The Channel | 2002 | June

3 / 22

4 | the channel
The big test facing new conferences is whether they cover genuinely new territory while
helping delegates gain valuable new insights. On both counts the inaugural conference
of the Association for International Broadcasting, held on April 30th, hit home.
It managed to shine a powerful searchlight into the nooks and crannies of the issues
facing broadcasters worldwide as they grapple with trying to keep up with change, but
not be overwhelmed by it.
To do so, it drew on diverse experiences round the globe – from explaining the astonishing
and overnight importance of the satellite telephone to efforts to create the first truly
Pan African broadcast services and the use of soap operas in spreading public service
messages in areas as diverse as China and St Lucia.
AIB’s Global Media Business conference was attended
by well over 100 delegates, drawn from five
continents, and held against the appropriate
backdrop of Manchester’s museum of science and
industry.
Nick Gowing, well known to delegates through his
role as a presenter for BBC World, set the tone by
noting that the conference was taking place against
a background of great uncertainty and change in
the broadcast environment, at a time when the sums didn’t all add up and when serving
audiences was becoming more and more difficult. He said that broadband – seen by
some as the magic password to new services - was promising much, but warned that
the day of reckoning was approaching in terms of finding out from where the revenues
associated with additional choice and capacity would come. He also warned that delegates
were faced with a period of “ruthless rationalisation” in response to too many ideas
chasing too little revenue.
Rick Cotton, CEO of CNBC Europe, delivering the keynote address of the morning session,
said that the business challenge now facing pan-European broadcasters was to grow
revenues. He claimed that the services had “good parents and good looks” and now
reached 50% of European households, a figure that was gradually expanding. But he
argued that, from this strong foundation, the challenge was now to develop real time
research and audience measurement systems that would better underpin selling efforts.
He contended that current surveys, based on the recall of viewers, were not effective
enough for media buyers and gave distorted results. Mr Cotton predicted that as new
services expanded, business television would emerge as one of the categories of service
with the strongest appeal.
The imaginatively-titled opening session on Big Pipes, Boxes Bytes and Bits illuminated
different aspects of the continually expanding ground being opened up by new technology.
David Jamieson, head of content services at British Telecom, outlined details of his
company’s Digital Content Management System (DCMS), a massive central digital
storage system capable of storing 43 million hours of content in MPEG 1&4 format
with metadata, and distributed via satellite and IP networks.
He was followed by Anver Anderson, director of occasional use at satellite provider
EuropeStar, who told delegates about his company’s high powered satellite, now covering
The Global Media Business
in an Uncertain World
The Association for International Broadcasting held its inaugural conference,
the Global Media Business in an UncertainWorld, in the city of Manchester
in north-west England, on 30th April. David Keighley, journalist and
publisher of the Media Digest, reports on the event.
AIB Conference photography: Michele Jones