Here are insights and takeaways from the best of the creative and business minds at MIPCOM on Day One, which saw a plethora of activities to take M&E industry to the next level.

On day one at MIPCOM the best of the creative minds never uttered or spoke about disruption and transformation. May be in the new media landscape it is a passe. But the oft repeated buzz words are resilience, speed, agility and flexibility…for survival in the emerging media landscape.

Take Carolyn McCall, CEO, ITV Studios in her mastermind conversation. “It’s just about speed, agility and flexibility and making sure you have the right skills moving in the right direction and you are really listening to your consumers.” These are the traits that would help collaborate and compete in the new media world.

McCall stated that running ITV Studios is not as stressful as the managing low-cost EasyJet airline. Prior to becoming CEO of ITV Studios, McCall was CEO of Britain’s EasyJet Airline Co. for eight years. Managing ITV doesn’t keep her awake at night compared to having run a safety business.

Here’s McCall’s cue on managing business. “You have to start from the consumer perspective. This is the golden age of content: everyone talks about that. There’s an insatiable demand for content,” said McCall. “Viewers will view great content, but I think what we have to do is make sure we have the relationship with the viewers, and we understand the viewers.”

And OTT giants are competing for time from consumers.

On the day one at MIPCOM dominated by Britain, Time Davie, CEO BBC Studios in his mastermind keynote stated that he was “really passionate about UK creativity,” and with its home-grown IP, the one thing he could do was grow young talent through that.

“The speed of change is dizzying. Scale is becoming more defining. You have to decide what business you’re in. What we needed to do was attract and retain the best talent.”

“We’re a global company, powered by British creativity. That means our scope is tightly defined by what we’re looking for, but broadly across genres. We’re looking for the finest premium content. This is not rocket science: In an age of infinite choice… content is king.”

Ari Emanuel, CEO of Endeavor, was honoured with the Variety Vanguard Award. He led Endeavor’s rise from a startup talent agency in 1995 through its expansion into a parent holding company active in entertainment, sports, and fashion.“The US TV market is a $150bn business; it’s not going away in the next 5 years at least,” said Emanuel. “With the SVODs it’s a $180bn business…. and they’re all self-contained wall gardens,” he said.

“It’s incredibly important that we keep the skills going, the craft skills,” he said, suggesting that the BBC gained its best financial return on programming where there was a focus on high quality. The editorial values are outstanding, and I think you have to fight for that. You have to fight for homegrown storytellers and we’re creating a company of global scale which can do that. It’s going to be a battle at times; we are in a battle to secure talent to make sure we are winning projects.”

Actor Dominic West received the first Cannes Series Excellence Award, presented to him by Cannes Mayor David Lisnard at a ceremony within MIPCOM.