Television
December 8, 2011
MIPFormats Pitch Competition Opens Warner Bros. International Television Production To Pre-Select Entries
(December 8, 2011 – Paris, France) – The MIPFormats Pitch 2012 call for entries is now open. Warner Bros. International Television Production (WBITVP), the exclusive sponsor of the competition, will oversee the pre-selection and choose the final competition contestants. WBITVP will spend up to €25,000 to develop the winning project of the MIPFormats Pitch.
Offering both a strategic and a hands-on approach of the Formats business to all participants with more in-depth market analysis, more screenings, more interactive workshops and more matchmaking between buyers and commissioners, the 3rd edition of MIPFormats will take place on Friday 30 and Saturday 31 March 2012, ahead of MIPTV (1-4 April), in Cannes.
The MIPFormats Pitch competition aims to find new ideas, new talent and new formats. It is open to all creators and producers from around the world who work under the banner of a company or independently. Taking place during MIPFormats on Saturday 31 March 2012, the international pitching event expects to see cross-media and multiplatform productions, as well as hybrid format concepts crossing the lines of programme genres enter the competition.
All pitch entries will go before a panel of international format experts from Warner Bros. including WBITVP, Shed Media, BlazHoffski and Warner Horizon, as well as Nathalie Wogue, former Senior Executive at Fremantle and Endemol. The panel will choose the final contestants.
Commenting on his company’s support of this year’s MIPFormats Pitch, Andrew Zein, Senior Vice President, Creative Format Development and Sales, WBITVP, noted, “Through sponsorship of this MIPFormats event, we are seeking to uncover genuinely new and original, genre defining non-scripted concepts that have the potential to travel as a format to countries small and large, developed and emerging. Formats that can make their mark in a genre and with the viewer, formats that can be big primetime concepts or high volume ratings builders. Well structured and tightly formatted so that they can offer real security and production know-how to our broadcast clients, and capable of returning for multiple series. Above all they need to be entertaining and possess a unique point of view to break through the clutter.”
“Building on 2 years of experience and success, the MIPFormats Pitch competition is now reaching a whole new level,” commented Laurine Garaude, Director of Reed MIDEM’s Television Division. “Warner Bros.’ involvement in the 2012 MIPFormats Pitch event creates a strong and emulating competition framework, a unique and tangible perspective of project development and an exceptional opportunity for the next generation of media producers around the world to connect with the industry and enter the big league in format production.”
For more information on MIPFormats, click here.
About Warner Bros. International Television Production:
Warner Bros. International Television Production (WBITVP) aims to establish or acquire production companies in the major television territories around the world in order to become a leading producer of local scripted and non-scripted programming.
In those territories where WBITVP establishes a production base, it operates by developing and producing original programming and also producing local versions of formats owned and controlled by the group such as “The Bachelor,” “The World’s Strictest Parents” and “Who Do You Think You Are?” Where WBITVP has no local production capability it licenses Warner Bros. formats to 3rd parties.
WBITVP has already taken significant steps by acquiring a majority stake in UK production group Shed Media, one of the UK’s largest and most successful independent production companies, which operates both in the UK and the US. Most recently it has acquired a majority stake in BlazHoffski Holding B.V., a leading independent television producer in The Netherlands and Belgium.
About Reed MIDEM:
Founded in 1963, Reed MIDEM is a leading organiser of professional, international tradeshows. Reed MIDEM events have established themselves as key dates in professional diaries. The company hosts MIPTV, MIPDOC, MIPCOM, and MIPJUNIOR for the television and digital content industries, MIDEM for music professionals, MIPIM, MIPIM Asia and MAPIC for the property and retail real estate sectors.
Reed Exhibitions is the world’s leading events organizer, with over 460 events in 36 countries covering 44 industry sectors. In 2010 Reed brought together over seven million active event participants from around the world generating billions of dollars in business. Today Reed events are held throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, and organized by 34 fully staffed offices.###