The first thing most people noticed when arriving in Mexico for the MIP Cancun TV market was the large number of Canadian tourists. Nearly 10 large busses awaited Canadian visitors at the Cancun airport, many of whom opted to vacation in the Mexican resort town as opposed to spending their tourist dollars in Florida as a reaction to the Trump administration’s antagonism toward Canada.
Also new is the fact that, this year, not all content buyers were invited to MIP Cancun all expenses paid. Some buyers were, for the first time, asked to make partial payments.
It is also possible that MIP Cancun’s organizers were fully aware that most of the three-day market’s participants have limited time slots available, which is why, rather than hosting any lengthy sessions devoted to micro-dramas, they chose instead to stage two brief conferences about the subject. The first was held on the morning of the market’s first day, Wednesday, November 19, while the second took place this morning.
All told, the event saw 110 companies exhibiting at the Moon Palace Hotel’s Convention Center. Exhibitors with tables include Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, Fox Entertainment, Paramount Skydance, and Sony Pictures TV.
The first event, titled: “Micro Drama, Mega Audience,” included such panelists as InterMedya’s Can Okan from Turkey, Shawn Wu from China’s COL Group, and The Mediapro Studio’s Juan Acosta from Spain. (The Mediapro Studio is actually 80 percent-owned by China’s Orient Hontai Capital, and China is one of the major producers of micro-dramas).
The second event, titled: “Powering LatAm’s Micro Drama Boom,” took place today. Panelists were confirmed just before the market started, and included Sammie Haw and Maritza Castro, both from Crazy Maple Studios, the California-based unit of China’s ICVR.
For those viewers who have short attention spans (read: almost everyone these days) and like to watch TV on their cell phones, Hollywood and, apparently, the rest of the entertainment world, has refined the concept first developed in 2018 by platform Quibi, but which was shut down at the end of 2020 by its creator, Jeffrey Katzenberg, after losing $1.75 billion.
Today, Hollywood (led by Asia, and followed by LatAm and Europe), is back to banking on micro-dramas of up to 90 minutes transmitted in installments of one-to-three minutes to be displayed vertically on mobile devices.
The budgets for micro-dramas are relatively inexpensive, but the shows are popular with young viewers (especially in China), and TV production companies like DramaBox, ReelShort, MicroCo, and GamaTime are all betting on this vertical video market now estimated at $8 billion and expected to reach $25 billion worldwide by 2030.
The micro-drama business utilizes the freemium model, where a few episodes are free, and the rest is available by subscription, via purchase, or with ads.
Pictured above, from top l.: Mexico’s Pedro Lascurain, Martha Contreras, and Ernesto Ramirez; Turkey’s Selim Türkmen; Micro-Drama conference: The Mediapro Studio’s Juan Acosta from Spain, InterMedya’s Can Okan from Turkey, and Shawn Wu from China’s COL Group; a member of VideoAge‘s distribution team.
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