Being relevant to society as a whole

to conventional media or which traditional media are not addressing adequately (notably young people, but also people with a migration background and local communities). The main topics addressed can be broadly divided into the following (sometimes overlapping) areas:

 being relevant to society as a whole;  being relevant to society by being inclusive;  re-thinking business models;  levelling the playing field.

Topic: being relevant to society as a whole

A number of speakers discussed the challenge of addressing society as a whole. Speakers from three public service broadcasters (RTBF of Belgium, ARD of Germany and SVT of Sweden) stressed their responsibility to reach society as a whole and presented different approaches. SVT stressed the importance of engaging with local communities. Both RTBF and ARD stressed in different ways the importance of seeing themselves as addressing the whole of society, while TF1 (French private broadcaster) emphasised the social function of television. With society becoming polarised into digital bubbles and the risk of two-tier access to news, with higher income groups able to access quality journalism behind paywalls while lower income groups rely on social media, Jean-Pierre Philippot, CEO of Belgium’s RTBF, sees it as the role of public broadcasters to bring people with different opinions together. He thought of RTBF not as a TV broadcaster but as a media group which acts as a technological bridge between TV, radio and platforms. Gilles Pélisson, Chairman and CEO of TF1, made a similar point that TV is a social need that binds people together, whereas the internet is for individual consumption. He also pointed out that the concept of broadcast news is also changing. TF1’s main lunchtime and evening news broadcasts have an increasing educational function, and that differentiates them from social media. Patrick Weinhold, Editor-in-chief social media at ARD’s Tagesschau described how this German public service broadcaster has gone through a transformation from a TV channel to a 360 degree media group, describing how the traditional evening news programme Tagesschau has developed its brand to reach young people through TikTok. This was due to ARD having a statutory responsibility to inform the public as a whole, not just a segment, at a time when TV audiences (whether live audiences or via the app) are predominantly male and older. Hanna Stjärne, CEO of SVT described how built on the lessons learned by the BBC which, with Brexit realised it had not fully understood what was happening over all the country. SVT has increased its local coverage “dramatically”, going from 27 local stations to around double the figure. This process required “painful” rationalisation to finance the shift within the existing budget. SVT also engaged with local communities in workplaces, local squares, in gardens and in homes. They learned that their reporting was seen as too Stockholm-centric and rather depressing. They have shifted the focus on more constructive journalism and more local coverage (while continuing to cover national and international news). Expanding their local coverage encountered initial opposition from local papers, but that has been resolved by an agreement on crediting sources and through continuous dialogue on exploiting mutual benefits.