Marinella Soldi, President, Rai, Italy
Transcript:
“When world television day was established, in 1996, on the initiative of RAI, the Italian public service broadcaster, the United Nations strongly believed television was going to live a long life and to keep playing a major role in peoples’ lives. And as you know, they were right.
In 25 years, TV has changed dramatically and even unpredictably, but some things have stayed the same: Whether you watch on an old tv set or on a smartphone, whether you choose live, linear or on demand, nothing makes your heart beat like video.
No matter how young or how old you are, tv provides us with the widest range of emotions:
- fear at twisted fictional plots,
- amazement at the wonder of documentaries,
- elation at reality shows,
- shock at hard news,
- joy or desperation at sports cliff-hangers.
In 2000 some experts foresaw the end of the TV, but simply those two letters T and V changed to signify Total Video: choose any place, any time to watch content, on multiple and even simultaneous devices. Data and algorithms create an increasingly ‘tailored for me’ tv experience.
And although viewing behaviours are much more fragmented, the number of tv households worldwide has been increasing by 17% in the last ten years and is expected to exceed the current 1,7billion in the near future.
The Tv Screen still has a central role in our home and in our heart. Every day, here, in Europe, 78% of us watch television on a tv set, the overall tv market is steady, over 210 million units sold per year.
The TV screen is still an object of research and development: it has become smart, flat, hyper, augmented and bigger! More than 5 inches of growth in five years, thanks to higher resolution. And, in its most futuristic realizations it is still an object of design and of desire.
With such an emotional and powerful media, we have a great responsibility as a public broadcaster, to our audience and stakeholders, and grateful that it pushes us towards the highest quality, credibility and creativity.”