Magazine / Media / Television / Interview | 18/06/2008

"The marketing era"

The new markets for European TV stations are in China, India, the USA and the Arab world. José Lopes de Araújo, director of the international department of the Portuguese station RTP talked to eurotopics editor Nikola Richter about emigrants, style and cheap signals.

euro|topics: Mr Lopes de Araújo, you are the president of the Bruges Group, an informal network created 16 years ago which unites all Europe's national and international public service broadcasters which are also members of the European Broadcasting Union. What do you talk about at your two annual meetings?

We talk about distribution issues. For many years the international broadcasting of European television was a European affair. The different national television stations wanted to be broadcast within Europe via different cable systems.

José Lopes de Araújo was born in the Azores, Portugal, in 1958. He is director of the Department for International Relations at Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP) and President of the Bruges Group.

Photo: RTP

Over the past few years satellite costs have been substantially reduced thanks to digital technology. We can broadcast in different languages, subtitle in different languages, use different schedules for the various areas of the globe - all using practically the same signal. Now there are great expectations for IP TV, a very cheap mode of distributing televison content over Internet platforms. Television is no longer a national business broadcast in different parts of the world, it has become an international business.

euro|topics: France 24 launched an Arab channel in 2007. BBC followed suit this year. It seems the audience in Arab countries is of huge importance for European television stations.

The Arab world is a very important up and coming part of the world with money, viewers and influence. The same is true of the Chinese market, which however is not yet as accessible. If you broadcast in China, you can do it in English, but it's better to broadcast in Chinese. If you don't you miss out on the future: on breaking down walls and frontiers and becoming more global. There may also be political motivation behind these options, but primarily we are interested in markets and viewers. Euronews, for instance, is now a very well-established news channel which is broadcast in seven different languages in Europe and overseas. On 12 July 2008, it will launch its Lyon-France-based Arab service which targets Arab-speaking viewers in the Arab countries, the US, Canada and England.

euro|topics: What about African countries? Are they interesting audiences for European television stations? Internet usage in these countries is often very low, so they cannot profit at all from the new low-cost Internet television formats.

The platform that has been most successful in Africa is the "direct to home"-format (DTH): it offers the possibility of receiving pay-TV via satellite using a very small dish (40-50 cm) even in isolated rural areas. With DTH you can attach the dish to a window and get all the satellite channels. The most important distributor in Africa is Multichoice, based in Johannesburg. This is the only platform that has become really popular in Africa. The pay-TV market is growing very quickly there, for example in countries like Angola or South Africa.

euro|topics: Do European television broadcasters have a common goal for the next ten years?

We cannot have a common strategy because each public television broadcaster has its own strategy determined by national goals. For Portuguese television it is important to be broadcast on every continent because we have former Portuguese colonies in Australia, East Timor and Macau in China. More than two million Portuguese live in the USA, and in Brazil 200 million people speak our language. Spanish television stations are more interested in South America, while French television broadcasters are interested in French-speaking African countries. In Asia we have a common strategy for distribution.

euro|topics: What is the common strategy in Asia?

We must pay close attention to the Chinese market. It is a very big and important market. Nowadays it is very difficult to distribute European television in China due to legal restrictions.But one day this will change. India has changed some laws that posed some obstacles to international distribution. As far as the Bruges Group is concerned, for many years the satellite operator Asiasat has allowed us to use a number of its frequencies and this has enabled us to negotiate better conditions for the partners of this deal.

euro|topics: Is there a global audience for national European television formats?

Yes, the USA and Canada, for example, are big and important markets. Their multicultural and multiethnical societies are often of European descent, with Italian, Irish, Portuguese, Greek or Croatian forefathers. They are interested in national contents – football matches, traditional music, news programmes – and also in the European way of life. We can seize the opportunity and send an image of Europe to this market. For many years Europe imported the American way of life, first through cinema and then through television. America passed on to Europe the American way of producing television; a more attractive, faster and more rhythmical approach.

euro|topics: So we have lost our idiosyncratic European style of television?

This, unfortunately, is what I believe to be the case. Perhaps we have succeeded in attracting more and younger viewers in Europe who watch more European productions and content like fiction series, gameshows and talkshows. In Portugal a new Portuguese industry of fiction series has been very successful on TVI – the leading private TV channel – and has surpassed the famous Brazilian novellas that were very popular a few years ago. But we have lost our own approach to producing television in a public-service style, which comprised adaptations of the works of classic writers or historical fiction series and the great documentaries made in co-production we used to make 30 years ago.

euro|topics: Why did we lose the European approach?

The times have changed – it is the era of television marketing and television is a global activity. Nowadays it is very difficult to distinguish between a European style of television and an American style. Even if you look to Asian productions you find they are very close to the American style of TV production. Today we must use our international antennas to convey the image of a modern and mature Europe.

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