ERCIM News No.25 - April 1996 - INESC
German Media go on the Internet
by Manfred Bogen, Michael Lenz and Susanne Zier
Individuals, organisations and governments use the Internet for a
wide range of activities. As part of the booming Web scene in Germany more
and more radio and television stations, newspapers and press agencies looking
for new audience and publicity go on-line in addition to their traditional
program branches. For a sound service start external support is needed.
The time where Internet was a big playground for adults and children is
almost over. Individuals, organisations and governments use the Internet
for a wide range of professional and commercial activities. The Internet
and especially the Internet application World Wide Web is an ideal tool
for media companies and organisations to deliver their program and content:
a world-wide coverage, multilingual and multimedial, and finally cost-effective.
Broadcasters in the Web
The media market currently undergoes a radical change. New technical buzzwords
like 'multimedia' p; the word-of-the-year 1995 in Germany p; and
'on-line surfing' become popular and common. There is an increasing general
need for political, economical and social information and it should be available
on an individual basis. Today, more than 30 German stations are present
on the Web ranging from national and international providers to regional
or even local and from commercial to broadcasters under public law.
The major goal for radio and television stations and other media companies
to be on the air, is to improve their information capabilities and to get
a faster, more flexible (interactive) and closer contact to their audience
in the preparation, transmission and follow-up treatment of their program
and contents:
- information offers in the Web give users an easy and quick access
through their normal Internet connectivity
- information providers get a fast feedback by the integration of electronic
mail
- service providers have an exact analysis of the usage and relevance
of their offerings.
For international media companies additionally the Web is an ideal opportunity
to expand their often multilingual program and world-wide coverage. As a
general side effect existing program material can be recycled and there
is a hope to increase the attractiveness of the program. Beside the interactive
components, the Web is mainly used for merchandising and to provide program
schedules and organisational information. Television stations very often
offer background material for their magazine programs as well as tickets
for their shows. Radio stations offer mainly actual news, information about
their transmission frequencies, tables of events or interviews with prominent
persons.
A good start is a must
It is rather easy, to start a Web-based information service and many radio
and television stations went on-line very fast with impressive results,
at a first glance. To keep a certain quality level related to the information
provided and to the availability of the service is much more difficult and
sometimes tedious. The trap is: once you have started, you have to continue,
especially if the service is of public interest. So many broadcasters' pages
are 'under construction', today and tomorrow.
When broadcasting people meet Web people, there is sometimes an amount
of enthusiasm which makes almost everything look possible. Pictures and
animations are integrated into the Web. The most recent, unfortunately not
standardised features of a new browser's version are used and everything
looks really nice, if you are on the Web server itself and have the newest
version of the browser. Network aspects as a fast Internet connectivity
for the broadcaster are neglected and nobody is thinking about the poor
end user sitting behind a slow modem trying to load the megabytes of data.
The result of this euphoria is often frustration and loss of the intended
audience. Two very popular German television stations went off-line with
their Web server recently. As with other Internet applications, a careful
planning and in most cases external help is urgently needed. Apart from
these technical problems the media companies entering the game have to face
a certain uncertainty of strategic importance:
- whether these new applications could really satisfy the new goals
of the broadcasting service
- whether it could be possible to attract new audience world-wide
- about the amount of money to invest for personnel, servers, and bandwidth
- whether a return of investments would be guaranteed.
The risks for the company should be minimised. A traditional business-oriented
way to solve this problem is outsourcing with a clear distribution of responsibilities
and work. Setting up Internet services requires networking and system administration
knowledge as well as skills in organising and preparing the data (layout
and the information design in the World Wide Web). The input has to come
from the media company itself.
External Support Needed
GMD's department for network engineering is responsible for the establishment
of national and international wide-area networks in a multiprotocol environment.
It performed the development of communication software and the engineering
of value-added services like electronic mail, file transfer, and directory
services for different national and international customers. High-speed
networking with ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and multimedia applications
are the main work items here, especially World Wide Web-based developments,
the interface design, and works related to Secure Internet. While most of
the past projects were performed for the scientific community, it is now
the goal to transfer experiences and to do research and development in a
business environment, e.g. media companies. The major goals for cooperation
projects with media companies are:
- scalability
- security
- quality of service
- extendibility
- migration.
At present, GMD's research group 'Value-added Services' is cooperating among
others with:
- Deutsche Welle, founded in 1953, Germany's international broadcasting
service with radio and television programs, on the Internet since the end
of 1994
- Hessischer Rundfunk, a radio and television station under public law
located in Frankfurt, on the Internet since early February 1996
- Bundespresseamt, the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government,
with a scheduled service start in March 1996 on the occasion of the CeBIT'96
trade fair in Hannover.
Experiences
In spite of the pressure from the market, it is very important not to start
in a hurry but to plan carefully the activities and the service to be offered.
Once a Web-based service is started, it has to be continued professionally
which is much more work-intensive and difficult than just coming up with
a Web server. Our advice to newcomers in the Internet business is: if you
feel uncertain in any aspect, rely on external, experienced support. Our
steps to reach the final goal to move the services to our cooperation partners
responsibility and to introduce Internet applications in the media organisations
themselves are:
to improve the service offered on easy terms
to adapt the program and content even more to the possibilities of Internet
(real-audio, real-video etc.)
- to continue training for the networking people (i.e. operation, security,
quality assurance) in order to migrate the service to the cooperation partner,
if wished
- to teach the program makers how to use the Internet as information
base for an attractive program and content
- to convince the internal administration to use Internet applications
for internal communication and cooperation.
Please contact:
Manfred Bogen p; GMD
Tel: +49 2241 14 3192
E-mail: Manfred.Bogen@gmd.de
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