would say that five years
ago Bloomberg Television
was an extremely reliable,
factual service but it was
less of a TV channel. Under
Andy Lackʹs leadership as
CEO of Bloomberg Media
Group, the team here have over the
last five years turned it into a
compelling and entertaining TV
and video product.
We upgraded the look and feel
of the channel, introducing on air
talent and building new studios in
Hong Kong, London and New
York that are beautifully designed
and make the set much more active
and vibrant. There is a much more
punchy, analytical and fast paced
feel to the channel now.
When I joined, Bloomberg had a
number of local language TV
channels – in the English language
and French, German, Spanish,
Italian and Portuguese as well –
and for the first six months my job
was to visit all the distributors in
Europe and explain that they would
be much better off with the new re‐
booted global Bloomberg English
language channel that was going to
have the same effort and resources
of Bloomberg TV put into it.
We decided that this was the
way and closed the local channels
that were each reaching a very
limited audience. So whilst on the
commercial side I was renegotiating
contracts and making sure that
everybody in Europe who wanted
to watch Bloomberg TV was
watching the new global
Bloomberg TV feed, Andy and the
newsroom team here were busy
revamping, refreshing and re‐
launching Bloomberg Television
from our three international hubs.
Has your audience changed?
I think it has broadened;
increasingly we have become a
business channel rather than just a
financial channel. Business is all
around us – we are not just talking
about stock markets, we are talking
about sports business, fashion
business, entertainment business.
We needed to extend our coverage
to these areas without in any way
dumbing down the financial
coverage we had made our name
for. We realised in that revamp that
we had to cover all aspects of
business that were important
globally and tell the top stories
every day in the business world.
We actually stopped displaying
quite as much information on the
TV screen. What we wanted to do
was create a screen that was much
more engaging for an audience,
gave plenty of information but
information that was being
concurrently interpreted and
debated by the on air presenters. So
whilst keeping the attention of the
financial services audience we were
also engaging a new business
audience who want to understand
and hear about more general
business stories rather than just
financial services stories.
We do have a broad appeal in
the sense that wherever you are in
the world, when you wake up and
switch on the TV you can see the
same global English‐language feed
of Bloomberg TV with the top
stories in business.
What about localisation?
We do like to have a local flavour,
definitely. We have cameras in
around fifty cities because we feel
that it is important to get a local
view to help the audience
understand the stories better. Of
course there is the advantage then
of being able to interview the
people who are making the news in
different parts of the world. But
what makes Bloomberg TV what it
is, is the knowledge that this
information is researched properly,
given with integrity, and can be
trusted by the viewer. If you are a
business news channel it is
absolutely essential that people can
rely on the information you are
giving them.
So take us through where the
output comes from.
Our one feed follows the business
day around, so we follow the sun.
We start in Asia in our studios in
Hong Kong and then after five
hours of Asian coverage we move
I
We don't
have a
'one size
fits all'
idea of
creating
localisa-
tions
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over to London. Later in the day at
11 oʹclock local time here in the UK
we move to the US – and of course
there’s communication between the
hubs during the broadcast day.
There is always the feeling of the
business day moving on as the sun
rises in the next region, so as you
are looking at the closing of one set
of markets you are already
anticipating the effect this will have
on the opening of the next set of
markets.
There’s huge competition for
places on platforms. What does
this mean for Bloomberg?
We recognise that we still are a
niche product and we want to serve
our viewers and be true to the type
of content we think they are going
to be interested in. With the level of
distribution that we have
established in Europe we find that
new platforms often come to us
now because they want to get
quality channels on.
Yes, it’s a very crowded market
but I really believe that reputation
is key here. You may have a
thousand TV channels but how
many are going to be of the quality
and the integrity of Bloomberg TV?
The values of our brand are very
strong and so I am grateful for the
fact that these days we donʹt have
to fight to get onto TV platforms,
particularly not here in Europe
anyway.
What are you doing in Africa?
The Africa market of course has
tremendous potential. We launched
Bloomberg TV Africa as a new
product in November. Recognising
that there are simply not enough
hours in the day to cover all the
stories we would like to cover
about every part of the world on
Bloomberg TV global feed, we
started a series of localisation to
enable us to go into more depth
and detail with local stories in
certain parts of the world.
One of the most recent of those is
Bloomberg TV Africa where we are
getting local stories reported on by
local journalists and presenters and
that is huge potential for us.
