As part of their 50th anniversary celebrations, the Turkish Radio Television Corporation (TRT) gathered broadcasting representatives from around the world in Ankara for a discussion about public service media (PSM). EBU Director General Ingrid Deltenre, along with TRT Director Mr. İbrahim Şahin and Secretary General Javad Mottaghi from the EBU's sister union Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), spoke to over 200 delegates.

In his opening speech, Mr Şahin said: “PSM should commune with the audience. If not, the audience will wave goodbye to us.” He went on to add that TRT carried out many innovations in recent years towards this end: "We have changed the administrative structure, renewed the technical infrastructure, increased the number of training activities and employed more young people to make the corporation more dynamic."

Mr Şahin went on to add that the number of programs broadcast per day had gone from 235 in 2007 to 700 today. Plus, TRT increased its ratings from 5% of the viewing population in 2007 to 16% today.

Ms Deltenre congratulated TRT for its achievements and underlined that TRT was a founding member of the EBU. She went on to presented a brief look at public service media (PSM) models in Europe, the challenges they face, and how through the Vision2020 project, the EBU is helping address these.

Ms Deltenre said “I do not think PSM are at risk as long as they know how to manage the process. Innovation and making the case for PSM are the key words. We should understand the audience better. We need to remain the most trusted and relevant source of information. To do that, we should be ready for transformation.”