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WAEA 25th Annual Conference & Exhibition
21-24 September 2004
Washington State Convention & Trade Center

REAL-TIME TV

Cathi Breza (Discovery Communications) and Chris Merry (Rockwell Collins/ Airshow Systems) took the hot seat to explore issues facing delivery of real-time television inflight.

Technical challenges in transmitting television content to aircraft via satellite include: atmospheric conditions, the aircraft's motion, turning and climbing, use of bandwidth, and the antenna size and weight. The system must be compatible with the installed IFE system and must function on the aircraft both in the air and on the ground, Merry emphasized.

Demand is apparently growing in Europe . The Middle East has the highest rate of adoption of this technology and the largest number of recent aircraft orders. The Middle East also is a particularly difficult region to achieve consistent signal reception, Merry said.

Cathi Breza explained that content rights might be owned by the entity that paid for production; rights could be split in the event of a co-production; or rights might reside with a third party (unrelated to the production). Other rights cover talent, music, format, and site. Agreements can be exclusive, non-exclusive (similar to Split and Shared), rights buy-backs, co-financing, and expirations.

It can be confusing, Breza admitted, adding that it is the content provider's job to sort it out. Having savvy buyers or requestors is very helpful, for all involved.

"I hope this puts the myth of 'content is free' to rest!" she said.

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