A Broadcast Renaissance

When the term Renaissance is used you generally think of men in tights writing poetry, great thinkers philosophising, scientists making ground breaking discoveries and the dawning of the modern era out of the dark ages. I apologise now to any historians for my wildly inaccurate and generalised sweeping description of what is considered a fundamental turning point in the evolution of society.

At the moment however we have an entirely different sort of Renaissance forming as the product of the Future of Broadcast Television Summit. As reported on Broadcast Engineering by Michael Grotticelli, 13 broadcast organisations from around the world met to discuss a global strategy in an effort to define the requirements of future terrestrial broadcast systems.

Over 200 delegates met on 11/11/11 at 11:11 (the time and date most reminiscent of Fustian, our very favourite type of cloth) in Shanghai to express unified support to identify a variety of common content delivery standards, as well as promote sharing of technologies which will benefit both consumers and media organizations.

The three main initiatives that proposed by the declaration were:

• Define the requirements of future terrestrial broadcast systems. “The collaboration between broadcast and Internet content will play a vital role in providing attractive services. The broadcast industry is committed to developing necessary technologies to create and deliver new media and information services by taking advantage of future broadcast systems. We also know the critical role played by broadcasting in times of emergency.”

• Explore unified terrestrial broadcast standards. “We aim to promote cooperation among broadcasters, communications companies and manufacturers of broadcast equipment and all types of receiving devices. We seek to maximize proper and efficient use of spectrum resources, as well as exchanges and cooperation between communication systems and broadcasting on both a technological and business level.”

• Promote global technology sharing. “A future broadcast ecosystem, with collaboration between different areas and among broadcasters, research institutes and industries, will foster new broadcast technological innovation. We commit to the elimination of broadcasting technological gaps. We realize that advances in broadcasting technologies should benefit both developed and developing countries.”

The declaration goes on to say:

“We need to explore new ways of cooperation, seek the progressive unification of standards, and realize technology sharing so that the efficiency and convenience enabled by digitization will be realized — not reduced by system fragmentation. The 21st Century is an era of integration of broadcasting, Internet and communications, all of which have evolved in parallel. Consumers are calling for more convenient and user-friendly services. The development of digital technology opens the possibility of cooperation among all the different networks and transmission systems.”

All we need now is for the world’s political leaders to do something similar then maybe we’d have world peace… as long as they don’t do it in tights.
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