Canada had 134 exhibiting companies at MIPCOM 2002, up 19% compared to the 113 attending last year, and now ranks fourth among top exhibiting nations after France, the U.S. and the U.K. The Canada brand at the fall program market was underscored by the record 67 companies gathered under the Canada Pavilion umbrella, and by CBC/Radio-Canada’s investment as co-host of the market’s opening-night festivities.

Adding a fresh perspective to difficult market conditions, Peter Moss, VP programming at Toronto-based Corus Television, says while the market and individual companies go up and down, ‘the television industry is a thriving industry. There are people making fortunes and spending fortunes every day.’ The trick for buyers at markets like MIPCOM, he says, is to find fresh product.

‘One of the things that you do as a buyer is to plug yourself into the current trends and you try to guess what’s coming down the pipeline. It takes a year to 18 months to make these programs, so when something hits the market, chances are most of the major sales have already been done, because that is how they are financed. So what you really want to try and do is find who is planning the most interesting things so you can get your finger in the pie early enough…and you can have some input.’

In youth programming, Moss says there’s an appetite for live-action programming in two genres – comedy and spooky-action adventures such as Apartment 11 Productions’ new series Mystery Hunters.

Moss, who joined Corus in May, says he spotted ‘a couple of great [program] leads at MIPCOM in animation on the kids side.’ The shows mix promising technique and stories and originated with offshore producers who were actually looking for Canadian partners, he says.

‘This is a hit-driven business. Broadcaster executives don’t go to the market to buy programs by the pound. Everybody is trying to sniff out the next Simpsons or the next Angela Anaconda,’ says Moss.

At the market, Muse Distribution International sold the CTV movie The Investigation to BBC. Muse also pitched Pandora’s Closet, a half-hour teen series commissioned by CBC and developed with exec producer Kathy Slevin (Zack Files) and veteran writer James Nadler. The response from buyers in Germany, the U.K. and France was entirely positive. ‘We’ll certainly try to get a U.S. broadcaster on board as well,’ says Michael Prupas, president of Muse Entertainment.

The company also cemented a deal with Beyond International to develop Answered By Fire, a miniseries based on true stories of peacekeepers in East Timor. It is being developed with exec producer Barbara Samuels and CBC, and is the first serious effort at a coproduction between CBC and ABC, says Prupas.

‘Notwithstanding the depressing part of this market – the German situation is still a mess and the dollars offered are not great – we are making some progress and finding that the quality of shows we’ve done is receiving more recognition,’ says Prupas.

The top series at MIPCOM for Cargo Releasing, with offices in Toronto and New York, was Weird Weddings, produced by Yaletown Entertainment of Vancouver for Life Network. The show received an offer from Women’s Entertainment (Rainbow Media) in the U.S., says Cargo president David Piperni.

Piperni says ‘prices are still tough,’ notably in the European specialty market.

More sales, or volume deals, is the seller’s response to low prices ($500 to $600 per episode for a two- to three-year window) from three- and four-year-old cable and satellite services. ‘Some of the buyers characterize this by saying that when they first started out they were actually overpaying for programs, and now they’re just starting to catch up,’ he says.

Cargo deals regularly with 25 to 30 U.S. specialty broadcasters and represents eight or nine Canadian producers specializing in non-fiction programs.

‘People actually came with offers this time around, which was different from past years. It’s been a slow year, but it seems to be turning a corner,’ says Piperni.

Discovery HD Theater, the new Discovery USA high-definition channel, made an offer for the six-hour series Have Camera, Will Travel, a globetrotting, behind-the-scenes look at the work of travel photographers produced by Yaletown. The show has been presold to NHK in Japan.

Other Cargo titles at MIPCOM included High Point: Casinos of the World, hosted by country-music legend Kenny Rogers and produced by Toronto’s Influence Productions, and Healey’s Blues & Friends (13 x 30) starring Jeff Healey and friends and produced by Buck Productions, Toronto.

MIPCOM was mostly about running after scarce dollars and ways of putting deals together in lifestyle and factual programming, says Michel Lavoie, a documentary producer with Zone3 in Montreal.

‘We spent a lot of time developing new relationships with the Australians, trying to get the Australians, French and even the Americans in on some of our stuff. We have a lot of similarities with the Australians,’ says Lavoie.

The key in the international market, he says, may be finding ‘the model that works for everybody,’ shows such as elove and Dogs with Jobs, both from Cineflix, or Famous Homes & Hideaways, the latter produced by Zone3 and distributed in the U.S. by Hearst.

Sheena Macdonald, president of Rhombus International, says market response to Jennifer Baichwal’s arts doc The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia was entirely positive. ‘It’ll go everywhere. Everyone is keen.’

Macdonald says Rhombus’ major-market buyers, mostly international public-sector broadcasters in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Germany, expressed definite interest in Stormy Weather: The Music of Harold Arlen, a feature-length production, and a one-hour performance piece, The Shakespeare Sessions.

The Multimedia Group of Canada announced it had acquired exclusive rights in Canada, the U.S. and South and Central America to RTL2’s series of 9,000 funny home videoclips. Sari Buksner, MGC’s senior VP sales, says, ‘It’s rare that a new library of this quality and magnitude appears on the market, and this is an exciting opportunity to forge a relationship with RTL2.’

At MIPCOM, CineGroupe announced it had signed a deal with Fox Kids Europe for the all-media distribution in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa of its popular animated TV series Pig City. The series is a coproduction between CineGroupe and France’s AnimaKids in association with Merchandising Muenchen and Fox Kids France.

Corus’ Nelvana reported numerous Asian deals, including sales to Malaysia’s Juita Viden for Pippi Longstocking, the third series of Little Bear and Little Bear Movie. Rolie Polie Olie will premier on Japan’s ATX satellite channel and Pecola will start on TV Tokyo. Nelvana also sold pay-TV rights for Beyblade and Sausage Factory to Australia’s Foxtel.

Canada’s Breakthrough Films and Television and the U.K.’s Winklemania sold their live-action kids coproduction I Love Mummy to Latvian broadcaster Latvijas Televizia.

Industry veteran Les Harris of Toronto-based Canamedia acquired Canadian rights to Winchester’s preschool properties Jellabies and The Big Garage.

Cambium Catalyst International sold the second season of righteously whacky animation series The Ripping Friends, a coproduction with John Kricfalusi’s Spumco Canada studio, to Cartoon Network U.K.

Overall, there were 10,272 participants (up 3.4% from 2001) from 2,721 companies and 90 countries at MIPCOM 2002. Participation prices for all Reed Midem markets in 2003 have been frozen.

MIPTV 2003 is slated for March 24-28, 2003.

-www.mipcom.com