MIPTV 2023 Takeaways: Drama Boom Is Bust But Reality TV Offers a Lifeline

Scott Roxborough
·6 min read

First the good news: the weather was spectacular. For three days, the international television market MIPTV, which wraps up in Cannes on Wednesday, was blessed with the clear blue skies and blinding sunshine that have always been the main attraction of this bit of the Mediterranean.

But if the beaches, cafes and seaside restaurants along the Croisette felt like a postcard paradise, the market itself — downstairs in the Palais, the concrete bunker by the Cannes harbor that hosts MIPTV — had a more dystopian vibe. The long, empty, echoing halls and bare walls mark the spots which, in previous years, would have been jam-packed with splashy stands from the U.S. studios and the super-indies: Fremantle, Banijay, All3Media and the like. In their place were a few lonely outposts from public broadcasters and a handful of second-tier sales outfits. It looked like a once-bustling megamall that’s lost its anchor stores and seen the discounters and tattoo parlors move in.

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MIPTV organizer RX France tried to put on a brave face, announcing a jump in attendance for this year’s market, with 5,650 delegates, 5,510 attending in person, up 1,000 from last year, when the group held its first post-pandemic event. But that’s barely half the number that made the trip to Cannes for MIPTV 2019, which had 9,500 official registrations. And 2019 was no high-water mark. MIPTV then was already in decline — there had been more than 10,000 attendees in 2018 — and struggling to adjust its business model, designed for a more traditional broadcast industry, to an age of rapid digital disruption.

The market worked best in the time when the U.S. studios needed a place to present and sell their big scripted series — from C.S.I. to Big Bang Theory — to international buyers, mainly free-to-air commercial networks such as Germany’s RTL, France’s TF1 and Britain’s ITV, and where the super indies could roll out their new non-scripted formats — from the X Factor to The Voice — aiming to land big commissions with both U.S. and international networks. Around the edges, independent production companies like Gaumont, Studiocanal and Beta Film would launch ambitious international series —Spy City, Crossing Lines, Babylon Berlin — looking to find co-production partners and/or buyers to close the gaps between the commissioning fees of the local broadcasters and the shows’ ambitious budgets.

But the rise of the streamers jostled national networks — their audiences, particularly the younger demographics so beloved by advertisers, shifted online and revenues dipped. At the same time, in their bid to gain market share, Netflix, Amazon. et. al outspent their local rivals, boosting the budgets of local shows — when Netflix commissioned British period drama The Crown it was the most expensive non-U.S. series ever made, Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is the most expensive, full stop — and forcing national broadcasters into an arms race for local talent amid tightening budgets. Now that the streamers are also cutting costs —with the exception of Apple TV+, which still pays big but only commissions a handful of titles — fees for local-language shows have dropped to the levels of national networks and the entire content market is contracting.

The Drama Bubble Has Burst

“The TV bubble has burst,” said Studiocanal boss Anna Marsh, in her MIPTV keynote address on Monday, saying out loud what everyone has been whispering. Jane Featherstone, head of U.K. production powerhouse Sister (Chernobyl, Gangs of London), speaking at MIPTV on Tuesday, agreed, noting that the fiction business faced a “painful” period to come as fees fall and budgets —driven by rising inflation and talent bottlenecks —continue to rise.

That market reality hung like a dark cloud over Cannes’ sunny skies, even as the MIPTV-adjacent Canneseries TV festival celebrated some of the splashiest new fiction series coming out of the U.S. — film-to-series adaptations like Paramount+’s Fatal Attraction with Lizzy Caplan and Joshua Jackson and Amazon Prime Video’s small-screen reimagining of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, featuring Rachel Weisz in the role of twin gynecologists — and internationally, including such highlights as Norwegian political comedy/period thriller Power Play, Korean horror series Bargain and the Israeli genre-bending show Carthago.

With VIP guests including Buffy and Wolf Pack star Sarah Michelle Gellar and Transparent creator Joey Soloway attending for Canneseries masterclasses this year, its clear the TV festival, launched in 2018 in a counter-programming effort aimed at undercutting northern French fest SeriesMania, is coming into its own.

Reality TV Throws Industry a Lifeline

But it’s reality TV, not high-end fiction, that the industry is pinning its hopes on, particularly following WGA members’ overwhelming support for authorizing a writers strike. The last time Hollywood writers downed tools, in 2007, non-scripted production surged to fill gaps in the drama schedule. Reality TV’s promise of low-cost, high-volume production is also particularly appealing in the current economic climate.

In fact, non-scripted programming was the only format generating much excitement at MIPTV 2023. NBCUniversal and the BBC on Monday announced they were teaming up on the new unscripted series Destination X, based on a show created by Belgian company Geronimo and distributed by BE-Entertainment, and the latest in a flood of “adventure reality” shows set loose by hit Dutch format The Traitors, which now counts some 20 local adaptations worldwide. NBCU and the BBC also teamed up, in 2021, for the English-language version of Traitors.

There was also some chatter about the promise of Free Ad-supported Streaming TV or FAST. In part because, being cheap to set up and maintain, FAST channels offer a promising new revenue stream for networks and producers. But there is still fierce disagreement about the pace of FAST growth internationally and whether new online revenues will compensate for the decline in traditional ad sales.

“I think FAST channels will just replace the thematic cable channels and that in a few years time we’ll stop using the term, because the business, of ad-supported television, is nothing new,” said Guy Bisson of Ampere Analytics.

The New MIPTV Is Still A Work In Progress

“We have found the right format and scale for MIPTV and it’s working,” said MIPTV director Lucy Smith, who heads up RX France’s entertainment division. “The increased attendance and robust exhibition confirm that the design and focus are paying off for all.”

Those points are debatable — empty exhibition space does not scream “robust” — but it would be premature, and unfair, to judge the 2023 market as a failure. MIPTV, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this year, is just at the start of a transition, from a large-scale, old-school TV trade fair to a more bespoke platform with a greater focus on non-scripted and kids programming — areas with a brighter future than drama series — as well as co-production.

“The benefits to all of having the international industry in one place to discover, connect and acquire is magnified by trends such as increased licensing to third parties, the pace of growth for FAST channels internationally and the ongoing hunger for, and necessity of, co-production partnerships — themes we will further build on at Mipcom Cannes in October,” said Smith.

The big question is whether the market, with its decades-old infrastructure — that concrete bunker, all that empty space —can be retrofitted to meet the challenges of the next TV era.

The next edition of MIPTV is set for April 15-17, 2024.

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