15 May 2014 – Aula Magna of the Universitat de València

The CONTD Content for Digital Television Conferences continue being, one more year, a reference for the Valencian, Spanish and international audiovisual sector, constituting again in an international meeting point for professionals, academics and students. This edition, as the previous one, took place at the Aula Magna of the Universitat de València, at the historical building of La Nau, and has been dedicated to the so called “smart television” and the transmedia contents. It is a central topic to understand the deep transformations currently taking place in the audiovisual sector and that affect the creation, production and, specially, consumption processes of consumption. The consolidation of Internet as a distribution platform of the contents and the bursting of communication mobile devices, particularly tablets and mobile phones, are essential when talking about an multiscreen or multiplatform environment able of offering a constant connectivity, so desired by youngest people. The scenario in which we find ourselves makes us think of new narrative formulae, but also in business models different to the traditional ones that adjust to the variety and richness of languages and display formats. Nowadays, the stories are expressed and developed by means of a great number of devices. Also, naturally, by the conventional television, which is being redefined thanks to its alliances with the web, by facilitating a bigger citizen participation and the access to a wider offer. This allows for a consumption à la carte in which the viewers are their own producers. These are issues we should not undervalue in the debate on the possibility of launching a future Valencian public television, on the six-month anniversary of is unfortunate disappearance.

The thoughts on the constant accessibility to the contents and its consequences on the present and future of the audiovisual sector, both in industrial terms and in social and cultural terms, were exposed from the opening, which on this occasion was headed by the Vice-Principal of Culture and Equality, Antonio Ariño, and the Director of Technology, Innovation and Systems of RTVE, Pere Vila, who once again showed the support of the main public communication firm to the Conferences. Ariño, who indicated the way in which technology is changing our day-to-day behaviour patterns in relation to the communication, both in the search of information and leisure, maintained that from the public university we have to pay attention to all the technological and cultural changes that are being produced in this and other matters if we aim to generate and disseminate knowledge. In this sense, accordint to the Vice-Principal, the CONTD Conferences, end point of the Official Master’s Degree in Audiovisual Contents and Formtas, accomplish perfectly their role of transmitting an added value to society. Precisely, the director of the Master’s Degree and also of the Conferences, Miquel Francés, remarked that the projects of the students are becoming more sensitive to this hyperconnected and cross-platform scenario. It is, ultimately, a reality from which we cannot run away and that we have to deal with risk and innovation.

Television and the “new paradigm”

During the debates and the conferences that took place during the CONTD Conferences, different ways of interpreting the impact of the consumption produced beyond television were shown. The mystery is specially relevant in the Spanish audiovisual system, immersed in an absolute definition, as the professor of the Universitat de València, José María Vidal, reminded us at the presentation of Ricardo Vaca, Chief Executive Officer of Barlovento Comunicación, one of the most important firms for the analysis and consultancy on the tendencies in the television consumption. The reorder of the DTT map, the elimination of multiple in the digital dividend, the television chaos in some autonomous communities as the Valencian, with the disappearance of the public radio and television and the non-compliance of the law in the allocation of licenses of the private local television, among others, force us to be cautious before the apparent solidity of the television system.

Nevertheless, for Vaca, the digital convergence, rather than the erosion of television as an audiovisual reference, what makes is strengthening it, such as demonstrates the increase in the consumption of the last years and the adaptation ability of the television firms to the new scenario. Without belittling qualitatively the increase of the consumption of other audiovisual platforms, essentially thanks to the Internet, the television is getting in the most recent seasons the highest shares of its History (254 average minutes during 2014 in Spain). According to Vaca, this is due to the combination of a triple factor: having a bigger offer through the DTT; the feedback that social networks create, specially Twitter, in the following of the live programmes; and the crises, particularly in the morning programming, where we can see a bigger presence of viewers. According to Vaca, the problems of the audiovisual consumption through Internet in these moments can by synthesised in that it does not reach the whole population (around 60% in 2014, although it is increasing), that it does not get to build loyalty in the viewers as television does and that the number of minutes that each citizen spend with Internet is appreciably lower than the time invested in watching the television. That does not mean that the traditional television consumption has remained unchanged. On the contrary, Vaca explained during his speech how the access to television is more individualised each time, which will force the channels to generate more personalised products and contents.

Andrés Armas, General Head of UTECA, the association that groups the main Spanish commercial televisions, expressed a similar line during the later roundtable, who talked about a deep cultural change to try and define the moment we are living. A “new paradigm”, according to his words,  that could be nominalised in the pass of a lineal consumption to a non-lineal consumption, which causes a jump from a traditional programming concept to an à la carte access of the contents. It could also be nominalised in turning a single broadcast platform into a multiplatform scenario, with all the consequences that entails in the attention processes, which go from being fixed to be disperse; and also in the boosting of participation and interaction of users in the devices and contents, a technical possibility that in the traditional television, specially with the DTT, has not been developed as promised. Nevertheless, for Armas, these processes are not substitute for them, but both ways of access audiovisual contents have to coexist for a long time, specially because the television firms do not want to stop being hegemonic within the audiovisual business and are making important efforts to be good positioned in the transit towards a still uncertain model.

We could confirm with the exhibitions of Pere Vila, Director of Technology, Innovation and Systems of RTVE, and of Ferran Clavell, Director of Innovation and Future Media of CCMA (Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals). The two public televisions are a technological and innovative reference in their respective fields. In this sense, it was very illustrative knowing which is the policy of these firms regarding the relationship between the television and the network. What was clear is that these public televisions are carrying out an important investment to be present with their contents in the largest number of devices. Firstly, with the launching of a potent multimedia portal or player from which being able of watching à la carte in streaming and also through the download of the greatest part of its programming, and later with the development of applications for mobiles or tablets, as the main communication public firms of the world are doing, such as BBC.

An effort that is not profitable for the moment, as recognised Clavell, and that is developed due to the vocation of these firms to comply with a public service. The objective, according to Vila, is approaching to the generation that is already “connected”, and to do that it is necessary to open to all the devices. This connection idea, for the representative of the Spanish public television, is key to understand all the processes that are currently being produced. For this reason, for Clavell it would be preferably talking about “connected” television instead of “smart” television, an attribute that does not adjust still to the experience provided to the users. This does not mean that we cannot refer to “smart” television further on. Programmes and known applications, but still not completely implemented, such as Boxfish or Smart Design, from which the representative of the Catalan public television could be indicators of where is the future relation between television and the audiovisual contents in the network addressing.

In this sense, the most categorical on the consolidation of a new way of relating with television was Pablo Romero, Content Management of Yomvi, the Canal+ application that allows for accessing all the contents that this digital platform offers through a variety of devices, from the tablet to the mobile phone. To the extent that Romero stated, provocatively, that it is time to say goodbye to the DTT age and welcome the broadband age. Among other issues, the expert argued that the other platforms are transforming for good the consumption of audiovisual contents from the part of the audience that is increasingly active. The users, who has become fans, currently demand being able of accessing the contents whenever they want, without programmatic impositions. A tendency that started with the stunning appearance of YouTube and that now is unstoppable due to it has become an important part of society, not only for younger people.

In any case, the professionals that attended the Conferences agreed that one of the key pieces of all this process are the makers of the devices, who could decide ultimately what contents will the users find when they turn on the television. It is no accident that manufacturers as Samsung and that audiovisual content distribution companies as Google have decided participating directly or indirectly in the creation and production of contents. A battle for a growing business, different to the traditional one, to which the telecommunication companies want to join. New actors that, together with the devices, are completely modifying the way of designing the contents from the start, since they have to take into account the transmedia scenario.

TL CONTD 2014 Resum

Summary of the 7th CONTD Conference Smart Television and Transmedia Contents

The eclosion of the transmedia contents

One of the main experts in this type of contents, the professor of the University of Vic, Arnau Gifreu, outlined the state of the art on this phenomenon, that is not new but that lately has take an extraordinary dimension within the audiovisual industry. Following the theorists that have tried to define this object of study as Henry Jenkins or Carlos A. Scolari, Gifreu suggested that the transmedia contents are those stories that are distributed in multiple formats and in which the audience exercises a very active role in the appropriation of those contents and in the creation of new material. One of the first examples of this kind of transmedia stories would be, for example, religions. Its particularity is that transmedia narrative does not appeal anymore to an only story, but to the creation of an universe where all the pieces have to be coherent with the story. The objective is that the users enter the world they want to know everything about and a world they want to discover by themselves and on their own, without intermediaries. This is why, in transmedia contents, the ideas of game engagement or user immersion in the narrative device are encouraged.

The eclosion of this kind of narrations within the audiovisual world is, for Gifreu, a reality if we adjust to the quantity of channels, producers, festivals or international markets where finding financing that have appear in the last few years interested in this kind of products. As it happens, only in Spain there are accounted almost 40 or 50 producers that want to make transmedia. Even the main channels, as RTVE, have decided approach their star products, as the fiction series «Isabel», as transmedia from the very beginning, as Pere Vila stated. But not only transmedia fits within the fiction codes. As Gifreu exposed, the transmedia narrations have taken a lot of verve in the documentary stories or non-fiction documentaries, as interactive webdocs. Likewise, transmedia can be applied to education through participative formulas as learning by doing or to the business world, which needs a brand and a powerful storytelling so it can be distributed by different platforms. But the success of the transmedia product is not guaranteed, of course. In the design process the figure of the transmedia producer, who confers coherence to all the universe and creates a document, a “bible”, that serves as a guide to not getting lost, is essential. In any case, the most important thing for Gifreu is, just as before, having a good story to tell.

In the later screening session we could enjoy the presentation of several transmedia projects of reference in Spain and that are carried out by Valencian ideas people and producers. It is “Urban Horror”, a black humour fiction created by Luis F. Bourrey (Infinitoo Studios) set in Valencia and “0 Responsible People”, a social protest interactive webdoc designed by the producer Barret Films on the metro accident on July 2006 that happened in Valencian in which died 43 people and other 47 were seriously injured. They are two very different proposals but that appeal to a same multiscreen scenario, where each one of the parts dialogues with the rest by offering the chance that it is the users who ultimately determine the narrative tour they want. In the first case, it consists of a joint of video scenes in the way of short films that serve as a tool of tourism promotion of the city. An entertainment production, clearly commercial, that allows for a different navigation experience in which are very important the images recorded with a 360 camera. In the second example, Àlex Badia showed us the narrative options that the documentary web can provide, where there is access not only to the videos that constitute the lineal documentary or the complete interviews carried out to all the participants, but also to a complete dossier with text and sound material, that form a whole network with many nodes connected with the objective of contributing to evince that the research commission on the metro accident open by the Valencian Government was false closed, exonerating technicians and politicians in taking responsibilities.

The presence of transmedia could also be felt during the presentation of audiovisual projects on the part of the students of the Master’s Degree in Audiovisual Contents and Formats in a pitching section before a selection of professionals of the sector formed by: Ximo Pérez, from PAV (Productors Audiovisuals Valencians); Rosa Pérez, from TVE; Kiko Martínez, from Nadie es Perfecto; Manuel Serrano, from New Atlantis; and Francesc Pou, from TVC (Televisió de Catalunya). The master’s degree final projects of this edition were Trapos sucios, a sitcom on the professional and labour life of the workers of a laundry located in a neighbourhood of the big city; Tus noticias, an infotainment for the younger audience where the today world is explained with a language accessible for young people and where different animation techniques are used; Au pairs, a fiction series in terms of dramedy that tells the life of four young women, with higher education, that have to migrate from their country due to the lack of work to exercise as caregivers in Netherlands; UyS – Universidad y Sociedad, a scientific and cultural dissemination magazine on the activity that the Spanish universities, research and training centres carry out, which give society much more than they receive; and Devenir, an interactive drama webserie that describes how would be the life of famous characters from History if they had chosen a different path to the one they took, where the users can decide the future of the protagonists. The professionals valued very positively the projects and the students showed the talent, creativity, innovation and effort, demonstrated that they were ready to face the professional world.

With the presentation of the master’s degree projects on the part of the students, this meeting finished, fully established within the Spanish and university audiovisual outlook. A closing that was lead by the Vice-Principal for Postgraduate Studies, Rosa Marín; the director of the Department of Language Theory and Communication Sciences, Santiago Renard; and by the Director of the Conferences, Miquel Francés. From the organisaion of the 7th CONDT Conferences we are all the happier with the obtained result and we are already working on the conferences from next year, which will be dedicated to rethink the current television model, immerse on the permanent vagueness.

CONTD Conferences Organisation