INTERMAG Annual Meeting

INTERMAG Annual Meeting
Cologne

March 24/25 2000

Draft: Proposed Minutes

1. Opening of the General Assembly

Mariolina Bronzini (RAI), INTERMAG President, welcomed the participants and left the floor to Dieter Weirich, Director-General of Deutsche Welle. He addressed some words of welcome to the attending members and stressed that Deutsche Welle will continue to be a committed member. He also assured that Deutsche Welle will support Intermag wherever possible but within certain financial limits.

Approval of the "Proposed Minutes" of the General Assembly in Amsterdam
November 99

3. Membership

(a) New Members:

"Arabesque" / IBA was suspended beginning of this year. IBA would like to replace it by "Globus". The magazine is broadcast every Saturday morning and gives a deeper insight on global matters, sometimes connected to the Israeli reality. Contrary to the weekly magazines no politics or politicians are allowed in this programme. Generally there is one main topic to which 2/3 of the programme is dedicated. There is always a guest in the studio with whom the presenter has an informal conversation, rather than an interview. Two samples were shown at the beginning of the screening and the programme was accepted as a new member.

(b) Leaving INTERMAG:

"Nah Dran" / WDR since the programme was suspended

"Am Schauplatz" / ORF since the programme doesn’t benefit from INTERMAG

Mariolina Bronzini stressed that it is extremely important to inform the CC of any withdrawals as soon as possible since invoices are based on the number of magazines with the same station being member.

4. Co-ordination Centre

(a) Applications for a take-over of the ICC:
Although the members obviously wanted INTERMAG to continue no station came forward with an application to host the ICC. Mariolina Bronzini stressed that RAI is not interested anymore to take up the ICC. If there are still no applications by November 2000, Deutsche Welle will go on provided the workload and the financial burden are minimised.

(b) Future Co-ordination Centre:
Deutsche Welle proposed to have only one meeting a year: first of all this would reduce the costs since Deutsche Welle had to finance this conference almost entirely and secondly it would further minimise the ICC’s working hours. The attendants could think it over and a discussion on this subject was scheduled for the next day. After a short discussion it was decided that there would only be one conference upon invitation of one of the members. The inviting programme would organise the conference, the ICC would merely take care of the paperwork and provide the necessary documents.

5. Miscellaneous

(a) Promotion INTERMAG

Promotape: According to Diederik Bangert the Commission could only air the promotape if at the same time INTERMAG could offer reports free of charge to EC customers. This was unacceptable for the attending members since every newsdesk all over Europe would then be able to broadcast these reports for free.

INTERMAG Website (www.inter-mag.org.) is accessible, but visitors have difficulty entering the members only section (login: inter-mag, password: enter). Daniel Hansch promised to investigate the matter.
The question was raised who should be responsible for the update of the Website since the content needs updating from time to time. It was agreed that the ICC should send information in HTML format to Daniel Hansch of Tecmath, who would then do the necessary changes.

Advertising: It was felt by the attending members that it is high time to start winning new members and preferably by directly contacting responsible editors and convince them of the advantages of INTERMAG membership. In order to start a campaign a working group was established. First task was to draft a letter (attached) with an INTERMAG heading and sent out to interesting magazines. INTERMAG more specifically needs French partners. Also Spanish magazines should be attracted as well as Swedish and Norwegian programmes. In the coming weeks the working group will compose a list of target programmes and provide them with as much info as possible. They would even get the possibility of visiting the PES and try it out.

Members of the Working group: Steffen Gram (DR), Guido Baumhauer (DW), Reinhard Behm (DW), Karin Brans (NPS), Mariolina Bronzini (RAI), Katinka Nowotny (ORF) and Vladimir Spicer (HRT). Deadline for results: 1.10.00.

(b) Functioning of the INTERMAG Exchange: Remarks and/or suggestions

Exchange via EbS: Also here the Commission cannot be of any use for INTERMAG: it is impossible to encrypt material, since the Commission only works with digital video, which would once again lead to an uncontrolled taking of reports. Furthermore the Commission insists on European matters, which would exclude some INTERMAG members.

Exchange via EBU: Mr. Pusterla had prepared a PowerPoint presentation on EBU and finally repeated the offer that was sent to all the members beforehand. EBU could offer best quality and could encrypt the material. Unfortunately the pricing model based on the exchange of 650 items per year seemed too expensive since regular rates for some members turned out to be lower than the one offered to INTERMAG. In addition to this INTERMAG cannot guarantee to fulfil the package of 650 exchanged items per year. The attending members also felt that they don’t always need items that fast, in case they want an item the next day airfreight has proved to be a good solution. If the material is needed faster, a unilateral feed could be organised. This solution would still be cheaper than the EBU offer since members would only make use of it once or twice.
Bottom line: the members obviously don’t need such fast exchange at such high price.

6. New INTERMAG Programme Exchange System (PES)

Members working with the system are satisfied. Still there are some remarks:

(a) Since there is no address under every ordering button, a lot of orderings go directly to the ICC from where they are sent to the offering magazine. Reason is that some magazines cannot agree on one address to send the order to, here the ICC is a good solution. But of course if the co-ordinator is on vacation, some orders lie around at the ICC and are not handled.

The mystery of the ORF translations was lifted: they simply used the Translation Programme of the PES. This tool could save some time but the translations need to be checked afterwards. The members agreed that they would prefer less lines on an item but in comprehensive English.
It was stressed once again to not offer items with rights or to at least mention them.

7. Next Meetings

Next Meeting will be the General Assembly and was planned for 11-12 May, 2001 upon invitation of YLE in Helsinki.
Since elections for President and Vice-President were scheduled for the Autumn meeting and the next conference will only take place in 2001, the attending members were asked if they would accept the presidency to stay on until that conference. The attending members all agreed and it was decided to send out a mail, asking everyone to state their opinion on this extension.

8. Screening Session (List attached)

Every magazine showed one item

President Vice-President

Mariolina Bronzini Reinhard Behm