An unusual cold spell embraced Miami during NATPE, bringing the outside temperature on par with the freezing cold air-conditioned temperature inside, which made for brisk walking and heavy drinking.
The walking was due to several factors: The back-to-back meetings, which required buyers to shuttle among four towers at th emarket’s official venue, the Fountainebleau, two floor markets and the poolside cabanas, as well as to the conferences that, this year, were moved to the adjacent Eden Roc hotel.
The heavy drinking, was attributed to the numerous parties that began even before the start of the market on Sunday with VIP2000, continued Monday with the NATPE welcoming cocktail party and Tuesday with the NATPE opening parties, plus A+E Networks, China TV Drama Production Industry, YiP and the mega party from Telemundo Internacional, which went overboard with about 200 more participants than the 400 who’d RSVP’d.
More parties are set up for today (Wednesday), including TVFI, NBCUniversal and Viacom, among others.
In a nice change, the elevator lines at the Tresor Tower were light, mostly due to the fact that distributors’ suites were evenly scattered among the Fontainebleau’s four towers.
This development also accounted for the corridors being emptier than usual, since each floor housed only one or two exhibition suites.
(On a more trivial note, the NATPE market bags, usually given at the registration stand, finally arrived mid-day on Wednesday, the second day of the three-day market.)
As for the business side, some buyers reported meetings every half an hour throughout the day looking for product, others met to renegotiate financial terms, some others to screen rushes coming out of co-productions.
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