MIP-TV through the looking glass.

One may ask, where is MIP-TV headed as a market? Is it still useful for sales? To be sure, the industry's abundance of markets is astounding, if not downright overwhelming. Some feel that NATPE now overshadows "the mother of all markets," since the once domestic NATPE is now considered an international event too; most distributors are bringing the same product that they brought to NATPE to MIP-TV. Add to this the emergence of regional markets, and TV executives may never see their families again!

Nevertheless, MIP-TV remains a market mainstay for most distributors and a venue worth visiting. Last year's 33rd edition registered 10,578 professionals representing 2,562 companies from 104 countries. (This represented a 14 percent increase over 1995 in the number of participating companies.) MIP '96 had approximately 404 exhibitors, including 55 new ones from countries such as Saudi Arabia. Europe boasted 60 percent of the participating companies, followed by North America with 19 percent and Asia and Australia with 13 percent.

Thus far, MIP '97 has registered about 340 exhibitors from countries around the world, including Egypt, Cuba, Croatia and Romania. Taking its cue from the success of MIPCOM's Rivieria Village, which housed exhibitor overflow, MIP-TV will launch the Palm Village Hall. It will be located in the square by the main stairs of the Palais and will host the stands of Radio Television Malaysia and five new companies attending MIP-TV for the first time: Germany's VFFV, Hong Kong's Sil Metropole International, the U.S.' Seagull Entertainment and the U.K.'s Dandelion and Spice International. The opening cocktail party will be held on Friday, April 11, in association with Protele and Televisa at the Palm Beach.

As part of the continued demand for educational programming, which has been bolstered by the FCC's recent ruling requiring all U.S. channels to broadcast a minimum of three hours of educational children's programming a week, MIP has set aside a special day - From Education to Edutainment - to feature such programming. (It is estimated that 150,000 hours of educational television were broadcast in 1992, totalling $2.5 billion in spending. Sales of educational CD-ROMs in 1995 reached $1 billion in the U.S. and 1.2 billion in Europe.) Scheduled for April 12, the education day will start off with a conference titled "Millions to Educate: The Challenge to World Programmers," which is being organized in conjunction with AITED (the International Association of Educational and Discovery Television Companies). The conference will allow key players in the field to discuss important educational issues of today and tomorrow. Special emphasis will be placed on the need to redefine the concepts covered by educational and discovery programs and products. Boutros Boutros-Ghali will give the keynote address at the conference.

AITED was created last year through an initiative by France's La Cinquieme. Composed of 30 members from 14 countries, its goal is to "provide members with the tools for better and faster information exchange on programs, thus accelerating the development of cooperation and co-productions," said Jean Marie Cavada, president of the association. AITED members include the BBC (U.K.), Young Asia TV (Sri Lanka), Galaxy Latin America (Mexico), Discovery Communications (U.S.), Children's Television Workshop (U.S.), Estonian Television (Estonia) and IETV (Israel), among others.

According to Hearst's Tom Devlin, everyone is "sort of wowed" by the convention business to a point at which distributors will go as long as a lot of buyers plan to attend. "Unless you have output deals all over the place, you still have to attend the markets," Devlin said.

Fred Cohen of King World maintained that MIP-TV is a big market for his company since King World doesn't attend Monte Carlo. "MIP is the first new market we use following NATPE. We spend time with our licensees, promote our shows and discuss production aspects with the many producers that attend. It's a market that doesn't just have buyers, but the creative people are there too," Cohen said. Greg Phillips of MTM also uses MIP to meet with producers. Since the company is horizontally and vertically integrated, "we do other things than just sell programming. We are also involved in licensing and merchandising, which also keeps us busy at the market," he said.