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Festival considers future of the small screen

The Rose d'Or Festival always lends some glamour to Lucerne: American actress Sofia Milos attended in 2009 Keystone

This year marks the 50th Rose d’Or global television festival, now running in Lucerne in central Switzerland.

Yet in the age of mobile phone video cameras and YouTube, the industry is having a serious think about the future of the small screen.

“Gone are the days when some fusty old guy in a capital decided that everyone would watch a particular programme,” said festival forum speaker David Liddiment, creative director of All3Media and member of the BBC board of trustees.

On Monday, Liddiment was part of an international panel of experts gathered to discuss the future of TV entertainment. While acknowledging the importance of content and quality storytelling, the consensus seemed to be that new technology is the ticket to survival.

Television is turning into a “slightly old-fashioned form of entertainment” – and facing huge challenges – according to panellist Pius Knüsel, director of Pro Helvetia, the Swiss arts council.

“The internet allows people to choose or even create their own channels by piecing together whatever they find online. There’s also more interactive content on the internet and more television access on the internet,” Knüsel told swissinfo.ch.

“That’s a real danger for public broadcasting in particular, which strives to protect the copyrights of its content.”

Nicoletta Iacobacci, head of the Eurovision Multiplatform of the European Broadcasting Union, agreed that public broadcasters are “facing a tough time”, not least because they don’t earn advertising revenue.

“To be successful, they must be at the forefront of technology and distribution,” said Iacobacci. Broadcasters also need to learn to let go of something, she said, suggesting that they embrace Creative Commons – a non-profit organisation that facilitates the free sharing of media.

New tube

As Patrick Walker of YouTube pointed out, classics like Mr Bean have enjoyed a fresh wave of popularity now that the full episodes can be viewed online.

“The numbers of people online are getting enormous, and the more people that start to engage in any particular type of platform, the more innovation you’re going to see there,” said Walker, director of video partnerships for YouTube in Britain. He estimated that 1.7 billion people have internet access.

Walker also shared some impressive statistics about his company: YouTube has 450 million users and a total of two billion videos are viewed there per day. He added that 24 hours of video are added to YouTube per minute.

To put that into perspective, the amount of video uploaded onto YouTube over the past two months would be the equivalent of US networks ABC, NBC and CBS running round-the-clock new footage since 1948.

He admitted that in general there was a broad range of online content on offer, some of it less than stellar.

“Now it takes a lot more effort to weed through all the information, and that’s also a great place for traditional media, journalism and broadcasting to come into play to help analyse and package all of this noise coming from the web,” Walker said.

Walker also made a pitch for Google TV, a platform being developed to enable people to enjoy internet content on their televisions. (YouTube is an independent subsidiary of Google Inc.)

“People are getting much more used to driving their own scheduling. It doesn’t mean that scheduled programming is dead in any way whatsoever… there’s still a place for it… but the need to be able to access content when you want it and how you want it is changing,” Walker said.

Fun and games

Games were also a topic of the forum; throughout the festival, people can test new ones at the Schweizerhof Hotel.

“I believe the computer game is the future,” said Knüsel, suggesting that interactive games would either transform or even overtake television.

“The second threat [to TV after the internet] is the computer game, which brings a new form of entertainment that is really absorbing the young generation. The big challenge for television will be catching up with this development and keeping the young audience from migrating to other forms of entertainment,” Knüsel said.

Asked if he could recommend a good new game, Knüsel named the French creation, Heavy rain.

“The player is confronted with very difficult moral decisions … it’s the first game of a new generation that’s not about gathering points or shooting but about living through a story by making decisions which change the story.”

This year marks the 50th – or golden – anniversary of the Rose d’Or (Golden Rose) global television festival. It runs until September 22.

More than 40 countries are represented this year. The festival has developed into a major event for industry professionals; more recently it has become accessible to the general public as well.

Anyone can purchase a festival pass or tickets to one of the special events, including the award ceremony on September 22.

Golden Roses go to the year’s best television programmes.

Award categories include:
– Arts Documentary & Performing Arts
– Children & Youth
– Comedy
– Drama & Mini Series
– Game Show
– Multi-Platform
– Reality & Factual Entertainment
– Sitcom
– Soap & Telenovela
– Variety & Live Event Show

Special prizes:
– Social Award
– Best of 2010

The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, swissinfo’s parent company, is one of the partners of the festival.

Past winners include: Barbara Streisand, the Muppet Show, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Liza Minelli, Benny Hill, Monty Python, Cirque du Soleil, Julie Andrews, The Simpsons, Mr Bean, Nigel Kennedy, Kurt Browning and Shirley MacLaine.

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SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR