Videoage International - 2020: A Year in Review

12 January 2021 V I D E O A G E Take Five With Maurizio Colombo M aurizio Colombo is head of Scheduling Coordination and Acquisition Planning for 11 free- and seven pay-TV channels belonging to Italy’s Mediaset. His responsibilities include deciding on what content to acquire and which license fees to pay, but not actual negotiations with suppliers, which are conducted by Mediaset’s Marco Leonardi. Colombo sent his answers from his office in Milan. VideoAge: Have you been acquiring additional programs during this lockdown period? Maurizio Colombo : Luckily, we bought new TV series for our spring and summer seasons before the pandemic outbreak. So we haven’t been acquiring additional programs. Moreover, we have a library with more than 5,000 movies and 400 TV series. VA: What genre of programs did you buy? MC : We bought some new European TV series for primetime, including Time is a Killer and Olivia , and two Turkish series: one for primetime, Sisterhood , and one for daytime, Daydreamers . [Our] audience will be able to see, for the first time on a free channel, the Spanish drama La Catedral Del Mar , a very successful Netflix series. From the U.S., we’ll have new episodes of New Amsterdam, Manifest , the Chicago brand, and the first seasons of Baker and the Beauty, Lincoln, FBI: Most Wanted , and Prodigal Son . We also have a new TV movie collection, At Home in the Mountain , and the last chapter of Windstorm . Last, but not least, we have new chapters of Rosamunde Pilcher’s collection. VA: With your library material how long could you go without acquiring additional fare? MC: Without counting domestic series and self-produced movies, we have a library with more than 5,000 movies and 400 TV series. We don’t need additional acquisitions. VA: Are you looking forward to seeing the new U.S. TV season? MC : Of course I am. VA: When do you expect production to resume in Europe? MC: In Italy, production will resume in a few weeks. I hope that the rest of Europe will soon follow. Veterans’ Luncheon Kept Alive Virtually T he coronavirus did not spare the traditional Veterans’ Lunch at the canceled L.A. Screenings, so the veterans decided to stage a virtual 16th annual event in order to raise a glass to departed friends and lunch veterans, including Russ Kagan, Jim Marrinan, and in- dustry veterans Larry Gershman, Justin Bodle, and Tetsu Uemura. TV Ratings Go Up, TV Ads Go Down C onsider this: Up until recently, TV ad- vertising rates kept going up and the number of spots increased despite drastic ratings drops. Today, the contrary is true: Advertising spots and rates are going down despite a surge in viewership. Recently, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal published articles about local U.S. TV stations losing advertising revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while still increasing viewership. The Journal reported that local TV stations in the U.S. have more viewers than ever since viewers are leaning on local TV news for updates. For example, the WSJ article said, the Nexstar station group, which owns 196 local stations in 114 U.S. markets, has experienced ratings jumps of 35 percent since mid-March. However, the rise in viewership comes as companies and political campaigns pull back on ad spending. In the U.S., the ad industry employs about 500,000people. In addition, the Times article said, according to the New York City-based ad trade group Interactive Advertising Bureau, overall spending on digital ads for March and April 2020 is down 38 percent from what companies had expected to lay out, and ad spending has fallen 41 percent on TV, 45 percent on radio, 43 percent in print publications, and 51 percent on billboards and other outdoor platforms. This problem is compounded by the fact that many companies are trying to protect their brand names by keeping their ads away from media reports about overrun hospitals, joblessness, and death from coronavirus. However, while many national TV advertising categories such as restaurants, travel/tourism, and retail have declined as expected due to COVID-19,othercategories, includingautomotive, insurance, and household products, have been climbing. In this climate, some advertisers have shifted towards less expensive, non-premium inventory. On the flip side, travel/tourism is down 94 percent, food ads are 21 percent lower, retail is off 16 percent, restaurants are down seven percent, and financial services have registered a five percent drop. Tetsu Uemura: 1962-2020 W hile at MIPCOM a few years back, Tetsu Uemura invited VideoAge ’s editor, Dom Serafini, to lunch to talk about... sake. Before that, the only time he wanted to talk about television with him was when Tohokushinsha Film Corporation (TFC), the group founded by his late father, Banjiro, entered the short-lived 3D-TV business. Tetsu was not too keen to talk shop with a journalist, but not shy about his key interests: His father, 3D-TV and sake. He explained that the sake of “the Kimura family, [which] is distantly related to my family, has a small brewery with a 400-year history that produces premium sake by hand in a small quantity following the traditional technique.” It became a TFC group company 24 years ago. Tetsu started at TFC in 1988 and became pre- sident 22 years later. Prior to his untimely passing at the age of 58 on April 21, 2020, he took the title of the company’s Executive Principal, while his brother-in-law, Kiyotaka Ninomiya, took on day- to-day responsibilities. In Other News May 4: Starz tapped Christina Davis as president of Original Programming. May 5: ABS-CBN closed down its stations following orders from the Philippine government. May 6: TV France International turned its Le Rendez-Vous Biarritz into a virtual event set for Sept. 7-9. May 7: Licensing Expo was canceled and later became a virtual event held June 15-19. May 11: NBCUni streamed a one-hour video presentation about its new series on the date initially set for its L.A. Screenings. May 15: Angelo Teodoli became president of Rome, Italy-based RaiCom. May 16: VideoAge published its L.A. Studio Issue (print and digital). Cecilia Gómez de la Torre, gerente general of Peru’s Tondero Distribución, received her copy while in Italy (pictured above with VideoAge ’s Dom Serafini). May 18: IBC , which was scheduled for Sept. 11-14, was canceled. May 19: It was announced that the Daytime Emmys would be postponed, later they became a virtual event held on June 26. May 19: Rebecca Campbell was named chairman of Direct-to-Consumer and International at The Walt Disney Company. May 20: Armando Nuñez left CBS Global Distribution after it was renamed ViacomCBS, passing the baton to Dan Cohen . May 20: ViacomCBS Global Distribution hosted its L.A. Screenings virtual event. May 20: Indian TV channel Zee One closed in Germany. May 22: ViacomCBS International held its L.A. Screenings virtual event. May 25: Sony Pictures Television hosted its own L.A. Screenings virtual event. May 2020 Review