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PSBs - leading the broadband way
In an ideal world, the remit of a public service television broadcaster and potential of broadband services should fit hand in a glove: public service broadcasters (PSBs) have a fundamental need to contact huge swathes of a country's population with information, entertainment and education, while broadband technology has the power to deliver on all three counts directly to every home. In reality, of course, the modern business world does not allow PSBs a free hand at fulfilling their remits, without a healthy dose of competition from commercial broadband rivals. Yet, however long it takes for broadband to be ‘omnipresent’ in homes across Europe, PSBs do not intend to be marginalised by these, allegedly, more savvy, faster-moving commercial companies. As such, the European Broadcast Union (EBU) has delivered strong pronouncements on how its members should act, and all of them are addressing the broadband future, with varying degrees of success. As recently as July this year, a paper from the EBU Digital Strategy Group urged PSBs to be at the centre of the new digital marketplace. It also highlighted a number of salient questions that PSBs needed to ask themselves, including: ‘how long could their digital niche programming channels survive; should they attempt pay-per-view services? top
The BBC in the UK and VRT in Belgium are among the EBU partners at the head of broadband experiments. The BBC recently announced an E40 million trial of its vision of 'television of the future' to 10,000 households via the Kingston Communications platform in Hull. The trial began in October 2001, and is using Kingston's ADSL lines to deliver local and national content including news, entertainment and learning features. The BBC's Director General, Greg Dyke, summed up what all of Europe’s respective PSBs probably must be thinking for their own countries when he said: "My ambition is to harness all of the benefits that digital technology provides and extend the BBC's local and learning role still further – to place the BBC at the heart of British community life in the 21st century." In Belgium, VRT's roll out of a broadband services will start with just 150 homes in Antwerp in January 2002, but is estimated to reach tens of thousands by the end of the year. Its self-titled 'Digital Home Platform' service has been 30 months in planning and involves a digital set-top box, which includes a hard disk for storing multimedia content files to allow use of less, always-on bandwidth. Project leader Martin Verwaest believes that VRT's file transfer protocol and non-linear communication style is a breakthrough. "We are also putting together special content, such as a 24-hour news channel because we know that the consumers don't just want new technical things." For a commercial company like Microsoft, PSBs such as the BBC are an important content partner. Andrew Adamyk, director of content development programmes for Microsoft TV Europe, is an ex-BBC man himself and sees the public service broadcaster's own broadband work as highly relevant. "We can all learn from the BBC about how to engage an audience and promote loyalty," he says. “The way they can cross-promote on their TV channels and across their Internet site is a great model." Envy Commercial rivals also value PSBs budgets that push the broadband envelope, either in content or technology areas. Dutch cable pioneer Henk de Goede, president of Casema, says the smart people wait for PSBs to carry out tests in the broadband market before jumping in themselves. "The public service broadcasters have more ways of getting development money from governments. They are in the best position to show commercial broadcasters what to do in some areas. We don't always want to be the first penguin in the water because there may be a shark in there," he says. For broadcasters like Channel 4 in the UK – a public service/commercial hybrid – the broadband problems emanate from both sectors. Locked into a proportion of legislated programming, Channel 4 has no direct government funding and must balance its books on any loss-leading broadband experiments. "It's a very challenging time for us," says Andy Anson, head of Channel 4 Interactive. "We have a remit to be innovative and that certainly means developing broadband, but whatever we do has to have a commercial business plan for a positive return." Anson believes he achieved the balance of fulfilling his multi-cultural remit, as well as producing innovative multi-platform content with this year's month-long coverage of the Kumbh Mela religious festival in India. The world's largest ever gathering of humankind – which attracted approximately 70 million people – was covered via streaming video broadcast live on a special Channel 4 micro website, which also featured chat rooms, updated news and stills and comprehensive background information about an event that takes place only once every 12 years. In addition, every evening on Channel 4 a highlights programme was shown on the traditional TV channel. However, such isolated successes in the near future will have to come from a smaller budget. Anson spent E32.5 million in 2001 on his on-line, interactive and broadband projects, but admits he will spend less next year. "We have to be clever about it, and have strategies for broadband and narrowband as well. It could be three to four years before the broadband numbers are big enough for us to pump significant money in." Europe Across Europe, the PSBs are not always in the lead for broadband developments despite the safety net of government support. In Germany, for example, there are only about 100,000 digital set-top boxes among the country's 30 million cabled or satellite-connected TV homes. Neither the public broadcaster ARD/ZDF, nor its leading commercial rival RTL, have made progress towards two-way services because of a lack of technical progress. However, RTL has aggressively positioned itself for the future with the first broadband pilot presentation that took place this August in Berlin. With over 30 free-to-air channels on German television, RTL Newmedia says the consumers are more interested in add-on broadband services than more programming. "We have taken a visionary position on the markets of tomorrow," says Dr Thomas Hesse, chairman of the management board of RTL Newmedia. "We have concentrated on the power of the RTL brand, adapting television content and developing new interactive services." His company, RTL Newmedia, is keen on developing online revenue streams, including advertising, e-commerce, teletext and mobile phone services. It announced E46 million of income via these areas for their last financial year. Even in a country like Sweden, with the highest European broadband penetration rate (13.8 per cent of TV households), the public service broadcaster SVT is looking at a continually changing landscape. "The broadband boom is not in place any more for us," says SVT Managing Director Kjell Kullberg, "so, in the short term, we are concentrating again on conventional television." Pace slows Yet, SVT had great plans for broadband only a year ago. It received E5.7 million from the government in 1999 to use over the following three years to develop services from digital television through to broadband on five local stations throughout the country. But the set-top boxes proved to be too expensive, and the technology – including signal delivery and data protection – were not in place to the satisfaction of the broadcaster. The all-out run towards broadband services soon became more of a slow walk. "There is no rush anymore," says Kullberg. "As the public service broadcaster, we plan to run in parallel with the technology and our commercial competitors. We will not be in the lead because we do not have the financial strength. We cannot take money from our core business." Also for PSBs, there is always the changing public charter to take into consideration. Next year, SVT's will begin working to a new four-year charter that will probably allow only minimal broadband experimentation. "We could use VOD to open up our archives and some interactive elements to deliver more information to viewers, but that might be all," says Kullberg. So, as ‘take-up’ becomes the new mantra for future broadband success, it is governments like the French that are showing the way. It has promised to spend three billion French francs over the next several years to close the digital divide – an amount that is almost 10 times the British government's approximate E50 million over the next three years. Education One of the main uses of such money will be simple communication to educate the public about broadband's advantages, a strategy that the PSBs' commercial rivals know will be the biggest help of all to the new media marketplace. Therefore, it is slightly ironic that while one of broadband’s biggest potential benefits is its educational capacity, governments have to spend billions educating the public about the benefits of broadband. Bill Goodland, NTL's director of Internet, has been one of the most outspoken commentators and wants the BBC to send out the message about broadband to the UK audience with infomercials to reinforce the benefits of current and future services. "The millions in regional grants from the government and some wise words are not enough," says Goodland. "The British government needs to apply its own priorities to broadband – that means education, education and education." |
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