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The Mipcom trade show in Cannes continues to attract buyers and sellers of television shows, though the definition of television has undergone considerable metamorphous and show is almost meaningless. Thankfully, the weather improved. Event producer Reed MIDEM reported 4,800 companies, a record, attending.
This year’s Country of Honor was China, complete with huge pavilion. Traditional sellers understandably believe Cannes is the perfect place to sell stuff to Chinese broadcasters, web portals and mobile TV platforms, all of which are expanding rapidly. China, said Mipcom, is now the world’s second largest TV market. Sorry for them, that’s not the way it’s working. The Chinese government puts strict limits on imports, preference given to selling its own shows outside China. Then there’s the intellectual property problem; TV formats and even story-lines are appropriated with impunity.
Chinese streaming platform iQIYI chief executive Yu Gong wants to sell a new business model to one and all. It’s based on artificial intelligence - AI - and will, he said, provide “intelligent creation,” noted Variety (October 17); everything from casting and script evaluation to customer service and distribution. Evidence, he cited, is more than 80% of Chinese movie goers buy tickets online. (See more about media in China here)
iQIYI spun out of Chinese online search giant Baidu in an initial public offering (IPO) this past March on the US Nasdaq exchange, reaping US$2.25 billion. In the Chinese streaming video market the company competes, primarily, with Tencent Video, subsidiary of huge Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent, and Youku Tudou, subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba. Competitors, though, keep popping up.
At Mipcom, iQIYI signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) - less than a contract, more than a handshake - with Viacom International, said a company statement (October 16), for “creative guidance and supervision” over the second season of iQIYIs animated kids show Deer Run. Tencent signed a co-production deal with BBC Studios for a Mandarin-language of natural history series Dynasty as a follow-up to an existing agreement for science series Blue Peter.
South Korean daily JoongAng (October 9) reported more than thirty South Korean TV shows being “cloned in China without any copyright permission.” Cited was iQIYIs reality talent show Idol Producer, ripped from music TV channel Mnet’s Produce 101.
Social media behemoth Facebook introduced a set of new political advertising rules this week in the UK meant to reduce political and popular pressure for legislation. “All advertisers wanting to run ads in the UK that reference political figures, political parties, elections, legislation before Parliament and past referenda that are the subject of national debate”, said the company statement, are obliged to disclose their identity and location. A little “paid for by” caption will then appear. It’s part of the Brexit effect.
Political advertising has been around forever. Some national jurisdictions have rules advising the use. Some do not. Political content is rarely restricted - formally, at least - under tenets of free speech. Widespread evidence of foreign and otherwise dodgy actors “interfering” with elections and referenda in recent years - leading to questionable results - has rattled legislatures. Couple this with the risen power of social media and there is a wave of discontent. (See more about elections and media here)
New media executives want to control whatever fix might come down the road, so to speak. Political advertising in Ireland was preemptively frozen on Facebook during the two week run-up to the recent abortion referendum. Mostly, these companies are attracted to simple and inexpensive solutions that do not touch that massive revenue stream. None of them want a repeat - or extension - of the German NetzDG law mandating big and immediate fines for failure to remove hate speech content. They also do not want to take on massive troops of live humans to scour each and every posted bit. (See more about social media here)
Artificial intelligence - AI - is regularly touted at the ultimate solution to dodgy content, ads and otherwise. Facebook founder and chairman Mark Zuckerberg loves AI. Alas, automated controls don’t always work so well. Facebook bots “mislabeled” Nike and Reebok ads as political, noted AdAge (October 8), flagging them to its political ad archive, where political ads go with “revealing information about their marketing strategies, like how much the ads cost and how many people saw them.”
Complaints over funding for public broadcasting, particularly the household license fee, still come around with some regularly. Within the European Union direct assaults against this hypothecated tax compelling households or individuals to contribute mostly dropped away after the 2003 Altmark decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and then the Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive came into force in 2007. Alas, those with a grudge against the license fee, specifically, or public broadcasting, more generally, have not given up.
Last week a class action lawsuit was brought in Austria against GIS (Gebühren Info Service), the license fee collection agency for public broadcaster ORF. It seeks to reclaim the 10% VAT (value added tax) added to the household license fee. The lawsuit was filed by Advofin, a private sector lawsuit financing company; something between crowd funding and bitcoin. The claimants are demanding ORF repay €300 million - calculated at €20 times five years times 3.3 million Austrians. Advofin will take a 27% fee if successful.
If the Advofin suit prevails the ORF would lose about 7% - roughly €60 million - from its annual budget. The lawsuit was filed at the Vienna Commercial Court. A hearing is set for November 12th. The case will almost certainly end at the ECJ as a 2016 special provision of the EU Accession Treaty allows the Austrian Finance Ministry to accept VAT receipts from ORF via the GIS. (See more about media in Austria here)
Separately, a petition is circulating seeking to end the ORF license fee altogether. Sponsored by the right-wing Christian Party of Austria (Christliche Partei Österreichs), it has gained sufficient support - more than 100,000 signatures - to force consideration by the Austrian National Council. The far-right populist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) is supporting the petition drive. FPÖ leader and Austrian vice chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was recently forced in an out of court settlement to publicly apologize to ORF news anchor Armin Wolf for a derogatory Facebook post and pay €10,000.
Negotiations have been underway for a couple of weeks with Italian publisher Arnoldo Mondadori Editore and Reworld Media, the former selling its French subsidiary to the later. The “exclusive” talks “for the possible disposal of Mondadori France” were announced September 27th in a company statement. The possibility was reported two weeks earlier by Reuters (September 5). Mondadori France publishes Grazia, closer and others.
Reworld Media publishes Marie France, Télé Magazine and many others. It is considered the third largest publisher in France, said France Inter (October 8). The company has grown through acquisitions since founding in 2012 by Pascal Chevalier. In 2015 it took a principal stake in publicly listed Tradedoubler, based in Sweden, and recently offered to acquire remaining shares in the advertising network.
"The acquisition of Mondadori (France) is a real bet given its size and context," observed an unnamed media watcher to Les Echos (October 15). "Reworld has a reputation for making financial moves by buying cheap assets.” The Mondadori France assets have been valued between €60-80 million. (See more about media in France here)
Last week unions spoke up asking the French Culture Ministry to intervene. Jobs are threatened, they said, perhaps as many as 700. “It is the whole sector, already very shaken, that would suffer the effects, from printers to kioskiers.” Reworld Media is known for outsourcing editorial production to advertising companies.
Mondadori is principally controlled by the Berlusconi family.
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