IMPRESSIONS OF A PARIS CONFERENCE BY A COMMISSION CHAIRMAN

In my capacity as chairman of the Programming & Production Commission (P&PC) I have been asked to give some impressions of the Paris Conference.

Firstly, I am sure all of the delegates agree with me on the general impression, that it was one of the most successful and worthwhile of FIAT Conferences so far. It was a perfect combination of a host organisation (INA) that had anticipated almost everything that could happen during such a big event and a programme with exciting speakers. A challenge to any FIAT Conference organiser in the future.

Secondly, those of you who did not have the opportunity to take part in the Conference have something to look forward to in the Conference Book (also available on the FIAT Internet home pages).

The idea to have open Commission meetings on the day before the official programme starts has now become an established and important part of the Conference. Never before have these meetings been so well attended, not to say crowded, by an audience eager for debate!

From my point of view I would like to "highlite" the P&PC meeting on Guidelines for the use of Archive Material. The presentation was hopefully a "jumpstation" for a broader and necessary discussion on this topic and also for a wish for the membership to submit suitable - exemplary and deterrent - footage for the illustrating cassette we are preparing together with the Guidelines document. Subjects that will covered are: Proper identification of Archive Material, Use of identifiable people shots, Rights/Clearance/Droit morale, Commercial aspects and Feed-back systems on actual use of Archive Material in programming.

The management aspects of TV-archiving has often been neglected at our conferences. This time we tried to make a real effort to change that. Under the heading "Archive Management and Restructuring" I think we created a lot of discussion, even if the tight schedule of the programme did not allow too much of it during the session it certainly continued afterwards. Television archives have to cope with adjusting to new production formats and routines as well as to the tightening of economic resources for broadcasters.

The Danmarks Radio contribution by Lise-Lotte Westh showed one way of handling this situation through the concept of "Merging all media archives in DR-TV into one organisation". The BBC Archives business manager Jeff Barrett asked the question "Can an archive be self-supporting within a public organisation?", a subject for debate. We were given a vivid description on how the "ProducersÍ Choice"-concept - introduced 1993 - affected the archive services. These were just two of the contributions during this session.

The session was moderated by Rolf Hamacher of Bossard Consultant who put the searchlight on some survival, or, success factors for Television Archives in the future. "Focus on core business, make sure it reflects the real needs of your customers, adapt the recruiting and training of your staff to fit the new needs", were important parts of his message. And it stirred the audience!

The Television Archives Award has emerged as one of the most important tools in marketing FIAT/IFTA and stressing the importance of Television Archives. It was the third time the Award was presented and it seems to be well established now. For the first time a screening of the short listed programmes was made as part of the general programme of the Conference. That added to the attention both the Award and the short listed programmes deserved. I guess it did not come as a surprise that the BBC nomination and production by producer Norma Percy, "The death of Yugoslavia: The road to war" was the final winner this year. In the citation for the short listing the P&PC wrote: "The Commission was particularly impressed by the nature of the footage used in this programme, ... the use of both locally broadcast programming and other European News broadcast and agency provides a most clear and impressive background to a very current news story."

I'm sure that the president of Arte, M. Jerome Clement, who handed over the Award, the sponsors, GÙrtler InterMedia and Tecmath, who presented a check of 10.000 DM to the winner and the membership, who with such overwhelming majority voted for this programme, feel proud of the choice!

The generous contribution of one of the Award sponsors, GÙrtler InterMedia, in providing the membership with video copies of all the short listed programmes will add further interest to the Award. This means that non-present member organisations can obtain a free copy via the deputy chairman of the P&PC, Karl Mayer of SÙdwestfunk. This year the nominations were dominated by documentaries. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the 1997 nominations, since we have decided to extend the right to nominate programmes also to non-member organisations in the future.

As a general impression of the Conference, I think the delegates could also trace the efforts of the organisers/Commissions to establish a conference where the respective tasks of the Commissions were reflected in every session. We will try to emphasise that even more at the Budapest Conference 1997.

And finally, if I may add a very personal observation: Crucial for the success of any conference, no matter how interesting the programme is, is the cuisine of the venue!

Lasse Nilsson
Chair of the Programming & Production Commission