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MIPTV Highlights 2014

Last year's MIPTV was a time of "tentative optimism". This year's edition felt a lot more self-confident, clearly announcing itself as "The World's Market & Creative Forum for Content on Every Screen".

There was a trace of hyperbole in the first few words - in fact a huge 67% of participants were European, 'only' 16% from N. America and 18% from Asia;
But, Orange Blog's Céline Louis headlined: "MIPTTV 2014 Content and Transmedia at the heart of the discussions";

And the Whole Digital Universe was positively embraced: YouTube, social media, Google and all the other players - gone the internecine sniping of recent years.

High spots from major sessions:

Deb Roy, responsible for Media Studies at Twitter, claimed "Twitter makes television better: it's a real catalyst that can increase the impact and possibilities of TV". As illustration, she recounted that at the recent Oscars 5 million people sent 19 million tweets, received by 37million people, concluding that "if TV channels then broadcast the tweets, the buzz created for the program becomes enormous" - an almost horrendous image of the whole digital universe feeding on itself. Does content create buzz, or buzz create content?'.

Coincidentally, Maurice Levy, CEO of Groupe Publicis, in his Keynote 'Future Content will be Digital', also turned to the Oscars ceremony, putting a value of one billion dollars on the viral selfie taken against a background of Hollywood's biggest stars. A valuation "justified by the photo's unprecedented social media impact" - unarguably a case of buzz creating content!

Alex Carloss, Head of Entertainment for YouTube emphasized "content is king". He talked at length about US TV chat shows, which "now try to include independent sketches that can be easily lifted out onto YouTube-style media" and finished by observing "An audience tunes in when told to; a fan chooses when and what to watch".

Some might look back with a little nostalgia to days when audiences were sometimes discriminating, fans used to watch their soccer team and the word 'content' was often qualified by judgmental adjectives like 'interesting', 'trivial', 'enthralling', 'depressing'...

MIP Digital Fronts - a new concept at MIPTV 2014:

Designed for digital entertainment executives, MIP Digital Fronts is the first international digital content marketplace for the production, distribution and acquisition of high-quality original content exclusively for online audiences. Founding members include Dailymotion, YouTube, Maker Studios, Vice Media... The Fronts featured Grand Auditorium screenings from world-renowned transmedia operators, followed by interviews withthe producers, creative execs and talent behind the content.

Just a taste of what was on the agenda:

Rightster CEO, Charlie Muirhead discussed his company's work : It's a "one-stop shop for all digital backend and monetization" (read 'content and turning content into cash'), under the slogan "upload once - commercialize everywhere". You upload your content, then push it to your own website, to the big platforms like YouTube, and to the publisher network.

Sam Barcroft, Founder of Barcroft TV: "On-line video is not just a depository to push content into - you have to promote it and get excited about it. We are incredible at picking out stories and getting them shared across platforms". One of this year's star items: Snake Eats Crocodile, with 24 million views.

Vice News Channel screenings include 'Black Market - everything from sex to cough syrup and drugs to kidneys'! Then the channel's fiery and uninhibited CEO, Shane Smith, got his audience cheering in the aisles: “We can’t just have stick-your-head-in-the-sand shit anymore, we have to say something. We have to say ‘if we don’t do something about the environment, we’re f**ked’. “Let’s change the f***in’ world.”

MIPTV Highlights 2014