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MIPCOM Insider: Five Key Takeaways From Cannes — Squeezed Scripted, Nostalgia & ‘NCIS’ In Spotlight
There has been plenty of fat to chew on this week at MIPCOM in Cannes. The television industry is clearing a path forwards after a very difficult few years, and that route became clearer during the four-day confab. Below, we identify some of the key takeaways from the Croisette.
Squeezed Middle In Scripted
Conversations about the future of TV drama almost a year after the U.S. strikes ended dominated chatter at this year’s MIPCOM. What was being communicated to us was an extension of the ‘squeezed middle’ chat that dominated conversation in Edinburgh a few weeks ago. That confab’s chatter was focused on non-scripted, but these proclamations were concentrated on drama. Effectively, buyers are still looking for the odd splashy tentpole, maybe a buzzy limited series here and there, but are mainly beefing up catalogs with cheaper, higher-volume, bankable and returnable fare.
Our Deadline Hot Ones highlighted the current penchant for procedurals as we entered the market, and on and off-record chatter over the past four days backed this up. “What is nice is there was this disdain for procedurals and now people are saying, ‘You know what, the audience enjoys them and we should make new procedurals’,” said Warner Bros TV. Chair Channing Dungey, who also talked up the creative discipline required to make them. The trend could also be seen in two of the market’s most talked about shows, Paramount’s NCIS spin-offs Origins and Tony & Ziva, which were heavily advertised across the Palais des Festivals and attracted attendees to one of the most fun sessions with franchise stars Cote de Pablo and Michael Weatherly.
This procedurals buzz was evident in some of the sales coming out of the market and could already be seen in deals we broke on cozy crime shows like Cineflix’s Whitstable Pearl, while we revealed the BBC’s Doctor Foster and France’s High Intellectual Potential were the top-selling scripted formats of the past 18 months. “The ‘in-between’ is hard to rationalize,” a U.S. exec from a streamer told us, comparing the trend to what happened early last decade after the 2007-08 labor strikes. “This is about ordering ‘keeping the lights on’ shows and mitigating risk.” The exec, and many others, echoed Dungey’s notion that prioritizing shows that keep the dial moving is no bad thing, and many producers told us they at least felt a semblance of buyer strategy now appears to be in place.
