An overview of all Catholic TV seminars for producers and leaders of Catholic television stations and production centres
Fr. Peter Malone, former OCIC President, elected as SIGNIS President
First steps : creation of a "SIGNIS TVdesk"
In November 2001, during the first assembly of the new SIGNIS association, a number of former officers of OCIC were elected to the board. As a result, some members were preoccupied. Was SIGNIS going to turn into a cinema organization, neglecting radio and television ? Already in Unda some producers had the impression that the organization in the past was too 'academically' oriented and not active enough in supporting television production and distribution of programmes.
So, the new board and particularly the general secretariat were challenged to set up a concrete strategy to give the support of the new organization to the members working in the fields of television and production. One of the vice-presidents, Peter Thomas, a television producer, was nominated in charge of a 'SIGNIS TV Desk', with the help of the secretary general.
A follow up could be given to initiatives taken in the past by Unda and OCIC. For instance, since 1992, OCIC had organized a series of 'Video Forums' gathering not only video producers but also a number of leaders involved in Catholic programming for television. Was that an experience which could be re-adapted in the new context of SIGNIS? Unda, together with WACC Europe, had organized regularly 'Christian Television Festivals' that were very well appreciated, but limited to Europe. Was it an experience to offer to other parts of the world?
Steps had already been taken during the period of the merger. The Catholic Radio and Television Network (CRTN), linked to Aid to the Church in Need, was active in providing television programmes to a number of stations and church institutions in the former communist countries. CRTN was willing to broaden its service to other regions of the world. A grant was given by SIGNIS in order to help to develop the CRTN website by adding a Spanish version, mainly to serve the Latin-American Catholic television institutions. CRTN was also developing contacts in Asia, mainly through the Hong Kong Diocesan Audiovisual Centre.
Attending meetings in different countries, both the President and the Secretary general took the opportunity to visit a number of Catholic television stations. They went to KRO, the Catholic Television station in the Netherlands. They went to EWTN, the radio and television station of Mother Angelica, in the US. Over the years, they had the opportunity to visit Sat2000, in Rome, KTO and Le Jour du Seigneur, in Paris, stations in Peru, in the Dominican Republic, in the Caribbean (Trinidad and Grenada), in Lebanon (Télé Lumière and the Centre Vincentien), in Cyprus (Sat 7)… This gave a good picture of the vast diversity of situations.
2003 - Cape Town About "public market" and "internal market"
In November 2003, the SIGNIS Assembly of delegates took place in Cape Town. It was a good opportunity to organize in conjunction with it a Radio workshop and the first seminar for Catholic TV/Producers. In fact, the main purpose of the seminar was to listen to the participants, to see what kind of services were to be set up for the benefit of such a diversity of Catholic televisions and production centres. Was there anything in common between CRTN (production and distribution of programmes based in Germany), Kuangchi Program Service (Jesuit production centre in Taiwan), the Hong Kong Diocesan Audiovisual Centre, the Centro Televisivo Vaticano (with a worldwide distribution of exclusive coverage of Vatican events), Maryknoll (USA), Frank Frost Productions (USA), EWTN (USA), Albert Street Productions (Australia), Metanoia (South Africa), KRO (Netherlands), Nova-T (Capuchin production centre in Torino, Italy), the Audiovisual Centre in Lebanon and the Polish Video Studio of Gdansk (former production centre of Solidarnosc)?
The first step was to know each other. Part of the meeting was devoted to sharing information. Then came some proposals. In the conclusions, we read : 'The SIGNIS strategy for production and distribution has two objectives: to reach the public market and to reach the internal Catholic market. To reach the public market a professional marketing strategy must be applied. SIGNIS is studying the possibility of creating a sales office, a catalogue of the best productions and to develop the presence of Catholic producers in TV markets. For the internal market, the promotion of the SIGNIS brand and producing in multimedia format should be encouraged.'
2004 - Strasbourg Three projects: Signs Magazine, fairy tales cartoons, mission archives This was November 2003. A few months later, in April 2004, the SIGNIS Board met in Strasbourg. Again, the opportunity of that SIGNIS meeting was taken to invite the TV/Producers to join Strasbourg for the second seminar. The programme included a visit to the studios of Arte, the European public-service cultural television channel established in cooperation between France and Germany.
Most of the participants present in Cape Town came to Strasbourg, joined this time by representatives from Belgium, the two Catholic television institutions of France (Le Jour du Seigneur and KTO), Rome Reports (the news agency based in Rome), Sat2000, Télé Lumière from Lebanon, Blagovest Media, active in Russia, TV Seculo 21 from Brazil and the Paso Alto Group from Spain. Some twenty five institutions were represented at the TV/Producers' seminar in Strasbourg.
Again, the programme offered the possibility to each participant to present their institution and to show samples of programmes and productions.
Apart from efforts to promote the programmes of all institutions, three concrete projects were chosen. One was to coproduce a television magazine called 'SIGNS'. Peter Thomas, with the support of Sat2000 was in charge of preparing a pilot programme. A second one was to present, for funding by the European Community, a series of animated films about traditional fairy tales belonging to the European cultural heritage. Three institutions promised to collaborate in that project: Imago from the Czech Republic, Studio Malembe Maa (Congo - Belgium) and Paso Alto (Barcelona).The third project was to collect pictures and films made by missionaries since the early times of photography and film, to digitalize that material and to offer it as archives at the Catholic television stations and producers. Two institutions were involved in the project: Telecre (Belgium) and Nova-T (Italy).
Msgr Enrique Planas, the delegate of the Pontifical Council for social communications, also representative of the Vatican Film Library, who was present for half a day, indicated how much he appreciated the initiative taken by SIGNIS to organize such seminars for the leaders of Catholic television.
The delegate of Imago invited the participants to come to Prague for the next seminar, scheduled for April 2005. He offered a visit to the famous puppet studio where Jiri Trnka made all his films and where Imago, with the support of Le Jour du Seigneur was producing a series of films under the title : 'The Time of the Foundations', describing the three religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
2005 - Prague Signs first pilot, funding for mission archives
Everything was ready for an exceptional seminar in Prague. The meeting was going to be hosted in the auditorium of the Cardinal's palace. The Cardinal himself was supposed to open the seminar. Again the number of participants was increasing. But at the end of March, Pope John Paul II went to hospital and died on the 2nd of April. A large number of the registered participants being in charge of religious programmes had to cover the events, the ceremonies in Rome, the funeral. The Cardinal was called to Rome. Eighteen participants still joined the seminar.
Peter Thomas presented the first pilot of the SIGNS Magazine, realized with the collaboration of Sat2000. Participants made some suggestions. Those who had contributed to the magazine offered to take the suggestions into account and to produce a second pilot. Peter Thomas took the responsibility to coordinate this second pilot.
The proposal of a series of cartoons on European fairy tales had not been presented in due time and according to the rules of the European Commission. It was too difficult to face all administrative difficulties for the first experience of such an international collaborative work.
The project about photographic and cinematographic archives from the missionaries was in better state. Some German funding agencies were ready to finance part of the costs for the collection of material and the digitalization.
Exchanges of programmes and resources between participants was another result of the previous seminars so that the feeling of building a community of interests and services was more and more shared by all Catholic TV/producers.
In Prague, Msgr Planas, the representative of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, surprisingly announced that the Council was going to organize a World Congress of Catholic Television, in Madrid. One of the purposes was to give a clear definition of what is a 'Catholic television'. Other purposes were to build a data bank of programmes offered free of charge to all Catholic television stations. The announcement was followed by reactions from the participants. Was it possible and to be desired to fix a definition of what is really 'Catholic television' considering the great variety of initiatives, institutions, contexts? Some producers found it unjust to organize a bank of programmes offered free of charge to the Catholic television stations. A production has a cost that has to be covered.
The fact that SIGNIS was invited to contribute to the organization of the Congress spoke in favour of the idea of organizing in 2006 the TV/Producers' seminar in Madrid, a few days before the Congress.
2006 - Madrid Collaborations before the World Congress of Catholic Television The fifth seminar took place in Madrid (7-9 October), shortly before the World Congress of Catholic Television organized jointly by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the Episcopal Conference of Spain. Again the proximity with that Congress encouraged a larger number of participants to join the two events. Participants came from the Czech Republic, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Korea, India, Taiwan, Canada, USA, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Lebanon, Australia, Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and Burkina Faso.
New programmes were presented by most participants. Agreements were discussed in order to exchange some productions. Collaborations were initiated (for example, the cameraman of Télé Lumière filmed for Frost Productions an interview of a former Jesuit assistant to Father Arrupe). The wish was expressed to organize a seminar in Latin America. Funds were still needed to produce the SIGNS Magazine. The project to digitalize the missions' archives was progressing. Discussions were on the way between Telecre and Le Jour du Seigneur to produce short programmes using the missions' archives. Some participants were preoccupied with projects to be announced during the World Congress of Catholic Television, particularly the ideas of a free of charge programme bank and the creation of a television news agency. At the closing of the seminar, the participants went to the Congress.
2007 – Bucharest Larger participation of Eastern Europe
The sixth seminar took place in Bucharest (19 – 22 November 2007). Programmes were presented by Maryknoll, Frank Frost and EWTN (USA), by Nova-T, H2Onews, Rome Reports and Shineout (Italy). Le Jour du Seigneur showed the short programmes using in a very creative way some material from the missions' archives. Almas (Mexico) and BNC (Argentina) came with new productions. A number of Catholic television stations and production centres from the Eastern part of Europe attended the seminar for the first time : Domus Patris (Russia) and LUX Studio (Slovakia) joined Duna TV (Hungary). Lebanon was largely present and even delegates from centres in Africa (Kenya, Cameroon, Senegal). All together some 45 participants were hosted in a monastery close to Snagov (not far away from Dracula's grave!).
During the seminar in Bucharest the www.catholictv.tv website launched in December 2006 was presented as a tool for the TV/Producers' community to increase the exchange of information and programmes, offering the possibility for streaming video. The option to organize the following seminar in Latin America was discussed. A majority was in favour, although the cost of travelling to South America was seen as an obstacle for a number of participants. It was considered and accepted that such a seminar was going to be more Latin American than worldwide.
2008 – Buenos Aires The vitality of Catholic Television in Latin America The seventh seminar took place in Buenos Aires (Argentina) from 20 – 23 April 2008 in the Argentina Catholic University (UCA). Fifty-five people were registered, a majority coming from the Latin American and Caribbean countries ( Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, Ecuador, Trinidad, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Haiti, Venezuela, Belize, Panama, Peru) but still with participants from France, Hong Kong, Spain, Taiwan, USA, South Africa, and Germany.
This was an extraordinary opportunity to discover the vitality of Catholic television stations and initiatives in that part of the world. A previous meeting – the Latin-American Congress of Catholic Television - had already taken place in Medellin (Colombia) in May 2006. The seminar in Buenos Aires was seen as a new step in the collaboration between stations, production centres in the context of the presence of the Church in the television media. The CELAM (Episcopal Conference of Latin America) was represented at the seminar. A meeting was held at the secretariat of the bishops' conference and the participants went for a visit to the archdiocesan television station Canal 21. From the conclusions taken during the seminar, we would like to point out the offer made by some participants to produce the SIGNS Magazine in Latin America. ADB (Ecuador) took the challenge to produce the first episode of SIGNOS, in collaboration with other production centres in Latin America. The wish was also expressed to have a new seminar in Latin America, probably in Mexico in 2010.
The eight seminar in Chiang Mai Larger opening to Asia and the Pacific, Creativity, Childrens' Rights
The eight seminar is planned to take place in the context of the SIGNIS World Congress, in Chiang Mai (Thailand) from 16 to 22 October 2009. This will give the opportunity for a larger participation for representatives from Catholic television stations and production centres in Asia and the Pacific region. The seminar will give a special attention to creativity and programmes about children and childrens' rights. For more info about conditions and registration, write to : tvdesk@signis.net
Some reflexions
The Catholic television landscape is continuously changing. An increasing number of countries have opened the access to television to private groups, including religious entities. The technologies have made it possible to produce television at a lower cost. Groups of Catholics, religious congregations, dioceses, Episcopal conferences have started their own television station. A large number are 'message driven', with no real business plan, market strategy, professional experience. Some are well equipped, have employed dedicated Catholic professionals, have the support of a large community, even have a worldwide coverage, using satellites. Others have taken the opportunity of a presence in television but without having the capacity to produce programmes expressing the pastoral priorities of their local Church. They rely on programmes offered by larger Catholic television enterprises. Since 2003, the SIGNIS TV Desk modestly weaves links between a growing network of Catholic institutions in the field of television. The task is immense. The conviction is that marvels are happening every day, but also that the Catholic Church has not taken the real measure of what its presence should be in television.
Robert Molhant SIGNIS TV Desk
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