(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.)
If you make a lot of calls, you get a lot of pushback. That’s the nature of the beast when you’re a columnist/analyst playing the media game. Sometimes, the pushback really bothers me (especially the folks on Twitter who don’t even read the articles), but sometimes the pushback has some truth to it. For example…
…I don’t cover the global streaming landscape enough.
Fair! I’m only one analyst/writer, and I only have so much time and space to devote to every topic. I’d say I share this weakness with most other American journalists—you tend to think more about things based on the country you’re from—but it’s important to acknowledge it. So yes, most of my “Most Important Stories of the Week” focus on the U. S. Of A.
(Though I will defend my US focus in my Streaming Ratings Report; right now, the U.S. has the best data landscape to make comparisons. Plus it’s too tough to cover every country’s content output every week! Some folks have reached out asking how I could make that happen, and the simplest explanation is more paid subscribers. So if you want the EntStrategyGuy to expand his coverage, sign up! Or if you are paid and forward the email to one hundred co-workers at your streamer—that’s ironically cracking down on password sharing!—consider buying a few more subscriptions!)
By the way, if you would like to reach out to provide feedback, please do! I’m at Info at EntertainmentStrategyGuy.com That’s a much better way to reach me than Substack’s new direct message system. (Sorry, but I don’t need a new inbox in my life.) I read every email, though may not have time to respond to each one.
All that said, in today’s article, we do have a fun, juicy international story today, but one that impacts all of entertainment. So let’s dig in.
Most Important Story of the Week – The End of MIPCOM (in France)
When I first started working in Hollywood, it genuinely surprised me how many conferences executives could attend if they really wanted to. I don’t have any data that “entertainment” has more conferences than other industries— folks from every industry like to mingle at faraway convention centers! And it sounds like academia might have the most—but because the entertainment business has so many different parts, an exec who really wanted to could travel all year and never return to the office, attending technology conferences (E3, NAB), film festivals (Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, on and on), investment conferences (every bank runs one seemingly), industry confabs for specific verticals (CinemaCon, The Upfronts, MIPCOM), and, to the topic of the day, exhibition shows selling films or TV shows, such as the American Film Market, Series Mania, The London Screenings or MIPTV.
That last show is the news of the week, specifically that the MIPTV Media Market is ending its run in Cannes. The MIPTV trade show had been running since the 1960s and in Cannes for nearly as long. According to Wikipedia, in 2010, 4,000 buyers showed up to sample the wares of 1,500 exhibitors. But attendance has shrunk in recent years—reportedly down 40% from just a few years back—and rival events in London and France crowded the exhibition calendar. Thus MIPTV is ending its run in Cannes, and will now take place in London, alongside London TV screenings already going on.
(I enjoyed Marion Ranchet and Manori Ravindran takes on MIPTV in particular.)
So what ended MIPTV as a standalone event? Three dislocating trends likely ended MIP TV’s run:
We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to read my take on the latest theatrical forecasts, my take on a potential IATSE strike this summer, the Upfronts, Liberty Media’s latest acquisition, and more…
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