Bill Roberts is president and CEO of Vision TV. He is also a founder of Public Broadcasters International and member of its steering committee.

Later this month, Public Broad-

casters International will celebrate its 10th anniversary at its annual conference in Toronto, bringing the organization full circle.

It was a decade ago that Bernard Ostry, then chairman and CEO of TVOntario, had the idea of bringing together the world’s public broadcasters for a gathering in Toronto.

In the 10 years since, PBI has become the premier forum for players in this category to share ideas, strategies and tactics. It provides opportunity for broadcasters as diverse as the BBC and TV de Mozambique to discuss how they do what they do – and how they can go about doing it better.

At the Toronto conference, to be held Sept. 21-23, PBI members will take a hard look at the current state of public broadcasting. They will examine changes in technology and funding models, and will set out a mission for the future that embraces continued education, citizenship and culture.

All in all, the agenda looks a lot like it did 10 years ago. But the environment in which public broadcasters now operate is dramatically different.

In 1991, digital television was still in its embryonic stages, and new technological permutations such as personal video recorders had yet to be conceived. In the direct-to-home business, the talk was of American ‘death stars.’

For many PBI members, meanwhile, the most pressing concern was the growing clamor for their privatization – a global trend sparked in large part by the U.S. policies that Newt Gingrich was responsible for promulgating.

Today, the pressure on this front has somewhat diminished. That’s partly due to disillusionment with some of the actual results of privatization. But it’s also because more and more public broadcasters are changing the way they do business. Driven by economic necessity, they are adopting more of a private-sector approach to meeting public-sector goals.

One of the most fruitful ways of doing this is to find private-sector partners who share the same sense of public mission – who recognize the value of treating audiences not just as consumers, but as citizens. At a time when many things ‘public’ – including health care, water treatment and social programs – face increasing financial and political pressure, it makes good strategic sense to build such a network of like-minded allies, both at home and abroad.

PBI members interested in examples of successful public/private partnerships would do well to look to the new Category 1 digital specialty service Country Canada (a joint venture between Corus Entertainment and CBC) and the French-language arts channel ARTV.

The possibility of partnering with public-service broadcasters (i.e. APTN, CPAC, CBC Newsworld, Vision

TV, RDI and TV5) also warrants

consideration.

Earlier this year, for example, Vision and U.S. public broadcaster Thir-teen/WNET New York cemented a deal that makes them coproduction partners and guarantees reciprocal rights of first negotiation to licence-specific types of content.

Partnership initiatives can transcend cultural and linguistic differences. Witness the venture between TVO and Japan’s NHK for the coproduction of science programming. Officially launched in 1990, this collaboration has resulted in more than 220 different productions and nearly 450 hours of programming in Japanese, French and English.

Similar initiatives between public broadcasters and public-service broadcasters are almost certainly taking place in other countries. PBI is positioned to gather information about such partnerships, and to encourage more of these kinds of efforts to bolster public broadcasting.

As it happens, the PBI conference in Toronto also coincides with the launch of an ambitious review of Canada’s broadcasting system by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

The committee’s investigation will focus on the impact of new technologies, the changing patterns of media ownership and the role of the CBC in the broadcast universe. PBI 2001 presents an opportunity for public broadcasters from all over the world to provide input to this debate.

Private broadcasters have a number of industry bodies designed to help advance their collective interests and sharpen their business edge. PBI can play just as powerful a role for public broadcasters.

In the decade since PBI was launched, the array of challenges facing public broadcasters has expanded greatly. If ever there was a time for these players to go global and pursue new partnerships, this is it.