Painting a grim picture of the future, Dawn Airey introduced the audience to the challenges that the TV industry has to deal with these days, before she presented solutions and tasks to fulfil. “Clearly we are facing substantial pressures. There is audience fragmentation. Ad budgets are shifting,” she said. “But might it not equally be the case that some of the factors that we’re told are going to lead to our inevitable demise, may in the long run actually make us stronger?”
In order to meet the challenges the industry faces, Dawn Airey stated that broadcasters should rethink their businesses: “We're not simply ‘broadcasters’ any more”, Airey said. “We are in the content business and the business of building brands – the business of creating them, funding them, marketing them, distributing them, but most importantly of all – monetising them in a sustainable fashion. That can be on broadcast TV, pay TV, IPTV, the web, mobile devices, Apple tablets, you name it.”
Dawn Airey
But not only the way of presenting content on different platforms instead of just one changed with new technologies. With declining advertising revenues, broadcasters need to find additional sources of revenue. “We should start by working on our existing programme assets a lot harder and transforming them into high value franchises that allow us to share in their lifetime value”, Dawn Airey said, quoting the examples of Glee in the US as well as Five’s Milkshake and The Gadget Show. “So all of a sudden we're not just a broadcaster any more we're in the merchandising and licensing business.”
Last but not least, Airey cited the example of partnerships such as Groupe M6 in France partnering with Orange to form M6 Mobile by Orange. “Partnerships represent a way forward - with companies like Orange that bring additional expertise to the party. But also partnerships between broadcasters.” When broadcasters combine their forces to build up new markets, all of them can profit from the collaboration – so long as the regulators agree.
In conclusion, Dawn Airey brought up three tasks for the industry: first, continuing to invest in high quality domestic productions; second, embracing new technology and non-linear platforms because the viewer already does so and third, recognising that broadcasters can’t do all of it on their own any more. “We need to work with one another and look for interesting partnerships further afield because that will also enable us to continue to invest in new content and new technology. What we mustn't do is rail against advances in technology,” she said and concluded: “Embrace technology. Work with it. And you may just discover a whole new world of intriguing possibilities. But for god’s sake don't whinge.”