Media 2020 – Discussions focused on key trends in media development
“How can Asia-Europe cooperation help meet new media challenges?” was the theme of the 3rd edition of Media 2020 Conference in Sinaia. Various accomplished media experts spoke on various issues and the major challenges facing broadcasters in the 21st Century.
Steve Ahern, of Asia Radio Today, described how the conference commenced with speakers laying out the key trends in media development, especially the role of public broadcasters in a time of fragmenting audience attention and increasing competition.
David Jordan, Director of Editorial Policy and Standards at the BBC, said that public service media were “the glue in our society”. He said that some media tended to polarise the community, but the job of public service broadcasters had never been to coalesce the population to a single view, but to reflect the many views of people in the country.
Fayyaz Sheheryar, the Director General of India’s Prasar Bharati, said the biggest problem facing his country’s national broadcaster was to “reach the last man”, to get media to every person in the country at the lowest cost to them. He urged broadcasters to continue to focus on content, saying that the problem of people in South Asia was loss of identity in the face of so much foreign media, which the media could correct by bringing them the world in their own dialect.
Sally-Ann Wilson, CEO of the Public Media Alliance, reminded broadcasters that, in the face of new media challenges, some traditional strength was still important to broadcasters, such as bringing people together and quality storytelling. She also urged broadcasters to “invest in media literacy” to let people know who was selling something and why, including the selling of political policy ideas.
Media2020 combined with the two-day Public Broadcasting (PBI) Conference in Romania.