This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
LEONARDO TRANSFER OF INNOVATION PROJECT
No. LLP-LdV-ToI-11-CY-1671107
MEDIA TECH: “The future of media industry using
innovative technologies”
WP2: Consolidated Report – April 2012
Project No. LLP-LdV-ToI-11-CY-1671107
1
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary ............................................................................................ 3
Context ............................................................................................................... 3
Media industry situation ..................................................................................... 4
New Media and their use .................................................................................... 7
Southern Europe media situation - Summary .................................................... 10
Main survey results........................................................................................... 11
Conclusions....................................................................................................... 18
Project No. LLP-LdV-ToI-11-CY-1671107
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Executive Summary
The following consolidated report has been developed for the second Work Package (WP2)
of the Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation Project “MEDIA TECH: The future of media
industry using innovative technologies”, No. LLP-LdV-ToI-11-CY-1671107.
This consolidated report aims to focus on the results of the survey conducted in Cyprus,
Greece, Italy and Spain about the training requirements of the participants . As we will see
throughout the report though, it is impossible to highlight a common line of interests for all
the Countries. What we will try to do will be showing and explaining the results for a better
comprehension of what the participants look for or what they think they need.
Context
This project aims to provide a complete training package regarding the current
advancements in the media industry, using new technologies. The training package will
include theoretical applications, guidelines and practical cases for the development of new
media and the application of the technological advancements in the most traditional tools.
The main goals of the project consist in assisting European media companies to face and
embrace the constant advancements in their field and adjust to these on a timely manner,
helping European MP to develop the necessary new skills that are required, identifying
which social media to use alongside traditional media to reach target audiences, providing a
format for networking, engagement, and lots of social media debate around the latest tools,
technologies, platforms, and emerging trends within social media marketing, examining
Project No. LLP-LdV-ToI-11-CY-1671107
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
how technology can assist reporters, presenters of TV programmes, media technicians and
other people working in the media industry to perform their tasks more efficiently and
professionally and studying the impact of information technologies on processes, on
content and production in the media industry.
This particular report is based on the results of the online survey conducted in the four
participant Countries: Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Spain. The main aim of the survey was to
know the training needs, requirements and interests of the participants from each Country
(40 to 50 people involved in the media industry).
Media industry situation
The following national media industries situations are taken from the national reports of the
participants Countries and consequently discussed in order to highlight major key points,
areas of intervention and common traits in South Europe media environment.
Cyprus
The media industry in Cyprus is quite small and with a low budget, making its capabilities
very limited. There are only a few powerful players in the media game and large media
groups. Even though television dominates the media scene, a large number of print media
also exists and new social media are now increasing.
Television dominates with 46% of the budget. Newspapers follow in second place with 17%
and radios in third place with 11%. Finally magazines come last, TV weekly magazines (9%),
women weekly magazines (4%), and women monthly magazines (4%).
Project No. LLP-LdV-ToI-11-CY-1671107
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Greece
The economic crisis that Greece is facing during the last two years has also affected the
Media Sector. As a result of the austerity program, Greece faces a long period of falling
output. All components of domestic demand have seen a sharp deterioration. Household
disposable income has been shrunk due to cuts in public employment and wages, as well as
higher taxes. This led to a new trend featuring less luxury, more free fun and more free
media. Today there are around 160 newspaper and almost one thousand radio stations,
most of them being private and regional.
After the deregulation of 1989 and the end of state monopoly, private television reached
Greek households and dominated the market. Most of the Greek households are equipped
with television sets. The public operators in Greece are ERT S.A (ERT), which owns three TV
channels (ET-1, NET, ET-3) and Vouli TV. The latter is dedicated to live broadcasts of the
Hellenic Parliament’s proceedings. Both transmit nationally. There are seven private
national television stations under official license: Alpha TV, Alter, Antenna (Ant1), Mega
Channel (Mega), Skai TV (Skai), Star Channel (Star), Macedonia TV. Among the regional and
local television stations, only three have an official licence and another 123 have applied for
a licence.
Italy
From the late ‘80s on, the media industry in Italy has always been television centric. Still up
to today more than 85% of the people gather information exclusively from television, with
written newspapers (very) slowly losing their little shares to the online media. The most
read written newspaper is La Gazzetta dello Sport, which collects 4.3 million readers per
average day. A part from sport newspapers, in the last 20 years La Repubblica and Il Corriere
della Sera have been the undisputed top contenders in the Italian market with respectively
3.5 and 3.4 million readers per average day.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
The global economic crisis brought the whole media industry to drop consistently. The
stagnation of the Italian economic system led to a fall of 20% in the advertising revenue
during the last two years.
The “switch-over” from analog to digital television was meant to bring more competitors in
the tv market, in order to dismantle the Rai (public) – Mediaset (private) duopoly. The offer
increased, but there are a number of technical reasons that prevented a smooth and clear
transition. Licenses assignment ended in favoring the big competitors giving them more
frequencies. The transition itself is two years in the making now and still some regions (e.g.
Sicily) can’t receive DTT, while in many other regions people still can’t see every channel.
Spain
Spain's leading newspapers are predominantly located in the capital, Madrid, though
powerful regional sentiments - particularly in Catalonia and the Basque Country - mean
major newspapers in those areas can have an important influence in local and national life.
In total, there are more than 100 dailies published in Spain, but few have a circulation
topping 100,000. Most are published in Spanish, but there are also a number of bilingual
papers, notably Catalan-Spanish, Galician-Spanish and Basque-Spanish.
Until the international economic crisis, newspaper circulation figures went through several
years of stagnation. But this did not prevent publishing companies from having good
economic results.
The economic crisis has seriously impacted Spanish newspapers of all kinds. According to
Informe e-España of Fundación Orange, advertising revenues for printed publications
dropped 20 percent in 2008. And according to data of the employer’s organization of
newspapers publishers, AEDE, during the first quarter of 2009 advertising income of the
Project No. LLP-LdV-ToI-11-CY-1671107
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Spanish press as a whole dropped 31 percent compared to the same period in the previous
year.
There is an increasing fragmentation in the Spanish television market. At the beginning of
2009, television in Spain included six different kinds of offers: analogue television, digital
terrestrial television (DTT), satellite television, cable television, Internet television (IPTV)
and mobile television. This situation, however, changed when the transition from analogue
television to the digital system – the so-called “analogue blackout”– concluded by January
2010.
New Media and their use
Cyprus
New media is slowly growing in Cyprus. Challenges such as the economic crisis, global
competition and the fact that Cyprus –being a small island- has a low budget are making
development much slower than what we would like it to be. In order to make new media
work it is important to find a way for old media and new media to work together.
The current trends in Cyprus include digitalization, strategic partnerships, social media and
the introduction of new advertising vehicles- that is if there are changes in the legislature.
Most specifically, 72% of the general population uses the internet daily for at least an hour.
The most visited site in Cyprus is Facebook, followed by Google and YouTube. The world
trend of social media has a strong presence in Cyprus as well, with Facebook and Twitter to
be the leaders in this sector. In terms of hardware, 91,48% uses laptops or pcs to surf the
web, 5,25% their smartphones, and 2,62% their tablets. In general, Cyprus is adapting to the
Project No. LLP-LdV-ToI-11-CY-1671107
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
new media age, but has still long ways to go in order to catch up with more developed
European countries.
Greece
The media ecosystem, also driven by the economic crisis, is transforming since traditional
media are becoming less preferable to the consumers. People move online and as a result
of this, businessmen, journalists and ventures enter the digital domain investing and
launching portals and vertical properties to attract both users and advertising revenue.
Content is expanded and combined with video, multimedia and applications to generate
digital engagement and leverage user experience. All that are also reflected on the
advertising spends on the traditional media which are continuously declining in contrast to
internet where these expenditures are growing. Consequently, the incomes of the
traditional media are decreasing since the major income factor (i.e. advertising) declines.
Italy
New media in Italy grows at a slow pace. The infrastructures are poor and the connection
speed is one of the worst three in Europe, with an average of 3.4 mbps. Only 49,9% of the
population has a continuous access to the internet.
Information online is just a mirror of what happens in tv and written newspapers. Proof
being that the top two online news sites (and the only ones with more than one million
visitors per day) are corriere.it and repubblica.it, the online versions of the two most read
written newspapers. There are just four newspapers that exist only online and between
them only two (ilpost.it and lettera43.it) reach a wide audience, considering 40 thousands
visitors per day5 a wide audience.
The social media world is still dominated by Facebook, with Twitter facing a 126% growth in
the last year6, but still far behind Zuckerberg’s network with only 2 million users. Other
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
social networks already spread worldwide, like Pinterest or Tumblr, are barely heard of in
the Italian environment.
Spain
According to data published in 2011 by the National Institute of Statistics and by the
Telecommunications Market Commission, 63.9% of Spanish households had Internet access,
as compared with 59.% the previous year. 61.9% of households (almost 9.6 million
dwellings) had a broadband Internet connection (ADSL, cable network, etc.), representing
an increase of more than 800,000 households as compared with the previous year.
In Spain, there were 9.9 million family dwellings with Internet access, representing an
increase of more than 800,000 households as compared with the year 2010.
The main forms of broadband Internet connection were by ADSL line (which 74.9% of
dwellings with Internet access had) and cable network (15.8%). The connection via
broadband mobile phone line reached coverage of 13.1% of the households with access.
Worth noting the implementation reached by others broadband wireless connections
(public Wifi, Wimax, satellite), with 8.6%.
There are a great number of online news publications but only few are well-developed in
editorial and business terms. The economic evolution of these publications is fairly good:
according to the e-España report of 2008, online advertising revenue increased 26 percent
and was the only sector on the rise. In Spain, there is a general fall in the advertising market
share for the printed press in contrast to the growth of online advertising.
Project No. LLP-LdV-ToI-11-CY-1671107
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Southern Europe media situation – Summary
With a little exception for Cyprus, which is a considerably smaller market in comparison to
the other three, the situation pointed out in the Country reports is pretty clear. The media
environment is somewhat slow and not subjected to change that easily. Television is still
the main form of communication based on advertising revenue and audience. Print media
comes in second place, where web and internet communication is still far from covering
critical masses. But the global economic crisis may change all this. All the Countries are
facing sensitive drops in advertising revenues, more or less around 20%. What seems not
suffer from this fall, or at least seems less affected, is the internet.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so the following information (which by
the way comes directly from the Greek WP2 report), shows the advertising situation in the
midst of the financial crisis and can be converted for Cyprus, Spain and Italy as well.
Advertising expenditures by media in Greece, 2010
(Source: Greek Media Landscape, Trends & Implications”, Recession study, Tempo OMD)
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
The reason television and “old” media are collapsing is because they are more expensive
every way you look at them. A TV Ad is more expensive than an online one: because it costs
more to be produced and because broadcasting time is more expensive itself. More than
that, internet media, from social network to online newspapers to blogs, are lighter and
faster. But, once again, they are also cheaper to be produced.
The grow in internet access, mobile internet and Adsl is completing this process. Even
though the numbers of internet access are still low in comparison to Anglophone areas,
something is finally moving in South Europe. But there is still much to do in order to
complete a transition to the so called “new media”, which could lend a hand for getting out
of the global crisis.
Main survey results
All of the participants are professionals in journalism, PR, marketing, advertising and
communication in general. The survey was made available online through the
SurveyMonkey service (http://www.surveymonkey.net) and it was conducted between
March 12th and March 21st, 2012.
•
Cyprus: 47 responses
•
Greece: 35 responses
•
Italy: 42 responses
•
Spain: 42 responses
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Question n.1 asked participants which area of media are they most interested in. As the
next figure suggests it, results vary widely and probably depend on the background of every
single participant.
Question n.2 asked participants about their existing training provision. Answers vary, but
the options that stand out from the average are the extremely high percentage of on-thejob training in the Greek questionnaire and the sadly high number of people – more than
60% - in Italy not receiving any of the mentioned trainings (while actually not receiving any
training at all). This in my opinion is a key point.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Question n.3 asked participants which area of training is most important to them in order of
preference. Once again there are mixed results, with some extreme results, like 66% of
Italian participants interested more in journalism (which reflects their field of expertise)
opposed to no one in Spain. The interesting things that comes out from this question is that
there isn’t a predominant field over the others.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
The sub-question for crisis management asked participants what are their most and less
important topics on the subject. The number of replies from Cypriot participants was very
small as only 7 people answered. Even so for these seven people “crisis strategy” was more
important. Then followed “crisis toolkit”, “specification of probable crisis”, “reputation
management” and last “possible crisis design”. The Greek responders indicated “Identifying
potential crisis” as the most preferable topic. The three Spanish participants consider
“Identifying potential crisis” and “Crisis strategy and toolkit” as the most important subareas, meanwhile “Planning for a crisis”, “Reputation management” are considered as less
important. No Italian participant answered to this one.
The sub-question for editorial/journalism asked participants what are their most and less
important topics on the subject. “Presentation and interview techniques” was the most
popular answer among Cypriot participants. “Best editing practices” and “news and design
collection” were the other answers that a few people chose. Greek responders indicated
“News gathering & planning” as the most preferable topic. Being all Italian answers at the
same score, it is interesting to say that nobody thinks “user-generated content” as their
most important aspect in the journalism world. All the other Italian results are
homogeneous, with ‘telling the stories’ getting the most “less important” number of
answers (8 out of 28 people). No Spanish participant answered to this one.
The sub-question for production/technical asked participants what are their most and less
important topics on the subject. Only two people from Cyprus chose to answer and that is
not much of a surprise since production did not get a high percentage in the first questions.
Greek participants indicated “Convergence: delivering across different platforms” as the
most preferable topic. Only four Italians answered the production sub-question, with all
four of them thinking that adapting content to different platforms is one of the top two
most important issues. The 6 Spanish participants who answered that Production/ Technical
is the most important training area, consider “Best practice for filming and recording” the
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
most important sub-area, followed by “Creativity”, “Adapting content to different
platforms” and “Convergence: delivering across different platforms” ones, meanwhile
“Codec” sub-area is considered as less important.
The sub-question for social/digital media asked participants what are their most and less
important topics on the subject. For the seven Cypriot participants who answered, the
creation of a social networking campaign concerning the targeted audience and social
media as marketing and client service tool are the most interesting topics. Greek
responders indicated “Defining a social media target audience & monitoring effectiveness
and reach via SEO and other analytics” and “Building a social media campaign around your
target audience” as the most preferable topics. The most important issue related to social
media for 5 out of 7 Italian responders is studying them as a communication tool. Spanish
participants (20 people) who answered, consider that “Defining a social media target
audience & monitoring effectiveness and reach via SEO and other analytics” and “Social
media as a communication tool” are the most important training sub-areas, followed by
“Social media as a marketing tool”, “Building a social media campaign around your target
audience”.
The sub-question for strategy/planning asked participants what are their most and less
important topics on the subject. It was answered by ten Cypriot participants. For them
“Preparing for the future” is important as “Identifying your target audiences and ways to
reach them”, which is the most preferable topic for Greek participants and for two out of
three Italian responders too. Spanish responders consider “Building audience engagement
and interactivity” as the most important sub-area. “Brand awareness”, “Changed landscape:
Media provider v Consumer Choice” are considered less important.
Question n.4 asked participants what outcomes are they expecting from this training. By a
wide margin the two things people expect from this project are to acquire new skills and
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
ideas for innovation. All the other options fall far behind and could be considered secondary
to the first two expectations.
Question n.5 asked participants what is their preferred method of training. In all Countries
face to face is the preferable learning method, with a peak in Cyprus where it reaches 80%
of the participants. Apart from Italy, where 40% of the people would prefer hand-out
material, in the other Countries it never goes beyond 20% of the answers.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Question n.6 asked participants what resources do they have to deliver training and of
course (since all answered this online survey) all of them have a pc and an internet
connection to follow the training.
Last question asked participants their comments regarding their personal training
requirements. Those who showed their interest for an online training course stressed the
importance of adapting the training to their free time and availability. They also would like
to divide the course in little blocks, not to take away too much time at once to people who
already have a full time job.
Project No. LLP-LdV-ToI-11-CY-1671107
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
[communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Conclusions
It is almost impossible to indicate which areas of the course are considered more important
and which are considered less important. Every Country showed a different result. This
probably stresses the importance of the opposite: keeping the training balanced in every
aspect. For instance, if Spanish participants showed very poor interest in the editorial area,
it proved to be the most important aspect of the package for Italian participants, while the
opposite can be said for the Social media part. What could be pointed out clearly though, is
that the preferred method of learning is face to face – even if people says not to have much
free time – and they expect this project to open their minds giving them ideas for
innovation and new skills for their everyday jobs.
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