When Eurodata TV Worldwide VP Frederic Vaulpre opened MIPTV by including the phrase “content is king” in his monologue, this writer, at least, almost packed up her laptop and left.

But he kept going, turning the phrase on its head and insisting that while content is still key, it is the viewer, in fact, that is now king. And that viewer, who has never had more access to international content, still likes the touchstone of relatable faces and stories on their screens, it seems.

Katrine Vogelsang, head of fiction at widely acclaimed TV2 Denmark, repeatedly emphasized the pickiness of Dutch audiences, who have a low tolerance in primetime for anything but (their own) premium drama: “We can’t make anything else work for a Danish audience – they are a very demanding crowd.” While she said she’d love to free up some cash for original production by increasing the number of acquisitions on the channel, Dutch audiences simply don’t want anything but the gritty, high-concept dramas the channel has trained them to love.

During her session, which featured network programmers and execs from Ivory Coast, Poland, Canada (CBC scripted exec Tara Ellis), Italy and Denmark, every panellist agreed that a local-first approach was critical to their company/network’s success.

However, at the same time, all execs save Maciej Chmiel of Telewizja Polska (Poland) – which has a bananas local TV market, with its top two series ratcheting up 700 and 1,200 episodes each – said coproductions were an important part of its strategy, with finding the right story fit being the main challenge.

Vogelsang said her “dream is to do two coproductions a year,” and that because TV2 Denmark does not have any in-house productions, copros are key to its strategy. She said most often, copros are in the crime genre and emphasized, again, that the channel needs a specific fit to achieve the right story for its audience. Surprisingly, she referenced CBC’s The Council as an interesting idea for a copro partner, since Greenland – and its Inuit communities – is a former province of Denmark.

National Ivory Coast broadcaster Radiodiffusion Télévision Ivoirienne (RTI)’s Sandra Coulibaly outlined how her four-channel network had been out of copros for years, but were back on board with a vengeance as it seeks to bolster the quality of its programming. Copros are now the net’s “main method” of production, with 50% financing the norm and occasionally 100% if the show “has international potential.” What are they looking for next? A “historical show, maybe.” What works now? Series that have the potential to become long-running hits, so Ivory Coast audiences can bring them back to the workplace water cooler.

Italy’s Mediaset too is back in the copro game after a long absence and is looking for Italian stories with global appeal. The company currently has six in development, one of which is a series based on infamous Italian-American gangster Lucky Luciano (with Federation Entertainment) – an example, Mediaset’s Zelda Stewart, head of acquisitions, noted is “an American story but also an Italian one.”

Each country’s’ copros enter a staggeringly huge content market. Eurodata’s Sahar Baghery, director of global research and content strategy, said that more than 8,400 new TV programs launched worldwide in 2015, a good chunk of which are fighting for audience share in the local-first/global-next strategy marketplace. The U.S. remains the top exporter, she noted, but France is rising quickly on the list, with 120 exports last year. (See the success of France-Canada copro Versailles as an example of what’s possible.)

Trends rising in this crowded market include scripted adaptations, Baghery said. While it’s an interesting opportunity (with a proven track record in series such as Homeland, an Israeli format), she cautioned the audience that it’s “quite [a] difficult recipe to find a balance to appeal to local audience.” As an example of local market adaptations, Baghery showed clips from origin series Germany’s Der Letze Bulle, which was adapted to France’s Falco and then to South Korea’s Last Cop. Germany’s take on a cop waking up from a coma (the cause of which he has no idea) in comparison to South Korea’s was, in understatement, totally hilarious. (However, it totally worked: Last Cop aired to a 43% share on airing in the coveted 20 to 34 demo.)

Trends in factual formats from local markets, Baghery said, include new spins on dating shows – Marry Me Now from Israel’s Armoza Formats, in which a girlfriend surprises her boyfriend (or vice versa) by asking their partner to get married on the spot, looked interesting – and singing shows. Circling back to the “viewer is king” theme, one of the buzzed about formats of MIPTV is Global Agency’s The Legend (Turkey), in which an aspiring singer performs and rates themselves, then uses audience feedback to determine if they were correct. They then get to “challenge” themselves to see if they can beat their audience score. Who needs Adam Levine, anyway?

It was Denmark’s Vogelsang, however, who summed up best the challenge of building local content with an eye to international success – as factual formats do so successfully. While it’s all the rage to say you want your show to do well at home and then have a glamorous life abroad, the reality is that the home market really does have to remain at the forefront, she said.

“You need to be very well aware of your home audience. The more local we [TV2] go, the better it travels. I’m worried about all the distributors coming into the market that want to be producers and the focus on sales not story. It’s not just about finance – it’s about making a great show.”