INTERMAG General Assembly Ljubljana May, 23/24, 2003

Draft: Proposed Minutes

1. Opening of the General Assembly

Mariolina Bronzini (RAI), INTERMAG President, welcomed the participants and thanked Television Slovenij for the invitation. She also excused Gerd, who couldn't make it to Ljubljana for personal reasons and thanked Marianne Hoffmann for kindly replacing her at this meeting.

2. Approval of the „Proposed Minutes“ of the General Assembly Munich, May 3/4 2002

3. Approval of the Amended Statutes Statutes attached
Two amendments:

• Between meetings, applying for membership is possible via e-mail and provisional membership will be granted until the next meeting

• Deutsche Welle takes up the invoicing from July 2003 on

4. Presidency
Since there were no candidates, the General Assembly decided that Mariolina Bronzini (RAI) and Gerhard Losher (BR) should continue.

5. Membership

1. New Members:

• Applying for Membership:

1. DW/"Euromaxx": Reinhard Behm and Eberhard Sucker introduced the new programme "Euromaxx", being broadcast Monday till Friday and launched in July 2003. It will be covering German and European good news themes ranging from culture over life style, royalty, fashion, charts to celebrities and luxury. Politics are not on the menu. A high class guest will be in the studio. Duration of the programme: 25' divided in 5-6 items of 2 to 4 minutes length. Not all the items will be uploaded, since there will be purchases due to the nature of the programme and the mass of items. It was suggested that "Euromaxx" could offer once a week about 5 items in the exchange. Samples were shown on Saturday before the screening and the programme became approved.
   
   

2. MTV/Politour: Agata Barath confirmed the renewal of this programme, formerly being an INTERMAG member. This 30 minutes programme being broadcast every second Saturday consists of 3 items of different lengths dealing with background stories of cultural, social and life style nature. A sample was shown on Saturday at the beginning of the screening and the programme was also accepted.

• Latvian Television has shown some interest. The question came up if we should try to lure programmes from enlargement countries into INTERMAG.
  The Assembly agreed that it would be preferable to get French or English and also Spanish magazines again in the exchange, although it had been proven to be quite a hopeless endeavour.
  But also programmes from EU enlargement countries would be welcome. Marianne Hoffmann suggested that we could try to establish contact with such programmes via the EU Commission. Studio Brussels of Deutsche Welle, which is situated nearby, could be of assistance.
  
  

• Left INTERMAG 2002:

1. YLE: due to new programme structure, they only want to sell and purchase

2. NPS/NOVA: same problem

3. RTE/Primetime: was a sleeping member for some years and finally took the decision to leave.

4. HRT: had no programmes in the exchange

5. RAI/Sereno Variabile
   
   

2. Changes among members: New Titles, Formats, Contacts etc.
   No changes reported.

6. INTERMAG Programme Exchange System (PES)

1. Functioning of the INTERMAG Exchange:

Gerhard Losher would like to urge the members that make good use of INTERMAG (e.g. RAI and IBA) to also upload the film material. Presently only BR and DW upload the films. Perhaps only for those who put the material in the Internet on their own Website - for instance SFDRS/10vor10 - the uploading is not compulsory, since the members are able to watch their items.

2. Virtual Screening:

Gerhard Losher proposes to organise a virtual screening via the PES in Autumn. By that date the members should look out two of their best items of the past 6 months and load them into the PES. Those who are not able to do that, could send their Beta's to Gerd at the Co-ordination Centre. She then could take care of the uploading. If there is some money left, after having paid Tecmath, even an English translation could be provided. With 20 INTERMAG members this would result in a selection of 40 items.

7. New Pricing Model

1. Payments of the invoices 2002/2003
   There were some problems concerning last and this year's payments, due to various reasons.

2. Costs of the PES Appendix
   Gerhard Losher explains the pricing model. He managed to almost halve the price for each member. Question is now whether we stay with progressive rates according to the number of member magazines with one station or decide that every member simply pays the same amount. The hope that progressive rates would attract more members didn't come true, so this cannot be an argument for keeping up this system. Furthermore the handling is much easier in a system with equal fees.

The Assembly unanimously approved the price of 1500 € per member which would lead to an overflow of about 7.900 €.

The overflow has two advantages:

• If some members don't pay (which occurred last and this year) INTERMAG would still be able to pay the fee to Tecmath.

• If the sum comes in completely, the overflow would be divided by the number of members and deducted of next year's fee.

The new magazine of DW/"Euromaxx" proposed to also pay for membership. Since the workload for the CC is solely covered by DW/Studio Brussels (consequently Europa Aktuell does not pay), further DW programmes should be invoiced.

Udo Biss asked whether it would make a financial difference if we would restrict the PES to a database with only metadata and no upload.

In this case two problems occur:

• Although one can easily find another system to communicate via e-mail or Press releases, a language problem could occur in some cases (Hungarian, Slovenian). (Note CC: the PES also is a database, without it searching for reports would be extremely effortful)

• Items cannot be watched , which makes the choosing of reports unattractive for some members.

3. Invoicing by Deutsche Welle

• Agreement DW/members:

Since Flying Documents doesn't want to do the invoicing anymore and Tecmath only agreed to send bills for the first part of 2003 to fill in, another party to the contract had to be found. To guarantee a continuation of the PES, Deutsche Welle offered to sign the contract with Tecmath and agreed to take over the invoicing of the INTERMAG members. To make sure that the money will be transferred to Deutsche Welle, their legal department drafted an agreement between themselves and every INTERMAG member.
Udo Biss and Mariolina Bronzini fear that such an agreement could alarm some responsibles, who would then start an investigation on the INTERMAG exchange and find out that it isn't an official organisation and administrative personnel, who never heard of INTERMAG will be involved. They might wonder why a contract must be signed now since they have paid for so many years. Contracts always are thoroughly checked by different controllers and could just lead to an opposite result. Problem is that if we want to keep up the new prices, we cannot give the invoicing back to Flying Documents Media, since they add 10.000 € to cover the risk of not being able to collect the money.
If it is clearly stated in the agreement how much every member has to pay and if a letter is added explaining that this procedure saves money it could work. But even better would be a kind and unofficial letter explaining the situation and asking to agree with the new pricing model and the invoicing by Deutsche Welle.

• Contract with Tecmath:

Deutsche Welle offered to sign the contract with Tecmath in order to guarantee a continuation of the PES. The financial department of DW will send out invoices beginning of July.

8. Next Meeting

No invitation was forwarded for next year.

In order to avoid one of the mayor costs for the hosting station the following proposal was made: every desk could provide an English translation which could be read out by a presenter so that translators could be abolished.

Deutsche Welle Studio Brussels could check with the European Commission if they would agree to invite INTERMAG, as an international organisation that tries to integrate the new EU-members in European broadcasting. Studio Brussels could take care of the organisation.

8. Screening Session (List attached)

President Vice-President

Mariolina Bronzini Gerhard Losher