But again one of the top moments has been the ‘Fresh TV’ conference, where The Wit’s Virginia Mouseler told about entertainment formats that call the attention due to originality or twists. The auditorium was so crowded with people that another space had to be open.

Among all the introduced formats, PRENSARIO can stress ‘The Piano’ (Love Productions, UK) where pianos with hidden cameras are set up in public places and people that play them well, are taken for work opportunities. ‘Destination X’ (BE TV, Belgium) where participants are with 3D glasses in a bus and they are driven between real and virtual locations, having to distinguish them. And ‘Rise and Fall’, Channel 4 (UK) where in a 15 floors hotel, participants go up and down progressively changing their lives: millionaires on the roof, cleaning bathrooms on the bottom. Physical efforts, money challenges, outstanding locations are cross trends.

Nicolás Smirnoff, Francisco Ferreyra, Mariano Gutiérrez Alarcón

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