EU plans shake up of public broadcasting rules
LEIGH PHILLIPS
04.11.2008 @ 17:42 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Public broadcasters across Europe, such as the BBC, Magyar Televizio in Hungary or PBS in Malta, worry that a European Commission review of the laws governing them pays too much attention to free market concerns and not enough to the delivery of quality content in the interest of citizens.
Private broadcasters regularly complain that their public counterparts are venturing into commercial territory (Photo: EUobserver.com)
The commission on Tuesday (4 November) issued a draft communication on a revision of public service broadcasting (PSB) rules.
On the one hand, the new rules proposed within the communication would allow public broadcasters more leeway in holding onto some revenues for a rainy day and in rare cases to charge for services, but they also would require member states to more strictly control the money given to them by governments and prevent them from funding so-called commercial activities.
In recent years, the presence of more free-market-oriented governments across the bloc has emboldened private broadcasters and commercial providers of online content to increase their attacks on their public service counterparts.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), an alliance of public broadcasters - and also coincidentally the producer of the Eurovision Song Contest - says that depending on the free market instead of quality broadcasting that is not beholden to the profit motive is a mistake now more than ever in the wake of the ongoing financial crisis.
"The commission gives too much power to the market, which makes little sense when you see the failures of the markets in the last few weeks," EBU spokesman Jacques Bricmont told EUobserver.
Their particular worry is that the path the commission wishes to go down will lead to all member states adopting the increasingly deregulatory environment that exists in the UK, in which British public service broadcasters must perform a "public value test" every time they wish to deliver new services.
"This takes six to ten months for the BBC," he said, "a very expensive and time-consuming process, especially for public broadcasters in the smaller member states."
"This delays the ability of public broadcasters to develop services that involve some of the new technologies. As technology develops so rapidly these days, this puts a real break on flexibility to deliver the services citizens want."
The broadcasters are also worried that having to undergo a "market test" for new services means that commercial broadcasters will begin to have a say over the remit of their public counterparts.
EBU director-general Jean Reveillon said in a statement that "if this extremely detailed version of the Broadcasting Communication were adopted, it could seriously reduce the scope for member states to grant public service broadcasters a significant role in the information society."
Member states are also not happy with the direction of the review. In September, the Dutch culture minister, Ronald Plasterk, wrote to competition commissioner Neelie Kroes on behalf of 19 EU countries, saying that the existing communication, which dates back to 2001, was largely sufficient and did not need to be substantially altered.
Meanwhile, the Association of Commercial Television in Europe, has rubbished the public broadcasters' concerns as fear mongering.
Ross Biggam, the director-general of ACT, told this website: "Nobody is saying that public broadcasters need to refrain from certain activities - online or elsewhere, it's just that there has been an enormous amount of changes in the media landscape since 2001 and the issues that confront us. This is a reform, not a revolution."
"Media companies are no longer just calling themselves broadcasters. They're in the business of delivering content and across all sorts of platforms - online video, mobile, etc. We all grew up in an era where there was a public broadcaster and next to that there were private broadcasters, but the landscape has changed and now public broadcasters are venturing into areas well beyond where they were historically engaged."
"Some are even taking on newspapers and there is no tradition of a public service remit there - in fact quite the opposite," he said.
"The European Treaty is quite clear that state aid and competition rules need to be respected in all sectors and that includes broadcasting," he added.
Member states and sector stakeholders, including both public and private broadcasters are invited to comment on the draft communication until 15 January.