ASIA-PACIFIC BROADCASTING

In the last quarter of 2010, I have had the opportunity to attend a number of international conferences in Europe, the US and Japan, and joined discussions on the role of broadcasting and broadband. Through these meetings, I am keenly convinced of how important it is for broadcasting to live up to its social responsibilities — in other words, the resilience and potential of broadcasters.

One of the gatherings was a meeting of the United Nations’ Broadband Commission for Digital Development in New York, USA, in September last year. The meeting devoted most of its time looking at ways to speed up the spread of broadband around the world, particularly in developing countries, in its effort to help achieve the UN’s Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

As the only person at that meeting from the broadcast industry, I just could not remain silent, and made some assertions.

First, although broadcasting is a one-to-many form of communication, it has established a universal service firmly rooted in people’s life that can provide information to a vast number of people simultaneously and at a low cost. It is vital to combine the distinctive features of broadband and broadcasting.

Second, when it comes to allocating spectrum, we need to consider striking a balance between broadcasting and broadband, given that many countries are yet to launch the process of broadcast digitisation.

Third, although I indeed agree with the need to build a broadband infrastructure, broadband cannot achieve its social goals in the absence of reliable information and high-quality content. This is an area in which broadcasters have a major role to play. We need collaboration between broadcasting and broadband.

Earlier in the same month, I attended the IBC2010 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to take part in a keynote session. NHK also showcased two cutting-edge technologies, which drew a lot of attention, to our delight.

The first was a demonstration of the Super Hi-Vision. The system, providing 7,680 by 4,320 pixels, has 16 times the amount of information compared to conventional HDTV. NHK is committed to the development of this new-generation visual medium. The demonstration was very popular. People queued up for more than 30 minutes to view the Super Hi-Vision cinema, while its live images relayed from Amsterdam’s central railway station must have made the audience feel as if they were actually there.

The Super Hi-Vision might appear in various fields in the near future, such as industry, education, public viewing, digi­tal signage, and so on. By making step-by-step efforts, we hope Super Hi-Vision wall-mount displays, from 60-100 inches in size, might eventually appear in homes in the next 10 years.

The other demonstration was what we call ‘hybrid casts’ — a collaboration of broadcasting and broadband. We showcased prototypes of several new broadcast services featuring complementary information coming in via broadband, such as automatic generation of multilingual captions and sign language on the screen.

Providing a universal service for all is no longer merely a geographic issue. Public-service broadcasting also has an important role in offering services that everybody can equally enjoy.

The sheer speed of the advances in digital technology means people, especially those in online-related businesses, tend to focus on areas likely to produce quick profits or short-term gains. I am confident public-service broadcasters have a key role to play in pursuing long-term researches, or researches that have an important social function, even if they do not necessarily open up commercial opportunities, with a firm commitment to bringing new missions to public-service broadcasting.

2010 was regarded as the year in which the struggle is heating up to see who will dominate the services that can be provided through the TV set. Google, Apple and other Internet giants are launching, or are set to launch, their own services for TV. Elsewhere, major appliance producers in Europe, South Korea and Japan are unveiling ideas for applications that go with their TV sets. In short, they are competing for customer enclosure.

We believe that we in broadcasting will continue to provide audiences with content they will find useful and entertaining, but we will also go beyond our traditional borders — by taking advantage not only of the digital broadcasting wave, but also the hybrid wave, in collaboration with social media and broadband. Broadcasters must continue to set the standard not only in the production of quality content, but also in technical means and business models for bringing such content to audiences and users.

And then in October, the annual General Assembly of the ABU (Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union) was held in Tokyo, Japan, hosted by NHK. Its main theme was the “Resilience of Broadcasting”. In my capacity as sitting ABU president and vice-president of the host organisation, NHK, I had the chance to listen to all kinds of debate from executives, engineers, producers and experts from the major broadcasters in the Asia-Pacific region, totalling some 400 delegates.

They raised a number of issues in regard to the switchover to digital. Concerns were even expressed that broadcasting might be lost in the proliferation of various new media. The “digital stress” on the broadcasters in the region will be enormous, but a number of my Asian colleagues argued how they view the digital migration, if anything, in a positive light, and how they are not seeing the Internet as a threat. Rather, they are seizing social media and broadband as tools to improve their services, flexibly and shrewdly.

What is at stake in society now is the question of deciding who should be responsible for providing high-quality journalism and content, and how the ensuing news, programmes and other content can be delivered to people in a universal service, in a way they can access anytime, anywhere.

In this sense, public-service broadcasters should be allowed access to all forms of electronic media and means of transmission, instead of just sitting and restricting themselves to the airwaves. Especially, I would like to see the regulators and other industry players continue to recognise public-service broadcasters as an essential element of the society. And I believe it is vital for us to convince the public about the resilience and the social worth of public-service broadcasting, as it has constantly developed services and technologies for the benefit of audiences and users.

It is essential that public-service broadcasters remain the major supplier of quality information and content in the new domains, in spite of challenges ahead.