ATF 2009 - Day 2
ATF 09: formats and co-productions

By Fabricio Ferrara

The second day of the Asia Television Forum, Thursday 3 rd , was as positive as the first day. In the morning seemed to be less people walking through the corridors, but then the event recovered the activity. There were some official visits, as the press conference offered by Datuk Wira Kamaruddin Siaraf, Secretary General of the Malaysian Minister of Information, Communication and Culture; and Osman Mohammad, Senior Special Duties Officer of the Brunei Government.

In Malaysian's MSC stand at ATF, Kamaruddin Siaraf highlighted the ‘strategic' importance of the media, TV and film industry for the Government, announcing a USD 55 million fund to spur participation and accelerate growth in digital creative industry.

He also explained that the country ‘is focused on signing co productions agreements with media agencies all around the world to produce drama contents (through WRC and Latin Media, managed by Jose Escalante), movies, documentaries, among other genres'. The most recent joint venture is Saladin, an animation series (26x'22) produced between MSC and Al Jazeera Children's Channel, to be premiered by the end of 2010.

During the afternoon, there were important keynotes, like Focus on Formats , with Rob Clark, Global Head of Entertainment FremantleMedia. Then, executives from Endemol, BBC Worldwide, Televisa (Mexico) offered Pitching for Success, about the format adaptations in Asia and some keys of the business.

Prensario interviewed many broadcasters, asking them about what are they looking for at ATF. Airin Zainul, general manager at ntv7 Malaysia, explained: ‘There is a boom of local production in our country. At this ATF we are looking both, drama series and reality shows formats'.

Taiwan is a ‘booming market' according to Leilei Gu, Chief of Program Acquisition at TBS, the public free-to-air TV channel: they are looking mainly for HD contents, especially documentaries and artistic films. Jaenani Netra, Senior Manager Network Acquisitions at Channel 5 Singapore commented: ‘There is a trend on current series and entertainment shows. We are mainly looking for English content, series and blockbusters'.

Over all, Asia is gaining more relevance within the international content market.