A new TV Committee was elected on the second day of the 23^rd TV Assembly hosted by RTVS in Bratislava (1 - 2 June).

SVT’s Head of Content Strategy Markus Sterky takes over as President with 4 vice-presidents elected unopposed: SSR SRG’s Chantal Bernheim, RAI’s Nicola Caligiore, ZDF’s Frank-Dieter Freiling and CT’s Milan Fridrich.

Also elected as members of the committee for a 2 year term were Mohammed Abdenhour (SNRT Morocco), Ana Maria Bordas (RTVE Spain), Alexandre Dureux (FTV France), Natalija Gorscak (RTV Slovenia), Dermot Horan (RTE Ireland), Petri Jauhiainen (YLE Finland), Frans Klein (NPO Netherlands), Ekaterina Orlova (RTR Russia) and Doug Whitelaw (BBC UK). Marek Solon-Lipinski from TVP Poland will attend the Committee as an observer.

Day 2 of the Assembly shifted focus from digital transition to building trust in public service media (PSM). The Assembly explored how this can be effected by reaching viewers through high quality entertainment and drama as well as ensuring that all audiences are represented on all platforms.

A keynote from Elonka Soros, formerly of the BBC, who now works as a consultant on diversity for Members such as NPO made the case for how greater diversity is key to the future of public service broadcasting.

“Diversity and getting it right on and off screen is the key to moving PSM from survive to thrive – without getting the mix right you’re not going to be able to compete in the market,” she told over 60 delegates from 38 Members.

Soros showed that on one day in May the ratio of men to women visible on all EBU Members’ home pages was 7 to 3. She argued that to reach all audiences PSM has to not only talk about universality but reflect the way audiences look in their content too.

“The intention is always to do something but the reality doesn’t look like it,” she argued. “For PSM to stay relevant it has to be at the forefront of trust. Audiences are moving to places where people can find their voice and see their perspective and experiences reflected – we say we’re for everyone, we need to be for everyone.”

Her advice was to take action: “Measure your team, measure your content, measure your audiences - listen and act on the results. NPO are being a systematic in their approach and they are working together on changing bias, on who works in their team and what appears on air.”

Swedish Member SVT showed how they are tackling a loss of trust in parts of their audience by identifying the groups who think PSM is “fake news”, finding out what they have in common and why the problem is increasing.

SVT Head of Content Strategy, and newly elected President of the TV Committee, Markus Sterky showed how their tool for establishing these groups revealed 16 to 19 year olds and the lower educated 20 – 39 year olds were the ones with the least trust. To remedy this, SVT has begun engaging with these groups directly to discuss how to better target their output, ensuring that their journalism focuses on all groups in society and even creating a hashtag that is used across programming to reflect “your voice”.

Hosts RTV Slovakia and Czech Television (CT) showed that, with only low budgets to play with, co-producing dramas together – 105 in the last 7 years - has also helped both broadcasters build trust within their audiences.

 “Drama is the key to heart of the people”, said Milan Fridrich, TV Programme Director at CT. “You can attract the majority of viewers as its high quality content and by doing so you can gain common trust from the audience in all your output.”

“Co-productions are important elements for both our broadcasters to ensure the higher quality of the programme and sharing of costs,” he continued. “It’s important that this content is branded by the local broadcaster so audiences identify with you.”

The Head of the EBU’s Academy Nathalie Labourdette demonstrated how entertainment is also an integral tool in building audience trust.

“PSM values are at the heart of entertainment, entertainment enhances the values and television is the strongest platform for entertainment,” she told the Assembly.

Labourdette highlighted a toolkit developed by the EBU to help Members assess the impact of their entertainment programming. This involves a checklist for producers, a visualization and screening tool for the programmes and a charter which states PSM entertainment should be at “the forefront of innovation and creativity, bring audiences together as well as attracting new ones and offer attractive, popular and relevant shows of all kinds.”

“PSM should take risks,” added EBU Head of Television and Future Media Jeroen Depraetere. “To dare and make the best product possible – we are the only ones who can afford that.”

Demonstrating the connection and trust between audiences and local PSM is also one of the aims of a new pan-European marketing campaign showcased by EBU Head of Communications Michelle Roverelli at the Assembly.

The campaign – “Keep Media Good” - which will be seen in 9 countries in the autumn uses individual stories from those impacted by PSM to demonstrate the power of EBU Members.

“The value of PSM is not only about the quality of your content but about the quality of the impact that your programmes have,” said Roverelli.

“PSM has a positive impact on us – on families, communities, individuals and nations. “Keep Media Good” positions PSM as media with integrity. We have 34 contributors with real stories, real moments of impact from 9 countries.”

Next year’s TV Assembly will be jointly held with Radio in Brussels in April.