On its last day, NEM shifted its focus on local productions which are more welcome today in the European market than they have ever been. Therefore, the experts encourage the cooperation of these productions in order to create quality and original content. This year’s NEM was concluded by Christopher Peter Marcich, CEO of Croatian Audiovisual Centre, who shared his view on the role of the Audiovisual Centre and offered a view of his future plans. This was the most successful New Europe Market so far – it welcomed more than 1000 guests from the CEE region and was a host to CBS Studios International and Sony Pictures Television stars Alan Cumming, Jessica Alba and Gabrielle Union.
Bright future for local production
Discussing the future of local original production in the European market, Damir Novinić, Chief Executive Producer at Croatian Radiotelevision, said that cooperation between different local productions has never been easier: “We have all the ingredients for global influence – public broadcasters with public money, great local producers and streaming platforms.”
Matthias Settle, General Director at TV Markiza, claims that the first step to quality content is finding the right format:
“We must find the right format to co-produce. We don’t have the reach and the critical mass for high-quality local productions. If people don’t get the program they are looking for on one platform, they will find it on another platform.”
Nova TV’s Dražen Mavrić emphasized the potential of local productions and added that cooperation is the key activity to overcoming the biggest problem of local productions:
“There are many obstacles in international co-productions, such as language and other specifics of the market, but they can be overcome.”
The discussion ended with all participants agreeing that the future of original local production is bright and that the market will certainly welcome new creative locally produced products.
Croatian Audiovisual Centre cherishes its public role
The role of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre goes beyond supporting culture, emphasized Christopher Peter Marcich, CEO at Croatian Audiovisual Centre. Relying on government funding, the Centre has an important public role as well. In the conversation with Nebojša Taraba, Marcich said that providing local productions with high-quality infrastructure is another purpose of the Centre’s existence.
“We need projects that can keep us together. Divisions are damaging to the industry and society, our mission should be to overcome those divisions. But we don’t have sufficient resources to finance our small productions. Therefore I am focused on securing those resources in the hope that the incentives we are proposing will be applied to series as well.
We need to build our infrastructure. We need a good modern studio in order to enable international productions to use everything they need. I am aware of the issue that local productions don’t have sufficient funding to use local facilities. Costs of using the facilities will have to remain realistic. Public broadcasters are very important for funding local production, but private broadcasters don’t support it as much. Everyone who benefits from exploiting the audiovisual products should participate in it.”
The final day of NEM 2019 offered participants yet another opportunity for networking in the form of a coffee break powered by Turkish Airlines, NEM’s faithful partner.
