German buyers at MIPDOC: Anne Hufnagel, from United Docs, Gaby Gartner-Schuess and Christiane Hinz from WDR, Carola Meyer, from NDR Fresen, and Matthias Kremin, also from WDR
Ian Taylor, Deputy Network Programmer at Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) with Damian Trewhella from the Australian Film Institute and Marsha Cummings from the Documentary Organization of Canada
Documentaries producers: Jan y gord Stanfield from Pristine Entertainment, Canada, and Angeline Swee and Felicia Koh from Very!, Singapore
Flor Latina dinner party: Juan Parodi, from the Argentinean production company Torneos y Competencias, Eduardo Tironi from TVN (Chile), Maria Basea, program manager at PDL (Greek top production company), Silvana D’Angelo, from Flor Latina, and Nelson Sato, from Brazilian production company, Sato Co.
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MIPTV 09 - Daily Report - The previous day
From MIPDOC to MIPTV: first figures and opinions
 During the previous day of MIPTV 09, most of Cannes attendees were wondering if the show will have fewer participants (and business) from last year, because of the financial crisis. What can be said to answer? The numbers of MIPDOC, the show focused on documentaries held during this weekend with early MIPTV attendees, can provide the first sureness.
This time, MIPDOC has had 643 participants, with 371 buyers and 1,350 programs on screen. These figures are a 10% or so less from last year, but the global sensation was that the show was very busy, with quite all the important buyers attending. The show was not significantly reduced in terms of business, absents has been mostly secondary players.
MIPDOC's buyers opinions? Susanne Guggenberger, from Austrian distributor Autlook Film, stresses that the European documentary market is very strong and during this crisis, it will be more useful to buy contents than to produce them, because there is more availability than in good times. One of its customers is ARTE, the strong pay TV channel that covers UK, France, Germany and Spain. This TV channel looks for politics, social and cultural documentaries.
Ljiljana Pasic, head of Foreign Programs of Radio & TV Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that this year the offer was not so good as in other MIPDOCs. ‘Eastern Europe is complicated because the costs are rising and the advertising pies are going down, but the public TV channels are making a big effort to compete with the commercial TV stations, which are very aggressive. We expect to have a good market'.
The main documentary subgenres requested by Japanese audience are wild life and discovery contents. Cecile Austin, program coordinator from SFINX, inc., that buys for Nippon Television channel (NTV, one of the top free TV channels in Japan ), says: ‘We buy all types of entertainment shows, life-style, funny clips and special green programs. We are not worry; during the crisis, people will continue watching free TV'.
About Latin America, attending buyers are few but quite active this market. Nothing to do with Mipdoc, a good example is Fernando Lagier, VP acquisitions of Disney Channels Latin America, which is re-launching its channel Jetix, as Disney XD, focused on tween programming, so he has to buy programs for children 8-12. Last MIPTV he was launching Playhouse Disney Channel, focused on pre-schoolers.
Nicolas Smirnoff and Fabricio Ferrara
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