NATPE BUDAPEST: FOCUS ON THE MENA AND LATIN AMERICA REGIONS

Within its schedule of virtual activities, the international market included two conferences that provided a glimpse of the current situation and the needs of the industry in both territories.

26 AUG 2020

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Natpe Budapest has started its online edition with more than 400 accredited people and among its outstanding conferences, there were two dedicated to providing details of the Middle East and North Africa and Latin America's  (MENA) needs. Nick Grande, CEO of Mena TV indicated that in the MENA region TV content marketplace has tremendous untapped potential for growth. "Te streaming revolution has inspired several, new regional networks, all seeking to acquire content and creating business opportunities for both regional and international content vendors", he explained. Many MENA broadcasters still produce all their shows in-house and are only now discovering that acquiring e3rd party finished content it's more cost-effective and improves the quality of their channel.

About the main trends in the pandemic period, Darine El Khabit, Senior Director for MENA and Turkish at Warner Media said that family consumption has increased. "Including during the summer holiday, we had to change our schedule and continuing to offer more variety for our audiences". Carlie Goodie, Head of Acquisitions at MBC Group was agreed and also added that the Free TV side is very challenging without advertising nowadays. 

FOCUS ON LATIN AMERICA
The online edition of Natpe Budapest also gave rise to an analysis of the Latin American market by Paloma García from Caracol TV (Colombia) and Melissa Pillow from TV Azteca (Mexico), moderated by Rodrigo Cantisano from Utópica Media. 
García referred to the success of the Caracol TV titles in Europe, such as "Bolívar", which received two nominations at the Seoul Drama Awards, and "The Queen of Flow", which won an Emmy International Award for best drama. The executive also clarified that although in recent years they have opted for soap operas and Latin content, they also added new genres. "I believe that Caracol holds leadership in the introduction of sub-genres in the Latin American market, such as narco novels or costume drama, with great investment in production and which we can compare with European series in terms of values."

García also remarked that Caracol TV has focused in recent years on formats, unscripted and entertainment, and commented on the success of the adaptations of her comedies in Greece and Serbia. She also announced the launch of the second season of "Challenge", with production in Europe in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria. "This makes us very happy because it gives us the possibility to explore other opportunities in Europe."

In her presentation, Melissa Pillow said that there are two main focuses for TV Azteca, one of them is the reality formats and the other is the great fiction series. "Fiction series is what TV Azteca exports the most internationally but now they have a larger budget and are shorter." 

She also highlighted that telenovelas still sell very well in Europe and Africa but not so well in Asia. Pillow opined that one of the reasons for this sales success may be related to the pandemic since broadcasters need finished content, to which García added that classic telenovelas were reissued on Caracol TV that people watched again and that himself added a new audience. "We also want to install the idea in the European audience that Latin America can produce soap operas but also other kinds of fiction and we proved that we can do it." "What we are doing now is exploring and introducing this new content in new countries in Europe where they have not been before and the new OTTs have opened doors for us," she concluded.