[Satellite News 09-08-09] This year has been a challenging year for Europe’s top broadcasters. With an economic credit crunch sweeping Europe, it has been a tough environment for Europe’s top broadcasters, particularly as there has been a slowdown in terms of overall advertizing revenues. Add to the economic conditions, the proliferation of online media, this is perhaps one of the toughest times ever facing Europe’s top broadcasters as they seek to maintain their position, and relevance to advertisers.
    The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is a large association of national broadcasters in Europe and well placed to assess the challenges facing top broadcasters. Lieven Vermaele, EBU technical director told Satellite News that European broadcasters “had been heavily impacted by the credit crunch” and have “suffered profoundly in their operations” as a result of the financial crisis.
    “We have different types of EBU Members, which are financed in a different ways. Some of our Members have business models based on advertizing, and they are seeing heavy financial issues. We have EBU Members based on the license fee or a direct fee coming from the government, which are affected less, but we are seeing these methods of payments being criticized.”
    As well as the financial challenges, broadcasters must adapt to the changing media environment. “We have a lot of EBU members active in traditional technologies such as terrestrial broadcasting, satellite broadcasting, cable broadcasting, but we see only too clearly the importance of the upcoming new media and broadband. This really is going to have an impact on our Members. It will affect the way they distribute content, and how they produce content, and there are rights issues,” said Vermaele.

Satellite
    Despite the changing media environment, Vermaele said that satellite will continue “to play an important role in broadcasting, both in terms of contribution and distribution.”
    Vermaele expects satellite to have a particularly strong impact in terms of HD in Europe. “In terms of distribution to the public, we are seeing the steady evolution where everyone is moving to HDTV on satellite. Satellite is the ideal media to distribute HDTV. It will help bring HDTV to different types of regions across Europe, rural and non-rural. Satellite capacity is plentiful, so we can bring a lot of HDTV channels on that platform. In that way, the requests for satellite capacity will increase as more HD channels enter the market. So, we see a positive evolution for satellite in the distribution market.  
   “In the contribution market, we see evolution taking place. Satellite is still important for ‘back haul’ for events that take place in rural areas and need up-linking. However, for the global distribution we see upcoming technologies like fiber becoming more important for contribution,” said Vermaele.
    Vermaele believes strong progress is being made in terms of HD in Europe. “We are seeing an evolution to a complete HD world. But, it will take time. We are also very happy that more and more broadcasters are looking at progressive scanning formats. We are already seeing this in the equipment availability. In the long term we see future production for high value programmes going to 1080p/50 and this will exploit the full potential of HDTV. What we found out from our Members that the cost of production is about 20 percent more for HD compared to SD, but this is decreasing,” he said.
     Broadcasters are now facing up to the challenge of being relevant in both the broadcast and online environment, bringing with it, a whole host of new standards issues. In terms of how the EBU is tackling these, Vermaele says, “We have a project running called ‘Hybrid Broadcast Broadband’ which is about merging the two worlds of broadband and broadcast. You always need standards to develop a market, and to know that type of product that needs to be developed. It is important to have open standards in this new media world.”
     In terms of the importance of developing new media strategies, Vermaele adds, “They (Public Service Broadcasters) have to develop their content to include new media. They need to look at how to go from where they are today to web sites to Internet video players to every way you can bring your content to the end user. It is important that our Members do this, and we are also developing our activities around this. It is not about replacement. Linear TV will still exist, but it will have many partners.”
    Broadcasters are now going “through several steps of evolution”. According to Vermaele, “We see several steps of evolution. We will keep linear media. Catch-up will become more important. The media over the Internet will become more important. So, we see increasing broadband activities. We also see more hybrid activities, the combination between the broadcast and broadband domain will become important. Media will be delivered in both of these domains, and the relationship between broadcast and broadband will take on increasing importance.”