A New Way of Seeing

June 2008

You’ve heard the saying “The more things change the more they stay the same.” Well, it’s time to retire that adage. We in the media business have to store it away alongside our old record players, VCRs and Walkmans (and, soon, our standard-definition TV sets as well). Yes, because one thing is certain: change is here to stay.

The way people watch TV and movies, listen to music and even get their news is constantly changing because technology keeps offering up cool gadgets and devices. We have the world at our fingertips, thanks to a computer’s keyboard connected to the Internet. Print offers words and still pictures. Television offers moving pictures. A website can offer an alluring mix of all three. The media companies that migrate all or part of their businesses successfully to the web will succeed, those who don’t are securing their place in history next to the dinosaurs.

We at World Screen have embraced the Internet and offer a wide range of services. Our websites house our indispensable dailies World Screen Newsflash and Diario TV Latina and our information-rich weekly newsletters in English and Spanish, as well as interviews and articles from all our publications. Last fall we launched WorldScreenings.com and TVLatinaScreenings.tv, portals for the entertainment industry where people can watch clips of some 100 different shows.

Now we are launching video reports featuring topics in the news. Our first one is about Central and Eastern Europe, to coincide with DISCOP. Since I have a background in broadcasting, I took on the video reports. Sure I know A-roll from B-roll, three-point lighting, white balancing the camera, set-up shots and cutaways, and the difference between “writing for the ear” (jargon for writing for television or radio) and “writing for the eyes” (writing for print).

As I was working on the video report though, there was a moaning, whiny voice in my head that said, “I want to go back to what I always do—to what is familiar, what is comfortable—writing and editing for our publications.” But then, the adventurous adolescent in me, the one who has been silenced for years because of responsibilities, parenting, deadlines, stress and sheer sleep deprivation, called out quite insistently, “Hey, isn’t it fun to be trying something new?” And in truth, it was more than fun, it was exhilarating, to be communicating with words and moving images.

Then I went home and had one of those very rare, uninterrupted moments in front of the TV. I was watching Brothers & Sisters and a few lines of dialogue really struck me. “Now the rules are different and things we thought to be true turned out not to be. It seems that when we give up on what was, that’s when things that we thought were improbable, or impossible even, happen right before our eyes.”

And you know how when you have a new awareness of something, then examples of it pop up in front of you repeatedly? Well, that played out for me with the main interviews in this issue. Michael Garin, the CEO of Central European Media Enterprises (CME), had years of experience in U.S. television—and all that a capitalist system can offer: advertiser-supported networks, syndication and then the cable industry. He stepped out of that paradigm and applied the best of it to very different market conditions in Central and Eastern Europe, and is now running a stable of successful commercial stations across the region. And from Russia, we have Alexander Rodnyansky, the CEO of CTC Media, who broke away from the Soviet model of state-controlled television to run two successful, independent commercial networks in his country. Nadav Palti is the president and CEO of the Dori Media Group, a company based in Israel that is taking the telenovela industry by storm. He is maintaining all the core qualities of hit novelas, updating them and producing for the entire world, instead of concentrating first on a domestic market the way many of his competitors do. Ricardo Scalamandré, the general director of Globo TV International, is maintaining Globo’s lavish novelas as the mainstay of his catalogue, but diversifying it to include dramas, documentaries, comedies and children’s programs in order to satisfy buyers’ many needs. Linda Jensen, the CEO of HBO Central Europe, has taken the core strengths of HBO—Hollywood movies, cutting-edge series and documentaries—and complemented them with original productions from the region. Gary Knell, the president and CEO of Sesame Workshop, is retooling the genius of Sesame Street for children around the world, and Josef Mandelbaum, the president and CEO of AG Intellectual Property Group, is refreshing classic properties and creating new ones for today’s multitasking children.

All these people took what they knew and looked at it in a different way to create new businesses and opportunities. We at World Screen are taking our core treasure—useful, accurate and relevant content—and offering you a new way to look at it, online and in video.