EUROPEAN TELEVISION DIALOGUE 2006 in Budapest

Summary of the EUROPEAN TELEVISION DIALOGUE in Budapest on June 21st, 2006 download as pdf (108 kb)

We intended to broaden the audience by launching a second conference in a different country and thus give more people working in television the possibility to take part in discussions with experts. It is important to be prepared for the emerging European media market.
Reinhard Klimmt, Chairman EUROPEAN TELEVISION DIALOGUE

The EUROPEAN TELEVISION DIALOGUE took place in Budapest on June 21st, the day before the programming market DISCOP. Overall 80 international participants - from as far away as Brazil - discussed the topics outlined below with our panel guests:
"Programming as the Basis of Success"
"Ratings as the Currency of TV Broadcasters - the Interplay between the Advertising Industry and Television"
"TV, Media and Democracy"

Keynotes were held by:
László Cselényi, President Duna TV, Hungary,
Reinhard Klimmt, former Prime Minister of Saarland and former Federal Minister, Germany
Dr. Janós Schiffer, Vice Mayor of the City of Budapest

Reinhard Klimmt welcomed the participants who had made it to Gerbeaud Ház despite the coinciding Football World Cup Championship and George W. Bush's visit to Budapest. He reiterated that democracy is not possible without a free and effective media landscape. The structure and the experiences within the growing Europe still serve as a model for developments in other parts of the world.

Although the development of the TV-markets in Central and Eastern Europe started later than in Western Europe, it proceeds in giant steps. Even if not all countries are at the same stage, problems such as the influence of politics and economy appear nearly everywhere. Private television is determined not only by national and international media groups but also by individual businessmen, whose financial background enables the financing of the channel. Generally their influence is more than less on their channels, or the channel is used by political parties- all to the threat of neutrality.

In addition to this the relevance of public television is decreasing. Iryna Kostyuk reported that in the Ukraine, public television has a viewing share of only a few percent despite a full penetration. The reasons being are not only the extensive variety of private programming but also the poor financial situation of public television. The upcoming digitalization will bring more channels but not necessarily more variety according to both Szabolcs Macher from the Hungarian media agency OMD and Pavel Stantchev the CEO from Bulgarian Nova TV: the same players as today will broaden their airtime, but the financial basis for TV will not grow significantly to allow for new formats. One should not forget however that most of the countries have only a fraction of TV households compared to Germany. At the same time, media research must become more precise to produce relevant data on small channels.

Programming is purchased from abroad as well as produced in the home market. International formats are mostly adapted to the local viewers' taste. Péter Kolosi, Program Director of the Hungarian RTL Klub saw only a few differences between Hungary and Western Europe. In fact, Europe can be split into three TV-regions: Mediterranean, Central Europe (including Germany) and Great Britain/Scandinavia. Gábor Banyai, Producer at Interaktiv Ltd. specified that the Hungarian taste lies between Mediterranean and central Europe, while English productions have more difficultly in finding their viewers. According to Jens Richter, Managing Director of the worldwide operating distribution arm of ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, SevenOne International, Telenovelas are experiencing a current wave of success in the direction eastwards. The German "Verliebt in Berlin" has been sold to TV2 in Hungary, TV7 in Bulgaria, TV Joj in Slovakia as well as to Viasat TV3 in Latvia. Among the new trends are "sciencetainment-formats" such as Galileo and daily fiction, with reasonable production or acquisition costs.

Ryszard Sibilski, CEO of Endemol Polska, pointed out that the bigger format production companies such as Endemol promote the local adaptation of their "bibles", in order to integrate the small but extremely important cultural characteristics of the individual countries and thus lead the format to success.

The public channels were criticized from all sides for not fulfilling their duty of educating young people. The writer János Sediánsky provoked with his polemics on the disappearance of culture. He recalled that not such a long time ago the Hungarian television broadcasted a poem in the weekend primetime with high ratings while today the international entertainment formats have seduced the viewers, in the same way as everywhere else.

Above all, formats for children and teenagers are missing, and many programming segments are no longer in existence. Hungary itself however does have solid financing of its public broadcasting service giving creation to Duna TV Channel. The public television in other countries mostly does not have the financial means or only use them in order to compete with the private channels. Result: Its function as a useful complementary expansion to the private media landscape is generally not in existence.

All panelists agreed that the ambition should be to maintain variety and to protect the freedom of speech especially in television. Only by this can television achieve its full potential, as THE mass media.

The discussion does not stop in Budapest: New panelists and especially the keynote speaker Prof. Dr. Kurt Biedenkopf promise further exciting discussions at the next EUROPEAN TELEVISION DIALOGUE 2006 in Munich on October 17th, 2006 on the following topics: "Sports - From Ambush-Marketing to the Zenith of Rating"
"Export and Import of Cultural Values through Television - e.g. Turkey"
"Digitalization in Central- and Eastern Europe - the Price of Diversity?"
"Public Television - Catch 22 with the Authorities"

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