MIPCOM is underway in France, the last of the year’s major screen-focused events to hit the French Riviera.
Kids-focused companion event MipJunior ran over the weekend, with the biggest topics of discussion in conference sessions being – unsurprisingly – AI and the fragmentation of audiences.
The key takeaways focused on ditching traditional models, be they commissioning processes, production pipelines or single product and point of delivery (linear TV), in favour of much faster processes leading to multi-platform delivery (which might still include linear TV) and a move away from fees as the primary driver of income.
Music to the ears of networks, you’d assume, but where would the money actually come from? Some would come from monetisation on platforms where that’s a viable option (eg YouTube), according to those promoting the strategy. The other options to generate income being touted at MipJunior have been less explored in NZ, mainly because of the small size of the market here.
Merchandising is an obvious one. For shows that make it out of NZ and on to screens elsewhere, Kiri & Lou probably being the biggest current example of local kids fare, merchandising strategies can deliver returns that make a difference to the bottom line. Merch also has the advantage of mostly being executed and delivered by third parties, meaning the production team still gets to focus most of its energy on the title itself, rather than being constantly distracted by other elements that require continuous attention (looking at you, social media).
The other strategy being touted at MipJunior was to make more use of interactive elements for a title – especially games – to drive income.
The size of the NZ market still makes that a limited opportunity too but, now that there’s some NZ On Air support for game development, it might be something more prodcos here could be tempted to explore. As game development is the profit-making part of the screen production eco-system here, it might well be worth a deeper dive.
As well as generating more income, reducing cost was also an option being proposed in Cannes.
AI tools offer various ways to cut down production costs, although the commentary we’ve seen out of MipCom has very much been a lot of people saying it’s great for reducing grunt work but it’s important for humans to retain creative control and be the final yay or nay sayers for whatever it delivers.
How much that matches up with how people are actually using AI is hard to know, as is the quality of results being delivered – although its capabilities are only going to improve.
Elsewhere at MipJunior, Brazilian preschool title Bia and the Beats won the pitch competition, fending off Monsieur Roscoe (UK), Dogs Need Jobs (UK), Pumpkin Finds Her Queen (South Africa) and Littlest Robot (Germany).
Around 40 people repping 20 organisations from Australia are taking part in MipJunior and MipCom as buyers this year, with seven organisations exhibiting, led by Screen Australia. NZ has four buyers present, two each from Sky and TVNZ, according to the official buyers’ list, with Motion Tech Lab the only NZ exhibitor, promoting its AI-driven script analysis tool, Scriptsee.
MipJunior has now done its dash and segued neatly into MipCom, which runs until early Friday morning (NZ time). It’ll be the last Mip event in France for a year, with MipTV having run its final edition in Cannes in April, ahead of relocating to London early next year.
