‘Good future’ for TV

At the MIPCOM trade show taking place this week in Cannes, France, Luis Fernández of Spain's national public broadcaster RTVE (pictured, left) showed himself optimistic over the future by declaring "the new audiovisual business models will make us successful in spite of the present financial and economic crisis".

Talking about how television may be in the future he said that conventional television would always exist but would combine with new forms of image distribution such as on-demand television.

RTVE’s President underlined that television is still being watched even more than before despite internet success all over the world. "The time spent in front of the TV set by Spanish viewers last year was 223 minutes per day - an historical record. The same happened in the US where TV was watched a daily average of 250 minutes, four per cent more than the previous year. This means Internet hasn't stolen viewers from TV," he added.

Televisión Española wants to be a reference point in the new ways of TV distribution so it has an on-line video channel on YouTube as well as its totally renewed website. The broadcaster has projects such as the initiative it launched on the occasion of the last Eurovision music contest with MySpace through which the public chose the singer to represent Spain.