Philippe Dauman

Why Viacom is beefing up Channel 5

Philippe Dauman at this year's Cambridge Convention

The digital revolution will be televised,” argued ­Viacom chief Philippe Dauman in an upbeat address to the RTS Convention. Twelve months after the US media giant bought Channel 5 for £450m, Dauman offered a positive “end-of-term report on our first year as a British public service broadcaster”.

“Today, I am pleased to reaffirm our commitment to upholding the rights and responsibilities that entails. We pledged that we would increase investment and original creative content – we have, and will continue to do so.”

RTS Cambridge Convention 2015 programme announced

The preliminary programme for this year's RTS Cambridge Convention has been announced. 

The convention, held on a biennial basis, brings together leading figures from the television and its related industry.

This year's event looks forward to television in 2020, focusing on the challenge for content, creativity and business models.

The programme features sessions covering foreign ownership of UK production, the rise of the smart phone in television viewing, and the influence of talent in programme-making.

Philippe Dauman: The king in waiting

Philippe Dauman

Philippe Dauman, Chief Executive of Viacom, the media empire created by nonagenarian Sumner Redstone, has been called many things in his long Viacom career.

One is "dauphin", marking both his succession potential and the fact that he is French-born. Although he has lived almost all of his life in the US, Dauman is a fluent French speaker.

He is "an iron fist in a velvet glove" according to Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive of WPP. The New York Times summed him up as "The man who would be Redstone".