broadcasting

The schemes will offer real-life work experience and insight into various careers within the industry.

The Channel 4 Production Trainee Scheme, Channel 4 Apprenticeships, 4Studio Placements and the Aspiring Lawyers partnership, together with the 4Skills projects to be announced later in 2021, will provide opportunities to more than 50 people across the Nations and Regions.

“There’s so much content and it’s in so many places. Finding a way of navigating, aggregating and personalising that content for the consumer is going to be key,” said Helen Stevens, ITV’s operations officer, content supply & distribution and Chair of the DPP.

Rowan de Pomerai, the DPP’s chief technology officer, added: “Voice search and aggregated watch lists will start to become really important to the way consumers navigate media.”

He called on “content and technology companies to work together”.

ITV Network’s first head of technology discussed the big developments in television or what he referred to as “the fun factory”, from the early 1960s when he worked in ABC TV’s engineering research department at Teddington Studios to ITV in the 1990s.

At ABC he worked on the problems of using colour film in television and, in particular, on The Avengers. He went on to develop the first computer-controlled presentation switcher in Europe.

It was the latest edition of the “Breaking into Broadcasting Bootcamp”; this time held at Norwich University of the Arts, and hosted by Fran Acheson of the BBC Academy alongside RTS East and BBC East in late November.

The students – all from creative and media courses at Norwich universities – were warned that the training session was going to be like a real newsroom experience, with long hours and lunch on the go.

At the late-September session, acquisitions, commissioning, marketing, media law and scheduling – rather than running and researching or presenting and producing – were the subjects for discussion.

Jay Davidson described her route into commissioning as “convoluted”. The BBC Two and BBC Four assistant commissioner moved from record labels to Radio 1Xtra to BBC television via a series of marketing roles.

“My expertise is understanding audiences, really knowing what makes them tick,” explained Davidson. “I’ve used my marketing expertise in a commissioning situation.”

RTS Wales joined the Institute of Welsh Affairs to host a lively debate on the future of Welsh broadcasting at Glyndŵr University in Wrexham at the end of October.

In a pre-recorded video message, the Welsh Government’s Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, Ken Skates, expressed concern about the weakening position of broadcast media in Wales.

The RTS Centre’s administrator, Hywel Wiliam, gave a brief overview of the key features of the current communications market.

The economic arguments for diversity came under the microscope at a lively joint RTS/BBC session held at New Broadcasting House last month. The panellists agreed that, following years of inaction, broadcasters are finally making an effort to boost black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) represen­tation in television.