It is difficult to define or label a year. Perhaps we will remember, in the future, 1998 simply as a necessary year. In fact, it was not stagnation or recession for everyone: those who knew how to take advantage of it, obtained growth. For others, it was a necessary year of accommodation, organization, planning and preparation for the coming great change, a true renaissance.
1998 was also a year in which the world's mega-capitals continued to play for dominance of telecommunications media ownership. The crisis in the world scared the players, and the natural reaction was to slow down the frenetic pace of the financial game a bit.
The most important events were, due to the impact that will soon have on our lives, the advances of digital television and the technological development of video on demand. For this reason, Argentina's choice of a digital standard is an important historical fact, because it marks the end of a stage of indefinition and sets in motion the creation of the future.
The immediate future
Our actions to energize the industry must be oriented to permanently tune it with the desires and needs of the people, and to create, with historical responsibility, a vision of a better future. From there it is up to us to discuss the current reality, remove the obstacles from the road and create the future itself.
You know me and you know I'm optimistic. Our industry, like any other, does well when it is in tune with the wishes of the public. If we deliver what people want, we will always have a healthy, strong and dynamic industry. Then we must ask ourselves at all times; "What do subscribers want?" The answer, for me, is: maximum content offer, possibility to easily find out about them and to choose the desired instant access to the selected program, at a convenient price.
The content of what we look at is food for the mind and spirit, good and healthy food that fortifies, or bad, that makes you sick. And what is good for one is not necessarily good for everyone. The world is beautiful in its diversity and it is up to us, with our work, to help promote and maintain a democratic and pluralistic society.
At one point we have an audience eager for diversity, with different and varied interests. In the other, expansion of the offer with greater generation of programming, more accessible means of production, approaching the until recently unthinkable world in which we will have "a camera in each hand". The bottleneck is right in the middle; a technology and business model that limits access to more entertainment, education and information.
What's gone and what's coming
Goodbye to analog technology and channels. These, as we know them today, will die, and few will remain. Then digital technology will arrive and the possibility of choosing specific content, receiving them at the desired time, simply paying for what we choose, receive and watch.
The sovereignty of video-on-demand and pay-per-view will arrive. Goodbye to waste television, where we pay for what we do not watch and where part of our monthly subscription reaches the hands of those who develop content that does not interest us or we do not approve.
Goodbye to the garbage we receive forced, because they package it together with the excellent programming. Hello to democratic television and freedom of choice. Hello to quality. Hello to the menus in which we will choose what we want to see.
Interactive programming guides will arrive, which will allow us to inform ourselves and select content. Guides increasingly easy to use, more informative, that seek to know the individual interests of each of us, that easily provide information about the content of the almost infinite offer at our disposal.
We must, therefore, reinvent the business, see new models beyond the traditional one.
The challenge of responsibility
Argentina has long needed a big change in its cable TV business model, the "big and only basic package of channels" model. This change is inevitable and looming. Argentina has the best traditional cable TV in the world, a luxury unknown to audiences in other countries; no one has access to so much by paying so little.
But this very reality, which served to develop the business and seems beneficial, is what prevents the change of this model, which is already staying in the past, towards new and better ways of providing access to education, entertainment and information.
We must increasingly use marketing to get closer to the public, not only to detect needs, but also to, based on a responsible vision of the future, create new needs (still unknown to people) together with the means to satisfy them.
The impact of television on our society is immeasurable. We are creating a new man and a new world. Television shrinks the world, shows the world to the world, fights prejudices, makes us brothers in suffering and greatness.
Television is the vehicle that unites populations and helps human fraternization and the dissolution of borders. For this reason, because of the impact it has on all the lives of the world, we must be very clear about our social responsibility.
If we form an industry concerned with society, justice and the promotion of peace, a participating and conscious industry, constantly working to reform and improve the world, we will be acquitted in the historical trial.
I am glad to be part of a company that is not only a leader in the field of digital TV, but has a clear vision of its responsibility.
Will 1999 be the year of change? This depends on ourselves and our leadership. We, who make up the industry, were given by society the mission of commanding change. We serve the public. The fruit of our labor is the legacy we will leave to the generations that follow us. Let us not miss the opportunity to do what is right. Make history, serve the community and improve the world.
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