China will be the country of honor at this year’s Mipcom, the international TV showcase set in Cannes.
As part of the spotlight on China, Mipcom will include panel discussions on the Chinese market during MipJunior, the sidebar focusing on children programming, and the main lineup of Mipcom, as well as multiple showcases of recent Chinese programs and antipated shows in the Fresh TV presentation. Mipcom will also host a Chinese-themed opening-night welcome reception and its largest-ever China Pavilion.
“The Chinese television and entertainment sector has a special place within the Mipcom and MipTV community going back to 2004, when MipTV welcomed the largest-ever delegation of Chinese TV executives at an international television market,” said Laurine Garaude, director of Reed Midem’s TV division. Garaude cited the popular Chinese format “National Treasure” and the recent deal signed by Tencent and BBC to produce high-quality documentaries as successful bilateral production partnerships.
“We anticipate that the trend towards Chinese content being exported to international territories will speed up over the next two to three years, and we are very keen for Mipcom and MipTV to be part of that process,” added Garaude.
China now ranks ahead of the U.K. as the second-largest TV market in the world after the U.S., according to a report from IHS Markit. The report says that China spent $10.9 billion on television programming in 2017 compared to $10 billion in the U.K. Meanwhile, TV broadcasters spent $6.4 billion and online giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent invested $4.5 billion to feed the pipelines of their entertainment platforms. Original programming represented 49% of shows aired in China. The remainder was made up of acquisitions and sports programming.
Ma Li, who heads up China’s international cooperation department of the National Radio and Television Administration, said his company was confident of China’s “capacity to play the leading role at Mipcom and present to the world great Chinese stories and work with [its] colleagues around the globe to usher in a better future.”
Mipcom will take place Oct. 15-18.
