To the point: Missed opportunity
Last week, the Communication Summit 2012 took place. It was organized by the Zurich Press Association and the Zurich Public Relations Society. 600 people made the pilgrimage to ETH Zurich.
No wonder, since the topic "Service public in the digital age" promised a lot. After an uninspired 08/15 speech by Prof. Dr. Heidi Wunderli-Allenspach, rector of the ETH, and the welcome by ZPV president David Strohm, the presentation by SRG director general Roger de Weck was on the agenda. Rhetorically perfect as always, he explained to the audience why online is becoming increasingly important for the public service. Afterwards, there was a roundtable discussion in which de Weck, AZ media boss Christoph Bauer, PR entrepreneur and social media expert Marcel Bernet, award-winning blogger Michèle Binswanger and media lawyer Philip Kübler took part. SF presenter Reto Lipp introduced the conversation with a provocative question to his top boss, asking why SRG needed to offer entertainment formats. The answer from de Weck didn't really surprise any of the participants. He pointed out that for every broadcaster it was a question of the mix of the program; if you came along exclusively with public service programs, you would have no viewers. Kübler countered that the Internet would become the dominant medium in 25 years, and that watching a program at the same time would therefore become less important. On the Internet, TV stations would no longer appear as entire channels, but rather there would be individual formats. Then the argument that the SRG must offer other programs in addition to the public service programs would no longer apply. However, De Weck said that the channel principle would continue for the next 10 to 20 years.
So much for the actual conference topic, which was then quickly left in the further discussion to turn to a simpler topic: the future of new media. The participants agreed that the new technical possibilities, social media and changing media consumption would present providers with new challenges. A truly surprising conclusion! Only at the very end did Lipp come to talk about the online dispute between SRG and the publishers and demanded an assessment from Bauer and de Weck. But there, too, the answers were banal and unproductive. But they were diplomatic.
Too bad for the missed opportunity. I had expected more, but apparently the participants were satisfied, one could greet old acquaintances and laugh at de Weck's joke: "I would so like to be a neoliberal - there you can judge everything without expertise." Something, after all.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief [email protected]
