TV and streaming content and production trends were firmly in the spotlight at the ninth edition of the Conecta Fiction & Entertainment industry gathering in Cuenca, Spain this week, which wrapped up on Thursday.
Executives from the likes of Warner Bros. Discovery, the Walt Disney Co., Gaumont Television, Spain’s Atresmedia Group, production giant Banijay, NBCUniversal Telemundo, and Movistar Plus+ and many more touted their original programming and plans. They discussed the state of the industry and its outlook.
The latter opened the door for U.S. President Donald Trump to also cast his long shadow over sunny and picturesque Cuenca at least a couple of times, even though no speakers or panelists mentioned his name.
One of the first sessions of Conecta 2025 on Tuesday set the stage in that regard. It was entitled “Focus Canada: D.E.I. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Moderator Marina Mathieu, executive director of Coalition M.E.D.I.A. (Media for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility), started by mentioning that the panel was not put together “to annoy a certain president” but because her organization strongly believed in the intrinsic value of DEI initiatives. This was a reference to Trump’s crackdown on diversity and inclusion policies in the U.S.
Later that day, Gaumont Television president and producer Isabelle Degeorges indirectly referenced Trump when lauding France’s rules requiring U.S. and global streamers to invest a minimum of 20 percent of their net French revenue in European works. “If we don’t own the IP, we lose our identity,” she said. “If we don’t own the IP, my feeling is that everything belongs to the U.S., and at the end, it is their identity.”
Degeorges emphasized, though, that the French industry can’t rest on its laurels. “This regulation is very important for us, and we will always fight for this… especially with this new administration in the U.S., because they don’t care.” She concluded: “We know that our decrees, our French decrees, are not acceptable for them.”
Trump and how his possible MAGA policies could affect international markets also came up during a session on production incentives. During the Q&A portion, one person asked if threatened U.S. tariffs on films made abroad to help boost production in California and other parts of the U.S. “We really don’t know what the president of the U.S. is going to implement,” emphasized Ana Marqués, executive director of the Portugal Film Commission, in response, highlighting a lack of specific plans so far. So, Portugal is focusing on its strategy, including “diversity, hopefully, cultural exchange, and co-production,” she concluded. “This is our way of working.”
Victor Lamadrid, general secretary of the Spain Film Commission, shared similar thoughts. “We are in touch with American production companies, of course, trying to see what happens,” he told the Conecta audience. “Sometimes, measures they want to [launch to] protect, I think, are worse for production companies from the United States. We are also trying to open new markets, new territories,” something that his commission’s team always has an eye on.
Concluded Lamadrid about possible Trump film measures: “But we don’t think it will be as bad as everything seemed to be when he announced it. We have nothing real at the moment.”
In one of the final sessions of Conecta 2025 on Thursday, Sergio Mendoza, vp, scripted development at NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, also mentioned the current political situation and division in the U.S. without going into details. “We live in a specific political and social moment,” he said. “That opens up opportunities to tell certain kinds of stories.”