Being an important meeting place for public broadcast organisations, Singapore hosted the 20th Public Broadcasters International Conference for the first time in October 2011.
Organised by Mediacorp and supported by MDA, the conference attracted more than 200 participants from 20 public broadcasting networks worldwide. It addressed common challenges and highlighted future opportunities faced by public service broadcasters.
Ms Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State (Information, Communications and the Arts, and Environment and Water Resources), opened the conference by urging public service broadcasters to ride on the opportunities presented by various content delivery platforms to expand their reach. She also emphasised that public broadcasters had to invest in the “fundamentals” of content and talent.
Reviewing Public Service Broadcast
In October 2010, an eight-member PSB Review Panel was set up to review the improvements to the delivery of PSB and recommend ways to maximise the reach and impact of PSB in Singapore, in view of challenges brought about by media convergence.
In March 2012, Ms Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), and chairman of the Panel, announced that the Panel had submitted its recommendations to MICA. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister, MICA, announced in July 2012, that the Government had accepted most of the Panel’s recommendations for implementation that focused on raising the quality of PSB productions and extending its reach to counter the impact of audience fragmentation.
Implementing the Panel’s recommendations, MDA worked with Mediacorp to develop pilots for PSB to boost programme quality through audience-tested programme formats.
The PSB Contestable Funds Scheme, a revamp of the previous Public Service Content scheme, was introduced for MDA to identify and invite more eligible local broadcasters, including non-FTA broadcasters, to commission original PSB content.
In so doing, independent production houses benefit from an expanded playing field and consumers are better served with PSB programmes being made available on multiple local broadcast and new media platforms.
Taking a long-term view, MDA enhanced efforts to nurture creative talent such as TV producers, scriptwriters and directors through courses and overseas attachment programmes.
In the same vein, MDA also put in place a revised PSB intellectual property (IP) ownership framework that came into effect in July 2012 to accord such ownership to IP creators of original PSB programmes, while fundamental PSB objectives such as accessibility of programmes to the public continue to be met.