I N T E R N A T I O N A L www.V i deoAge.org THE BUSINESS JOURNAL OF FILM, BROADCASTING, STREAMING, PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION December 2022 - VOL. 42 NO. 8 - $9.75 (Continued on Page 14) CancunTVMart Crucial For LatAm, Shows Growth My 2¢: When sellers followed TV GMs who trailed their engineers On board, would you rather watch a movie or track your flight? Book to film and TV adaptations to solve downtime blues The Travel Channel gets The Washington Post all ghosted up Page 22 Page 20 Page 6 Page 4 The MIP Cancun TV market is only eight years old, but it keeps growing by the day. Organizers announced that the event had 600 registered participants on October 18, but had 800 just 10 days later. At the end of the three-day market, which started on Monday, November 14, 2022, the number of participants actually reached 825. Organizers even ran out of sponsored bracelets (which were also used as electronic keys for the hotel rooms). There were just 450 participants in 2021, so this was real growth. MIP Cancun 2022 also saw more than 70members of the Worldwide Audiovisual Women’s Association ATF Returns With Optimism, More Anxiety (Continued on Page 12) In preparation for the 23rd edition of the Asia TV Forum and Market (ATF), VideoAge connected with Singapore-based Justin Deimen, executive director of the Southeast Asian AudioVisual Association (SAAVA), and president of 108 Media, to talk about what he expects to find at the Singapore market, which is set (Continued on Page 16) Some of us in the media thought that Parrot Analytics was just a company from somewhere in the world that measures the popularity of television content around the globe. “Not completely”, said Laurine Garaude during MIPCOM Cannes. “We’re much more than that.” Garaude joined Parrot in May 2022 (after she left Reed MIDEM, which then became RX France) with the title of Partnership Director, EMEA. This somewhat vague title is typical Parrot-speak. The company also likes to use rather arcane terminology in its reports, such as saying “genre preferences compared to the global average” instead of the simpler “audience content preferences.” One way that Parrot Analytics has been repeatedly described online is as a company involved in the measurement of demand for television shows that includes social media engagement, video Insight Into Parrot: More Than Just Analytics Data
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4 World V I D E O A G E December 2022 Travel Channel all Ghosted Up People who travel a lot don’t have the time to watch television. And those who only travel occasionally just want to be entertained by TV, so watching programming about something that they rarely do could be boring. This realization is something that the executives behind the creation of The Travel Channel discovered much too late — after the launch of the cable TV network in 1987. Actually, the discovery didn’t take place until the year 2000, when an executive at the channel told reporters that the network didn’t need to cater to travelers, but rather TV watchers. This “peculiarity” of TV viewers was highlighted recently in a Washington Post article that also briefly recalled the history of the Travel Channel and its “transient” ownerships. Here’s the full story. The Travel channel was created by the U.S. airline TWA (which folded in 2001). In 1997, the channel was sold to Landmark Communications, and a few months later it was acquired by Paxson Communications. Discovery took control of the channel in 1999, but in 2007, sold it to Scripps Networks. Discovery (now Warner Bros. Discovery) once again owned the channel in 2018 after acquiring Scripps. However, the main gist of the Post article was to decry the channel’s switch from travel-related shows to ones that focus on “ghosts.” Indeed, the channel, rebranded in 2018 as TRVL Channel, mostly features shows about paranormal activities, ghost hunters, UFOs, and possessed pets. Headquartered in New York City, the channel is available to 91 million TV households. But travel has not completely disappeared from the channel’s programming lineup, as the show Ghost Adventures can attest. However, the Post didn’t just stop at what it now calls, the “Ghost Channel.” In subsequent pages the daily listed “11 of the scariest destinations.” The issue also included an article about “sleeping in a haunted prison,” and even one about “tombstone tourists” (i.e., cemetery enthusiasts). The first in-person Jornadas Internacionales of Argentina since the pandemic began on Wednesday, November 9, 2022. The 32nd edition of the event (which ran for two days, November 9-10) brought together LatAm linear pay-TV operators and streaming platforms at the Hilton Hotel in Buenos Aires. Its return to normal featured conferences and an exhibition, as well as face-to-face meetings (pictured below). In terms of figures, 32 companies participated in the expo and around 200 executives registered to attend the conferences. It’s a far cry from the traditional 1,500 attendees, but this is the post-pandemic reality for many trade events. Participation at the various conferences was lower during the morning hours, but the afternoon hours showed a significant flow of representatives from the pay-TV and IT markets. Most of the subjects discussed during the sessions had to do with critical aspects of the business, such as the impact of the migration from linear to online platforms and the challenges faced by traditional TV operators who have been forced to restructure and experiment with mixed business models. LatAm Took the Jornadas Challenge (Continued on Page 6) THE INTERROGATION ROOM SECRETS OF THE INTERROGATION ROOM 10x60’ 10x60’ 1 x 60’ / 1 x 90’ PRODUCED BY DRIVE AND WINGMAN www.bomanbridge.tv sales@bomanbridge.tv MEET US AT ATF! Singapore Pavilion (H08, F06) 63 x 30’ FORMAT Hosted by Vivica A. Fox Welcome to Football Leaks
6 World V I D E O A G E December 2022 On December 2, United Artist (UA) will release in the U.S. Women Talking, which is based on Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel, and Universal Pictures will release it internationally. Theaters will be screening Sony Pictures’ AMan Called Otto on December 14. The movie is based on Fredrik Backman’s 2012 Swedish novel A Man Called Ove. On April 28 theaters will show Lionsgate’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, based on the 1970 Judy Blume book by the same name. Then there are film adaptations that have no release dates as of yet, including Universal Pictures’ Oppenheimer, adapted from the 2005 book by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Another film adaptation is Paramount Pictures’ Killers of the Flower Moon, based on David Grann’s 2017 book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. Finally, there is Daisy Jones & the Six from the novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, which will be a miniseries on Amazon Prime Video. Another Reid novel, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, is being adapted by Netflix for a feature film. Cost Cutting At All Costs There was a time when studios could practically print their own money. Then came streaming, followed by losses, layoffs and drastic cost-cutting. And this time, the cost-cutting measures weren’t due to the prodding of corporate raiders like Carl Icahn, Kirk Kerkorian, Robert Bass, etc. Disney’s streaming segment has lost more than $8 billion in the last three years. Warner Bros. Discovery has cut more than 1,000 jobs as the group struggles with a $50 billion debt load and $2.3 billion in losses for its streaming service in the third quarter of this year. Comcast (NBCUniversal) is planning on layoffs and offering buyouts to employees. Its Peacock losses hit $614 million in the third quarter of 2022. Similarly, Paramount forecasts $1.8 billion in streaming losses for 2022. Books are great — when there’s nothing worth watching on TV, that is. And sometimes those books even manage to creep up on TV screens anyway. VideoAge picked 12 books that have been adapted first for U.S. theaters and then for worldwide television, with a Fall/Winter 2022 release. Proceeding in chronological order, there was Blonde, released in theaters on September 16, and 12 days later streamed on Netflix. The movie is based on a 2000 novel by the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. Then came The Wonder, which hit the silver screen on November 2 in the U.S., November 4 in the U.K., and subsequently streamed on Netflix. The movie was adapted from Emma Donoghue’s 2016 novel by the same name. On November 18, Universal Pictures sent She Said to theaters. The film was based on Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s 2019 book. Five days later, MGM sent its book-related movie to theaters Bones and All, based on Camille DeAngelis’s 2015 book. On November 25, White Noise hit the big screen (before Netflix relegates it to the small screen on December 30). The movie is based on Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel of the same name. Book-FilmAdaptations Solve Downtime Blues (Continued from Page 4)
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8 Book Review V I D E O A G E December 2022 Who has more director credits from iconic television shows than James Burrows? No one, that’s who. Burrows has worked in the industry since the 1970s, contributing to and directing some of the best-known long-running TV series, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers, Laverne & Shirley, Night Court, Frasier, Friends, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Will & Grace, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, and many, many other beloved programs. Directed by James Burrows (368 pgs., Ballantine Books, 2022, $28.99) dives into Burrows’ career trajectory over 50 years. Working with the help of Eddy Friedfeld (a professor in the Film Television department at New York University), Burrows shares little-known anecdotes and behind-thescenes tales from the slew of sitcoms he directed. The book is part personal story, part history of contemporary American television, and part dispensing of advice about the TV biz for anyone who needs to hear it. The tone of the book is conversational yet informative, as if the reader is sitting down with a mentor. Burrows was born in Los Angeles on December 30, 1940, but he was raised in New York City, by his parents, Ruth Levinson and Abe Burrows, starting when he was five years old. An entire chapter is devoted to his dad and Burrows spends a significant amount of time discussing his father’s influence on his son’s eventual career. “My dad was always very present in my life, offering helpful advice and telling me stories about his early years in entertainment”, says Burrows. Brooklyn-raised Abe Burrows started out writing jokes for radio and nightclubs in the 1930s, but he would go on to become a humor writer, playwright, director, and producer. He had his own radio show, The Abe Burrows Show, and later directed shows on Broadway, even winning a Tony. After high school, the young Burrows went to Oberlin College in Ohio and grad school at Yale for drama. Once he graduated, he took gigs as stage managers and traveling directors for plays. His entry into network television happened in 1974, “during the Second Golden Age of Television”, he notes. At the time, he joined MTM Enterprises, the production company run by Mary Tyler Moore and her then husband Grant Tinker (an NBC executive). After describing this first foray into television, the book proceeds to zoom in and out of the many highlights in Burrows’ career, with passages devoted to his role in Cheers, the making of shows like Frasier, Friends, and Will & Grace, and the lessons he learned from all of them. With his decades of industry and storytelling experience, Burrows offers gems of advice to aspiring writers and producers looking to enter into the world of television. He tries to explain what makes a good story. For him, everything comes down to characters that audiences can relate to. “Whether working on an entire series, one episode, or just one scene, a director must be thinking about how to develop characters and have them interact with other characters who are also growing”, Burrows writes. “That’s what creates good comedy.” His advice doesn’t only apply to the creative side but the practical business concerns, as well. When discussing how to bring pilots to series (and as he reminds the reader, “I have directedmore than 75 pilots that have gone to series.”), his advice on storytelling continues to apply. He writes: “A successful pilot needs characters that the audiences would want to see every week, in a location that will appear again and again, with a series of conflicts and goals that viewers would want to tune in to see resolved. What’s the most important goal of directing a pilot? The obvious answer is to get the network to buy the show and put it on air.” Throughout the book, Burrows also notes what state of mind a sitcom director will need to maintain. During sitcom season, he recalls: “I’m very animated on set. I’m listening, I’m moving, I’m laughing. It’s a play. You have to keep rolling. You are part of the entertainment.” Burrows has led an enviable career, working with several of the most recognized actors in the world, from Mary Tyler Moore and Ted Danson to Jennifer Aniston and Debra Messing. He directed some of the most beloved TV shows of the last 50 years. And he’s still going at it. In recent years, he was invited by U.S. TV host Jimmy Kimmel to direct live versions of All in the Family and The Jeffersons, which aired in May 2019. In the epilogue to Directed by James Burrows, Burrows remains humble and encouraging. At 81 years old, he says that “[by] Norman Lear’s standards, I still have a lot of work to do.” Screenwriters and television producers Glen and Les Charles sum it all up well in their foreword to the book: “He’s simply become the greatest director of comedy in television history.” The director who helmed over 1,000 TV episodes presents insights and anecdotes from his long-running career in the TV show biz. Director Jimmy Burrows Shares Stories From the Last 50 Years By Luis Polanco “A successful pilot needs characters that the audiences would want to see every week, in a location that will appear again and again, with a series of conflicts and goals that viewers would want to tune in to see resolved.”
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10 V I D E O A G E December 2022 Floating around the offices of many international TV executives are two big considerations for the upcoming revival of what used to be NATPE Miami. The first has to do with the belief (which is held by many, including a number of trade publications) that an important TV market inMiami has to be organized and run by an independent organization, specifically one that has a track record for staging TV markets. Think the Independent Film and Television Alliance (IFTA) in Los Angeles, which organizes the AFM; the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) in Washington, D.C., which organizes the NAB Shows (Las Vegas and New York City); and DISCOP, the Los Angeles-based organizationthat createdandorganizedDISCOP Budapest (1993 to 2011, whereupon it was sold to NATPE), DISCOP MENA (Istanbul and Dubai since 2007), and DISCOP Johannesburg (which started in 2007 as DISCOP Africa). Publications, news agencies, producers, agents, and distribution companies are good for organizing conferences and seminars, but not suitable for TV trade shows that rely on exhibitors. The second consideration has to do with the focus of a Miami TV market, which begs the question: “Why organize another LatAmcentric market when there is already a very successful one — MIP Cancun — held just two months earlier?” The calendar dates selected by DISCOP Miami organizers (January 31-February 2, 2023) are also ideal as they come a month after the lengthy Christmas holidays. The hotel, the Grand Beach in Miami Beach, is also generally said to be perfectly set up for such a market, and is within walking distance of the Fontainebleau, which is where the prepandemic NATPE Miami events have been held for the past decade. Organizers chose the Grand Beach for two reasons. First, because of the relatively low rates. And second, to limit commuting time. Miami residents will spend more time at the Miami Beach hotel than they would at any of the downtown Miami hotels, since those are closer to their offices, and thus encourage office trips and time away from the market. As for the thrust of the DISCOP Miami market itself, after surveying a few potential exhibitors, the organizers decided to re-direct the market towards a U.S.-based event focusing on the global market, rather than just the LatAm region — one with a strong domestic (U.S.) participation from Anglo- and Spanishlanguage TV stations, cable networks, and platforms. This is partially due to the rising popularity of the recently concluded MIP Cancun (see separate front cover story). As for NATPE, by filing for Chapter 11, the association was trying to restructure its finances with the help of a U.S. bankruptcy court, which basically entails counting the money on hand against the money owed to various entities, which include hotels and exhibitors that paid in advance for the 2022 market that was ultimately canceled. Since its 2023 market, originally scheduled in Nassau, in the Bahamas, was also canceled, the association has no future revenue to depend on. The attorney in charge of NATPE’s bankruptcy proceedings, Leslie Cohen from Santa Monica, California, reportedly received bids from several potential buyers for NATPE’s assets. A hearing is scheduled for December 14, 2022. If the terms of the auction are approved, the auction will take place that day. If approved, a sale could be completed by December 23, 2022. In its bankruptcy filing, NATPE reported that it ran at a $1.33 million deficit in the first six months of its fiscal year. After making an initial bid for some of NATPE’s assets, the DISCOP organization decided to withdraw because a potential buyer could be liable for NATPE’s outstanding debt connected to those assets, explained Patrick Zuchowicki, the 63-year-old founder and director of the DISCOP organization. A French native, Zuchowicki relocated to Los Angeles in 1984, and became an American citizen in 1996. He is known in TV trade show circles as a pioneer of emerging TV territories — first with Eastern Europe, then the Middle East, and later Africa, where he currently stages a yearly TV market in Kigali, Rwanda. Naturally, a new Miami TV market was also on the minds of many participants at the recently concluded MIP Cancun. “We’ll go where our Turkish clients go”, said Liliam Hernandez, CEO of Miami-based dubbing company Universal Cinergia. It happens that DISCOP is also returning to organizing a TV market in Istanbul that will be held May 9-11, 2023, therefore it is assumed that Turkish companies will also participate at DISCOP Miami. Emilia Nuccio, vice president of International Content Sales for New York City-based FilmRise is “certainly considering DISCOP Miami.” Jose Luis Gascue, the Miami-based EVP and head of Worldwide Sales for the Istanbul-based Calinos, echoed the opinion of MIP Cancun’s organizers, who noted that a Miami market should be more of a North American and international event, rather than just a LatAm market. Marta Ezpeleta, director of Distribution, International Offices, and Co-productions at the Spain-based Mediapro Studio, said that NATPE Miami used to be an important market for Mediapro. As for DISCOP Miami, she said that she and her team are in the process of analyzing the market and finding out which members of the distribution teammight attend. “Our Miami team will be there for sure, but as for our other salespeople, it depends where the buyers will be coming from. If Colombian buyers will be there, our Colombian team will attend. Similarly, if Argentinian buyers will be in Miami, our Argentinian sales team will be there, and so on.” Cecilia Gomez de la Torre of Peru’s Tondero and Roxana Rotundo of Miami-based VIP 2000 also had positive things to say about a Miami Beach TV market. Finally, Marcel Vinay, president of Mexico City-based Comarex, said that he’d surely be at any Miami TV market (“After all we have a Miami office”, he said), however he’s concerned about the high cost of accommodations at DISCOP Miami’s hotel. Road to DISCOP Miami: New Mart to Become Americanized Making $$ and Cents The Grand Beach hotel is located half a mile north of the Fontainebleau hotel, on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach Why organize another LatAmcentric market when there is already a very successful one ... held just two months earlier?
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V I D E O A G E December 2022 12 (Continued from Cover) for December 7-9, 2022. This year’s edition is the first fully in-person ATF event since 2019 — before the pandemic. Last year’s ATF managed to have an in-person component (but was mostly held online), although it was limited to the opening day’s activities, which took place (as it will again this year) at theMarina Bay Sands Convention Center on December 1. Attendance was by invitation only. There was a free, on-site COVID-19 testing facility there, and foreign participants had to abide by Singapore’s quarantine requirements, which are no longer in play. Some 200 in-person participants attended ATF 2021 — primarily from Singapore — and they basically listened to speeches that day. Asia TV Forum’s theme remains “Content is Still King.” The fact that the ATF relies heavily on the forum portion of the event has always been known to all, and this year is no exception. Seventy-one speakers will be walking to the podium this year. On opening day, December 7, 2022, some 15 speakers will be making presentations and, according to an ATF press release, they “will include visionary speakers from TikTok, Vidio, Mediacorp, Wavve, [and] Studio LuluLala.” Exhibitors at the three-day event include companies such as as A+E Networks, All3Media, GMA, Kanal D, Lionsgate, Paramount, and TelevisaUnivision. VideoAge: What is the mood in the South East Asian (SEA) TV community? Justin Deimen: The new mood essentially boils down to being optimistic about new frontiers but cautious of legacy practices. The pandemic didn’t slow production down as much as expected but it did reconfigure thought processes. The reliance on local and regional commissioners has cooled, with more independently minded producers looking outwards for new opportunities and collaborations and finally dipping their toes into co-producing with the current support of government incentives creatingmore gateways. The push into understanding rights issues and having a hands-on management of that part of the work has become more salient as regional producers are looking to create their own output with new buyers instead of handing over world rights after production to sales companies, and they have become more cognizant of their ownership over productions instead of selling them off cheaply early in the one market they can’t and won’t miss due to its proximity to them. VA: Asians are traditionally more adept with technology. Are they happy to go back to in-person meetings or are they more comfortable with virtual meetings? JD: Not all Asians [are goodwith technology]! It’s still a social game at the end of the day. We love bringing our friends to our favorite haunts and drinking holes, with some karaoke and family discussions thrown into our business dealings. So yes, the in-person meetings have been something everyone has been planning and looking forward to. In fact, my company, 108 Media will be using ATF to bring in upwards of 10 colleagues from our global offices in Tokyo, Toronto, London, and L.A., with some of us meeting for the first time. Justin Deimen is group managing partner of Aurora Global Media Capital, executive director of SAAVA, co-founder of SEA Film Financing Forum, co-organizer of Screen Singapore, and president of 108 Media. The Singapore-headquartered Southeast Asian Audio-Visual Association (SAAVA) is a non-profit association founded in 2014 that seeks to unify media producers in the SE Asian region that counts a population of more than 650 million and a robust growing economy. Its members include producers, financiers, directors, distributors, and exhibitors from the film, TV, and digital media sectors. financing process. VA: What has changed since 2019? JD: Somewhere in the crowd someone is screaming, “Commissioning budgets!” But in all seriousness, the biggest change is the understanding of diversity elements in creative projects and knowing that Asian producers can be the vanguard in pushing diverse, global stories into the international pop culture arena. This has moved the ball into focusing on strategic packaging, deeper creative development, and more financial/creative coproductions with established players in more mature markets to align local/regional content with the rest of the world. VA: Is there some anxiety, or do executives seem to be relaxed? JD: Today, there’s definitely more fear and anxiety among the executive ranks of the industry given the existential issues facing capital markets. The consolidation of media assets across the world stage has a slower but no less definitive ripple effect into Asia, hence internal attitudes are seeping into the business. Decisions are slower to be made, innovative deals are being paused in order to not rock any boats, previous content strategy decisions are not confidently being followed through due to constant reversals of plans, and many executives are looking towards the next stages of their careers and becoming independents themselves, hence there’s a gap in experience and leadership on corporate levels. VA: Asian airlines did not want to fly over Russian air space (therefore increasing the time it took to fly to Europe for markets such as MIPCOM). Will that mean more Asian buyers at ATF? JD: There’s always been a great showing of Asian buyers at ATF — it’s the market of choice for Asian buyers in the calendar year because that’s where their bread gets buttered. What ATF represents is the gateway to the rest of the world’s content in December, capping off the year. In fact, I believe, given that it’s still considered a transitional year due to the pandemic, many fringe Asian buyers have held off on trips to the rest of the world in 2022, so if they had a choice, ATF would indeed be the Asia TV Forum Today, there’s definitely more fear and anxiety among the executives ranks of the industry given the existential issues facing capital markets. Justin Deimen, executive director of the Southeast Asian AudioVisual Association
V I D E O A G E December 2022 14 MIP Cancun Report (Continued from Cover) From l. to r.: ATV’s Mustafa Keyvan, Merve Dogan, Emre Gorentas, with Tania Porras Cossani of Medcom Panama (WAWA) in attendance. They made up an astonishing nine percent of the market’s attendees. It is now clear that MIP Cancun has become the premier market for LatAm television, forcing DISCOP Miami to turn its attention to the global market, with LatAm relegated to just one of its components (see DISCOP Miami story on page 10). Marta Ezpeleta, director of Distribution, International Offices, and Co-productions at Spain-based Mediapro Studio, had ten people from her company in Cancun. “MIP Cancun is crucial for our sales and finding opportunities for new projects”, she said. Mediapro also sponsored the opening party. If there was some grumbling at MIP Cancun, it was related to the event’s calendar dates, as it was close to the end of the AFM in Santa Monica (which concluded on November 6, 2022), and just 25 days after MIPCOM. Some content distributors simply did not have the time to jump frommarket to market, and a few of them had to forgo Cancun. Similarly, because of how close it was to MIP Cancun, companies like Mediapro had to skip this year’s AFM, which is a market they normally attended in the past. MIP Cancun also changed its management structure — it’s now headed by Maria PerezBelliere — and in the process it became more structured and formal. For example, there were no less than 20 e-mail exchanges between panelists and organizers (with up to 12 people cc’ed each time) in order to schedule a single seminar. This was not something that ever happened before. Despiteitsskyrocketingsuccess,MIPCancun is not one of trade media’s top advertisinggenerating markets, like NATPE Miami used to be. This element brought some aspects of the market to light, as illustrated below. Traditionally, sales companies invest heavily in promotion when expectations are high for a market. In the case of MIP Cancun, it could be that the nature of the market — which offers pre-scheduled appointments with buyers — makes the need for promotion less necessary. But it could also be that the focus of the market (which also caters to LatAm regions strongly affected by economic problems) is what actually reduces the sellers’ potential revenue, and thus their promotional budgets. It might also be that the market is simply reaching maturity, even though it’s still technically in its infancy, and further growth will be hard to achieve. But MIP Cancun has a winning card that can be played in the future — the growing production and co-production section of the market. Taking a cue from previous American Film Market (AFM) events, market organizers can encourage producers who are looking for coproduction partners to run teaser ads based on artistic renditions of the scripts (or treatments) and even list the potential talents that could be featured (prefaced with “credits not contractual”). This was a very effective strategy at AFM to find film co-production partners, or to pre-sell projects. This strategy was discontinued at the AFM after the demise of large independent production companies that could afford such marketing costs, but it could be revitalized at MIP Cancun. The event is seeing an increase in the participation of production companies, which have meeting tables on the ground floor of the Moon Palace Convention Center. Distribution companies typically have meeting tables on the first floor, which is always buzzing with activity — very different from the quiet surroundings of the production quarters. The Convention Center is adjacent to one of the three hotel complexes that make up the Moon Palace Resort, where all participants are housed. Buyers’ expenses are paid by the MIP Cancun organization, while sellers are offered packages that include meeting tables and flat fee accommodations. Once registered, guests are not required to pay extra for drinks and food. With themeeting table packages, organizers guarantee meetings with 35 buyers over the course of two-and-half days. “It’s a good value”, said Emilia Nuccio, VP, International Content Sales for New York City-based FilmRise. This was the second time since 2016 that Nuccio attended MIP Cancun, and this time she “was very impressed by the organization.” Not all the invited acquisition executives are actually “buying”, though. “I’m here to connect with friends and partners, but not buying”, confided one major Mexican buyer, who wished to remain anonymous. “The budget is gone!” There are also cases where first-timers are teamed up with buyers who deal with different genres than those offered by the meeting’s seller. In cases like that the 25-minute slot is used for friendly chit-chat. Naturally, both sellers and buyers can reject some pre-arranged meetings, but if it is not requested, the time together is used to just re-connect, regardless of whether any business will get done. One complex aspect of the complimentary offerings iswhen the seller is also amajor buyer. In this case, if a company is buying for his/her distribution pipe, company representatives are only offered free registration badges, but are required to pay the table package fees. If, on the other hand, the seller also functions as a buying agent for a TV network (which qualifies for a fully-paid invitation), one member of the company is invited all-expenses-paid, and another is required to buy the table package, or the registration badges. Those participants who just buy the market badges have access to the buyers’ list, but not their e-mail addresses. In order to secure appointments, such sellers have to request a meeting through the MIP Cancun website. In addition to the sales aspect, the market features seminars, screenings, showcases, themed group breakfasts, group luncheons, and plenty of parties. These include a preopening party, an opening party, and a closing party. Naturally, all are dutifully sponsored — with the exception of this year’s “Breakfast with buyers” event, and the market’s closing day, which had no sponsor. At traditional markets, seminars are viewed as a distraction from the buying and selling aspects, but with the pre-arranged meetings at MIPCancun, buyers have a pre-set schedule and can fill holes in their schedules by attending some of the many conferences on offer. The seminars consisted of panels of experts that touched on some of the industry’s most relevant topics and issues that supposedly were on attendees’ minds. This year, MIP Cancun featured a total of 18 sessions, which started on Sunday, November 13, 2022. A total of 70 speakers made their respective ways to the podiums at the Cancun Theater in the Moon Palace Arena complex during the event. On Monday, November 14, the market’s first day, one of the sessions featured VideoAge’sDom Serafini, who moderated a panel with Cecilia Mendonca, head of Content Development for the Walt Disney Company; Tiago Mello, executive producer and partner at São Paulo’s Boutique Filmes; and Pablo Ghiglione, who is in charge of Content Distribution & Partnerships at Globo. The theme of the discussion was “Spotlight on Brazil: A View to its Voices, Content, and Evolution of the Sector.” Next year, MIP Cancun is scheduled to take place on November 13-16, 2023. The WAWA contintigent counted 70 participants Meeting tables in the MIP Cancun exhibition area at the Moon Palace Hotel
V I D E O A G E December 2022 16 Insight Into Parrot Analytics my seat up for a person with those credentials.” And indeed, seven executives sit on the current board, includingDavidBishop (formerly of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment andMGM Home Entertainment), Bruce Tuchman (former president of AMCGlobal), and Adriana Cisneros, CEO of Grupo Cisneros, who sent a note to VideoAge, stating: “I’m on the [Parrot] board and excited about the impact we’re having on the entertainment industry globally.” Now, it is known that Seger completed a Bachelor of Biomedical Science in neurobiology in 2009 at The University of Auckland, followed two years later by a Master of Bioscience Enterprise from the same institution. While at the university, he raised more than NZ$8 million (U.S.$4.8 million) in capital funding to develop a range of analytics products, including Demand Expressions, a data tool that allows acquisition, production, and marketing executives to gauge market interest in specific TV programs and genres in real time across all platforms. Demand had the backing from, among others, K1W1, owned by New Zealand investor Sir Stephen Tindall. These were aspects of The University of Auckland entrepreneurship ecosystem, which ultimately allowed Seger to launch Parrot Analytics, now a company with U.S.$18.5 million annual revenues and employing 66 people (source: Datanyze). However, via e-mail, Seger stated that he wasn’t born in New Zealand (the University of Auckland did, however, report that he grew up in West Auckland), that he’s not 36 years old (as many assumed after learning that he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in 2009), and that the information about Gourdie and Sir Stephen was inaccurate… but failed to provide the correct details. As for whether he ever moved to the U.S., he said: “We have offices in Los Angeles and New York, and I’m there often.” (Other offices are in Auckland, London, and São Paulo, while its headquarters is officially in West Hollywood, California.) Similarly, Samuel Stadler, Parrot’s VP of Marketing, declined to divulge Seger’s age, birthplace, and the origins of the name Parrot, stating that “it’s not all that interesting.” (A 2020 article in The New York Times about Parrot Analytics indicated that Seger’s age was, at that time, 32). In addition, there is very little non-promotional content about the company online, and Wikitia (a sort of Wikipedia) provides a lot of data, but not any insight into the company, which is ironic since during one of Seger’s many public appearances (in print, on YouTube, and as a guest on a variety of podcasts), he explained that “it’s not a question of having more data. There’s more data, but less insights, because big data and insights are not synonymous. You can have a lot of data, but very little insights.” And in the case of Parrot, even the insight about the origin of its name is not entirely clear-cut. Omar Méndez, VideoAge’s LatAm contributor and editor of the Spanish-language The Daily Television, closely follows Parrot’s cascade of press releases. He assumes that “the name of the company corresponds to what it is. They record and process everything they hear and the surrounding noises, as do the birds that bear their name”, he said. (Continued from Cover) streaming and peer-to-peer protocols, photo sharing, blogging, and research platforms. That description is easy to understand. But descriptions of the company from its own website revert to Parrot-speak. For example, a report that explained how Parrot monetizes all the data that it collects, said: “Our data accelerates content sales and distribution, informs better acquisitions and programming decisions, facilitates cost-effective marketing, de-risks production, helps content strategy and recommendations, informs better merchandising deals, and more.” There’s been a recent surge in analytics companies pitching their audience insights and content intelligence services, so much so that the sector is quickly getting saturated. Among themostwell-knownnames is Tubular, a subscription-based service that provides social video measurements and counts among its clients A+E Networks and PBS. VideoAge, which at MIPCOM had its stand just around the corner from Parrot, was curious to find out what Garaude meant by “more”, and we asked her to answer a few questions via e-mail from her Paris office. “I did my research before joining the company, and I can assure you it is much more than you expect”, she said. She ultimately redirected any and all questions to Parrot’s PR department. In anticipation of the official answers, and using VideoAge’s own data-mining resources, we learned that Parrot Analytics was cofounded in 2011 in New Zealand by Wared Seger, the company’s current CEO (pictured on the front cover). However, finding out who the other co-founder(s) were, as well as other information about the company proved to be a challenge. Various online accounts list one Adel Shahin and Australian futurist Chris Riddell as co-founders. But these names have not been officially confirmed by anyone at the company. New Zealand entrepreneur Alan Gourdie is also listed as having been Parrot’s chairman from 2013 to 2017, as well as one of its lead investors. Explained Gourdie from Auckland, New Zealand: “I was chairman for the first three years. Inits first coupleof years from2011, Parrot started looking at using its data sources for use in the music industry before Wared pivoted the company to focus on TV/film.” In a subsequent e-mail, Gourdie stated that “I invested in the first two seed rounds Parrot launched, [but] due to its early success the company and the board needed more U.S. media industry expertise than I could provide and I was happy to open Parrot Analytics captures a spectrum of actual audience behavior, including video streaming consumption, social media, blogging platforms, filesharing and peer-to-peer consumption. The Parrot Analytics Board of Directors (Continued on Page 18)
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18 V I D E O A G E December 2022 (Continued from Page 16) Insight Into Parrot Analytics As for the company’s services, the widely available information seems to point to the fact that Parrot Analytics captures a spectrum of actual audience behavior, including video streaming consumption, social media, blogging platforms, file-sharing and peer-to-peer consumption. This, combined with artificial intelligence platforms, allows the company to provide insights into geographic-specific audience demand for content. This enables media companies to understand audience demand for content across all content distribution platforms in all markets around the world. This kind of analytic ability has been reassuring for the broadcasting sector. In fact, a recent Parrot report stated: “To paraphrase a famous quote: the death of broadcast television has been grossly exaggerated. It’s true that the average viewership garnered by major broadcast networks in primetime has plummeted since 2015. Yet broadcast’s supposed demise remains more of a splashy narrative than concrete law. Fifteen of the 100 most in-demand TV series across all platforms year-to-date worldwide originated on broadcast networks. That number rises to 23 if we look at just the U.S., a signifier of how significant the cultural footprint of these showscantrulybe, particularly in the highly competitive domestic market.” Finally, in one of Seger’s podcast interviews he said: “We process a trillion data points a day, from 249 countries around the world. That’s every country on the planet.” He then proceeded to give some industry insight: “There are over 600 OTT platforms around the world, and U.S.$800 billion is spent on television content around the world. That’s everything from content investments, content production, distribution, marketing, and advertising. And it’s probably the least datadriven industry out there, given its size.” He then concluded: “People think technology and science are synonymous — they are not — technology is the application of scientific research and it’s necessary to have entrepreneurship to commercialize the technology to the wider market. So that’s what science commercialization is. It’s a combination of those things.” Ultimately, Parrot’s Stadler provided some insight into the “more” that Garaude alluded at the beginning of this article. “In terms of pricing, Parrot operates on a SaaS [Software as a Service] subscription model. At the same time, our teams work very closely with all of our customers, helping them to answer specific acquisition, programming, sales & distribution, financing, content valuation and strategy questions”, he said. He added, “We [have] the ability to value, in dollar terms, how much a TV show or movie is worth to a platform.” This ability includes services like “platform-specific value contribution analysis for any TV show or movie”, plus “global market demand assessment of intellectual property”, and “IP and content development, financing, programming and acquisitions, sales and distribution”, which at one time in the U.S. were something that the major studios developed internally and were called “the Ultimates.” (By Dom Serafini) MARINA BAY SANDS, SINGAPORE 7 – 9 DECEMBER 2022 www.asiatvforum.com @asiatvforum | #ATF #ASIATVFORUM SAVE OVER 30%WHEN YOU REGISTER BY 24 OCTOBER Market | Conference | Networking Events THIS DECEMBER, SAY “HI” IN-PERSON VISIT US AT MIPCOM STAND P-1.K63 Held in: Supported by: Co-located with: An event of: Produced by: ln the business of building businesses Hosted by:
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22 My 2¢ December 2022 TV’s biggest technical challenge was to make on-air personalities look and sound good. There was a time in the TV industry when the superstars were the engineers — especially the chief engineers of both local U.S. TV stations and international networks. Remember Joe Flaherty at CBS and Julius Barnathan at ABC networks? What about Wang Feng at China’s CCTV? Or Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony in Japan? After the era of the engineers, the superstars were the TV networks’ chief researchers (a.k.a. the ratings gurus), such as David Poltrack at CBS in the U.S., and Homero I. Sanchez at TV Globo in Brazil. Today, the stars of the TV industry are still technology people, but from the marketing side, like Tim Cook at Apple, Elon Musk at Tesla, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, and Reed Hastings at Netflix. Perhaps this is because, according to the October 30, 2022 edition of The Washington Post, these days, the United States “faces a desperate shortage of engineers.” In years past, TV’s biggest technical challenge was to make on-air personalities look and sound good. So experts in lighting, microphones, portable TV cameras, and videotape recorders were highly sought after. Today, the TV engineers (now called technology integrators, chief technology officers, CTOs, technologists, or even geeks) are focusing on issues like those created by programmatic ads, audience measurements problems, and how technology will enable emerging and developing revenue streams. But few of these new “technocrats” will be elevated to star status. Of course, back then the engineers were of the caliber of David Sarnoff (founder of both RCA and NBC), Peter Goldmark (CBS), and Vladimir Zworykin (RCA). This trio even won Engineering Emmy Awards. These technical people were revered, especially at trade shows such as NAB in Las Vegas, SMPTE (mostly in New York City, but now in Los Angeles), IBC (first in Brighton, U.K., now in Amsterdam), and the Montreux Convention in Switzerland. Today, many of the TV engineers of the past are forgotten, but back then they made news even in the consumer press. Some names that people might be familiar with include Germany’s Walter Bruch, the father of the PAL TV system; Adilson PontesMalta at TVGlobo in Brazil; TV pioneer Antonio Vittorio Castellani of Italy, and Leonardo Chiariglione, also from Italy, who was considered the father of MPEG (digital compression). The new “technocrats” don’t wear white shirts with screwdriver-filled pockets, like their former counterparts did. In fact, they tend to don T-shirts with confusing slogans, like “Test Icicles”, which might be referring to a new hip-hop band… or might not. At industry events these new tech executives are recognizable because they tend to walk the exhibition aisles by themselves, whereas the old engineers were followed around by hardware vendors, and by the stations’ general managers who wanted to make sure they would not be buying the latest “toys” (as general managers referred to the new equipment sought after by the engineers). In turn, the general managers were followed around by program syndicators hoping to clear one more market for their barter shows. So it wasn’t unusual to see the engineers roaming the aisles followed by an entourage of “interested parties.” The times are indeed changing — now at the speed of Internet pockets, while in the past, it was just at the speed of light. Dom Serafini In the past, those seeking out U.S. TV station managers at trade shows needed only to follow their TV engineers through the aisles. Today, chief technology officers have replaced the engineers, so this opportunity is gone. “There are no more engineers to trail at TV trade shows!”
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