Being more relevant to younger audiences is not only one of the recommendations of the Vision2020 report, but also and a crucial move for public service broadcasters if they are to remain relevant to the audiences of the future. It is therefore a priority for the EBU to support our Members to understand and reach young audiences more efficiently.

As a result, we have created an internal group of multidisciplinary, innovative and mainly young professionals. Our task is to exchange ideas and share knowledge to understand the digital natives and their media consumption habits and trends.

The group took as its starting point a series of interviews with our Members: around 40 Members from more than 20 different organisations. In most cases we heard from programme managers, channel managers, producers, editors and strategists. The aim was to find out what public broadcasters are already doing to reach younger audiences, what is working, what needs to be improved or developed further, what the next steps in strategy will be and how the EBU could help.

We talk about young audiences as the millennials or digital natives; the also so-called ‘YouTube generation’, a generation that has changed the way media is consumed and perceived. EBU Members are of course already implementing and experimenting new ways of reaching this generation: online thinking, social media and user-generated content, the ‘wow’ factor, humour, music discovery, real-world connectivity, on demand products and finding the right approaches to tell stories. These are some of the key elements to create brands that look younger and are more appealing to digital natives.

But, this is not always enough and public service broadcasters have suggested that they face several challenges in reaching young audiences, including the complexity of internal processes, legal restrictions, lack of creativity, and often a definition of public service media that’s just too old for the young generations. The trend is rapid and undeniable. So what actions can be taken?

One thing is clear: being present on all platforms to reach the digital generation wherever they are is the way for public service broadcasters to fulfil their function of reaching all of their audience. But the ‘what’ is done online or on-air is not the most important to reach younger audiences: it is the ‘how’ this is done that matters. Offering our audiences relevant and high-quality content above all to guarantee the excellence and raison d’être of public service media, combined with an open mindset that fosters creativity and innovation; a mindset that is not scared of taking risks and sometimes failing. Indeed, failure is part of the innovation process; perhaps even the most important part of it.

Taking risks and daring to fail is what some EBU Members have been doing through their recently created digital innovation labs: small teams of multidisciplinary, creative and talented professionals experimenting with new products for online and with new ways of storytelling in order to be quickly responsive to market changes. The engines among these labs are shared: dialogues and interactivity; more content for online and mobile; more products designed for streaming and on demand; more social campaigns to go beyond the traditional role of public service broadcasters to become active citizens together with young people. Finding simple ways of doing complex things is part of the game: if a project can’t be launched within two or three months, it is discarded; and if it is prototyped and the audience doesn’t show an interest in it, it is progressively adapted to the feedback received and evolves as the users imagine it.

The Eurovision Y-Now group was set up to encourage and share creativity and innovation. A series of visits to the digital innovation labs, workshops, documentation gathering and creative exercises about and with digital natives will be produced in the following months. The aim: challenge our peers to think differently and produce new (and crazy) ways to thrill the digital natives and make public service media indispensable for them. Because they say innovation is not a process, but a state of mind. And we aim at making innovation become a habit, not just a random act. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try.