The CONTD Content for Digital Television Conferences have changed the location, but the objectives that motivated their start remain and are reinforced: being a meeting point for academicians, professionals and students of communication and of the Valencian audiovisual sector and, by extension, Spanish. This year’s edition, the number 6th, took place on 20 May at the Aula Magna of the Universitat de València, at the historical building of La Nau, and was dedicated to the television of the crisis. An issue of enormous significance, because if there is any professional and industrial sector about which the economic crisis we have been suffering from years now is specially cruel is, without doubt, the audiovisual sector, which is going through moments of deep uncertainty. For many people, the crisis has demonstrated the structural problems of a sector that, arguably, has not grown orderly. There are people who speak about the “audiovisual bubble” to refer to the development of a model understood as a failure from the industrial point of view, but also from the cultural and social point of view.

These ideas touched the conferences since the opening ceremony, which was presided by the Principal of the Universitat de València, Esteban Morcillo. In this sense, the spokesperson from the Board of Directors of the Spanish Television Academy, Miguel Ángel Olivar, recognised that the audiovisual sector in concerned on how the crisis is evolving, specially on today’s difficulties to fund the projects, which leads to a halt in productive terms and to the destruction of jobs. But his message was not pessimistic at all, because he was convinced in the re-foundation of the audiovisual sector in a new model based on new ideas and contents, which are more necessary than ever. Precisely, this is one of the values of the CONTD Content for Digital Television Conferences that finished again with the presentation and public defence of the projects that the students of the Master’s Degree in Audiovisual Contents and Formats of the Universitat de València have developed throughout the academic year. The director of the Master’s Degree and also of the CONTD Content for Digital Television Conferences, Miquel Francés, emphasised the importance of maintaining this type of meetings despite the difficulties and, even more so, if they are developed from a state university. Also, this was the centre of the intervention of Morcillo, who brought to light the contribution of the higher state education to the social cohesion and to the collective richness in a moment in which critical voices with its functioning are heard. For the Principal, the CONTD Content for Digital Television Conferences are a clear example of one of the objectives any state university should set, as the transmission of knowledge and values to society, specially if we are talking about a communication mean as television.

The television model and the crisis.

On the debates and the conferences that were carried out during the CONTD Conferences, different ways of interpreting the crisis were shown, both when it came to make a diagnosis of the situation and when it came to make the decisions in the future to get out of it as soon and as strongly as possible. The representative of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU-UER), Giacomo Mazzone, and the full university professor of Audiovisual Communication of the Complutense University, Enrique Bustamante, considered that this crisis period should be seized by society to re-think the audiovisual system so that the state television occupies a more relevant position than it has had until now, which would allow it for becoming the motor of the audiovisual industry for Europe and, in particular, for Spain.

From its point of view, the loss of value and the loss of leadership of the radio and television public system is one of the priorities for the great part of the European governments, which are bowing to the pressures of the economic powers articulated in big communication groups from which take part the majority of the private televisions. In this moment of lack of resources as a consequence of the declining of the advertising market and the processes of business concentration are making that the small and medium-sized enterprises have more and more difficulties to compete and survive. The solution is, for Mazzone, a restructuring of the public television system all over Europe as a vehicle for cultural and technological transformation, which raises the quality of the private television and that fight against he digital age. A model that, according to Bustamante, was in the spirit of RTVE restructuring that started the socialist government of Rodríguez Zapatero, but that was dissolved in the final application. Nowadays, what these experts observe is that it has been produced a regression that is perverting and distorting the concept of the public in communication and culture, with which the democratic public space is deteriorated. Specially in Spain, where the public television system is under-funded in comparison with the rest of European countries.

By his part, Alfonso Nasarre, Director of Communication and Institutional Relations of RTVE, recognised that the existence of a public television in Spain is essential, but indicated that efforts have to be made to optimise the resources in a oversized context. Instead he wondered if the autonomic public televisions were sustainable with low share data as the current ones, in the line of an open debate on the convenience of maintaining the model of the third channel in the midst of the decommissioning process of the firms, outsourcing and privatisation of the contents and services or the application of Expedientes de Regulación de Empleo (ERE - Redundancy Plan) in some of this firms, such as RTVV or Telemadrid. Processes that the General Secretary of the FORTA, Enrique Laucirica, justified in certain cases to maintain a system that has serious financing problems as the consequence of the loss of advertisers, but who, unlike Nasarre, considers necessary to include the local and proximity sensors. On the other hand, the most forceful in the defence of the autonomic public televisions as an instrument to avoid communicative centralism and respect the cultural diversity of the State was Bustamante, provided that the contents are adjust to the founding objectives of the channel and respond to the needs of the citizens and not to the parties that govern the autonomous communities. The local television, recognised Mazzone, continues being a value but it has to be located if it wants to maintain its sense.

Otherwise, Laucirica agreed with Nasarre and with José Antonio Antón, Director of Programming and Thematic Channels of Atresmedia TV, in which the televisions must adapt to the crisis situation, which implies reducing structural costs and betting on innovation and creativity without losing quality. Following with this argumentation, Antón considered the possibility of exploiting new ways for income such as the ones that Internet can provide, which should not be understood as competitions but as an ally for the channels. In fact, Mazzone warned that while the European, public and private channels compete with each other for the increasingly exiguous resources, the social influence and, therefore, the advertisement are inexorably moving towards Internet and the big firms of digital communication, with Google at the head of it. The European expert predicted a future in which live television would be restricted to the big events, such as sporting events, while the rest of audiovisual content, the “tinned” television, will be available à la carte thanks to the Internet and to other storage devices. In this sense, the importance of Internet and the new ways of consumption it favours are essential, and for this reason its access has to be facilitated to all the population.

New business model, creativity, internationalisation.

Some of the changes brought by the economic crisis bear with the apparition and consolidation of new funding formulas that are allowing for the production of audiovisual projects apart from the institutional channels and the search of new stories to tell or the old usual stories but told in a different way. New ideas and new tools arise, such as social networks in the case of Twitter or mobile devices, as tablets or smartphones. This could be verified during the communications that were presented in parallel to the plenary sessions and that transform the CONTD Conferences in a scientific congress of reference. The production of docuwebs, the value added to brand image and the profitability of the contents or  the branded content and the product placement were some of the topics covered in these sessions. The quality and the level of the presented speeches can be compared with the resulting academic publication.

Regarding the independent audiovisual production, some successful business experiences attended the conferences: Manuel Serrano, from New Atlantis; Ramón Campos, from Bambú Producciones; Jordi Bosch, from Endemol; and Francesc Escribano, from Minoria Absoluta. All the professionals insisted on recognising the difficulty of the moment, but also launched some proposals from which facing with certain guarantees the future. One of them is the diversification of the market. Escribano indicated that it was very important not depending on an only client and knowing him well, as well as the public to which the client wants to address you. For example, producers have to know very well which is the channel they are working for, what image they want to transfer to the audience, how is positioned and which are their expectations. At this point a debate –still open– started on whether there have to be awarded public grants to the audiovisual production in a market under business competition. Nonetheless, the most important thing is getting to create an industrial network that today is very precarious and unstable. The other key that were really present at the roundtable was the internationalisation of the Spanish audiovisual production, as Bosch and Campos stated, in line with what is going on with fiction lately which, after many years, it seems that a global market is opening up. Without doubt, to go out and locating in an unbeatable position to face the crisis, it is needed a great effort and invest in talent, in creativity, values that do not get the strategic importance they actually have.

Precisely, talent, creativity, innovation and effort is what the students of the Master’s Degree in Audiovisual Contents and Formatsdemonstrated, who presented their projects for new formats in a pitching session before a selection of professionals in the sector formed by: Andrés Luque, from TVE; Ximo Pérez, from PAV (Valencian Audiovisual Producers); Teresa Blasco, from TVV; and Francesc Pou, from TVC (Television of Catalonia), who in this occasion they value extremely well the works. The projects of this edition were  El Enviado, a fiction series critical of the current political and economic situation; The Wonderful Buk Experience, a stop motion cartoon series for children and adults with much imagination; Post, a documentary series on forgotten urban spaces that met in the past a splendorous time; and Vidas de cine, a fiction series with a dramedy tone, focused on the personal and professional relationships of the workers of a cinema. The students showed they are ready for someone who trust them and gives them the chance of developing all their potential.

With the presentation of the projects of the Master’s Degree on the part of the students, this meeting concluded, fully consolidated within the audiovisual scene. A closing to which attended the Vice-Principal for Postgraduate Studies, Rosa Marín; the Vice-Principal for Culture; Antonio Ariño, and the Head of the Conferences, Miquel Francés. From the organisation of the 6th CONTD Content for Digital Television Conferences, we are all the happier with the obtained result and we are already working on the conferences from next year, which we will dedicated to the audiovisual contents that are being made for the new screens, in a more and more transmedia and cross-platform.