This document is downloaded from DR-NTU, Nanyang Technological University Library, Singapore. Title Satellite broadcasting : some future aspects Author(s) Dill, Richard Citation Dill, R. (1984). Satellite broadcasting - some future aspects. In AMIC-Department of Information-ISKI Seminar on Satellite Technology : the Communication Equaliser, Solo, Nov 25-30, 1984. Singapore: Asian Mass Communication Research & Information Centre. Date 1984 URL http://hdl.handle.net/10220/945 Rights
Satellite Broadcasting - Some Future Aspects By Richard Dill Paper No.18
DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION - ISKI - AMIC SEMINAR ON SATELLITE : THE COMMUNICATION EQUALISER NOVEMBER 25-30, 1984 SURAKARTA - INDONESIA 22/TP/SEM.SCE/D/84. SATELLITE BROADCASTING - SOME FUTURE ASPECTS BY Dr. Richard Dill Controller, International Relations ARD/German TV (First Channel) D 8 MUNICH/GERMANY
DEPARTMF.N1 OF INFORMATION - ISKI - AMIC SEMINAR ON SATELLITE : THE COMMUNICATION EQUALISER NOVEMBER 25-30, 1984 SURAKARTA - INDONESIA SATELLITE BROADCASTING - SOME FUTURE ASPECTS by Dr. RICHARD DILL Controller, International Relations ARD/German TV (First Channel) D 8 MUNICH/GERMANY 1. I am a public broadcaster from Germany. In my country after the Second World War, the Western occupation powers, recreated a public service monopoly. Capital, private invest, ors and private production facilities not being available at that stage, even the Americans opted for the British formula of public broadcasting oriented towards the model of the BBC. Regulation power for broadcasting content was and still is vasted with regional, provincial governments, not with the central, federal government in Bonn. One of the reasons for this decentralisation were bad experiences we made under Hitler with a centralised national service as an instrument of government dictatorship. 2. The public broadcasters thus created and developed net. works of regional and national programming, making use of available requencies. In TV, for instance, until the end of 1983, three channels were available to the viewer : the first programme, offered by my own organisation, ARD, which is a network of nine regional organisations ;
-: 2 :- the second programme by a nation-wide entity which is financed out of the licence fee jointly collect. ed by all Public Broadcasters (ZDF); -- a third programme of regional nature. The opening of new channels in cable systems and via satellite strer; rhened the cause of pressure groups campaign ing far the licensing of new stations. Private broadcasters were first authorised to offer new cable programmes. They are now being allocated satellite channels to be able to distribute their programmes to cable systems all over the country. 3. I myself have been associated with satellite development in various ways during the past twenty years. Having been a TV producer for many years, I joined UNESCO staff in the sixties in order to assist developing countries in shap_ ing their media. After returning to Germany, I assisted in creating a regional TV channel. Since many years, I am head of the Department of International Relations of ARD, the first German TV network, with regular assignments in the field of satellite planning for UNESCO, the Arab League and the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation. (During one of those assignments I was able to assist in the creation of AMIC in Singapore). From my background you can see that my main interest are services to the public. Now we must realise that satellites are not constructed primarily to serve the public or the individual customer. They serve governments, they serve military purposes, they serve business and banking - normally big business and big banking. The interest of the consumer is mainly for improved telephone services and for new radio and TV programmes. These programmes may be public in the sense that they are available to everyone, they may be restricted to cable homes, or, as in Pay-TV, to special groups of subscribers, willing to increase their communication budgets. - While programmes for the public only occupy a small place in the satellite systems of the future, I think they are in the centre of interest of a meeting like this. There is no need
-: 3 : - to envisage satellites unless we know that to do with them. And it is a waste of money to provide a satellite system for which we do not have the adequate programmes. It would be sheer blindness to assume that once a satellite is in orbit, programmes would appear by themselves. 4. I would like to touch on four programmes area in which I have been involved. First, as a broadcaster, responsible for international programme contacts, I have been using point-to-point satellites since the days of Early Bird to feed international events in our national programme and to share outstanding live programmes in my country with the broadcasters of the world. For transnational programme exchange the European Broadcasters have created the EBU, the European Broadcasting Union, whose exchange system is known as Eurovision (EV). So when ARD wants to get hold of an international satellite event like the Olympics, a visit of the Pope, an American space Mission or a live concert from London, I first address myself to Eurovision and find out to what extent I can share facilities and cost with other users. EV in turn may form a pool - as for the world football cup in Spain in 19 82 - with other regional broadcasting unions such as Intervision or the ABU. As you will have noticed, I am speaking of the first generation of satellites assuring international signal distribution. Lets take a look at what happened at Los Angeles this summer. The owner of US-rights, ABC-USA was committed to deliver a world signal. (Anybody having acquired the rights could use this signal). The ABC world signal was technically perfect - as you may recall. It concentrated, however (and rightly so) on finals and winners. If your man finished fourth or didn't reach the finals, he rarely reached the satellite. Anticipating this, the EBU (not wanting to be completely equalised) did set up its own delivery system. We did organise our own control room, into which we brought the signal from some 25 venues. Out of this control room we
-: 4 :- fed three parallel transatlantic satellite channels to Europe. So each EBU member in Europe had three multilateral feeds at his disposal to choose from. Obviously this was an expensive set-up, from which one can take one lesson for the future: the less money you have, the more equalised you get. But that not the end of the story. The 3-channel-Eurovision-feed was good for smaller organisations. The bigger ones, like BBC, ITV and my own organisation, wanted even less equalisation, meaning centralisation and uniformity. - Therefore, the German public broadcasters hired yet another control room and another transatlantic satellite channel to make sure that our man competing in the B-final would not get lost on the satellite. These unilateral facilities required a national broadcasting team of more than one hundred people. Olympic coverage provides a good example for the future. Will we get more single feeds, more centralised feeds, more preselected and pre-edited feeds from international e- vents or will be able to maintain plurality, diversity of feeds, and choice? Looking forward to the summer Olympics in Seoul in 1988, I am afraid we will be up for more equalisation with American demands. US-networks likely to pay the highest price for rights, they are requesting that finals be scheduled at US prime time, meaning breakfast time in Asia and midnight in Europe. So when we speak of equalisation we have to be clear about who is being equalised to what and to whom. The need to equalise in some areas must not side track us from efforts in other areas to diversify, regionalize, or localize. 5. Moving from the international to the regional field, we reach the category of distribution satellite. The European ECS system has been described to us in detail by our colleague from ESA. European broadcasters are making use of distribution satellites in the three ways :
-: 5 -- Firstly, the programme exchange of Eurovision is now partly taking plave via ECS, with part of the terrestrial network being abandoned; -- secondly, programmes already available on a local or national level, can be fed to cable stations or retransmitters practically all over Europe. This is the case, for instance, withtv5, a Francespeaking programme, jointly organised by the Frenchthe Swiss and the Belgians, available to cable networks all over Europe. This is the case with Sky Channel, a commercial channel featuring mainly US material; -- thirdly, many European governments are leasing ECS channels to permit new programmes, mainly of commercial nature. My government, for instance, leased two ECS channels. One was given to a public broadcaster, the second to a newly established commercial group. Since my own organisation did not succeed in obtaining one of these channels, we are now about to hire an IN TELSAT transponder - as many Third World countries have done before us - to offer a new nation-wide programme. In the late 80s we hope to be able to move from INTELSAT to our own national distribution satellite system called COPERNICUS. Two characteristics are important in connection with distribution satellites : they are usually capable of transporting signals way beyond national borders; they are, in principle, only available to wellequipped centres and do not reach rural areas easily. 6. In his opening speech, the Minister of Information touched on the advent of DBS satellite signals which can be received by individual homes. Much speculation still surrounds the technical and economic conditions of such direct
-: 6 :- reception. As a rule of thumb one can assume that the price of an individual receiving equipment for DBS will equal the price of a colour TV set - and I have as yet no reason to believe commercial advertisements promising cheaper solutions. With such an antenna one can receive all signals from satellites in one orbit position. One cannot - without additional investment - receive signals from satellites which use different orbits or which use different TV standards. As you may know, the French and the Germans are the first nations in Europe which have committed themselves to operate DBS satellites. We expect them to be available in 19 86. They can be received not only throughout Germany but also in the major part of Central Europe. In the German system, four channels will be available in Phase One and the competent authorities intend to allocate them as follows : -- One channel for the distribution of about sixteen stereo digital sound radio channels; -- three channels for new television operators. The public broadcasters, left out of this allocation, obviously are very unhappy with this distribution. It runs against the principle or public broadcasting to serve the nation as a whole and not only population centres. While we still hope to change this decision, another feature of the future appears : the availability of more and more broadcasting channels and the transnational impact of programmes. What we are really worried about - thereby sharing the anxiety of many developing countries - are channels which are beamed to our country from other countries. Channels which will concentrate on entertainment and neglect information, foreign affairs, and education. Programmes which will present ready-made foreign and standardised international product rather than investing in the more costly employment and development of national talent. Programmes a- dopting standards of advertising and sponsorship which are not in accordance with national practice. Undoubtedly many
-: 7 :- such programmes will find their audience. The most popular programmes in my country at this moment are Dallas and Dynasty, programmes which we can purchase at a fraction of the price of producing national drama of quality. Obviously, satellites are seldom free of charge. A DBS channel in my country will cost about 16 million USdollars a year to operate. That is cheaper than terrestrial distribution. Yet, the cost of the distribution tool will have to be related somehow to the cost of the product to be transported. The scenario is roughly the same in many countries. The president comes home from a meeting with government and joyfully informs that he has obtained the use of a satellite beam. He argues that we are obliged to use it because it is new and innovative, because it incorporates progress, growth and the bright future, because it is keeping us in line with our competitors. Of course we have to pay for it. And this again means that we must economise the programmes to be transmitted. Since major funds where spent on the satellite we must now look for cheap programmes to feed it. New programmes, however, would be the really expensive innovation. The cheapest television programme in Europe I know of is the Irish : it costs some 15 million US-dollars per year - thus matching the cost of a bare DBS channel. - Other programmes in France, Germany and the UK cost up to 500 million US-dollars per year. Our colleague from Malaysia reminded us that with the advance of satellites programmes can not remain the same. Yet, in many countries including my own I cannot find the programme production funds to match technical investment. I have often wondered how it is possible that we spend months and years in discussing, planning and preparing technology and its presumed benefits - and never even touch programmes, programme cost, programmes planning and
-: 8 :- training for programme production. 7. Lastly, I would like to touch another area of satellite application to which I am presently devoting a lot of time and energy. Since satellite signals usually cross borders whether we like it or not, why not build transnational programmes on a basis of cooperation? Cooperation has brought about many projects for the enrichment of national programmes - the exchange of sports programmes, the regular exchange of news. But the satellite also permits joint regional programmes to which many organisations contribute and which are distributed to many countries in their "national languages. The Arab States are contemplating such a programme - they are fortunate not to have a language barrier. The French-speaking broadcasters in Europe have already started a multi-national programme. At this moment a number of broadcasters in Europe are about to start a new type of joint European programme. It will be transmitted, as of 1987, from L-Sat/Olympus, an experimental DBS satellite capable of reaching all of Europe. While I myself think that such a programme is not only possible but also necessary, I must note that some are against it. Some fear that new structures may weaken the position of existing services, institutions and authorities. Others fear "equalisation" - an European melting port in which national values might dissolve and disappear. Others simply do not believe that transnational programmes will attract the public. 8. I am impressed by the way many speakers in this conference have approached the topic of new media: optimistically, but not without caution. If major parts of national income are to be directed to communication we must be sure that social benefits outweighs the risks. Some governments tend to use the introduction of satellite technology as a tranquiliser : they create the impression that by ordering a satellite they are about to solve major social problems. By
-: 9 :- pointing to the new media they distract attention from the old, whose potential we have yet fully to exploit. Through all areas of satellite applications which I have outlined in this paper, I, as a broadcaster and a programme man, have always upheld but one thesis : that software is more important than hardware, that programmes are more important than transportation vehicles, that content considerations must prevail over technical considerations, that equal efforts and funds must be devoted to programme planning as to technical planning. This conference has reinforced my conviction. Terima kasih.