Europe's Digital Revolution: Broadcasting Regulation, the Eu and the Nation State by David Levy

Author:David Levy [Levy, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781134547081
Google: NZuCAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17492533
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2001-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Protecting competition rather than promoting culture: a new emphasis in French regulation?

Other elements of the initial Trautmann proposals focused on ensuring fair competition in France’s highly successful digital satellite market.1 The previous government had sought to end Canal Plus’s monopoly of pay TV not only by persuading France Telecom and France Television to launch a digital satellite service—TPS—which could rival Canal Plus; but also by limiting the availability of France Television’s digital services to TPS alone. The Socialists, however, took a more consumer-focused view of competition, deciding that France Television’s services should be available on all digital platforms, and announcing that satellite operators would be encouraged to make their decoders compatible, even if there was some uncertainty as to what specific action the government had in mind. Similarly, action was also promised over exclusive control of programme rights. In accordance with the new Article 3a of the Television Without Frontiers Directive, access to major—mainly sporting—events on free-to-air television was to be guaranteed under the law.2 The Socialists’ January 1998 plans also proposed limits on the acquisition of other exclusive programme rights—e.g. for PPV use—in order to encourage the development of a secondary market for films and other programmes. This measure seems to have been targeted at what some saw as Canal Plus’s excessive control of the programme rights market in France, an issue that the CSA had drawn attention to in a 1997 report (CSA 1997).

Generally these initial proposals from the Socialists would, if implemented, mark a change in the emphasis of French broadcasting regulation. Cultural concerns were still regarded as important, but Mme Trautmann made it clear that she wanted to look beyond them as well, noting that: ‘the cultural exception which has been hard won and remains under threat is not enough to ensure the development of our programme industry’. Great emphasis was placed on the economic importance of the audio-visual industry to France. When Mme Trautmann announced her reform proposals, her first observations were about the value of the sector in terms both of turnover (about 90 billion francs) and the 60,000 jobs it accounted for (Trautmann 1998). Under her January 1998 proposals the focus of the CSA’s work was to move beyond detailed policing of production quotas and to work together with the Competition Authority, taking into account economic issues such as relations between independent producers and broadcasters, and the compatibility of, and terms of access to, conditional access systems.

The CSA’s increased ability to intervene in the operation of the audiovisual market was offset, however, by a reduction in its traditional licensing powers. Henceforth only terrestrial broadcasters were to require detailed licences from the CSA while satellite and cable operators were to be granted licences in response to a simple declaration made to the CSA. If implemented, this change would amount to a very fundamental liberalisation in the French system, and would bring French procedures more closely into line with those operating in the UK where non-domestic satellite licences were issued by the ITC, more or less on demand.

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