W. Paterson Ferns is president and ceo of the Banff Television Festival.

It’s a cliche, but we are living in a world of change. And it’s even affecting an old techno-peasant like me! I haven’t graduated beyond the fountain pen, but I’ve always insisted that the organizations I manage be on the leading edge of technology. At the Banff Television Festival, we’re introducing fantastic new project management software: cpr from Tecskor. There are even rumors that a computer will appear on my desk before the millennium.

But what the industry as a whole must recognize is that a paradigm shift has taken place. Broadcasters have acknowledged the digital revolution, but only in the last six months. Now, they’ve ‘got it’. natpe is booming, thanks to new media exhibitors. I’ll be hosting a major part of MIPNET Day @ MIPTV. The television business is going interactive: e-this, i-that, @ the other…

Unfortunately, many producers haven’t ‘got it’: they wish the digital revolution would go away. Sure, they like their nonlinear post-production systems and their digital cameras. But new distribution platforms? Where’s the money? they ask. As Sam Sniderman once said to me, ‘First you make the market; then you make the money.’ You cannot ‘accommodate’ the digital revolution by simply adding a website to your program, or doing a little repurposing for broadband delivery. It’s not an ‘add-on’ world: it is time to rethink our approach to content creation.

I recall the words of a Banff Rockie Award winner some five years ago: David Fanning, executive producer of wgbh’s Frontline, speculated that, in the future, a television program would simply be the ‘executive summary’ of the content he created. And he showed me back then just what intelligent production planning can achieve across media.

Five years on, producers must be talking ‘content’, not ‘program’; they should target their audience, then choose the medium to reach that audience; abandon the unitary approach and embrace a multidisciplinary one. Producers must explore all the synergies, cross-promotional opportunities, reinforcement, extension and enhancement within the content they create. Good broadcast material may not be good broadband material, and vice versa. Learn the vocabulary and develop a style for each medium. Horses for courses.

Transcripts of your show do not a website make. And even good websites go stale. How to bring audiences back? Create entertainment content appropriate to the web. Former Just For Laughs president Andy Nulman, now the chief executive retina at Eyeball Glue, is doing just that.

The Blair Witch Project identified its audience and the medium to reach them long before anyone got to see the program. It is the creative sector – the producers – who must imagine the future, generating the opportunities, forging the tools for all the media now at their disposal. Some are doing this brilliantly. The rest better catch up.

How are we at Banff addressing the digital revolution? Bigger new media focus seminars are planned for BTVF 2000; enhanced cyberpitches; cyberlunches; bringing the digital practitioner firmly onto centre stage. And we launch a new initiative on Feb. 24 in Toronto: the first Banff_NATPE seminar and luncheon. Our theme: Broadcast/Broadband: Content in a Digital Age. What else? To remain the preeminent event for program makers, we welcome the paradigm shift.