Euronews, an international news channel covering the world from a European perspective, is one of the mainglobal news broadcasting brands. The channel was launched in 1993 and now is broadcast in a number of languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Arabic. The channel, distributed on numerous DTH platforms around the globe, also is a major buyer of satellite capacity.

One of the next challenges facing euronews is when to add HD broadcast to its offerings. For news channels, it may seem less compelling to make the move to HD, plus it is also more complex, given the acquisition of source material in the field.

Via Satellite spoke to euronews CEO Philippe Cayla at the Arabsat Broadcaster’s Forum in Beirut, about the channel’s HD strategy and how euronews intends to use satellite technology to increase the reach of its content.
 

NAB E-daily: What are Euronews’ plans to begin HD broadcasting?

Cayla: We want to start HD as soon as possible. There is a market in the United States. It was also mentioned at the Arabsat Broadcaster’s Forum. There are already a number of HD channels in the United States and the United Kingdom, so quite frankly, we need to be in HD. The issue we have is that we need our sources to also be in HD, however, we will start producing in HD ourselves for our magazine type programs. We have already made changes in the production chain. Now we plan to start HD next year.

NAB E-daily: How will you acquire HD source material?

Cayla: We are talking to all of our shareholders about getting the source material in HD. I think this will take some time. I think we will start with some HD and some SD features, and we are starting the transformation process this year. We hope that five years from now everything will be in HD.

NAB E-daily: How will the move to HD affect your capacity requirements?

Cayla: We have to decide which regions of the world we are going to do HD. We are using capacity on 38 different satellites. Some satellites are DTH satellites, and the capacity deal is locked in with the pay-TV platform. But in many cases we are paying for the capacity, so in this case we will be looking at what deals we can do for capacity. We are not going to be on every satellite at once. Certainly, the United States will be a priority for us. Europe will come second and the Middle East will be third.

NAB E-daily: There is understandable rationale behind a sports or movie channel going HD. Is it really compelling for news broadcaster such as euronews?

Cayla: I think it is becoming more important. Obviously, for a movie channel, it is perhaps more important. When you start watching movies in HD, you can’t then go back. You are seeing more and more 3-D movies become available such as “Avatar.” Once you see “Avatar,” you will want 3-D every time. For movies, it is a must to be in HD. For major sports events such as the World Cup, a lot of content will be produced in HD, but everything has a cost. It is not just the costs of satellite capacity but also the production costs involved. You also have the option of going IP, and this is something we have been discussing. IP is potentially a good alternative to satellite when looking at HD for broadcast transmission.
 

NAB E-daily: Is HD a priority for euronews?

Cayla: I would say it is not an immediate priority [due to issues with getting HD content from our sources]. It is three to five years out.

NAB E-daily: If HD is not the priority for the company, what would you say is?

Cayla: We want to start developing Web sites in different languages. This is the first priority. The second priority is to develop on-demand and then also HD offerings, but we would say video-on-demand (VOD) free of charge. It has become some kind of catch-up news site. We would like to develop this VOD offer. We would like to finalize deals with cable as well as IPTV operators. We are starting a VOD service in France with cable operator Numericable, and we are now looking to take this to other territories in Europe. We would like to deepen our relationship with cable and IPTV operators in terms of on-demand offerings. There may also be possibilities to do this with satellite broadcasters out there, but it is more difficult to have a VOD offer on satellite, so VOD and HD are two of the main technical challenges that we face in the next three to five years.