European Commission Sends Broadcasters New Signals

Michael Hedges March 1, 2005

Reorganizing European Commission Directorates, President José Manuel Barroso is sending strong signals to the audiovisual industry. The most important is that the Commission recognizes the sector’s economic as well as cultural significance. But, equally important, profound changes in technology taking place right now do not pause for rule-makers thoughtful debate.

The European audiovisual sector employs more than a million people and contributes about 5% of the total European Union gross domestic output. In 2000 European governments agreed to make the EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” by 2010. This “Lisbon Strategy” will guide President Barroso and his Commission.

When President Barroso implemented the long discussed transfer of the audiovisual portfolio from DG Education and Culture to DG Information Society bedrock assumptions about European media as a cultural instrument changed places with a new climate of opinion about media’s relationship with competitiveness and innovation. Naming Commissioner Viviane Reding as the new EC media “czar,” leading DG Info Society, moves forward a climate of change in the Commission’s view of media’s economic value.

The new Barroso Commission was finally approved in late November after MEPs delayed the confirmation vote until two controversial nominees were replaced. Mrs. Reding becomes DG Information Society and Media Commissioner, swapping jobs with Jan Figel, who becomes Commissioner of DG Education and Culture. From 1999 Mrs. Reding headed DG Education and Culture, which then held the audiovisual portfolio.

Mrs. Reding’s task will be to marry the free-market technophiles of DG Info Society with the more market-skeptic audio-visual content people moving over from DG Education and Culture.

“I will be the commissioner for innovation, inclusion and creativity,” she told the European Parliament in September.

The Commission’s interest in media and press, to this point, has been limited to cross-border issues. Several directives and protocols imposed guidelines on television, mostly excluding radio, to insure that one nation’s rules did not infringe on another, that European content would not be disadvantaged and that a special place would be preserved for public service broadcasting. Those agreements, originally drafted ten or more years ago and hotly debated, were political instruments that could not foresee the rapid up-take of digital media technologies nor the new issues raised by competition and liberalized markets.

Radio broadcasters have largely been immune to EU rules, radio viewed as local or regional in nature and its regulation left to individual Member states. The Television Without Frontiers Directive, which largely excluded radio, is set for a major revision, tasked to Mrs. Reding and DG Info Society. The Amsterdam Protocol, which establish a Union-wide basis for public service broadcasting, its mandate and funding, included radio broadcasting. But with the Barroso Commission’s emphasis on economic development and competitiveness the entire audiovisual sector will be under its watchful eye.

DG Info Society Commissioner
Viviane Reding

Speaking to the European Media Leaders Summit in London in December, Mrs. Reding described a “Business Without Frontiers” the new Commission intends to build for the audiovisual sector.

Digital policy is one example. As a “spectrum dividend” is realized from a conversion to digital broadcasting, the Commission is likely to favor new broadcast services over existing “incumbent” broadcasters.

The Commission seems less inclined to review the remit of the public service sector than to streamline the administrative burden of small and medium enterprises, which would include most privately owned broadcasters, by offering on-line form filing.

Within DG Information Society, the Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG) has conducted studies and public consultations all aimed at making recommendations for the best means to switch all broadcasting to digital technology. Even while strongly suggesting digital radio switch-over between 2007 and 2010, the policy makers seem somewhat reluctant to follow for the radio spectrum the same path used for television switch-over.

Market forces, said the RSPG in an opinion on digital radio switch-over published in November, were “helpful” and “more adaptable and quicker to respond than regulation” in the switch-over to digital television even though considerable “market intervention” was necessary. That “intervention” – reduced access fees and short-term exclusive franchise for public service broadcasters- came in the form of “generous concessions to incumbent broadcasters.”

Nothing has been suggested that would place public service broadcasting in spectrum jeopardy. All intentions, so far, from DG Info Society allow PSB needs to be filled first, then open access to other providers. This has been challenged under rules of the Services Directive, which would require harmonized EU rules for radio broadcast licensing. Broadcasters – public and commercial – are vigorously lobbying for exclusions. In the December speech, Mrs. Reding indicated that a “patchwork” of 25 sets of media rules was unacceptable.

EU parliamentarians often raise issues of media concentration and press freedom. So far, the Commission has left both to national governments, leaving the issues open to continual debate. The concentration of media ownership among a few large multi-nationals may have political traction but the positions of the Barroso Commission are seen as favoring liberalized markets, particularly in the audiovisual sector.

“It’s difficult to find a legal basis for legislative action on media ownership at the EU level,“ Mrs. Reding told a conference of newspaper publishers in November.

'Innovation must act as the driving force in the Lisbon process; inclusion will combat the digital divide and strengthen European identity and its cultural diversity, by means of media pluralism that will provide free expression for creativity,'

Mrs. Reding’s position with the Commission is one of co-ordinating, if not directing, media policy activities within several Directorates General – Internal markets, Competition, Consumer Protection, Culture and Education as well as Info Society.

“This is the first time that this kind of one-stop-shop for the media industry would be created within the commission,” she said at the publisher’s conference. This coordination, she said, would make sure that “all aspects of the legislative proposals or EU decisions which could affect the media are properly considered.”

Originally published in Radio World International, February 2005, in a slightly different form.

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