MIPCOM 2023 has had two first days as in the golden years, and though today business traffic should reduce a bit, we are talking for sure about a very successful market. This time, there no negative opinions, everybody is pleased about business concretions. The problems are others: the SVOD project cancelations, the fragmentation of advertisement pies for broadcasters, the thinner business for Pay TV channels. Partnerships, monetization formulas, model twists are the answers. What buyer smart comments have we collected about these? Come and read…

Claudia Ruehl, Sr. manager acquisitions, SevenOne Germany: ‘We are all digital players nowadays. We are buying now not only for free TV, but also for new own AVOD platform. For the first one, crime, procedural series. For the second, IP series, classics and remakes’. Nuno Vaz, acquisitions director, RTP Portugal: ‘The today challenge is to make budgets perform, considering flat advertising, inflation. An answer is cost-effective formats’. Johanna Salmela, acquisitions manager, YLE (Finland): ‘I usually look for fresh dramas, both for prime time and day time. And now I am adding comedies’.

James Townley, CCO, Banijay (UK) at its breakfast: ‘We are launching a global format acceleration program. In the past, the best unscripted formats were created by big companies. Now, by small producers and outsiders. We want to finance them’. Laura Fernández Espeso, CEO The Mediapro Studio (Spain) gave a keynote yesterday: ‘What do we have new or different? We are betting more on gameshows, docs, news programs, live humor… a next step in content is live streaming, with all to develop’.

Fabrizio Battocchio, head of format and factual, Mediaset Italy: ‘The market is plain, with few good ideas and mostly running previous shows. I’d love to fine a big shiny floor show, for the family, but innovative’. A main buyer of Pay TV channels, EMEA: ‘The windows for Pay TV get thinner and thinner, struggled between digital and free TV. What are we doing to react? To make output deals to get more content, and to pay more to gain space. But when you consume thousands of hours, you can’t increase a lot the cost per hour’.

Stephen Hodge, CEO, OTTera (USA): ‘The secret to be successful in FAST, is to have a good tech partner that provides reach to main platforms and optimization about advertising processes’. Julián Rodriguez Montero, content director, Tivify, Iberia & Latin America: ‘A future of content business is in aggregation. Many times the users don’t know where is the content they want. A good selection of many platforms, generates touchable value’.

Phil Gurin, co-chair, at the FRAPA Summit (format protection association): ‘As budgets continue to shrink and major content producers feel the financial squeeze, there is renewed pressure to think about the international format business option. The production market gets more international’.

A top Tuesday moment was the MADD night party (see the separated article) made as in the old times, with Turkish distributor inviting buyers from Latin America (Paramount/Telefe, HBOMax) Middle East (MBC Group) Spain (Atresmedia) Greece (Antenna); and producers from Turkey (Ay Yapim and Medyapim) Spain (Mediapro, Secuoya) and Argentina (Chris Morena) to tell the experience together. It was announced the adaptation of Globo’s ‘Brazil Avenue’ for Turkey. Ates Ince, CEO: ‘We want to generate virtuous circles, with business going in all directions. Disruptive output deals, co-productions, business models, are our ways to make a difference’.

Alberto Buitron and Francisco Ferryra from Cannes, France

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