One more year, and the 3rd CONTD (Contenidos para la Televisión Digital) Sessions, celebrated on the 3rd and 4th of June, were used as a meeting point by the Spanish Audiovisual sector. Organized by the Audiovisual Contents and Formats Master’s Degree from the University of Valencia, these sessions brought together, on this occasion, various experts, professionals and academics, who reflected and debated upon the so called quality contents, in moments of profound transformation regarding the presence of the digital terrestrial television (DTTV), the coming into effect of the General Law of Audiovisual Communication, the new financing of RTVE, and the final burst of new distribution and consumption technologies, along with technologies that create audiovisual contents, like the Internet and the mobile phone. And everything happened in the middle of a serious economic crisis which radically changed the game rules of all the agents involved.
In this complex and instable setting, the forum accomplished and fully strengthened the expectations that had been created since the organization. On this matter, we are fully satisfied both regarding the level of the conferences, meetings and debates, that took place during the encounter, and regarding the presented speeches with conclusions that represent a very important encouragement towards continuing on the same level in the future. Esteban Morcillo, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Valencia, spoke about the consolidation of the sessions and about their innovative meaning, precisely at their inauguration. As an example, the sessions could be followed live on the Internet, and they had more than 1000 viewers, a number that shouldn’t be overlooked. Morcillo also stressed the fact that this type of activities presents the university to the society, which is also one of the purposes of this institution, and encouraged the organization in making more editions.
The value of the audiovisual contents
One of the main conclusions that we all reached was that there is no agreement when trying to decide which the quality contents are, but still we are able to create a set of aesthetic, narrative and technical parameters which themselves give quality to the contents. This subject was a matter of discussion for Emili Prado, an Audiovisual Communication professor from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), and Enrique Bustamante from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). So as to raise the subject, Bustamante demanded that we pay attention to the organization of the structures and contents on the market, since the television system determines the business and management pattern. He gave the DTTV as an example, which was generated as a promise and whose development, at present, is very disappointing. For example, in the offer that we received, the same subject was insisted on, in some of the handed presentations.
In this view, both Elisenda Malaret, a member of the Audiovisual Council of Catalunya, and the one and the only Prado, claimed that having access to a large diversity of channels is not the same thing as plurality of contents and definitely not the same thing as quality. Prado says that this is a situation which happens not only in Spain but also in whole Europe. So, the majority of the first European channels get their fuel from huge macro-genres, like information, fiction, info-shows, after which the offer simply blends. On the contrary, the thematic and specialized channels, with some obvious exceptions, hide a lot of general contents, very much the same, with very little innovation and added value.
According to both Bustamante and Prado, one of the reasons that explain the little diversity and plurality of contents, can be found in the second place that public television received in Spain in this digital transitional process. Specifically, Bustamante was especially critical with the present socialist Government which, in his point of view, changed the audiovisual politics within the last year, so as to benefit the private televisions in the detriment of the public televisions, copying the decisions that Sarkozy made in France and Berlusconi in Italy. He explained that, for example, the elimination of advertising from public television could mean a huge limitation in its financing pattern, and as a consequence alter its programs and contents in a downward manner. This situation was also stressed by Prado, who focused on the necessity of the public to view all the genres, not only the informative ones, but also fiction and entertainment. These limitations would explain the fact that some experts discussed a possible step back in the public television service.
As it was suggested, perhaps we should wait for the distribution of the digital dividend to finish and also for the 2011 foresight of the final adjustment of the multiplex among broadcasters to produce itself, a process that should cause a substantial change in the program contents and schedules. On the other hand, the channels should begin adapting their contents to the new regulatory framework, so as the recently founded State Council of Audiovisual Media (CEMA), to be able to act as a real control organization towards the media wave and its contents. As Prado mentioned, this should be a perfect moment for the public channels to claim the tractor position for the audiovisual industry and to become examples for the whole society.
On the other hand, the situation is different for the representatives of the Spanish public and private channels. Eva Cebrián, Program Manager on TVE, defended the financing pattern of the public channel, without advertising, and emphasized the leadership position that the first channel has had for the past few months, with the help of productions like the series Águila Roja , info-shows like Comando Actualidad and Españoles en el Mundo. She also stressed the present success of genres like the TV movies, especially the one about events that had an impact on the public opinion and the ones based on important people from the Spanish society like the King Juan Carlos. From her point of view, Mar-Martínez Raposo, Manager of the Neox and Nova channels from the Antena 3 group, assured everyone that the channel fragmentation doesn’t necessarily have to bring with itself a degradation of the contents. And she offered as an example the two channels under her management, which succeeded in getting an interesting position regarding high ratings within the offer of the DTTV as propositions of specific contents: Neox, a channel for a young public and Nova, a channel about lifestyle, targeting the female public. In fact, she said that both Neox and Nova are trying out contents of their own production which are made exclusively for their screen, an aspect that, at the moment, is not part of the present plans of the rest of the channels.
However, regarding other participants, we shouldn’t limit the profit gained from the exclusively rating related content broadcasting, to knowing whether a content functions or not regarding the number of persons that view it, but what we should do is focus more attention on its value within social terms, especially in public televisions, although it wouldn’t be a bad thing to remember that the programs which appear on the commercial televisions are also a public service. As it was said in one of the received communications, a first unavoidable step should be to know the users and public’s opinions, as citizens more than simple consumers.
For example, facing the difficulty of measuring the ratings of the local televisions, Miquel Bonastre, from the Local Television Council of Catalunya, pledged for other parameters, like fame, in measuring the social influence and the advertising funds, keeping in mind that with difference to others, public televisions know their viewers very well, even personally. Using similar ideas, Francesc Escribano, from Absolute Minority, claimed a not only qualitative but also quantitative assessment of the contents broadcasted by the televisions, at the closing ceremony of the sessions. Mainly because the viewers approach the television in a qualitative manner, saying if we like what we see or not, and why. Nowadays, with the help received by the audiometers, the channels and production companies know the number of people that has seen a program but not what they actually think of it. Escribano said that under these circumstances both the channels and the production companies end up having a conservative attitude, because in the end what matters the most is the high rating numbers that guarantee the advertising funds.
Somehow, the answer came from Yolanda Marugán, Manager of RTVE Institute, and Jordi Hidalgo, the Planning and Program Vice-President of Canal 9, who think that the risk level and the level of creating new contents depends on the financial stability of the channels, a state that is very difficult to achieve in periods of financial crisis like the present one. Marugán claimed that we needed to reach a stable economic pattern that allowed us to grow. Under these conditions, Hidalgo stated that the thing the Autonomous Valencian Television is sure about is the proximity and testimony contents, which are understood as a way to approach the citizens and the Valencian reality. This was an aspect that could be seen in the entertainment and the fiction formats that the channel had been premiering lately, like La Alqueria Blanca, Gormandia, or Valencians pel món, and also in the ones that will appear within the next seasons. A pattern that, nevertheless, was also created beginning with the winning programs which were more certain but more expensive and less local, like Champions League or Formula 1.
The independent production companies also have economic difficulties. Touching this subject, Pancho Casal, from Continental Productions, assured that creativity and new talents are the way to overcome the crisis. Escribano himself encouraged the production companies and the channels to risk in the future as the only way to gain social and economic success. On his part, Fernando Carrión, from the Asociación Valenciana de Empresas Productoras de Animación (AVEPA), claimed that the audiovisual sector should adapt itself to these new circumstances. This way, having a lower budget could help to change certain routines and approach a more intelligent manner of production. That is exactly what happened to the animation sector which, according the explanation during its intervention, is not very affected by the crisis, but actually it’s the opposite. And this has been possible because the animation companies have looked for new markets and explored other business opportunities than staying with the traditional ones. The confidence in the creation of a sector that has always been characterized by shortage, like the local ones, was one of Bonastre’s claims, taking into consideration that the penalty of the local televisions regarding failure of the broadcasted contents is smaller than the general and thematic ones, which also have a bigger budget. That is why, in Bonastre’s opinion, the contents offer a lot of possibilities for the local televisions, although they have to know what they are allowed to do or not. He thinks that local televisions should focus on the proximity contents, regarding informative programs and especially sports, and give up making low quality general contents. The fact is that the confidence in the creativity and innovation of the contents should come exclusively from the independent production channels. Having a formative capacity, the universities must also present suggestions about how the future television could be. Regarding this, and like it has always been, the students doing the Audiovisual Contents and Formats Master’s Degree at the University of Valencia, were able to present in one pitching session, the programs that they developed during the academic year, to a selection of representatives from Spanish channels and production companies. The selected formats were: El Efecto Doppler, a documentary magazine about science, with informal and humoristic language; De un momento a otro, a historical fiction production which resulted from the collaboration of different autonomous televisions; El listillo, a humoristic question-answer contest about the Spanish language; Made in, a documentary micro-space in which the history and curiosity of everyday things are explained; and Adoptamos, a reality show documentary about the world and international adoption starting with the experiences of different families. Most of the projects received a positive feedback from the professionals forming the board, an aspect which again demonstrates the high level achieved by this year’s program. The invited experts this year were Ximo Pérez, Manager of Productors Audiovisuals Valencians (PAV), Francesc Picó, director of TVV Fiction, Alberto González, from the I+D Department from Cuatro, and José Manuel Pinillos, Contents Director at the RTVE Culture Channel.
The inrush of new media
Moreover, during the sessions the consolidation of the new media like the Internet and the mobile phone was established as platforms of distribution, consumption and creation of audiovisual contents. Screens that gradually gather more and more people, mainly youth but not only, who are attracted by the consumption capacity of the contents offered by the charter, or attracted by the level of participation that they include, and probably because the traditional television doesn’t offer them the contents that they want to see. Following this idea, the new types of media were considered a hope both for the plurality of the contents and the social dynamics which Bustamante was talking about, and for creating new business patterns, just like the demand of Antonio Mansilla, from the Associació Valenciana de Productors Independents (AVAPI), and the one of several communications presented during the sessions.
These matters were discussed in the speech of Rosa Franquet, the Audiovisual Communication professor from the UAB, who pointed out that the audiovisual sector has to be open to innovation and cannot turn its back to the cross-media contents, which are the contents designed for the technological convergence and which take every possible and available opportunities towards exhibition and exploitation. Franquet explained that this undoubtedly forces the production companies and the copywriters to rethink the audiovisual contents and adjust them to this new situation which is extremely linked to the permanent changes that are happening, especially in the consumption field. One of the new content examples that we were able to contemplate during the forum was the one from Balzac TV, namely Héctor Milla’s web TV, who also created a more optimistic vision of the new outlook. In Milla’s opinion, the key resides both in the artificial creation of formats, interactivity and emotion and in changing the mass traditional communication into communication among crowds, meaning into important market shares, so as to guarantee the advertising investment for the keeping of this type of suggestions.
From a more skeptical or realistic point of view, depending on how one sees it, José María Álvarez Monzoncillo, an Audiovisual Communication professor at the Rey Juan Carlos University, stated that there are business possibilities on the Internet, although immediately afterwards admitted that there still are uncertainties. For instance, Álvaraz Monzoncillo assured that, for now, the Internet hasn’t yet given the audiovisual industry a notable increase in incomes so as to become comparable to the increase in consumption. However, it is true that the Internet has allowed small products, that could only be made known this way, to get to the global market, but these are very rare cases. As a result, to the expert, television continues to be, to this day, the fundamental element of the audiovisual business. But this doesn’t mean that in the future there could be a mixed investment strategy, through advertising and the fees paid by the citizens in order to see the contents on the Internet, a process which could allow the companies to finance their products and make the production of new contents very profitable.
We will have to pay attention to the way the audiovisual market develops in the following years. However, it would be better to acknowledge that it’s not for them being Internet and mobile phone contents, but because they have their own quality value. And because of the way things happen with the traditional television, we again have to establish among all of us the criteria that shows the quality of the contents that were exclusively designed for the new media or for consumption through different screens.
The confidence in the technical quality
Lastly, another of the parameters used to measure the quality of the audiovisual contents, has to be linked to the technological advances applied to their broadcasting and reception. Having a high quality image and sound or having an audiovisual experience has lately become a fundamental matter for many channels and production companies. As an example, Hipólito Vivar, the Audiovisual Communication professor from the UCM, focused on the interactive services of the audiovisual contents, although they haven’t developed yet, the way it was expected and desired. The way he sees it, the interactive television should have advanced functions, a broad band that should be affordable to almost everyone, and suitable to the mobility and mechanisms of every individual person.
On the other hand, Pere Vila, the Technology Manager of RTVE, encouraged towards reconsidering the DTTV matter beginning with the incorporation of the High Definition Channels, and especially with the public channel. Ángel García Castillejo, from the Telecommunications Market Council (TMC), also focused on the advantages offered by the High Definition and on the possibility that these improvements finish by being an exclusive offer of paid DTTV, which is yet due to be explored. On his part, Sergi Alsina, from Albertis Telecom, commented on the mobility of television in Spain with the consolidation of the 3G devices, the touch screens and the iPhone stimuli. For Alsina, the mobility of television, an idea that is still at the beginning, can improve the audiovisual experience of the user and open new business opportunities for many companies. And finally, Lluís Grau, from the Department of Television Engineering of Catalunya, presented the advantages and limitations of the 3D applied on television. Grau said that he doesn’t watch 3D channels exclusively for the DTTV, although the tridimensional experience is spreading more and more in formats like cinematography and videogames as a new commercial strategy. As Grau says, the 3D television will be gradually introduced in various movies and in big events, mainly sportive events. Regarding other type of contents, this kind of technology is economically non-viable at present.
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So this has been everything. Since the organization of the 3rd CONTD Sessions, we are more than satisfied with their results and we have already begun working on the next year sessions, which will be about fiction contents on different formats and screens. Join us again next time.
