SIME Talks 12: Annie Wegelius, SVT, Director of Program's, talks about innovation within the public services television company

Annie Wegelius is impressive. She is not the kind of corporate personnel who would bend over when you talk digital jargon with her about why the new media would swallow up traditional media. Instead, she stands up, embraces the change in consumption pattern and executes innovation within the “huge dinosaur”. She was quite vociferous in her views about how the traditional media should fight the fire with the digital media on stage at SIME last year and cited SVT as a classic case study. When going through some digital tapes, I managed to find this short talk and decided to feature her as the protagonist for this week’s SIME Talks. The talk can be found below (about 1.40 mins)

View SVT’s web here

View Annie Wegelius’ profile here (PDF Download)

SVT (Sveriges Television), for our international audience is the is the Swedish public service television company with the widest range of programming of all TV companies in Sweden. Following a completely non commercial route (no advertisements), Swedes wherever they might be are happy to pay a licensing fee to tune into the most trusted Swedish media.

Before joining SVT in May 2007, Annie has been an entrepreneurial part of the TV and media industry for the past 25 years. She was part of the founding team of the first Scandinavian commercial broadcaster TV 3 acting as the channels first programming director. She then founded and headed her own production company Wegelius TV that grew to become one of the leading independent production companies in the region in the 90s.

SIME 07 – Annie Wegelius from SIME on Vimeo.

The SVTplay.se which features shows and content straight from SVT’s stable is more than impressive for a public services company and no doubt is Annie Wegelius walking her talk. It won’t do any harm for Rupert Murdoch and co to take a leaf straight off SVT and Annie’s books.