Highlights from MIPTV 2024: Day 1 (part 1)

Here we are! The last Spring International Television Market opened today in Cannes. After 61 years, MIPTV is retiring in 2024 – but MIPCOM will continue to gather the global entertainment content community on the C?te d’Azur every October. Meanwhile, a new event, MIPLONDON, will be launched in February 2025 in, you guessed it, London. More on that tomorrow.

?For the time being, MIPTV was already in full swing this morning. The day began with the traditional worldwide overview of television audiences provided by French market research company Glance . The session, entitled “One TV Year in the World: Cracking Audience Trends”, was opened by Glance SVP Frédéric Vaulpré , who delivered a flurry of charts and figures illustrating the shifts affecting the industry, such as the fragmentation of the platform landscape – with FAST and AVOD services representing an increasingly large portion of people’s TV consumption (particularly in the USA), to the detriment of linear TV, but also causing the stagnation of streamers.

The result? Legacy players in the industry are becoming their own streaming platforms. “We are in a platformisation model,” Vaulpré explained. “Today, the motto is ‘everyone is a streamer’. BVOD platforms (Broadcaster on Demand) have been created by all the major players and become everything from a catch-up service to a destination platform, with the objective of reaching younger audiences – and it’s working.”

He added other key trends such as: scheduling is back, binge watching is out, young adults prefer reality TV over other genres, and familiar IPs stemming from legacy TV like The Simpsons or Friends is, perhaps surprisingly, the content driving the most SVOD consumption, more so than originals, even when these programmes are simultaneously available on BVOD platforms.

This was followed by a presentation of the best performing shows and launches across genres, delivered by Beatrice Rossmanith , Glance’s MD.

Shortly thereafter, up in the Verrière Californie, several companies had teamed up to provide MIPTV delegates with insights on the Japanese unscripted TV landscape: a broadcaster ( Tokyo Broadcasting System Television, Inc. ), a European producer ( All3Media ) and a British media consultancy ( K7 Media ).

This was the “Navigating Japan: Insights, Co-Productions and New Formats” session, where a representative from K7 Media told the audience about the success of Japanese unscripted formats, before two new shows were unveiled: Catch the Move, a TBS dance show inspired by TikTok, and Lover or Liars, which was born from a collaboration between TBS and All3Media. Representatives from both companies were there to present the shows.

One of the premiere screenings presented yesterday at the CANNESERIES festival was the series Becoming Karl Lagerfeld. To go behind the scenes on this upcoming French-language show starring Daniel Brühl as the iconic fashion designer, MIPTV had put together a panel entitled “From Book to Series, a Case Study.”

The audience was treated to a sizzle reel of the drama, but more significantly to an insider’s view on its creation, as the panel gathered the show’s producer ( Arnaud de Crémiers from Jour Premier ), commissioner ( Kevin Deysson ) from 华特迪士尼公司 , director (Jér?me Salle) and head writer (Isaure Pisani Ferry), as well as the Le Monde journalist whose book the series is based upon, Rapha?lle Bacqué, in a conversation moderated by Broadcast and Screen International’s Manori Ravindran .

They explained that Becoming Karl Lagerfeld focuses on a specific period of his life, when the designer was in his late 30s, and that the writers conducted extensive research, from interviewing his friends to reading the press from the time, to tell a story that’s rooted in reality. “We were thrilled to see the great reaction from the audience last night,” said Jér?me Salle, hoping the well-received CANNESERIES screening heralds the success of the series, which will be available on 7 June on Disney+.

The morning’s last key event was the keynote address by ALIXPARTNERS S.R.L. MD Mark Endema?o , entitled ‘Back To The Future - Bridging the Past and Present to Shape Tomorrow's TV Landscape’. Addressing the technological innovation, shifting business models and consumer behaviours that are disrupting the entertainment content industry, he provided a snapshot of its current landscape in Europe – indicating for example that 75% of the continent’s TV production in 2023 was commissioned by broadcasters, and only 25% by streamers – he stated that the expansion of SVOD is slowing and that major streaming markets are approaching maturity.

Lastly, Endemano touched upon the subject that has everyone on their toes – in this industry and beyond: artificial intelligence. Alluding to its “appetite for disruption”, he indicated that “levels of early adoption of AI in TV production in the US reflected a highly disrupted industry, with labour challenges on the horizon.” From pre-production to scriptwriting, animation, editing and dubbing, the use cases of AI are endless, and its adoption has societal, ethical, creative and legal implications we have only started to fathom.

Finishing on a positive note, he said that “there are significant challenges as well as huge opportunities. I hope you share the same enthusiasm and excitement as I do for the next chapter. But let’s be honest, we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t feel a bit daunted about what lies ahead as well.”