Success factors, developments and experiences in the film and television sector

Television has not been particularly innovative in the past few years. Shrinking budgets leave little room for creativity. New providers are jostling to reach the market. It takes courage to try out innovative formats. Viewers themselves don't always know what they want. Movie ticket sales are dropping even with 3D.

Against these statements stand an array of technical developments and possibilities for new distribution channels, interactive offers and market developments that are driven by the Internet and high data transfer rates.

IPTV, on-demand video, smartTV, mobile entertainment, 3D – the technology is there, but it seems there is still a lack of content to give this niche area mass market potential. Most business models are still in the testing phase, and consumer willingness to pay remains a critical factor.

The question is open as to how producers can best utilize the new opportunities, and what emancipation from traditional market structures will look like. Does the cloud offer additional possibilities here? How can creative processes continue to be financed? What potential does hybrid TV hold for advertising and subscription models, and how will social TV change the film and television landscape? Can cinema and TV even be considered separately in an era of 360° production and evaluation?

After almost a decade of talk about digitalization, the technology is now in place to provide broad access to high-speed data transfer rates. What remain open are regulatory questions, as well as the complex debate around net neutrality. The opportunities and risks of business models and processes developed for high-speed data usage and cloud computing are still untested.

Issues of "network" and data transfer cannot be addressed without considering content, just as content producers cannot get by in the medium term without high data transfer rates and new distribution channels. Also, in attempting to monetize business models and services, users are a critical factor that must be kept in view.

How much trust do content producers and consumers place in services and products in the cloud? What use can producers, program designers and stations make of upcoming technical innovations, and what technical and regulatory requirements and hurdles will mark the next few years? Are there approaches and scenarios for "Managing Trust"? How does societal change occur in this context, and what does this mean for legislation, competition, and the attitudes and behaviors of consumers? What does networked living require of mobile and other information and entertainment content?

The CeBIT C3 Conference music day hosts discussion of current challenges in the sector with the ICT industry, aiming to foster contacts with other content providers, shared positions and cross-industry solutions. One central question is that of the product, and how it is even defined in an era when cultural production has lost its physical existence. Another important aspect is the relationship to online marketing strategies and premium offers. Is there still such a thing as net neutrality? How does the medium optimally support cultural offers, and when is content merely a vehicle for advertising? Where are new niches for using and marketing music and other content arising through technological developments? How can copyright law and the many forms of digital marketing be reconciled? These and other questions are discussed in various conference formats.

Publishers, hardware manufacturers and app developers are all talking about it: digital publishing – the publication of content on mobile devices. Apple set the ball rolling, or at least got it moving much faster, with the introduction of the iPad just two years ago.

News headlines in digital publishing have been piling up in recent weeks: Amazon updated the iOS app for its Kindle software to give iPhone and iPad users access to Amazon's newspaper store, which had previously been reserved for Kindle Fire users. Google launched its proprietary reader Currents to compete with Apple's Flipboard newsreader and the customizable iPad magazine Zite. The kicker: with Currents Producer, Google also includes a layout program for producing and publishing digital magazines. Currents is designed for private users for now, but 150 publishing partners are already working on professional content.

Adobe is not lagging behind, with the release of its Digital Publishing Suite for iOS and versions for Android and other platforms to follow in 2012. The QuarkXPress App Studio also supports publication of content to offer in the Mac App Store.

In Asia especially, digital publishing is unstoppable: there are already 120 million digital readers in the market in China, expected to rise to 750 million by 2015. By that time in South Korea, school books will be published in digital format only, as determined by the Seoul government.