I’ll be heading to London’s Le Meridien hotel in Piccadilly next week to hear some of the UK’s top media decision makers debate the future of broadcasting; hence the event’s name: the Future of Broadcasting conference, courtesy of the IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs) and MarketForce . The first morning’s panel alone should be worth the admission fee. There can’t be many occasions when top execs at the BBC (Caroline Thomson), ITV (Michael Grade), Five (Dawn Airey) and BSkyB (Mike Darcey) have gathered together around the same table. Indeed, there might be a few hints at anti-trust activity if they did it too often, given that they represent more or less the entire UK television industry, with the primary and unfortunate exception of Channel Four – they will be appearing separately in the following session, but I don’t suppose we should read too much into that. I just hope the panel’s chairman manages to get these senior figures to avoid the usual platitudes about the strength of the UK broadcast industry, British TV being the best in the world and the impact of the Digital Britain report, and address the awkward issues, such as: - Why does the BBC need so much money from licence fee payers? - Is Sky’s domination of the UK pay TV market a good thing for British broadcasting? - Can ITV survive without being acquired by a major overseas media firm? Given that there are only 20 minutes for discussion this seems unlikely, but we live in hope. In any case, it looks like a fascinating couple of days and I’ll be reporting back whether or not the key questions are answered. Twitter: twitter.com/DavidMercer_SA Client Reading: Global Digital Media Growth Slows to 2.7% in Q4 2008