It may be too early to say things are back to normal, but this year’s annual ABU-RAI Days conference will certainly be a step towards it.

For the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the forum will be staged face-to-face in Rome on 4-5 July, at the headquarters of the Italian national broadcaster RAI. Participants will also be able to take part remotely via Zoom.

This is the fourth on the series and this year asks an important question, made all-the-more urgent by COVID limitations: “Are our audiences now in charge or is this the dawn of the transformation of Public Service Broadcasting?”

The forum will be a chance to explore the different pathways of the digital transformation that lead towards a new era of global collaboration.

Already scheduled to take part are more than 40 broadcasting leaders and experts from the ABU, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the African Union of Broadcasters (AUB), hosts RAI, and several independent commercial content producers and broadcasters from around the world.

They will take part in 12 separate sessions ranging from overviews of the current situation internationally, organisations sharing their plans for the future and practical showcases showing how solutions are already being applied on the ground to the problems coming over the horizon, especially at the intersection of new digital technologies and changing audiences.