Perceptions of Digital Migration on Media Production South America: A Focus on Argentina

Abstract

Brazil and Mexico are market leaders for the digital switchover in Latin America and are the countries closest to completing the process. Although they have chosen different technologies for digital terrestrial television, they both demonstrate that actively involving the broadcasting industry is key to success, and that the government also has to promote digital switchover and help the poorest citizens acquire digitally compliant devices. Digital switchover can be a lengthy process in large countries that rely on terrestrial television as their main television platform. This has regional consequences, because countries at an advanced stage of digital switchover cannot easily re-allocate digital dividend frequencies for mobile use while neighboring countries are still using these frequencies for broadcasting. The main challenges that Latin American countries face concern the management of the simulcast period and the switch-off process. The best-practice examples of Brazil and Mexico could, however, benefit other countries in the region such as Argentina in terms of identifying the network parameters that will best meet market demand, involving stakeholders, and carrying out pilot tests. Digital switchover calls for strong government support and action to tackle challenges as they arise. Therefore, the paper examined the perceived influence of digital migration on the performance of La Plata Media Group on Argentina. The study embraced a case study design considering the fact that it only used one institution, La Plata Media Group to gather the information that was used for analysis. The data obtained was analyzed using the content analysis since it was qualitative. The study concluded that digital migration was a cheerful incident to be adopted by La Plata Media Group despite it had the hurdles of the high cost of procuring the digital facilities, lack of adequate information, technology experts, poor infrastructure in the country and the lack of regulatory legal framework on the use of digital platforms. The study also concluded that digital migration spurred the productive information acquisition and news distribution within the organization. The study also, concluded that the organization majorly depended on the internal product re-innovation to establish new products to the viewers. The study further established the organization had ushered in a relook at the competitive service strategy to align it to the existing market situation. The study recommended that La Plata Media Group need to constantly welcome the use of the digital platforms to enhance its performance and enhance the cost effective. The study also recommended the government to implement strategies and policies that minimize unhealthy and unfair competition amongst the media houses in Argentina to make the firms grow in their future digitization. Besides, the study recommended La Plata Media Group to continue espousing the digitization of its contents and training of the employees to improve the skills and competency, thus higher efficiency.

Key words; Digital Migration, Media Production, La Plata Media Group & Argentina.