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Asian TV pierces global market
10/24/2005
CANNES, France, Oct 23 (AFP): From kungfu live-action to Far East love dramas, from documentaries to animation, Asian television content is powering its way around the world.
Showcased at MIPCOM, one of the world's largest and most prestigious shows for audiovisual content, Asian-made programming attracted flocks of international buyers.
"This market has been quite prosperous for us," Maggie Zhou of WingsMedia, a subsidiary of the Shanghai Media Group, told AFP Friday, the last day of the trade show.
Attendance from Asia topped 1,300, up more than five per cent over 2004. Japanese and Korean vendors, both leaders in mobile media content, came in force and attracted huge interest.
So did the announcement this week that Japanese mobile content heavyweight Index Corp. and investment group Sojitz Corp. will launch a new company-Index Global Rights Management-to acquire content to be sold worldwide.
The region's enormously successful "anime" animations were a star attraction for many of the buyers from the 92 countries represented, along with kungfu-style programmes.
The Japanese External Trade Organisation reported brisk business in both animation and high-definition (HD) programmes and was optimistic that this year's MIPCOM would match the strong result achieved in 2004.
"HD is becoming a more popular format worldwide and a lot of people are looking to buy, particularly from the United States," Kyoko Kiriyama, senior executive with Japanese public broadcaster NHK's distribution arm MICO, told AFP.
Sales clinched this week included a variety of HD programmes to VOOM, a new HDTV satellite service in the United States which is looking to add 10 new HD platforms, Kiriyama said.
Animation was equally busy. MICO's cutesy Domo animation series for children-still in the development stage-attracted a lot of interest as did a new series featuring Pucca, Japans much-loved cheeky little-girl cartoon character.
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