Global Perspective: This Year in Jerusalem

NEW YORK: Bruce L. Paisner, the president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, talks about this year’s Academy Day in Jerusalem.

On June 11, directors and members of the International Academy will sit down in Jerusalem for dinner with Shimon Peres, the president of Israel. That will be followed in subsequent days by dinners and meetings with other key government officials, and a much anticipated visit to the Peres Center for Peace for conversations with Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

It’s all part of Academy Day in Jerusalem, the latest installment in a special program of the Academy that has introduced Academy members to political, media and business leaders around the world.

Let’s face it. Media executives, though among the smartest business people in every country, are not always the best rounded. The pressures of the job—and the challenges of new technology—leave little time for anything else, let alone outside their own country. But because technology is making the world’s media so interrelated, a broader knowledge of what is going on in other countries is essential. The Academy Day concept was invented to meet that need. Approximately every two years, Academy members and a few guests journey to a country in the news, and meet with the people who are making the news. In Brazil in 2008, the keynote speaker was President Lula. In Beijing in 2006, the hosts were CCTV and Phoenix, and the group met with the organizers of the Beijing Olympics while all the contentious issues were brewing. In Hong Kong two years ago, the Academy met with the incumbent and former chief executives, and had an in-depth visit to Shenzhen, China’s leading industrial city. Academy Day in Jerusalem will continue those traditions. The host company is Dori Media, under its chief executive, Nadav Palti. Events will range from a dinner with Israel’s leading scientists to an outdoor performance by the Israeli Opera of La Traviata at the Masada fortress.

In fact, Academy Day was not so much invented as re-created, from one of the great marketing concepts of all time—the Time magazine news tour. Every few years in the 1960s and ’70s, Time invited the CEOs of its major advertisers to join the magazine’s editors and correspondents in one of the world’s hot spots. Several days of meetings, briefings and high-level encounters ensued. The CEOs came back much better informed about a critical area of the world, and, not incidentally, Time sold a lot more advertising to their companies. 

Academy Days, of course, do not have a profit motive—just the education of Academy members through in-depth, high-level engagement in an important region of the world. And the opportunity for leaders in that region to communicate their points of view to leading media executives and producers. Does it work? On the one hand, people who have attended one Academy Day tend to keep coming back. Someone who has been to all of them—and to a major Academy board meeting in Berlin in 2010—would have a high level and substantive knowledge of several of the world’s key issues, leaders and culture. What also happens is that people, once exposed to a region, tend to follow its affairs—to produce programs and keep up with developments. So it will be with Academy Day in Jerusalem. The importance of the city and the region are undisputed. But few people get to be briefed by the key players, and few media executives get to explore issues and opportunities in small groups and intimate surroundings.

Looking further ahead, to late June 2015, Academy members will journey to Brazil, for an Academy Day in Rio de Janeiro. This one is strategically placed between the World Cup and the Summer Olympics, and will offer participants an inside view of the events and issues of the Rio Summer Games, a year before they start. Academy members will also meet with key political and business leaders in a strategic and growing country. Globo, one of the world’s most distinguished media organizations, will serve as host for Academy Day in Rio.

Ironically, as the world gets ever more interconnected by technology and social media, the imperative for face-to-face encounters tends to fade in the minds of busy people. But, as any successful statesman will attest, there is often no substitute for meeting in person—and a danger in relying on words and video, if one is really to understand what is going on, and find ways to benefit from it. Academy Day is the International Academy’s way of making sure that its members stay connected to the world’s key decision-makers in media, politics, business and the arts.       

Bruce L. Paisner is the president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.