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80% WEEKLY REACH, SHRINKING BUDGETS: EUROPE'S PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA · The Media Odyssey

• 0:00
  Marion Ranchet: Hi, everyone. This is Marion Ranchet from The Media Odyssey podcast. I'm coming to you this week with a bonus episode, something I recorded at SME Life twenty twenty six, my event in Amsterdam. It matters because it's about the public service media ecosystem in Europe. If you don't know what that is, I can only encourage you to press play to know more.
• 0:18
  Hope you like it. I'm gonna get started with you, So when I chose the title, and there's a reason. We're seeing right now a lot of challenges faced by public service media. I'm gonna say PSM throughout the whole session. Otherwise, it's gonna be too long.
• 0:48
  Funding is changing the way they're being funded, budget cuts, political pressure in a lot of markets, including the French markets. So you would expect that from some other market, not from one of the EU five markets. And yet, France division went through six months of parliamentary commission, and they really went dirty. So, Serge, before we get into, you know, individual markets, you are at France Media Monde, but you're also very active at the EBU. Can you tell us a bit more about what's going on?
• 1:19
  Can you give us the map?
• 1:20
  Serge Schick: Well, first of all, I encourage every people to go on UBU website because you will get many public data. Well, maybe, first of all, we have to say before talking about money, which is, of course, important, we have to maybe, as you said, address the map of the things. If you watch the main figures, the average weekly reach of the PSM is Europe is more than 80%. It means that each week, you have eight persons out of 10 who are in contact with the PSM. If you take the young people, we often say that the PSM don't reach the young people.
• 2:03
  The weekly reach is close to 70% for people aged from 15 to 24. It means that it's relevant. We are not talking about little figures. When we talk about the cost, it's €3.0.6 per month for each European citizen. So if you compare this figure with the figures of the subscribers and the the money you have to spend in the different kind of subscriptions, I think that I mean, we provide TV, radio, digital.
• 2:35
  It's not so expensive. More qualitatively, I think that we provide quality in the news area, but we also provide massively the industry in terms of fiction, documentaries, and so on. And more deeply, I think that we have a very important role in the defense of the democracy, which today, as you know, is very much challenged within Europe, not only outside Europe, but within Europe. We saw the results of, the last elections, which are not very encouraging. And as you know, we will have very important elections in the future.
• 3:08
  So to defend democracy, to promote democracy is still important, and I think that we have a huge role in international debate. But regarding this panorama, if you see the evolutions of PSM funding, the average decrease is more than 5% for the period 2929 from 2024. And it's average. It means that in many countries, a decrease is much more important. So we have to face huge challenges on one hand in a very, difficult, with financial constraint on the other hand, but I guess that, we will come back to this later.
• 3:48
  Marion Ranchet: We'll get into that. So you guys we have NPO, RTBF, DVRT. How do you guys view what's going on in your market, but more broadly in the region? Like, all of what Serge said, do you feel that every day? How does that impact how you commission the amount of money you invest in your technology platform, etcetera?
• 4:08
  Lieven Vermaele: I, together with Christophe, just for the Americans, we are Belgian. They speak French. We speak Dutch, but together, we form Belgium. Two markets. That's one country.
• 4:16
  Serge Schick: Speak French also.
• 4:17
  Lieven Vermaele: France. So I think for us as public broadcaster, it's correct. We have challenges in terms of reach with younger audiences. But I think in terms of of the financial side, I think we are kind of holding a situation where our budget is more or less the same every year. We have part of our budget, to be clear, is coming from the government.
• 4:36
  It's around 60%. And 40 We are one of the more commercial ones in Europe. I think 40com percent is coming out of partnerships, which my team is responsible for. Distribution agreements, agreements with Netflix, advertising, all this kind of stuff. So we try to, let's say, hold that budget, but it's under pressure.
• 4:54
  And, of course, on the other side, on the cost sides, we have cost increases and and, of course, investments that are happening in in digital stuff and so on. Yeah. We are under pressure, and we have to make choices and bold choices and stop things to move on.
• 5:07
  Marion Ranchet: Any example of something you've stopped? And do you feel the same? Have you stopped anything?
• 5:11
  Christophe Chantraine: On the side, so we are also in a similar situation where it's more or the same investor year. It's frozen with inflation. It actually means it's cut. Let's be clear. So we need to reduce, to give an idea by, 10% of our global, task force, in four years, which is mainly done by not replacing people leaving, to be clear.
• 5:32
  No. On our side, what we have done so far is mainly with more linear services. So as an example, we stopped a radio station, as an example, in order to save some cost. We also have less rights around sports, Belgian football as an example. So we are mainly looking through those pockets in order to make savings and trying not to touch to, any of our investments we are doing on on the digital side.
• 5:57
  Marion Ranchet: And, Sebastian?
• 5:58
  Bastiaan Toering: Yeah. I do recognize the pressure that talks about. We are facing, budget cuts of around 10%, for coming year in a market where the ad revenue is declining. And due to regulations, we are hit by that, even more than our commercial competitors. And at the same time, we are facing a big reform two years from now.
• 6:20
  So there's a lot going on at a time where we should be accelerating rather than slowing down. Yeah. So that's difficult.
• 6:28
  Marion Ranchet: Because that's the thing. Right? There's a lot we hear a lot people tend to put the broadcasters, commercial and and public in one bucket and and push you guys that, you know, sometimes you don't understand that younger demos are off on social, and you're not doing x y z, etcetera. But right now, you are supposed to be doing much more to exactly do all those things. We're we're gonna be talking about what you guys do.
• 6:50
  Serge Schick: Sorry, Mark. Good say think that it's due to the global economic problem. In some countries, it's true. For example, in France, I think people know our budget is not in the better shape that we could imagine. But for example, in Switzerland, according to my knowledge, there is no problem of public deficit.
• 7:10
  Nevertheless, the budget will be cut by 70 It means that it's not only a matter of money. It's also a matter of ideology. And the problems we have to face in Europe. It's not about money only. Sometimes, yes.
• 7:25
  But sometimes, it's linked to ideology, and it has to see something with people who don't like the public services because the public services don't say what they want to To say.
• 7:37
  Marion Ranchet: Yeah. That's why it's yeah. Financial and political pressure. So that's the state of things. And honestly, guys, it's it's you listen to that and you're like, woah.
• 7:45
  Okay. But let's brace ourselves. What are you doing to, again, mitigate? How do you do more with less? What are those things that perhaps you weren't not doing a few years ago that you're doing now?
• 7:56
  Because those are the cards that you've been you've been handed.
• 7:59
  Bastiaan Toering: Well, I can say something on that. While we are facing challenges, we also felt that this is an this is an opportunity to put more focus in our digital transformation, to put more means to our VOD platforms, whether it is MPO Start, which is our video, service, and MPO Leister, which is our, audio platform, but to make that grow and to look for new partnerships to reach bigger audiences.
• 8:24
  Marion Ranchet: How about you, Evan?
• 8:25
  Lieven Vermaele: Well, to answer this one, we try to avoid to reduce investments in content. So 80% of our prime content is always locally produced with local production houses or production houses of international groups, so we try to do that. However, that's under pressure. And 65% of our total budget goes to content related stuff. That's something we try to achieve every year.
• 8:46
  That means we try to optimize if possible to, let's say I'm not gonna call it overhead, but a 35% of the organization. But things, for instance, that we have stopped over the last year, a simple example, we have a lot of brands. We have radio brands. We have TV brands. We have sometimes program brands.
• 9:02
  We heavily reduced all the different kind of different digital apps that were still there or, let's say, social media channels. Now we just focused on three digital platforms, one for news, one for sport, and one for audiovisual content. Very clear. That's the kind of things that we are doing now more strict, more heavily in organization.
• 9:20
  Marion Ranchet: Yeah. It's about rationalizing, especially because you need to be to be everywhere, and it's very hard to be everywhere with 20 brands. Like, you look at the BBC. I love the BBC, but there's, like, 60 points of entry. But not everything is happening within the BBC ecosystem.
• 9:35
  They need to be on YouTube, on TikTok, and others. And so I think that streamlining, regardless of that financial element, I think it's a must for you guys that people want simplicity. There's so much out there.
• 9:46
  Serge Schick: What we have achieved, first of all, we have already made savings in the technical area, in communications, in marketing, unfortunately. Because one thing is to produce the contents. The other thing is to let the people know that they are existing. So, clearly, we have made savings. But we we think that we have to go on with the digital transformation, of course.
• 10:08
  We have to keep all the broadcast network because, I mean, you can imagine that in Africa I mean, we are an international group. So we have French 24 in four languages, RFI in 17 languages, and we have also a panoramic radio station called. I mean, we need to keep the means for broadcasting because in subregions, you don't have streaming. Sometimes life is not so easy. So we go from short waves to the latest means of distribution.
• 10:41
  But on the content area, we have decided to launch new brands dedicated to young people. In Europe, we have launched Enter as a brand with our colleagues of. It's supported by the European Commission. We have launched a digital offer called Zoha in Africa for the French young speaking language, and it's a real success. And we have also launched a brand called.
• 11:05
  It's news about migrations. And we have achieved to do it thanks to new sources of revenues. So my job is to do is to look for the new sources of revenues. And it was very difficult at the beginning, but now we are quite known with our colleagues, the. We have launched a news regarding, called, also supported by the European Commission, new languages in very geostrategic regions like Cocas, for example.
• 11:41
  So for us, we want to be innovative. Want to I mean, from '24, MCD. I mean, of course, we are also in digital. We are also on the social networks, but the means we have in marketing are very, very, very tight. And it's the main issue, I think, we have to solve.
• 11:59
  Christophe Chantraine: Perhaps just to to add something about the the rationalization. So I'm fairly new in my position. I come from the private sector and been doing a lot of things before. The first thing that is really surprised me when when I started at the RTBF, if I'm really honest, is how little we collaborate between the public media services in Europe or across the world. Like, we have a lot of organization, and and that's really good, and we exchange a lot.
• 12:26
  But there is so much from a technology standpoint that could be, the foundation of something that we build together. And there are pockets again. We are part as an example of something called the public space incubator, which is building a sort of conversational interface between the citizen and the media, and it's made with other public media. And but it's it's quite small in comparison to the whole, infrastructure. And, I mean, we we've seen bedrock just before in the private sector and the power of RTL in multiple countries and MCs and so on.
• 12:58
  We don't have something similar when it comes to public media. And I just think I know why it's not happening, but I think it's it's a shame.
• 13:04
  Marion Ranchet: Yeah. When we did the podcast, I I don't wanna go there because I knew we would be talking about this, but we've never been able to have our own, you know, Netflix. And that's okay. There's no European Netflix. We have amazing local players.
• 13:17
  Having said that, there's a way underneath somehow, may that be on content, on the tech, etcetera, to be more collaborative because this thing we we talked about this. We all need scale. We need efficiency, etcetera. And it's very hard to do alone. Right?
• 13:31
  Serge Schick: I think that it's the same problem we have with Europe as a whole. If we want to have projects which have to be efficient Yeah. You can be 27 Yeah. Or 29. I mean, you you have to find the good partners for the good projects.
• 13:47
  That's why we have worked a lot with the. We would love to work, for example, with BBC, but, honestly, it's difficult. I'm sure that people know the BBC here. But with the, we have developed some project, but we are leaders of these projects. You have two leaders, three leaders, and then you you take with you the people who want to follow the same way.
• 14:08
  That's why I think that the UBU is achieving, really, an incredible work because it's difficult. But in some areas, I do agree with you, it can be a surprise that we don't share the technical means, for example, in order to develop new apps and these kind of things. But maybe we have to say, okay. You are a leader in this area. So, okay, one leader, two leaders maybe, and the others, which want to to take the same way you follow.
• 14:36
  Marion Ranchet: Consensus is difficult to to obtain for sure. Christophe And
• 14:40
  Christophe Chantraine: the just because it's a bit funny and and and sad. The the last, the latest PSI call I was in a couple of days ago, we were 80 leaders discussing it. And, I mean, that's that's Yeah.
• 14:52
  Marion Ranchet: There's no way to do anything. We were talking about rationalizing, but there's also finding new pockets of businesses. And that means that, you know, historically, you were all free with or without ads depending on, you know, the the markets. Bastian, at NPO, you actually have a subscription SVOD. Do you wanna tell us a bit more about that?
• 15:12
  Bastiaan Toering: NPO Plus is our SVOD service, and it has been around for a while now. Netflix entered the market in The Netherlands. It was 2013. We felt that we needed an SGD service for ourselves in order to retain SGD rights for a longer period of time, and then you have to enter a huge process with approval from the government in order to start your VOD service. But in 2016, we launched it, and it offers a longer availability of rights, a longer availability of contents to our viewers and a better viewing experience, but specifically for those who want to pay extra for it.
• 15:49
  So we felt that it would be unfair to burden every taxpayer with this choice. So we launched a few d surface with an added charge for those who are willing to pay for that, and that's been working really well for us for the last ten years. And I feel that we are now at a crossroads where we are looking to exploring partnerships with streaming services. We've launched a a co production called vulven, which is an big entertainment show that we did in collaboration with Disney plus, and I'm excited about that because that program would not have been produced for MPO if we didn't join forces with Disney plus
• 16:28
  Marion Ranchet: Fascinating. I'm surprised that we haven't seen more broadcasters, both commercial and PSM, investing in SVOD. And in France, historically, hopefully, no one from that company is there anymore. But they botched it. It was called Salto.
• 16:43
  It was meant to be the SVOD of the French ecosystem with both TF1 and success. Too many. It too late. And I think there's I don't think it can be the only reason because I can't remember the exact dates. But if launched in 2017, Netflix had been in the market for a couple of years already.
• 17:01
  I think there's a mindset thing as well. It's very hard to be free and then move and have the DNA to move to premiums.
• 17:08
  Bastiaan Toering: DNA thing, and that's really true. And I feel that the budget cuts that we're facing right now spark a new mentality and which makes us open for partnerships. The Wolven deal would not have been able five or six years ago.
• 17:21
  Lieven Vermaele: Well, I think first of all, having SVOD in a country for a public broadcaster depends on the country because because of public broadcaster, how it's organized, you have different, let's say, situations in different countries. So we are not allowed to do it. We do it in a different way. And I think also it's it's on the one hand, to be quite blunt, I'm involved in certain discussions with politicians also. It's difficult for them to explain that you go from a free to air model to a model where one day the citizens have to pay for television.
• 17:45
  So for a politician, it's difficult. On top of that, if you get the lobby from the commercial guys versus the public guys, where we see a revenue model, where we get more money, where we can where we can locally reinvest in production houses, it's something maybe the commercial guys doesn't like. So let's say the the the elements are not there to always help in there. But at least I see it differently in our situation. I I said we have 40% of advertising and distribution income, and some of our partners are here from Belgium.
• 18:13
  As public and commercial broadcasters, we have good comer cooperation with the telco guys, and people think television is free. But the bottom line, they pay for a telecom Yeah. Subscription, and they pay for media. So what we have to do, I think, in my opinion, is find a clever way in our situation where we yeah. We have the free to air a little bit like YouTube like.
• 18:34
  We develop further on the good relationship we have, and we can look to SVOD in the future. But what I would like to do at least is to first find cooperation in our market and across markets where we can keep the revenues and reinvest them in the content. But bottom line, it's about journalism and content, the relevant content close to our society.
• 18:52
  Marion Ranchet: Let's talk about YouTube and and social media, as a as a as a whole. And we've seen these last few years broadcasters within the region making moves. Right? Right or wrong, we won't know for sure. We'll know in five to ten years.
• 19:06
  I think it's worth trying. You guys all have public mandates. So in a way, you have to somehow figure out how to be available pretty much everywhere, including YouTube. Having said that, let's say you are on YouTube. There's been discussion in The UK about the topic of prominence.
• 19:21
  Is YouTube is I'll go first, but there's a notion of content. So how do you feel as local broadcasters as to this this topic of the prominence? It's one thing to be available. As we've said already today, it's another to be discovered.
• 19:35
  Serge Schick: For us, YouTube is really important. And I think we were the first to sign an agreement with YouTube because we are not national. So we can't afford on 18 national markets because we are in 18 national markets to be strong with our platforms. It's impossible. So we have an agreement with YouTube.
• 19:56
  We are working together since ten years, I think. So it's huge. And in terms of audiences, the figures are really incredible in all the languages, of course, in English, but not only in English. It's also true in Spanish or or Arabic. So we want to go on with YouTube.
• 20:14
  But, of course, we also want to develop our own platforms where the scale is reachable. So for example, in France, in Europe, the figures we have on our old platforms are correct. If you take The US, it's correct. But thanks to YouTube, we reach some audiences that we wouldn't reach with other means.
• 20:34
  Marion Ranchet: You're being pragmatic.
• 20:36
  Serge Schick: Yeah. I mean, that's what I was saying at the beginning. We have to be pragmatic. We have to be very diversified in terms of distribution. So we have launched a fast channel for France 24 in English.
• 20:49
  We're quite happy with the development of the the channel that, David in the room have launched with all the people, but it's really huge. We are on Samsung, LG, and all our friends. We share advertising revenues. Even if it's little money, it's still money.
• 21:07
  Marion Ranchet: Take
• 21:07
  Serge Schick: it. And it's a way for us to go into markets that we've reached because it's some countries. We can't reach the markets because the pay TV is not developed. And we have very interesting figures. For example, in Egypt, where for France '24, it's very difficult to, to have a good penetration except, of course, by satellite, but we we never have some agreements with the cable industry there for reasons that off center ship that you can imagine.
• 21:35
  The first channel is working very well in Egypt. It's a market where we are not.
• 21:39
  Marion Ranchet: I think for some for for you guys who are in a one market, in your own markets, perhaps the answer is a bit different about YouTube and and how you wanna be surfaced.
• 21:49
  Christophe Chantraine: On the RTBF side, so with YouTube, our strategy is more to play with, as an example, the the the release windows. So we we would put content on YouTube, but, perhaps keep seven days or sometimes more depending on the content. So we still have the visibility on YouTube, but we put our own platform first. What is quite interesting in the French part of Belgium, so where the the is that we have a big halo effect outside of our own country with with the content. So we have TV shows like, which is a a comedy show, which is now super popular in France, but mostly thanks to YouTube and social media because people would not watch it on TV.
• 22:32
  Yeah. And so because those content are getting stronger outside of Belgium, they make it also stronger for us in Belgium. And as a side effect, it was quite interesting to see. We now manage to get quite premium guests from France attending the show and, you know, coming because they know that they will be viewed in France and it will also help for their own popularity. Depending on the show, we we we may have between 40 to sometimes 80% of our YouTube viewership, which is outside of Belgium.
• 23:02
  Bastiaan Toering: It's interesting that our approach to YouTube differs. For us, we, put a lot of, native YouTube first, formats in, which are specifically designed to be on YouTube because we feel that YouTube content is really a different type of content than the content that we play on our own platforms, and we do that for the edit reach. We want to reach audiences that we don't reach on our own platforms, but we want to make sure that the audiences know that they're watching MPO content on YouTube. That's really important.
• 23:33
  Marion Ranchet: So you're protecting what you have live and within your catch up or your SVODs, and then you're using YouTube as a playground to do to do new things.
• 23:43
  Bastiaan Toering: Yeah. Definitely. MPO Stark is our home base, and everything else contributes to it.
• 23:48
  Marion Ranchet: How about you, Evan?
• 23:49
  Lieven Vermaele: Same for us. I think VR TMX is our digital audio visual product. That's our home base. That's where where where we want to have reach. We want to have 70% reach across all generations.
• 23:59
  We experiment on YouTube, and I think, for instance, something which we have done now recently and has impact is not the whole news, but specific news fragments we publish on you on YouTube, especially to address the younger audiences and, let's say, the the non native people. And by this, of course, it's it's information but also marketing, and you bring them to your platform afterwards.
• 24:20
  Marion Ranchet: So we're almost at time. So you have ten seconds each, and you need to pick one idea that you've seen somewhere. It can be a fellow PSM. It can be a commercial broadcaster. It can be a streamer, whatever you want.
• 24:32
  Just one thing.
• 24:33
  Lieven Vermaele: I would like to explore the MPO start end.
• 24:35
  Serge Schick: I think that we have to think also about impact, context, audiences, but also impact. And when we we watch the figures of the number of hours consumed, the linear world and the broadcast world remain massive. I mean, we can't consider that someone on Facebook reading a video with without knowing that he has launched a video is the same that someone who is in contact with your channel during forty five minutes a day. So I think that social networks is very important. It's a way to make teasing to be known by an audience that you wouldn't get, but we must not forget the impact.
• 25:17
  Marion Ranchet: A deep a deeper potentially relationship. And Christophe?
• 25:21
  Christophe Chantraine: I would probably want to steal the ability of the to move fast, the velocity they have.
• 25:29
  Lieven Vermaele: Wow. Thank you.
• 25:30
  Serge Schick: So you can talk together. Yeah.
• 25:33
  Marion Ranchet: I we're I'm gonna send a clip of this to your boss. That's pretty cool. Bastian.
• 25:38
  Bastiaan Toering: From time to time, I get jealous at the entrepreneurial spirit at channel four, The UK broadcaster, which is a public broadcaster, but not publicly funded. So they have to be entrepreneurial, and that makes them adjust strategy and make rapid movements. That's inspiring.
• 25:53
  Marion Ranchet: Awesome. I love it. That's it for today. Thank you, guys.