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Analysis: MIPCOM Mart Confirms Growing Global Demand for TV Content

Posted on: Tuesday, 25 October 2005, 09:00 CDT

Text of editorial analysis by Peter Feuilherade of BBC Monitoring Media Services on 25 October

The annual MIPCOM audiovisual market show which ended in Cannes on 21 October reflected growing global demand for TV content, with buyers clamouring for material on an ever-expanding range of platforms.

"We had a fantastic market this year," Paul Johnson, television director for the show's organizer Reed MIDEM told a news conference. He described MIPCOM's focus this year on the mobile TV market as "a huge success".

Over 11,000 participants from 52 countries registered for the five-day show, seven per cent more than in 2004.

The numbers of buyers attending also rose by seven per cent, to close on 3,500.

Mobile TV

"TV on the mobile was one of the big successes of the last 12 months," said Peter Bazalgette, chief executive at Endemol, the leading international producer of reality TV.

Endemol announced at MIPCOM that it was launching two new mobile- only TV channels.

The first will be the Extreme Reality Channel, featuring "weird and wacky" entertainment clips. The second, comedy channel See Me TV, will let users make their own clips available for download by other customers.

Bazalgette told MIPCOM delegates he believes that demand for mobile content will outstrip previous estimates.

"I'm convinced that the growth predictions we've seen will prove too low. I believe that the demand for mobile content will grow much faster than expected," he said.

Reality TV fans in the UK, Italy and Australia paid for half a million downloads and watched more than six million streamed minutes on their mobile phones this year to keep up with "Big Brother", Endemol's market winner.

Endemol has teamed up with a number of mobile phone operators, as yet unidentified, for its latest venture. It is creating a new division to focus purely on mobile and broadband content.

"It doesn't make us a channel owner in the conventional TV sense," said Bazalgette. "The plan is to work with commercial partners to bring our archive to mobile phone users."

"Buyers also are coming to the market with dedicated mobile plans, in a change from previous markets when the eventual deployment for mobile content was still uncertain," according to Mimi Turner of the entertainment industry publication Hollywood Reporter.

Turner noted: "While the studio sales arms reported their first- ever negotiations for high-definition rights, nontraditional revenue earners such as mobile phone and internet exploitation also are taking centre stage."

Television companies and mobile phone operators are not touting mobile TV as a substitute for conventional viewing. As Paul Durman wrote in the Sunday Times (London) on 23 October, "they see it as a complementary service offering highlights, previews, breaking news, 'behind-the-scenes' footage and a way to interact with a favourite show".

Although some market analysts are forecasting that mobile phone services around the world could sign up than 50 million users of mobile TV by 2009, others question how much users will pay to watch TV on small screens.

Sports and news, which can both be viewed in short clips lasting from 45 seconds to three minutes, are tipped as winners with potential consumers.

Endemol's Bazalgette has pinpointed three applications that he believes will also persuade mobile phone users to view TV on pocket- sized screens: interactivity, soap operas and content that is specifically tailor-made for mobile receivers.

Broadband TV

Broadband television, which allows viewers to watch TV via an internet connection instead of a traditional aerial, satellite dish or cable connection, also attracted great interest at this year's MIPCOM, media analysts said.

The UK's leading commercial network ITV announced on 19 October that it is linking up with Narrowstep to provide a national network of local TV stations.

And on 21 October, satellite TV giant BSkyB said it was taking over broadband internet provider Easynet in a 375-million dollar deal.

Agence France-Presse news agency noted that many internet companies are trying to transform themselves into media entities: "Yahoo has been hiring executives and journalists from the TV world to report from some of the top news hotspots, whilst AOL has started to become a content provider by producing its own children's cartoons."

The consensus at the end of MIPCOM 2005 was that as mobile phone operators and internet service providers start to expand into the TV market, it is now up to satellite, cable and terrestrial broadcasters - as well as terrestrial channels - to reinvent themselves to meet the challenges of the new distribution channels.

Source: BBC Monitoring Media

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