3.1 REACHING WIDER AUDIENCES

MEDIA helps European films and series find their audiences in the face of fierce global competition. Despite the COVID-19 lockdowns having paralysed the cinema and festival sector for many months and thanks to the increase in home consumption, MEDIA-supported works reached no less than 136 million consumers through different channels: in particular, 101 million TV viewers, 31 million cinemagoers in theatres in the Europa Cinemas network, and 2.2 million at festivals9 .

The Culture Sub-programme brings benefits to the music or literature sectors by helping less represented genres or countries expand their audience outside their home country in Europe and beyond. European books for instance – especially from smaller territories – do not travel easily across borders and, when they do travel, need to be promoted to kindle the interest of potential new readers. Since 2014 the programme has supported 380 projects by publishers for the translation and promotion of more than 3 500 works of European literature via traditional and digital channels. With more than 40 different source and target languages and 70% of all translations coming from “smaller” languages, the library of Creative Europe-supported books fully reflects the linguistic and creative diversity of European stories.

AUDIENCES ARE AT THE HEART OF CREATIVE EUROPE. ONE OF THE KEY OBJECTIVES OF THE PROGRAMME IS TO ENLARGE AND DIVERSIFY THE AUDIENCE FOR EUROPEAN CONTENT ACROSS BORDERS.

EXAMPLES OF AUDIENCE DATA AVAILABLE

200310_Netflix_Freud_PosterA1_594x841_39L.indd 1 13.11.20 14:39 Slapstick-comedy animation series Mighty Mike, which received EUR 500 000 of MEDIA production support in 2017, was a big success amongst audiences of children in the winter 2019/2020 season. When first broadcast in its national market – France – it attracted over 12% of 4-14 year olds. It was released in several European markets, as well as in the US (where it was the second most-watched show in the children’s category) and in China (on an a VOD platform, where it received at least 44 million views)

Freud is the first season of an eight-episode drama series about the young Sigmund Freud, investigating a murder conspiracy in 1880’s Vienna. It was co-produced by Satel (Austria) Bavaria Fiction (Germany), and Austrian broadcaster ORF. The project initially received Development funding in 2015 (EUR 50 000) before being awarded a EUR 500 000 grant under the TV Programming scheme in 2018. In Austria, during the broadcast on ORF (15-22 March 2020) it had a total of 3 286 000 viewers with an average market share of 12%. When it premiered on Netflix (23 March 2020) it reached 25 million households during the first month. It was in the top 10 ranking in 67 countries.

9 This number is only indicative of the full impact: the total size of audiences reached by MEDIA indirectly is certainly higher, but since audience data on television and VOD are limited, the numbers are based only on what MEDIA beneficiaries report to the best of their knowledge.