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President Ilves greets participants of International Digital Broadcasting Conference

27.08.2009

In his welcoming speech to the participants of the International Digital Broadcasting Conference, President Ilves said that instead of competing with each other different media channels are thinking more and more about fusion and convergence into a unifor In his welcoming speech to the participants of the International Digital Broadcasting Conference, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said that instead of competing with each other different media channels are thinking more and more about fusion and convergence into a uniform media space.

“Let’s take, for example, the convergence between TV and web. Media consumers and, especially, TV viewers have left the passive role behind and are now participating in the creation of programmes through the web environments of various TV channels, as well as voting and commenting,” said the Head of State.

“The development of technical devices has also given a rather interesting shape to the media consumption habits of different generations, contributing to the emergence of so-called information communities,” remarked President Ilves. “Within an ordinary family, for example, grandmother listens to the radio, dad watches TV and surfs the net for news while the child is spending time in various social networks, knowing next to nothing about radio.“

The Estonian Head of State encouraged both the producers and the environment to think of ways to make the dizzying development of technologies work beneficially for all people, by creating an information society that works for everyone.

“Therefore, multimedia centres in classrooms in all Estonian schools would help to increase the learning opportunities of our youth. We can already give some remarkable examples in this sphere: for example, one young teacher in Tartu is giving lessons in physics via the Internet to Kihnu Island, at the other end of Estonia,” President Ilves told.

The President also reminded those present that Estonia has been a pioneer in a number of innovative spheres both in Europe and in the world – our e-government, mobile parking and e-elections have all found followers.

Approximately 250 leaders from the broadcasting industry from the Baltic states, Scandinavia, Russia, Ukraine, France, the UK, the USA and even other countries further afield have gathered in Tallinn TV-Tower Conference Centre to discuss media consumption habits, the rapid development of digital television, and bridging the digital gap between urban and rural areas.

President Ilves expressed his hope that a number of exciting ways for merging different media spheres will emerge from the brainstorming.

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