My Amazing Boyfriend (Photo : YouTube)
Besides Hollywood movie producers, American TV show producers are now eyeing the China TV market because of the sheer size of the market. There are about 400 million TV sets in homes in China.
However, even Chinese TV producers are also eyeing the American market. Producers showed their offerings at the 2017 NATPE Market & Conference held on Jan. 17 to 19 at the Fontainebleau & Eden Roc, Miami Beach, Florida at the first China Pavilion. There were 18 Chinese companies that participated, including CCTV, the state-owed TV station, Variety reported.
MIP China Conference
The same companies are also expected to join the MIP China conference in May in Hangzho, China, where the Huace Group is headquarters. At NATPE, Huace shopped for American TV shows such as “My Amazing Boyfriend” and “The Legendary Tycoon.”
“The Legendary Tycoon” features Run Run Shaw, a Chinese film mogul, while “My Amazing Boyfriend,” aired by Tencent, the Internet giant in China, was aired in the U.S. by DramaFever SVOD service. It is a supernatural romance between a mummy and a woman.
Latin American Buyers
A lot of the shows on the China Pavilion were wacky reality shows and animation. The Huace Group aimed to market their TV shows to Latin American buyers. The company, which is creating a new drama and collaborating with ITV of U.K. for the reality series “Dancing on Ice,” is seeking co-production partners as well, Cecilia Zhu, vice general manager of Huace Group, said.
However, TV executive who attended the NATPE conference cited their dilemma of lack of available time slots in some of the biggest markets, especially for daytime, afternoon and early evening hours. It is because most of the important stations in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York have stocks of franchise shows up to 2020 in some cases, according to Variety.
