V I D E O • A G E Se p t e m b e r/ Oc t o b e r 2 0 0 9 14 The mother ship, DISCOP East, started its 17th annual event a bit slowly, but picked up steam during the market’s second day (of three) in Budapest, Hungary, in mid June. Market organizers attribute the slow start to “the fact that buyers and sellers were sizing each other up,” and not, as previously reported by VideoAge, because of the organization’s recent spawns: DISCOP Africa 1 (February 25-27 in Dakar, Senegal), DISCOP Africa 2 (Sept. 16-18 in Nairobi, Kenya), DISCOP Africa 3 (February 17-19, 2010 again in Dakar), and the newly tweaked DISCOP Middle East, formerly DISCOP Gulf. The latter market has been moved from Dubai to Istanbul, Turkey, and will take place September 20-21, 2010. The original March dates were found to be “too early” in the calendar. “[The slow start] is not in any way related to the fact that we have been organizing several different markets,” commented Patrick Jucaud, DISCOP’s founder and general manager. Despite this proliferation of additional markets, Sonia Danieli of Italy’s Mediaset and Delmar Andrade of Brazil’s Record TV expressed concern over the slow start of the market and the fact that some of their scheduled appointments were no shows. Ron Alexander of the U.S.’ TPI also noted the quieter nature of this year’s edition, though he seemed more reflective than worried. It should be noted, however, that DISCOP has not been much different than other international TV trade shows held this year, with the possible exception of the L.A. Screenings for the U.S. studios. There has been an overall trend of decreased attendance due to economic woes. As far as the increasing number of DISCOP offspring, Roberto Farina of Italy’s MondoTV said he doesn’t mind the proliferation of new trade shows, so long as they bring in new business and make sense financially. MondoTV will be attending the Nairobi edition of DISCOP Africa because the Dakar event was very successful for the company, and because African companies have thus far proven reliable from the collection standpoint (a sore issue for indie distributors these days). As for current licensing fees in the Eastern European territories, Farina commented that, unfortunately, they are dropping dramatically. Much to his chagrin, some Ukrainian clients are offering as low as 60 euro per half-hour episode. Record TV’s Delmar Andrade also commented on the downward direction of license fees in Central and Eastern Europe and indicated that some clients are now requesting multiple territories to be included in the same deal. Even so, collection remains his main concern, so much so that his company has occasionally offered to pay the bank fees involved in obtaining warrantees for contracts. DISCOP East recorded the attendance of approximately 510 sellers from 40 countries and 890 buyers, though market organizers complained of many buyers who, even after registering or being invited to attend all expenses paid, canceled at the last minute. Overall, officially registered buyers recorded a 19 percent drop compared to 2008, though the number of those actually present was estimated at 30 percent fewer than those at last year’s event. Sellers were scattered throughout 120 suites on four floors of the Sofitel hotel, as well as some 60 tables (most of them shared) and 60 individual viewing boxes (not shared) located in the mezzanine and basement areas. In terms of contingents, the largest one, with 45 companies, was from the U.S., followed by the U.K. (40 companies), France (39) and Spain (21). The basement also housed the registration area and conference rooms. The conferences covered topics spanning from how to monetize blocks of TV airtime to pitching for projects. Another of DISCOP’s signatures is its traditionally large number of parties, cocktails and luncheons. With 12 of such official recreational activities scattered over a three-day period, DISCOP is one of the international markets with the largest concentration of celebrations, averaging four a day. In addition to official parties, there were a number of private, unlisted events, such as the one offered by the Italian Trade Commission to the 13 Italian companies and their clients participating at DISCOP. C e n t r a l & E a s t E u r o p e DISCOP’s Offspring Did Not Affect Mother Ship Budapest Italian Trade Commission’s director Alessio Ponz de Leon Pisani greets Italian executives and international buyers at a private dinner Televisa International’s Ricardo Ehrsam, Patricia Porto Pedrido, Claudia Sahab, Jose Luis Romero Bavaria Media’s Helge Kühnen and Oliver Kreuter Telefe International’s Guillermo Borensztein and Diana Coifman Despite the reduced number of buyers, distributors reported brisk sales. Sabrina Eleuteri of Italy’s RaiTrade commented: “Even though the world’s financial crisis caused a drop of buyers compared to last year, results at this DISCOP were good. RaiTrade sold series, comedies, documentaries and children animation to countries such as Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia. We even made pre-sales to Romania and Bulgaria for Frederick Barbarossa, a new mini-series in production.” Finally, DISCOP’s Jucaud announced that, “We have not yet decided whether to hold one or two DISCOP AFRICA events a year from 2010 on. This decision will be made after the Nairobi event.”
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