Record-breaking Asia TV Forum & Market

THE Singapore Media Festival (SMF) 2016, which brings together several established events including the Asia TV Forum & Market (ATF) and ScreenSingapore (SS), Asian Television Awards (ATA), Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), and this year's keystone digital event SMF Ignite, under one umbrella, drew to a close last Friday.

Celebrating the best of Asian stories, SMF 2016 highlighted good storytelling as a key pillar of the global media industry through its many conferences, labs, trade markets, screenings, and award ceremonies.

Hosted by the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA), it ran from Nov 23 to Dec 9, gathering over 20,000 media and creative professionals, industry thought-leaders, and fans of television and film from around the world to discover, innovate and network with one another.

A string of fresh content for the upcoming year was also introduced.

There were investment opportunities aplenty as this year's ATF and SS broke records - from show attendance (5,383 attendees from 21 countries) to sales transactions on the market floor (over US$244 million worth of deals and partnerships were estimated to have been facilitated).

Asian buyers had access to fresh content from 738 exhibiting companies from around the world, including major studios such as CBS Studios International, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution Inc, MGM Worldwide Television, NBC Universal Television, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Television and Warner Bros International Television.

At the Singapore Pavilion of ATF, over 700 hours of Asian stories through 50 film, television and animation titles of various genres were presented, including new collaborations and titles.

These include Dining Stars, the world's first eight-episode Virtual Reality lifestyle series by BeVRR (Singapore) that invites viewers to dine with supermodel Rebecca Tan and her celebrity guests in award-winning restaurants and Jimami Tofu by Singapore-based BananaMana Films, which is set for a world premiere in March.

There were plenty of beaming faces on the buzzing market floor including that of So Fujinama, director, worldwide production and sales, international department, Fuji Television Network.

"We received strong interest from many companies," he says. "For our documentary How Pokémon Go Changed the World, we secured a deal with a European broadcaster and it will be shown in 60 countries; for our custom-made formats, we also secured leads for two deals."

Yeow Hui Leng, senior project director, Reed Exhibitions, adds: "With today's dynamic content market, ATF and ScreenSingapore constantly evolves to help the industry better navigate this disruptive landscape . . . We are already receiving early interest from content companies to participate in the next event and we look to grow together with Asia's rising content industry."