Videoage International - 2020: A Year in Review

3 January 2021 My 2¢ “Is everything all right Mr. Benson? You’re smiling this morning.” Looking back at the past 12 months and forward to a merrier New Year! T his special edition of VideoAge reviews the past 12 months, but it’s also our first Issue of the year and we want to start 2021 off with hopes and expectations. The year begins on a good note, with the availability of three vaccines that can fight against COVID-19, even though vaccinations don’t yet mean that we’ll be spared a virtual NATPE Miami (January 19-22). It does, however, mean that we can possibly look forward to small, in-person screenings- based event in Cannes to complement the Digital MIPTV 2021, which is set to take place April 12-14. Sundance has already announced a hybrid (virtual and in-person) event for January 28-February 3, and we can expect a live public Berlinale in June, with an industry online event in March. Last year’s Berlinale was one of just four in-person industry events held in 2020. (The others were NATPE Miami and Sundance, both in January, and the Venice Film Festival in September.) Production will also increase and with that in- creased output we should expect a live L.A. Screenings, although its exact dates are still difficult to pinpoint. Yes, the aftermath of the pandemic will still linger in the industry, which, in the U.S. alone, suffered layoffs of more than 10,000 people. And since COVID protocols for productions will still be in place, more manpower will be required. In addition, it is expected that some of the executives laid off in the past year will create new production and distribution companies to fill the vacuum created by the U.S. studios’ strategy to pull content from the international marketplace in order to offer it exclusively on their streaming services. Inlatespring/earlysummer,we’ll be lookingforward to a revived Series Mania, set for May 28-June 5, with its forum to take place June 1-3. NATPE Budapest is also expected to happen—either before or after the Cannes Film Festival, which hopes to hold its live event May 11-22. The Festival is determined to have an in-person event this year, and has already made contingency plans in case COVID should linger on. Alternate dates include July and August. In these later cases they would compete for attention with the 2020 Summer Olympics, which have been rescheduled for July 23-August 8, 2021 in Tokyo. Come late summer/fall, the in- dustry should be in full live-events swing, with the Venice Film Festival (September 1-11), Le Rendez-Vous (Sep- tember 11-16), TIFF (September 9-19), and a MIPCOM (October 11-14) that will conflict with NAB Las Vegas, repositioned as a live event in October (October 9-13) instead of its traditional April dates, which have often coincided with those of MIP-TV. The year will then end with a bang with the AFM (November 3-10), MIP Can- cun, (November 16-19), and the ATF (December 1-3). Looking back on the year that was, and all the antics pulled by former president Donald Trump, we should still credit him with increasing newspaper readership (especially for his antagonist, The New York Times , which went from one million digital subscribers pre-Trump to 6.1 million du-ring his presidency, and TheWashingtonPost , which increased fromone to three million subscribers), lifting broadcast television news ratings, creating a growing book-publishing sector (20 books about Trump were published during his four-year term), popularizing social media (especially Twitter), forcing the media to refine their fact-checking skills, helping to change the television landscape (by ignoring early reports of the pandemic), and making streaming a queen (although content is still king). Dom Serafini We’re looking forward to a great 2021, so let’s preview what we can expect and review what awaits us around the world in the next months. MAIN OFFICES 216 EAST 75TH STREET NEW YORK, NY 10021 TEL: (212) 288-3933 WWW.VIDEOAGEINTERNATIONAL.COM WWW.VIDEOAGELATINO.COM P.O. BOX 25282 LOS ANGELES, CA 90025 VIALE ABRUZZI 30 20131 MILAN, ITALY EDITOR- in -CHIEF DOM SERAFINI EDITORIAL TEAM ISME BENNIE (CANADA) BILL BRIOUX (CANADA) ENZO CHIARULLO (ITALY) LEAH HOCHBAUM ROSNER (NY) SUSAN HORNIK (L.A.) CAROLINE INTERTAGLIA (FRANCE) OMAR MENDEZ (ARGENTINA) LUIS POLANCO (NY) MIKE REYNOLDS (L.A.) PUBLISHER MONICA GORGHETTO BUSINESS OFFICE LEN FINKEL LEGAL OFFICE STEVE SCHIFFMAN WEB MANAGER BRUNO MARRACINO DESIGN / LAYOUT CLAUDIO MATTIONI, CARMINE RASPAOLO