Over the last years, the Media industry has gone through intense disruptions and very profound structural changes. Decades ago, consuming audiovisual services meant tuning to our traditional public and private broadcast TV and radio services. Then came the digitalization of the content, and broadband. As a major shift in the way media content was offered to the end users, the broadcast channels lost their de-facto exclusivity. Media services from Internet players and ISP popped up and started eating a growing part of the media business cake. Content became also on-demand. Finally came the Mobile and Social Network revolutions. Shorter content became popular and Social Networks brought the ultimate paradigm shift: the media content was no longer only “owned” by the media players, it was also being generated by the end users themselves. With the potential to be viewed by audiences sometimes larger than the media players.
Current Digital Single Market challenges for the Radio sector
Written by Vincent Sneed
The radio environment is neither audiovisual, nor music-only: it is an environment where sound-only usage / non-retail prevails. Most of the listening is still done by reception of broadcast content. As this mode of transmission enables one-to-many access and can influence listeners, national governments grant licences to radios allowing them to broadcast. However, radios have to be present on a multitude of platforms to maintain their audience.
The internet as we know it now was born in 1995… when radio was already everywhere, mobile, simple-to-use, interactive, cost-efficient and complimentary. 80% of the EU population on average listens to radio for at least 2 or 3 hours per day, as shown by national audience measurement (as regularly shown by data collected with AER national Members). For commercial radio, these features are all based on a very efficient model: terrestrial broadcasting of free-to-air programmes, funded (almost) 100% by advertising.
Visiting France Télévisions, our first international Sandbox
Blogpost by Sarah Geeroms
France Télévisions was the first official partner to confirm its participation in our Sandbox Hub. By joining the MediaRoad project, it is clear that they’re committed to innovation.
As we will be working closely from 2018, I wonder how our French colleagues are approaching innovation today. So I travelled to Paris for a short two-day immersion at France TV where I meet Frédéric, my Sandbox Hub contact, at the station. After this nice reunion and with the necessary updates over lunch, we start our program in the offices of France TV. You can virtually visit the offices of France TV via this link: http://www.francetelevisions.fr/lab/projets/visite-virtuelle-francetelevisions
The accelerator, a first test
France TV has worked together with startups several times in the past, even though this was not done in a structured way until 2015. Since then, France