Monaco, 18 June 2018
The European Coordination of Independent Producers (CEPI) successfully organised an industry workshop at the 58th Monte Carlo Television Festival of 2018. The workshop about ‘‘Content and Digital Innovation in A Multi-Platform World’’ was organised in the framework of MediaRoad, a Horizon 2020 funded project, and managed to gather various key stakeholders from the audiovisual value chain with outstanding speakers from the Independent Producers sector, Broadcasting and Platforms, as well as proactive Universities.
Following on from the recent publication of the new EU funding programme Horizon Europe, the European Coordination of Independent Producers (CEPI), underlined the role that research and innovation can play in the audiovisual sector and the crucial impact creative industries sector will be playing in the future. The Commission has proposed €100 billion for the new Horizon Europe programme and it could showcase, in synergy with the Digital Europe Programme, the opening of new doors for collaboration for creative SMEs in Europe, start-up and Radios/Broadcasting companies. Horizon Europe could help content production and distribution bringing a real added value to develop new and innovative research and innovation tools, especially in sectors such as animation, where virtual reality and artificial intelligence are driving many businesses’ competitiveness in the European market and beyond.
Apart from the content production and the distribution in the new technological era which was at the core of the discussion, the importance of skills and digital literacy in supporting audiences to absorb huge amounts of data and how massive technological change is forcing media organisations to adapt their strategies was also highlighted.
CEPI President, Mr Jérôme Dechesne, highlighted
“There is no doubt that we are all working in a market which is changing very rapidly in the audiovisual sector. We are creators because we like to develop concepts and ideas that are winning and that we can produce and distribute across Europe and often beyond; we aim at fulfilling consumers ’needs, who are watching our content and are eager to watch TV series, fiction, documentaries, that are high quality content. Research and innovation can help our industry to scale up, so we should not miss this important opportunity”.
The European Broadcasting Union, the leading partner of MediaRoad, and Nicola Frank, the EBU Head of Public Affairs, mentioned that
“Europe’s media sector has a lot of potential if we bridge the gaps between technology, innovation and creativity. In the Horizon2020 MediaRoad project broadcasters cooperate with producers, researchers, journalists and other media professionals. The EU must go further: we need a dedicated European media innovation scheme within Horizon Europe to amplify the innovation potential of the media sector”.
The media industry is the sector that has seen the largest scale of the disruption of its traditional business model to date, states the World Economic Forum report. This has an impact on talent development as well as skills and competencies needed. From the academic perspective, Mr Leif Holst Jensen who spoke about the role of the new skills and the new digital literacy playing for adapting to the technological change underlined that
“It is very important to look at the ethical side of tech development and how it influences creative workers. I tell my students to be curious and careful. Care and Dare. That is very important and needed as a skill for the future”.
You can find more details about the workshop as well as the presentations here.