Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 12, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Following the introduction of the dual broadcasting system, this is the second major paradigm shift in the television world, the beginning of TV 3.0. DVB-T, IP-TV and mobile TV are just some of the familiar phenomena representing this fundamental structural change.
However, digitisation brings not only new possibilities but also a number of new challenges. Leading media policymakers, academics and journalists are discussing what these look like in practice today, Tuesday, in Berlin at the specialist conference “TV 3.0 – Journalistic and Political Challenges of Television in the Digital Age”, organised by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in cooperation with the Chair of Journalism II at Leipzig University.
Digitisation is no longer a spectre of the future,” explains Beate Martin, Media Policy Officer at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, in an interview with the Internet news service pressetext.de. This is particularly evident in users’ media consumption.
“The aim of the conference is to discuss the central aspects of television’s transformation with the most important experts and decision-makers from public-service and private broadcasting, and to accompany it from a media policy perspective,” Martin summarises.
To this end, the organisers want to provide a stage for discussion where experts from both practice and academia can gather and enter into conversation. “But we do not want to hold a theoretical discussion within a closed circle of experts; we also want the conference to make an active contribution to informing the public,” Martin stresses.
Three subject areas are at the centre of the conference. “The first panel deals with legal and economic developments,” Martin explains. One example in this area is the debate about how far public-service broadcasting may and should engage on the Internet. Alternative licence-fee models are also to be discussed in this context.
“The second area focuses on innovative news formats and concepts,” says Martin. In the digital television age, these are no longer tied to a linear structure, for example. Users can watch only the news items that interest them, regardless of time and place.
The third panel asks what challenges journalists face. “The boundaries within journalism are becoming increasingly fluid,” Martin observes. In future, a journalist will have to work for different media and master different forms of content. “One trend here is towards the video journalist who conceives, shoots and edits TV reports single-handedly,” Martin concludes.
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