Cooperation is the key, regardless of whether we are talking about dealing with piracy or producing new, thrilling content. The last day of NEM saw an engaging panel discussion on the future of fighting piracy and the problems with regulating illegal activities, as well as Czech TV’s case study on bridging local and global production with regional co-production on their hit series “Maria Theresa”.
Discussing piracy in the region, Damir Novinić, Advisor to the General Manager of Croatian Radiotelevision, said we got ourselves to blame: “Piracy is growing because we are allowing it. We are very inert, very slow to react.” Still, he added: “We’ve started with legal actions and negotiating with companies and entities trying to sell our products without a contract.” The problem for Croatian Radiotelevision is biggest outside of Croatia, with OTTs around the world. MUSO’s Chris Anderson has taken another approach, claiming that “piracy is an opportunity for the industry – here are the people who want your content.” There is a portion of viewers who are downloading illegal content without being aware that it is illegal, and the reason they are downloading it is that they want the content but can’t find it legally. Broadcasters should recognize this and think of ways in which they could offer content digitally at fair prices.
“We have to address the problem of piracy from different angles: security, technology and human behavior”, said Irena Battelino, Head of Content Acquisition and Media Marketing Services at Telekom Slovenia. Covert watermarking, dynamic site blocking and protecting copywriting were some of the possible methods suggested by Irdeto’s Vice President for Cybersecurity Mark Mulready, who singled out unclear guidelines for the speed of removal of illegal content and anonymity as the main drawbacks of the EU legislation in this respect. Apart from the legal and technological aspects, how we educate future generations about piracy and content rights is crucial as well. Damir Hajduk, Chairmain of the Croatian Agency for Electronic Media, concluded “there is a culture of piracy we have to address”, agreeing with other panelists that enforcing cooperation between all stakeholders is a crucial step in addressing the problem of piracy.
A case study on the TV miniseries “Maria Theresa” proved that cooperation between various stakeholders can be achieved. “Maria Theresa”, presented at NEM by Czech’s TV Jan Maxa, is a product of cooperation between four public broadcasters from four countries: Austria, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Partly due to timely preparations, the show was a pure success – ratings and share were about double the slot average for all the broadcasters involved (Czech TV, Maya Production, ORF, MTVA and RTVS). Maxa shared the details of the production, saying that both national pride and differences among the countries in the way in which they view historical personalities were among the things they had to work on throughout the script adaptation and filming. “When you’re cooperating on something, there has to be a win-win situation or, in this particular case of four production companies and one distributor, it should be a win-win-win-win-win situation.” “Maria Theresa” in this respect offered a third way, bridging the local and the global, with seasons 2 and 3 currently being co-developed.
The last day of the NEM conference was concluded with one final networking opportunity for all participants – coffee break powered by Turkish Airlines. You can follow video and photo updates from the NEM conference at http://neweumarket.com/.
