Experts from the School of Communication of the University of Navarra and the Arthur Andersen signature have prepared a prospective study on "The future of television 2000-2005" based on a qualitative survey of 25 senior executives in the sector.

The report is based on the answers to a series of questionnaires which, once tabulated, have been analyzed and enriched by experts in each chapter, from the legal framework and technological innovation to the problems of program production, marketing and audiences, advertising, alternative sources of income and concentration.

The authors of the report pointed out that the aim was to draw up a kind of "collective notebook" in a sector characterized by the almost permanent need to make quick, short-term decisions. According to the experts from Arthur Andersen and the University of Navarra, it seemed appropriate to prepare a study that would allow a collective reflection on the medium-term future, based on the idea that this will be conditioned by the decisions that the main players in the sector are currently taking.

In order to prepare this study, the partnership of executives from the main companies in the sector was requested on two occasions. Firstly, a questionnaire was carried out for the managers of national and regional television channels; it asked numerous questions that sought a qualitative analysis of how the audiovisual market could evolve in the chosen five-year period. A work meeting was also held, attended by the authors of the report and executives of the television companies. This meeting served to identify the points of consensus and to discover the points that could be more controversial.

The first questionnaire and the ideas gathered in the meeting with managers formed the basis on which the report was drafted. At the same time, the most burning and conflictive points were detected. These issues were included in a second, shorter questionnaire , which sought to establish percentages on the opinion of the 25 most relevant companies in the sector about the evolution of the television industry in Spain in the medium term. For this second survey, the television networks and a sample of the main production companies, advertising agencies, consulting firms and cable companies in the Spanish market were consulted again.

The following key issues of current concern for the audiovisual sector in Spain can be deduced from the report :

    1. The legal framework and the new business models will favor globalization (with a particularly intensified process of internationalization in Latin America) and will drive the multiplication of supply, especially in thematic or specialized channels. skill levels will thus increase, while at the same time there will be a greater Degree of concentration.
skill is based on three elements: the time citizens spend on leisure (no significant increase in television consumption is expected), the domestic budget for expense on audiovisual products and services and the Internet, and the capacity to attract advertising investment and new forms of commercial communication.
3. The viewer will be less and less a passive consumer and there will be a shift from a supply market to a demand market.
4. New technologies and the interactivity they offer will require new forms of audiovisual marketing, both in terms of programming content and in terms of products and services.
The focus of commercial activity, in this sense, will be not so much the achievement of the sale of available content as the satisfaction of audience demands.
In the transition from analog to digital technology, the foreseeable stages - satellite, digital terrestrial TV and cable - will translate significantly into a skill in prices, especially in added value services.
Differentiation and "brand" image will be increasingly decisive factors in the choice of the television consumer.
The increase in the number of channels and media will lead to greater demand for production; however, due to the vertical integration of the "industry", the bargaining power will remain with the large generalist channels.
The proportion of advertising investment allocated to audiovisual media will be maintained despite the increase in the issue of channels.
10. All experts expect that a clear statute on the financing, content and governance of public television will be defined during this period.