ROYAL TELEVISION SOCIETY ANNUAL REPORT 2010 AGM 25 May 2011 at 6:00pm at the RTS, Kildare House, 3 Dorset Rise, London EC4Y 8EN Patrons Principal Patrons RTS Patrons BBC APTN BSkyB Autocue Channel 4 Television Avid Technology Europe ITV Bloomberg Channel Television International Patrons Digital Television Group Granada Television MTV HIT Entertainment NBC Universal Ikegami Electronics UK RTL Group ITV Anglia Walt Disney Company ITV London ITV Meridian ITV Tyne Tees Major Patrons ITV West ITV Yorkshire Channel Five Panasonic Broadcast Europe Deloitte PricewaterhouseCoopers Enders Analysis Quantel FremantleMedia Raidió Teilifís Éireann ITN Reuters Television KPMG Tektronix (UK) Ofcom University College, Falmouth Pepper Post Production UTV Television S4C Vinten Broadcast TV Four UKTV 2 R OYAL T ELEVISION S OCIETY REPORT 2010 Contents Patrons 2 Board of Trustees report to members 4 1 Achievements and performance 4 National events 2010 4 Centres report 2010 22 2 Structure, governance and management 32 3 Objectives and activities 32 4 Financial review 33 5 Plans for future periods 33 6 Administrative details 34 Independent auditors’ report 36 Financial statements 37 Notes to the financial statements 40 Notice of AGM 2011 48 Form of proxy 49 Advisory Council election manifestos 50 Minutes of AGM 2010 51 Picture credits 53 Who’s who at the RTS 54 The Board of Trustees (who are also the directors of the Royal Television Society for the purposes of company law) presents its report and consolidated accounts for the year ended 31 December 2010. The financial statements comply with current statutory requirements, the Memorandum and Articles of Association and the Statement of Recommended Practice – Accounting and Reporting by Charities (March 2005). R OYAL T ELEVISION S OCIETY REPORT 2010 3 RTS Board of Trustees Report 1 Achievements and Performance 1 The RTS maintained its unique and influential role in further- to this assertion several times in the course of the day, and ing public understanding of the transformation of the British made their scepticism clear. television and wider media landscape through its publica- The second session asked: What can we learn from South tions, website and the wide range of public events it staged. Korea? Professor Suk-Ho Bang, president of KISDI made an Throughout this report, we have sought to highlight the introductory presentation, then joined a panel with Franc- ways in which the Society’s activities have provided real ben- esco Caio of Nomura Investment Bank and Peter Smith of efit to the public at large, whether by extending the reach NBC Universal Television International. of its publications and web-based initiatives or by engaging The most wired country in the world is a difficult envi- with the public in ways that are easier and more affordable, ronment for content owners and piracy is rife, Smith com- and targeting particular audiences that might in the past not plained. “As a result of that, our DVD business, worth about have been involved in the debate, discussion and learning $1bn 12 years ago, is now worth $16m,” he said, adding that opportunities that the Society offers. low subscription fees meant broadcasters could not afford premium content. “I’m not sure the infrastructure, as exciting as it is, is benefiting the media business.” RTS International Conference The UK’s progress towards Korean broadband speeds will The RTS International Conference planning committee was not be trouble-free, either. Caio warned consumer prices chaired by Peter Bazalgette. The Conference took place in would have to rise: “The equation for the telecoms industry September and the UK keynote was delivered by the Rt Hon is not functioning any more. With volumes increasing, the Jeremy Hunt MP, secretary of state for culture, media, Olym- notion of flat rates and marginal prices for broadband is not pics and sport. He promoted city TV stations as a key broad- possible.” casting goal for his term, arguing that they could play a role The session, chaired by Erik Huggers, director of future in rebuilding communities – and rescue ailing local news ser- media and technology at the BBC, was sponsored by BBC Click. vices into the bargain. The BBC – and its alleged defensiveness in the face of In an exchange widely reported in the media, Hunt was mounting criticism – was the subject of the next session. BBC pressed by members of the audience to clarify whether ITV, director-general Mark Thompson was interviewed by con- Channel 4 and Channel 5 would all move further down the sultant and commentator Steve Hewlett, who accused him EPG (electronic programme guide) if they failed to deliver and fellow executives of having been wrong-footed by the local content. No, he said, allaying the channels’ concern corporation’s detractors, and conceding too much ground to that the local-TV initiative might be accompanied by a big them. Thompson made a robust defence of the BBC’s strat- stick – though there was little sign of a carrot, either. egy for delivering value to licence-fee payers. An initial report by Nicholas Shott, head of UK investment The fourth session saw sparky clashes between panellists banking at Lazard, on what changes would be needed to as they grappled with the question of whether video-on- make local broadcasting commercially viable, was published demand will be the game changer that its promoters claim. the same morning. Matt Brittin, managing director of Google’s UK and Ire- Hunt said: “The idea that somehow the UK ’can’t sustain’ land operations, took exception when All3Media boss local TV will seem very quaint when future generations com- Steve Morrison accused Google of acting like a cowboy pare us with other countries.” Conference speakers returned and showing scant regard for content owners’ interests.8 4 R OYAL T ELEVISION S OCIETY REPORT 2010 2 RTS International Conference speakers: 1 Secretary of state, DCMS, the Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP; 2 Time Warner chair and CEO Jeff Bewkes; 3 NBC Universal International president Peter Smith; 4 ITV CEO Adam Crozier; 5 KISDI president Professor Suk-Ho Bang; and 6 Nomura Investment Bank’s Francesco Caio 3 4 5 6 R OYAL T ELEVISION S OCIETY REPORT 2010 5 1 BBC director-general Mark Thompson interviewed by 1 Steve Hewlett (left) 8Virgin Media’s Cindy Rose took David Abraham, chief 5 6 executive of Channel 4, to task for – as she saw it – the anti- competitive approach of the YouView IPTV consortium that Channel 4 backs. The session, chaired by consultant Simon Shaps, also fea- tured a video interview with Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu. He assured delegates: “The next 50 years are going to be much more favourable to content owners.” For the International Keynote speaker, chair and CEO of Time Warner Jeff Bewkes, television was already “enjoying its second golden age”. If broadcasters can resist the temp- tation to let online aggregators come between them and their viewers, they have a bright future, proclaimed Bewkes. He pointed out that “network and video programming are among the only media to grow since the advent of the inter- net aside from the internet itself.” But he warned television companies not to “underprice our product in the misguided fear that digital consumers think 7 8 everything should be free or cheaper.” He also insisted that channels had to be available on-demand; otherwise “some- one else is going to put your programming on there for you.” In the next session, ITV chief Adam Crozier was quizzed by Steve Hewlett. Crozier said ITV’s travails “of the past 10 years are less about strategy, more about execution. There has been a failure to execute.” He admitted: “We were talking about needing to move our studios in Manchester for 10 years, launching ITV+1 for three years. Most people in the industry have said conversations tended to peter out.” Session seven saw a high-powered panel confront the thorny question – “social media, apps and games... what is the consumer up to?” Their deliberations were led off with a presentation by Deloitte’s Paul Lee. In deciding whether social media sites and apps – down- loaded onto the new generation of mobile phones and wire- Conflict over video-on-demand:5 David Abraham, Channel 4; 6 Cindy Rose, less screen – represent a golden opportunity for growing audi- Virgin Media; 7 Steve Morrison, All3Media; 8 Matt Brittin, Google ences and, eventually, delivering new revenue streams,8 6 R OYAL T ELEVISION S OCIETY REPORT 2010 2 3 4 8Lee provided some sobering context. In the UK General Election, he pointed out, around 500,000 people registered on the Facebook election page but 20 million watched the TV coverage. BSkyB COO Mike Darcey said that, in retrospect, Google had been very, very lucky to eventually hit on a business model that worked, while Facebook has not found a com- mercial application yet. Disney’s Giorgio Stock thought that Facebook could generate revenue from content owners through the power of peer recommendation – and, in turn, build viewer loyalty. The last panellist, analyst Claire Enders, cautioned that most VoD is catch-up, and derived from an existing schedule. Moreover, downloading catch-up programmes drawn from an existing TV schedule is nowhere near a mainstream inter- net activity. In contrast, for instance, to pornography, which “is very big, and has been for 15 years”. The final session saw Gerhard Zeiler, CEO of RTL Group, interviewed by Hewlett. Inevitably, given that RTL had just sold its UK subsidiary to publisher Richard Desmond, the conversation centred on what went wrong with RTL’s ambi- tions for Five – now renamed Channel Five. “It was not our biggest success,” he conceded. “We should have invested much more from the beginning..