MIPTV enjoyed an unexpected uptick last year – seeing a busier-than-expected floor despite a slight drop in attendance – and as Canadian buyers and sellers again jet off to the five-day market in the sunny south of France, many are optimistic that MIP’s improved (if not yet actually ‘good’) luck will continue into 2004.

Funder and lead flag-waver Telefilm Canada has lured a record-breaking 82 companies into its 400-square-foot pavilion, up from 65 last time and 52 in 2002.

‘It amazes me, when I look back three years at MIPTV, we had 20 companies,’ says organizer Lise Corriveau. ‘It’s like, holy moley, where the hell did they all come from? We’ve never had this many.’

Most of those companies, 34, are from Ontario, followed by some 20 each from the West and Quebec, and five from the Maritimes.

There are also signs that the overall world market is improving. Germany appears to be on the mend from its financial meltdown of 2002, although pundits say it is still six months to a year from regaining its full, former strength.

Roughly 10,000 delegates in total have attended the last few MIPTVs.

The Canadian Pavilion – a joint effort between Telefilm, the departments of Heritage and Foreign Affairs, plus regional outlets such as B.C. Film and the Ontario Media Development Corporation – has become a regular attraction at markets around the world and has done much to promote the Canuck TV trade. Corriveau says that large-scale partnership has allowed Telefilm to drop its rates for attendees, allowing more new and smaller companies a chance to do business with the world.

According to one MIP veteran, Canada’s many coproduction treaties have done much to keep TV-makers here afloat during the world market’s recent troubles, luring many cash-starved, deal-hungry countries under Telefilm’s red-and-white big top.

Many expect the demand for cheap, transportable programming to continue, good news again for Team Canada, which is made up mostly of companies dealing in docs, lifestyle and reality.

‘The only thing we’re not seeing is formats,’ says Corriveau. Formats are nonetheless expected to be strong sellers.

For some companies and producers, the 41st MIPTV will be their first. Telefilm is taking 16 rookies, some of whom went through the agency’s mentoring programs, to Cannes, and the National Screen Institute in Winnipeg is flying over the six members of its Global Marketing Program. Both groups hope to make emerging TV-makers comfortable with the world market.

The NSI is also organizing KickStart, an afternoon of networking and panel sessions on March 28 followed by a beach party, hosted by NABET Local 700.

MIP is a big place and can be incredibly overwhelming, warns Marci Elliott, senior director of marketing and development at NSI. Sellers need to do thorough research on would-be broadcasters, to pitch wisely and accurately to the right ‘casters, and to be patient, bearing in mind that it can sometimes take years of building a relationship before any deals get signed.

‘The contacts you make might not yield fruit for a few years,’ says Mickey Rogers, manager and mentor of the Global Marketing Program. ‘You never know. It’s an unpredictable place.’

Carrie Hall, director of development and distribution at Toronto’s Tricon Films, recalls meeting with a European buyer at MIPTV 2003 only to be told, point blank, that the outfit had no money. The meeting didn’t produce any deals, but it helped Tricon to build a relationship with the ‘caster. She’s hopeful that this year she will cash in that goodwill for some Euros.

‘This year we’re really directing our energy into development and developing relationships with broadcasters, so that we’ll have longevity,’ says Hall.

Tricon branched from production into distribution a few years ago, putting Hall on the receiving end of some sloppy pitches, often for unproduced formats (‘paper formats’) or reality shows. ‘Very often they’re pitching things that are not at all relevant to the Canadian market. Very strange things, and they’re saying, ‘Oh, we can adapt it, make it really Canadian.’ We don’t need this stuff. We’d rather get the show made or know that it has legs,’ says Hall.

Coming on too strong, pitching at inappropriate times or places, or indiscriminately hitting up too many targets are common and costly mistakes among new producers, say veterans – gaffes that the programs at NSI and Telefilm try to prevent.

‘It’s very expensive to go to market; you don’t want to walk away without accomplishing something. It can lend someone to being overzealous,’ says Elliott.

‘But there’s a time and a place for everything,’ she says, recalling pitches made in elevators, food lineups, and bathrooms. ‘Just ask a person for their card. Call or leave a message as opposed to pitching them cold.’

Buy curious?

A look at what just a few of the Canuck companies at MIPTV

are hoping to sell

National Film Board

Booty Call, a one-hour doc about the making of rap videos, is among the titles up for grabs from our dear old, and newly commercialized, NFB. (They’ve come a long way since the ’30s.) The board is also pushing its 3 x 60 Crime Scene series and feature docs Silent Genocide, about the Armenian massacre of 1915, and Peacekeepers, about the UN mission to the Congo.

Tricon Films

The owners of the Matchmaker franchise (86 hours over three titles, at last count) are looking to sell the format rights to their club-hopping 24-hour Party People and Fandemonium, a sort of Fear Factor for music mavens. They’re also talking up several developing series, including one about hotel scandals and their macho makeover pilot Walk Like a Man.

9 Story Entertainment

Arriving under the wing of Telefilm Canada, the young animation house hopes to attract minority coproduction partners to its 52 short Mr. Futz cartoons and to season one of its 21-ep toon Murphy the Rat.

Spectra International Distribution

Is jazz sell-able? To anyone other than the Asper family, that is? SID will find out when it tries to move six hour-long HD concerts taped at last year’s Montreal International Jazz Festival, part of the company’s 500-hour catalogue of performing arts programs.

CHUM

Star! has put together a 13 x 30 series Starville, about the hometowns of some of today’s top celebs, which its sister outfit CHUM Television International is hawking at Cannes, along with the 6 x 60 A Taste of Shakespeare, hipped-up redos of six of the Bard’s classic plays, and the Ron Mann doc Go Further.

-www.miptv.com

-www.telefilm.gc.ca