In its mid-year meeting on 19 July 2022, the ABU Digital Media Working Group (DMWG) discussed digital transformation at the ABU to evaluate DMWG members’ readiness to embark on a journey to implement digital transformation at their organisations and to map their collective long-term digital growth.

Discussions focused on identifying key challenges, goals, and priority areas to pave the way for digital transformation within their organisations and what tools, resources and insights ABU could offer members to add value to their current digital transformation strategies.

The discussion comes as part of the ongoing digital survey among the DMWG members to better understand their digital ambitions and offerings.

Two-thirds of the survey responders (66.7 percent) acknowledged the importance of digital transformation for their organisations, emphasising that online is as important as TV and radio for them.

41.7 percent of responders already have a formal digital transformation strategy in place while half of the survey responders (50 percent) said they will soon have one or it is in the plans.

“As audiences are seeking out more content across digital screens these days, it’s very encouraging to hear from fellow ABU members that they are all working on transformation strategies to make more of their content available online, either through third parties, partnerships or with their own platforms,” ABU Digital Media Working Group Chairperson and Director of Digital at TRT Riyaad Minty said.

“We’re also at an important period with Web3 emerging and it’s great to see how some of the ABU members are experimenting with creative storytelling in AR/VR to keep up with the ever-evolving digital landscape.”

In addition to collecting inputs on digital transformation, the survey is also designed to gain insights on online video offerings, partnerships with third-party content providers, pay-on demand services, and social media usage to get a broader digital outlook of members. The ABU plans to extend the survey to collect inputs from the wider membership in the coming weeks.

In follow-up to the digital survey, one-on-one meetings will be scheduled with all DMWG members to get more detailed inputs from each member organisation.

12 members who attended the meeting represented the following organisations: NHK-Japan, VOV-Vietnam, FBC-Fiji, TRT-Turkey, TDM-Macau-China, MRTV-Myanmar, MBC/MTV-Sri Lanka, REV Media Group-Malaysia, ABS-CBN-Philippines, MBC-Mauritius, RAI-Italy and VUTV-Pakistan.