ABA Update
August 2004
Conference report

Established in 1995 as a trade association for the crossborder broadcasting industry, the London-based Association for International Broadcasting has a world-wide membership which covers all sectors of the international broadcasting industry. ABA Member lan Robertson reports on its annual summit, heid in Prague in May.

Annual summit: Association for International Broadcasting

The venue for the 2004 Summit in Prague was the former Hall of the People which operated as the Czechoslovak Parliament building in the Communist era and is now the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The choice of venue had a certain irony given that the former Czechoslovak Government authorised the jamming of broadcasts by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty during the Cold War.
The summit covered a broad range of issues affecting contemporary international broadcasting.

Terror and conflict - democracy v state
Commencing with a quote from Einstein, `Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth', this session dealt with attempts by government to control the media and limit the independence of journalists.
The Iraq war was cited as a current pressure point of press freedom, particularly in America. An example of this pressure was the decision by a number of major US media outlets, including CBS, to wait a week before broadcasting the Iraq prisoner abuse story. The delay was apparently at the request of both the US Government and military.
The technique of using journalists embedded with military units to cover the war was seen by some as a further challenge to media objectivity. At least one speaker questioned whether, as a result of the horror of September 11, the US media had lost much of its objectivity when reporting international events.
Media consultant Helen Shaw, author of The Age of McMedía, stressed the importance of public broadcasting which has financial and regulatory independence, as well as the need for commercial news and current affairs to subscribe to the doctrine of fairness and balance. She considers both are crucial to the future of independent journalism.

Global sport broadcasting
Changes in the structure of major rights deals were the focus of much discussion and debate. The recent demise of major sports rights holders, such as Kirch and ISL which provided huge revenue guarantees to sports federations, has led to significant change in the industry.
Leading sports such as Formula 1, the Soccer World Cup, IOC Soccer, and Premier League Soccer have ceased to use agencies to negotiate their rights deals and have moved the process in-house.
This development coincides with what was described as `nervousness' in the market: that prices and values for major sport activities have peaked.
While sports federations still work with agencies for lesser rights and territories, major rights deals for major territories are now being negotiated in-house, resulting in a change to bid structures. In Europe,individual broadcasters are bidding against each other for rights previously bought for the whole of Europe by the European Broadcasting Union.
For example, television rights to UK Premier League Soccer are now negotiated in-house. The League tripled the price it received for Asian rights compared to its previous agency deal, but still used a specialist agency to sell the Eastern and Central European rights.
One of the most colourful aspects of this session was a live satellite cross to a sports cornmentator on the Olympic site at Athens. His simple thesis was that broadcasting the Athens Olympics would be an education and challenge for all involved, illustrated perhaps more vividly than intended by the satellite feed
repeatedly dropping out. The commentator was particularly concerned about the challenges presented in broadcasting an open-air swimming competition.
Another interesting area of the discussion was the large amounts being spent by non-Olympic Games rights holders to establish locations in Athens with back-drops which enabled their broadcasts from outside the Olympics precinct to nevertheless look “official”.

Quality, standards and figures
International Standardisation and Accreditation Services has, at the initiative of a Canadian non-profit organisation, the World Radio and Television Council, developed BC-9001, a quality standard for broadcasters. A copy of the standard can be obtained at www.media-society.org.
The standard is concerned not with content but how a broadcaster ensures quality production and effective service to society. It specifies requirements for a quality management system if a broadcasting organisation:
- aims to contribute to social development and democracy
- demonstrates its ability to consistently provide radio, television and internet content that meet audience and citizen requirements as well as applicable regulatory requirements
- aims to enhance stakeholder satisfaction.
Of interest also was the presentation, by AGB Italia, of an Italian audience appreciation index based on viewer behaviour retrieved from people meters. The índex focuses on viewer continuity i.e. how many viewers watched at least 80 per cent of a television program and were watching at the end.

Challenges for revenue growth
Speakers identified two principal revenue growth areas for television broadcasting in Europe. The first, niche channels, aims to meet the requirements of advertisers who want targeted niche markets. A web site, hosted by Inmedia, has been developed which explains how to launch niche channels in apparently easy steps:
www.howtolaunchatvchannel.com.
The second revenue growth area is satellite-delivered high definition television. The vice president of high definition satellite broadcaster, Euro 1080, proclaimed that, “Europe cannot remain a standard definition island”. Sport will be an important driver of high definition take-up: for example, all 61 games in the 2006 Soccer World Cup in Germany will be broadcast in high definition television.

New consumer technologies
Glenn Hall of HP Labs, who has the interesting title of Media Anthropologist, gave a thought-provoking presentation on new technologies.
The first, visual radio, delivers pictures synchronised with FM radio reception to a mobile phone which is also an FM receiver (as most advanced mobile phones now are), The result is an enhanced radio experience (rather than a video or film experience). Suggested applications include the transmission of still photographs from video clips and sports results to match appropriate FM programs. Much will presumably depend on the call charge pricing model.
Microsoft's new Windows Media 9 is regarded as a significant development in moving the computes from the study to the lounge room. It features high definition video and state-of-the-art compression technologies, and it is suggested that this device may bring true convergente to the home.

Analog television switch off
An interesting case study in analog television switch-off occurred last year in the German capital of Berlin which has a population of five million.
Less than 10 per cent of television reception in Germany is terrestrial: cable and satellite transmission are the dominant technologies. Digital television started in Berlin with technical tests in 1997. A regulatory framework was developed in 1999 and analog switch-off was completed on 4 August 2003.
Features of the switch-off included communication with consumers in the form of a letter to all households, as well as a telephone hotline and a web site. The local government authority bought 6000 digital television sets for poor households (at a cost of approximately 560,000 Euros).
An unexpected feature of the process was the rapid increase in set-top box sales leading to a rapid decrease in retail prices.
A local government authority survey showed that 87 per cent of Berlin consumers were satisfied or very satisfied with the outcome of the introduction of digital television and the resultant analog switch off.

Cross-media ownership
In proving that some media regulatory issues are truly universal, an editorial in the English language Prague newspaper, The Prague Post, at the time of the summit commented on a proposal by the Communist party of Bohemia and Moravia to establish cross-media ownership sales. The paper, which appears to be generally anti-communist, published an editorial which included the following comments:
About once a year the Communists actually say something that makes sense, although not intentionally. The Communist party has drafted a law that limits the extent to which one company can control the country's media. Essentially the law would prevent “one capital group” from owning more than one newspaper or more than one type of media company.
The paper, noting that 100 per cent of regional newspapers in the Czech Republic are under the control of one owner, hopes that the concerns raised by the Communists would provoke a “heated public discussion”. It also noted that “regulating cross-media ownership might bring a much-needed pluralism of information”.