MIP-TV: If you don’t play, you can’t win

I just returned from mip-tv, the international television program market in Cannes, France, after an absence of five years, and I was amazed at how many things have changed – and how they have stayed the same.

mip still assaults you like a larger-than-life production in its own right, with a cast of characters you probably would not create because you might think you had gone too far. But they’re all there, in living, breathing color, on the magnificent coast of the Mediterranean, selling themselves and their wares over breakfast, lunch and dinner, and trying to close the all-important international deal.

But then there are the things that changed.

I remember a senior Canadian entertainment executive telling me about her first trip to Cannes. She sat on the roadside curb with her head in her hands and cried because she said she had never felt so insignificant in her entire life.

Well, Canadians are no longer crying but rather reveling in a ‘coming of age’ that Ted Riley, president of Atlantis Releasing, feels is the coming together of many factors: ‘Canadians spent the past 10 years getting adept at putting deals together, Canadian funding schemes have succeeded, our market matured with technology, and it all happened when we were ready to kick it up a gear.’

And not only the major companies are benefiting.

The Ontario Film Development Corporation, sodec, and Tele Export Quebec stands were bristling with activity, and producers and distributors reported record-breaking activity and sales. If there was a difficulty, it was to keep up with the demand for meetings, screenings and negotiations.

Canadian producers and distributors in these stands didn’t only share space, they shared their experiences, and found a strength in numbers and unity that bypassed competition.

Marketing, merchandising and innovation were at the basis of many sales and coproduction deals. Major companies used the critical u.s. broadcast deal as the barometer for their product’s potential international success, while many smaller companies mined new markets through the sale of formats, thematic information, documentary and entertainment programming.

More and more large and smaller producers and distributors are realizing new revenue through multimedia applications and the merchandising of licensed product. The Canadian production industry has discovered what the music industry learned years ago: sometimes there is more money in the merchandising of a product than the product itself.

Whatever the source of revenue, the overwhelming message I received from virtually everyone I spoke to was the importance of attending the international markets, and ‘putting your face’ in front of the buying community over and over again.

Jean Mercier of Mercier Films in Montreal reports ‘that it is only after several years that they are starting to have quality meetings and to be taken seriously.’

To make doubly sure nobody missed his company, Mercier stood at the opening doors and ran a draw based on the collection of business cards for a child’s denim jacket for My Home Town, an interesting grassroots approach to breaking through the high-tech sound barrier.

Helena Cynamon and Mickey Rogers at Vancouver’s Forefront Productions were amazed at the ease with which they were able to meet with companies like nbc and Disney. Many producers believe they have to be there ‘to listen to what people want in the marketplace’ and respond accordingly.

So, to paraphrase an old lottery ad, ‘If you don’t play, you can’t win.’

nancy Smith is a Toronto-based television consultant.