TV must constantly innovate to stay true, says Laurent-Eric Le Lay, chairman, TF1 Publicité.

Speaking on day one of the Festival of Media Global in Rome, Le Lay discussed how TV can remain relevant in a our digitally challenging and fragmented industry.

“Over the past few years TV has been pronounced dead,” said Le Lay.

“I’’m surprised to hear influent people announcing the death of TV. But I’’m not worried -– a similar death to me was forecasted for cinema when TV came along.”

Le Lay claimed that today, TV consumption has never been so high, and the quality of programming is getting better and better.

He also said that emotion plays a big part in TV’’s success, citing sports and the Super Bowl in particular as a medium creating new records for viewing figures year-on-year.

During the tragic Charlie Hebdo attacks earlier this year, TV viewing increased by a whole hour per day on average which Le Lay explains is a result of people “looking for emotions.”

Discussing TF1’’s content strategy he said: “If you take the example of a TV series, our job isn’’t to promote a great series like ‘House of Cards’ every year -– it’’s every day.”

“Creativity and innovation make television more impactful every day. We spend above €900m on programmes every year. We are also working hard on technical innovation in order to be more creative,” he said.

Touching on digital, Le Lay described it as TV’’s “best friend” and that the power of TV is amplified by social networks.

“It allows us to access audiences who were previously difficult to reach.”

To end his keynote, Le Lay pointed out that the new digital world is not only a question of new content or new distribution, it also means that we must change the way we sell television advertising.

“Big Data will enable us to quantify the content and help us to sell.”