Highlights from MIPTV 2024: Day 2 (part 1)

The second day of the Spring International Television Market was a rainy one. Regardless, it was another busy day of meetings, panels, keynotes and even an awards ceremony.

Kicking off the morning, a panel talk addressed the oh so timely subject of sports in this Olympic year. ‘Thriving in The Sport Frenzy: Evaluating Sports as the Ultimate Viewer and Advertiser Magnet’ explored the evolving landscape of sports and entertainment, illustrated, among other things, by the assessment that sport no longer attracts audiences just for the live games or events, but also because of all the storytelling that is increasingly built around teams, athletes, clubs, etc. The main attraction will remain the big football game, but a documentary about the club playing it may elicit the passion of the fans too.

Zoe Duffelen from SNTV - Sports News Television , Scott Melvin from BUZZ 16 and Scott Young from Warner Bros. Discovery were discussing this, with the moderation of Marion Ranchet from Streaming Made Easy , highlighting the importance of storytelling to engage audiences – with the shift towards individual athlete followings and the significance of social media only accentuating this. As an example, Melvin cited his company’s football YouTube channel, which has grown very popular despite not offering any actual matches.

“Storytelling is about building excitement,” said Duffelen – and that can be done in a myriad of ways. Young, who came with a gift for the audience – in the form of a WBD Sports sizzle reel showing the scope of their coverage of the upcoming 2024 Olympics – added to that sentiment that “sport is entertainment, but it’s only live once.”

Later that morning, another panel talk delved into the transformations of content distribution and rights licensing with the ‘Finance Lab - Rights & Licensing: Monetising your IP’ session. Moderated by entertainment lawyer Anne-Marie PECORARO UGGC , the panel comprised producer Rachel Eggebeen from Amplify Pictures and distributor Cecilie Olsen from ITV Studios .

Talking about the shift in the ways content rights are managed, Eggebeen said “we aim to build shows where we don’t just sell all the rights upfront. We really believe in building value for ourselves and the partners we work with. To us, the more interesting route is in the independent model.”

Olsen addressed the changing role of distributors. “Today it’s all about collaboration. A distributor now helps put together a project from beginning to end. We’re like the middle-man that helps bring the financing together. That’s the new reality, very different from the old days when a producer would come to us with a fully financed programme and ask if we could sell it in other countries.”

The morning’s Media Mastermind Keynote was dedicated to a highly-anticipated premium programme, the documentary series The Americas. It was both a worldwide preview, with the screening of several sneak peeks of the series’ breath-taking wildlife images , and a fireside chat with its co-producers Mike Gunton from BBC Studios and Toby Gorman from Universal Television Alternative Studio, and writer Holly Spearing from the BBC , moderated by World Screen ’s Anna Carugati .

Narrated by Tom Hanks and scored by Hans Zimmer, The Americas promises to be a blockbuster of a natural history documentary series, reflecting the public’s “ongoing appetite for premium factual content,” reflected Carugati Guise.

Why the Americas? “Because of the scale of it: a continent whose head is in the Arctic and whose toes almost touch Antarctica,” said an enthusiastic Gunton. “We wanted to show people things they have never seen before in terms of wildlife footage.” He went on to describe the harrowing expeditions each scene required, from shooting spectacled bears on a vertiginous Peruvian cliff with a drone to attaching a camera to the back of a sperm whale to obtain the first-ever footage of its feeding dives. “The whole ethos of the film is to get deep into the secret lives of the animals,” he added.

Of course, this came at considerable cost, and Gorman confirmed The Americas was the most expensive unscripted programme in the history of NBCUniversal . “But we’re confident it’s been worth it,” said Gorman. “In order for this project to be successful on prime-time television, we knew it had to be entertainment, with comedy, drama, humour - and it has all that, in no small part thanks to Tom Hanks’ immense talent.” The Hollywood star quickly said yes when asked to join the project, as well as star composer Hans Zimmer, said Gunton. Carried by such a high-end cast and budget, the result will undoubtedly reach the producer's objective of “raising awareness in a way that’s thought-provoking rather than upfront. Wherever we could, we tried to draw people’s attention on the risks faced by wildlife.”

This awe-inspiring preview was followed by another MIPTV highlight: the MIP SDG Awards ceremony. Held for the fifth time, in association with the United Nations , these awards honour companies in the entertainment content space that uphold the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Hosted by MIP Director Lucy Smith and opened with a recorded video address by UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming and an introduction by the Deputy Director of the UN Regional Information Centre Carole Petit, the ceremony had two awards to bestow: the MIP SDG Award and the MIP SDG Innovation Award. “Both winners are agents of change,” said Petit. “They produce content that carries vital messages, giving people awareness, solutions and hope. With storytelling, the entertainment content community can bring environmental awareness to life.”

The winners this year were Ubongo for the MIP SDG Award and Open Planet for the MIP SDG Innovation Award.

Ubongo is an edutainment platform for African children. Its CEO Mwasi Wilmore received the award, then sat down for a fireside chat with Jeff Schon from Akili Network . Evoking the creation of the company’s first pilot 11 years ago in a small town outside Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Wilmore spoke of the quirky voice they had chosen for one of their animated characters, and the children’s instant response to it. “We needed to create characters that the kids really engage with so that our content would be like their favourite school teacher, but fun,” she explained.

The MIP SDG Innovation award was then given to Open Planet , a UK-based open-source media library for environmental footage, which was only launched late 2023. Created by SILVERBACK FILMS , well known for its high-end natural history documentaries, Open Planet is the first of its kind, said its Director of Operations Emily Renshaw-Smith in a conversation with Anke Redl from China Media Management Inc. . “We recognised that the climate emergency is a communications crisis as much as anything else,” she said. “We need more stories told by more diverse voices, but there are barriers to that, and quality footage is one. Open Planet was created to overcome those obstacles.”