38 May 2013 My 2¢ International program sales made commercial television viable and fostered its growth outside the U.S. International distribution business is ignored by academia, history books, trade publications and forgotten by old-timers. The 50th anniversaries of NATPE, MIP-TV and now the L.A. Screenings made me realize how little historical memory and industry-wide recognition surrounds the international program sales and distribution business. Even during last month’s MIP-TV Anniversary Gala, on the screens surrounding the dinner tables, there were projected pictures of stars that attended the market throughout the years instead of photos of international distribution veterans. Sales executives were ignored, as was the distribution business in general, which is, after all, the raison d’etre of MIP-TV. Indeed, there is not much historical information and recognition about markets such as MIFED (Italy), MIP-TV (France) and NATPE (the U.S.) before 1979, and none about the L.A. Screenings prior to 1983. Google these markets and nothing comes up prior to those dates. And it’s not that after 1983 the situation improved. Leaf through Les Brown’s Encyclopedia of Television, or Anthony Smith’s Television: An International History, and nothing comes up about MIP-TV or its founder Bernard Chevry. Likewise, there are no entries for MIFED and its founder, Michele Guido Franci and, while Brown makes a brief mention of NATPE, Smith totally ignores it. Plus, neither encyclopedia lists “international distribution” or “program distribution.” Similarly, The International Television & Video Almanac and the Museum of Broadcast Communications’ Encyclopedia of Television do not mention any TV markets and only list NATPE under “organizations.” Trade publications aren’t great distribution champions either. Except for VideoAge, no other magazine has decent historical references, even though only those trades that dealt with international program sales not only survived, but, in the case of Latin America, multiplied. Conversely, magazines that focused on other sectors of the TV business either closed shop, went online or scaled down. Nevertheless, one can find plenty of historical references about TV technology, production, advertising and broadcasting. But for academia, it’s as if 50 years of international TVdistributionbusiness never existed. And yet, international program sales made commercial television viable and fostered its growth outside the U.S. If it weren’t for American international distribution, Canada couldn’t have supported its first commercial TV stations that later formed the CTV network. If countries such as Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil hadn’t started to export telenovelas in the 1950s and 1960s (first selling scripts, then kinescoped versions and later, in 1965 versions on two-inch videotapes), Latin America’s TV industry couldn’t have developed as it did. If not for TV content sold internationally, Italy couldn’t have introduced commercial television in Europe. And yet, very few records remain of those milestones. Great broadcasters came from the distribution area (e.g., Les Moonves, CBS; Haim Saban, ProSiebenSat1 and Univision; Herbert Kloiber, TMG; Bruce Gordon, WIN). Some successful producers also started as distributors (e.g., Paul Talbot, Don Taffner, John de Mol, Sandy Frank). In the recent past, one event international distribution executives could call their own was NATAS’ International Council Gala in New York City, but now even that is, for all practical purposes, gone. What remains for the international TV distribution industry is a smaller get-together in Los Angeles, during the L.A. Screenings, now in its eighth year, called the L.A. Screenings Veterans Luncheon — last year renamed in honor of the late veteran distributor James P. Marrinan — and the historical memory of VideoAge. Dom Serafini
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