To face the growing competition from new players, buyers present at Mipcom 2019 had two clear goals in mind: to search for high-quality original content and join the craze for Turkish productions. These and other trends, up next.

This Thursday marked the end of a new edition of Mipcom in Cannes, which was full of coproduction announcements, international sales and distribution alliances, making it clear that content is still king.

This rule was also evident among buyers present in at the event, whose search for content revealed two clear trends: their interest in original productions that stand out from the rest and Turkish series.

Buyers Fall Under Turkey’s Spell

While the need to acquire international content was expressed by most buyers in Cannes, there’s one country that they all kept repeating: Turkey.

“There is a need within the international market for foreign fiction in small channels,” said Ángel López Armendáriz, Head of Foreign Production Selection at Mediaset Spain.“We are interested in the world of Turkish series.”

On that same line, William von Heidenstam, International Acquisitions Executive for SVT, said: “We’re open to fiction, dramas, children’s content, and factual, but looking specifically at Turkish content, we’re now going with Brave and Beautiful to see what are its results.”

José Alonso Navarro Contreras, executive producer of International Content at Canal 13 in Chile, said the search is wide: “we are looking for everything, from Turkish dramas to documentaries and film. We also analyze market trends. So it’s important to be here at Mipcom, so we can then debate it with our local team and decide what we’re interested in.”

Custom Content for Every Offer

Whether it’s Turkish or international production, another non-negotiable rule for buyers in Cannes was that this content had to be unique and truly stand out from the rest.

In this regard, Doris Vogelmann from Vme TV, said the choices depend on their audience: “animation for kids, for our preschool network, quality content for our US market. And for our Primo network aimed at kids 6 to 16, we look for animation and live action. We’ve seen things that have to do with science that we’re really interested in, so now we’re in negotiations and seeing how it works out.”

“We are always focused on content related to royalty, celebrities, lifestyle and fashion,” said Adolfo Alvarez Rivas, VP of Programming at Hola TV. “We are also looking for fresh content, realities that are softer and not as aggressive. And we are actually finding many things,” he added.

In addition, José Antonio Salso, Head of Acquisitions and Sales at Atresmedia, said his search for content is based on finding productions that fit into each of the group’s networks. “Antena 3 with its more general shows, or our smaller networks, which feed off of factual, animation, foreign series and telenovelas,” he said. “And we are meeting with the main operators at the market, searching for these types of contents”.

And when it comes to specific genres, few offers are as customized as Docubay: “The content we are looking for is long-form feature documentaries, we don’t have docuseries on the platform”, said Akul Tripathi, COO of Docubay.

“When we say documentaries we mean features which are opinion pieces made by passionate filmmakers who care deeply about something, and not just something that explains something. We are looking at cultural and other global markers, which are something that people will relate to locally,” he added.