The success of video sites such as YouTube can lead to the false conclusion that anyone who starts “broadcasting” on the web is guaranteed viewers.
Last year, the European Parliament decided to embark on its own web TV venture called EuroparlTV. The “channel” is available in all 22 languages of the Union and costs €9 million a year.
But where are the viewers? Since the launch of EuroparlTV (whoever thought of a name like that?) last September there have only been 150,000 of them – which translates into a cost of €60 per viewer!
Now, the plan is to launch a big and expensive advertising campaign to make people aware of the new channel. The Parliament expects more viewers, especially with the upcoming European elections.
This looks like throwing good money after bad. Euro MPs seem to be suffering from tunnel vision – outside of Brussels and Strasbourg, very few people will be interested in following the proceedings of the Parliament in the two cities. And will they really want to watch interviews, speeches and documentaries?
For many years, the Parliament has tried to convince broadcasters to give more coverage to European issues, but to no avail. They are even willing to pay for the costs, but broadcasters, even public service ones, know what their viewers want.
By launching EuroparlTV, the idea was to apparently overcome this unwillingness on the part of the broadcasters and reach the general public itself. Perhaps some even read that by using an over-the-top medium such as web TV, one could reach viewers directly without such hurdles as independent journalists, editors and broadcasters.
But this is not how media works: when the Parliament launches its own channel, there are doubts about its independence. Sure, there are rules that every party represented in Parliament will also have its say on the channel, but that seems more like old-school public broadcasting in European countries, where each political party had his own ‘channel’.
It is not likely the Parliament will learn from the lack of success. On the contrary, it will invest even more money into the venture.
And EuroparlTV is not a cheap operation: the channel employs more than 50 cameramen, journalists, producers and translators. Austrian journalists calculated that a one-hour programme costs about €60,000 to make. Pretty expensive for a talking heads exercise, and this doesn’t include the costs of hosting and traffic of video servers in Brussels.
For many years, European citizens have been wondering why the Parliament is travelling – at very great expense – between its sessions in Brussels and Strasbourg. With EuroparlTV declared a failure, the Euro MPs had better count their blessings as few viewers are aware of this failure.
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