I am asked to talk about the future of television.

What exactly is television? Is it the “hardware?" Is the organisation that produces great programmes? Is it a linear channel? Or is it the “software”, only the programmes? Or is it all of it together? In the past and as of today this is certainly true. It is all of it. But what it will be in the future depends on how television adapts to the challenges of new players on the market and the technical changes still ahead of us.

The term television is used to describe the device, which has changed so much over the past few years. It has gradually become bigger and flatter, displaying in ever better quality: From black & white to colour, from standard definition to high definition and now we talk about 4K and believe it or not I have heard about 5k as well, and of course of ultra high definition or 8K, which is 16 times better than HD.

The TV set develops more into a giant tablet.

But this development does not say it all. Today we are using the TV set not only to watch television. We look at our beautiful holiday pictures, we are playing games, we listen to music and the radio and we use it when we surf the internet and stream a video.

The television set is a device that comes along with a lot of innovation. It is so simple to use, you press the button, no waiting and there you go. If it did not exist already for so many years, we would call it a real game changer.

The term television is also used for the organisation that produces programmes, such as Rai, Mediaset or Sky and many more. We are currently living in the golden age of television. In the 28 countries of the EU today we have access to more than 9000 television channels. They had to innovate, because technology and the expectations of their customers have changed. New business models occurred. Almost all traditional broadcasters have become multi-channel-media organisations, providing their programmes on all relevant platforms and devices, anytime and anywhere. Their programmes generate more tweets and fans than anything else.

But Youtube is not called television, despite being the biggest streaming platform in the world and the second biggest search engine. Netflix or Amazon are producing good series and dramas too. They are not television. But without any doubt Netflix, and Amazon and many other new players want to become as successful as television is today. They want to catch the eyes of millions of people that watch on average 3 hours and 40 minutes of television every day.

In other words: Television is the killer application for the internet, for tablets and mobile phones. It is the killer application for social media. Television is the killer application for satellite and cable operators.

Isn’t this a fantastic situation for our industry? Everybody is looking for great content!

Our content today is mostly accessible everywhere, is mobile, tailored and adapted to all sorts of screens. We are including social media in our programme making. We are looking for ways to reduce costs and to become more efficient to be able to do all of this.

But what we have done until now might not yet be enough.

Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, recently said, that “Television is managed dissatisfaction”. And unfortunately I do agree.

We can do better. And here is my first thesis:

To connect a TV set is not that easy. A really simple remote control that helps us to manage the connected tv set and to find and watch the progamme in the language we want, does not yet exist. The search engines have flaws. The fantastic iPlayers of the various TV channels are not connected and are not easily searchable. If I want to watch a programme from the BBC in Torino on their iPlayer, I am told, that unfortunately I have no access, instead of saying: Welcome dear customer, it is great to learn that you love our programme. But since you are not a licence fee payer in the UK, this is what we want you to pay to watch it… Managed dissatisfaction.

Let me give you another example: If you travel abroad you will struggle to watch your favourite programmes for which you are actually paying a monthly fee or subscription at home. Managed dissatisfaction.

But I am optimistic. My first thesis is, that I believe that the whole customer experience will improve.

Let’s talk about the future of media organizations that currently produce television, The fact that they are contributing to this golden age of television does not automatically guarantee that they will have a golden future as well.

Look at what happened to Sony who invented the Walkman and portable Discman. Today people want to have an iPhone or an iPad. Why did Sony not invent it? We are taking more pictures than ever. Look what happened to Kodak who even invented the digital camera. What went wrong? Look what Nokia and Blackberry did for the mobile industry. Why are they not market leaders anymore?

I come to my second thesis, which might sound obvious:

If technology is changing, if consumer expectations are changing, media organisations need to change and adapt as well. What we did is not enough.

What do television organizations need to do, to remain competitive? We also asked this question within the EBU. Together with our members we have worked hard in a project called “Vision 2020”. Based on this work I have three recommendations to make for broadcasters, to remain successful:

My first recommendation: The customer is king. Yes, I know. We all love to say “Content is King”. This is the typical view of a producer. What we do is good. Right. But if the customer does not like the content, or even worse: if the customer does not find the content, our content will not be king. The day has only 24 hours, the availability of content is ever increasing. Of course you have to produce great programmes, but you also need to make sure, that this content will be found. Be sure, for Netflix and Amazon the customer is king. Technology allows a personalization as never before. And we have to understand this and do it as well.

For the traditional broadcaster this is quite a challenge. You have to re-start your thinking. Forget your background, where you are telling the audience what to watch when. We all have to increase our knowledge about the customer, and need to take their real needs much more serious. Otherwise somebody else will take care of this. We do have iPlayers, how do we build on them, how to we market our programmes.

Since more and more people use iPads and connected TVs to watch video, we are gathering so much more information about them. If only we would know how to make sense of the “big data” to take informed decisions. We are not taking advantage of the data and information that is currently available to take better and informed decision and to plan the future of the organisation better and to build new relations. More about this in a second.

Second recommendation: We need to cooperate much more across borders. The industry is globalizing. The expectations of our customers with regard to quality and innovation can only be met, when we are able to build on the economy of scale much more. For traditional broadcasters this translates also in doing fewer things bigger and better. But is also means look for new partnerships at home and abroad. We will not be able anymore to provide the wide range of services as in the past. I was mentioning the iPlayers that are not connected. TV content is hard to search for. If we do not sort this out together, somebody else will do this for us. Look what happended to the newspaper industry. Technology has changed and there are new players on the market. This is why I recommend to implement the slogan “Together we are better”.

My third recommendation: Communicate with your customer and find innovative solutions to their problems. Customers do not want to be explained something all the time. They want us to listen. We have to accept, that our news is not setting the agenda anymore. We have to accept that there is a community out there that is critical, looks for alternatives and finds them. What our customers are looking for is a dialogue. We have to establish a new form of relationship and build on it. This is very difficult for a traditional broadcaster. We traditionally invest a lot of time to produce great content. And we expect the customer to find it in our linear programmes. But we spend much less time thinking about creative ways to find solutions to their problems. We talk about copyright etc, but this is not a solution for customer needs. Our community is also our biggest fan club. And we should build on it. And if they would like to access our services from wherever they are, we should be able to serve them, even when they are travelling.

And this leads me to my third thesis:

We are living in a connected society with an ever increasing choice of content which is recommended to us, based on our profiles, likes and ratings we are giving. This also means that society is increasingly fragmented. And looking at the development of Europe we have to admit, that society is also increasingly polarised.

I truly believe that in a connected but fragmented society the public space where you can be informed and entertained, where you share views and opinion, where you face moments of joy and sadness remains not only important but essential. It is because of this public space where you establish a sense of belonging to a community. And this sense of belonging is essential for democracies to work.

And this is why I hope that television remains essential when we deliver what is meant by the word Television: bringing a vision, an inspiration, a great idea from abroad, from afar to the people. It should be the noble ambition of every media organisation. I am convinced, that the media organisations that adapt their organisation and innovate based on their knowledge and understanding or their customers will have a golden future.

Inspired by a famous old saying I would like to conclude: if we want to stay as successful as we are today, we have to change everything.