Mix Culture and Economics, Then Half-Bake

EuroParl’ Culture Committee is taking its first crack at the Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive. Nothing will change the fear and loathing culture of the culture constituency at the likely direction of media content if left either to the marketplace or to big media companies. Quotas, that very un-economic device, meant to preserve and protect always do just that, forcing the public to go to extraordinary measures to get what they want, where and when they want it.

The media business sees a nightmare. Even as Mrs. Reding repeatedly explained that a few good rules would make the world spin better, it was a spin rejected. National media regulators, notably, the UK’s OFCOM, added their 2p, saying much of the rule making is just not realistic.

But Brussels has its own reality. Notably, and nobly, the European Commission takes great consideration of input from civil society. The AVMS draft strengthens long held positions on protecting children, minorities and most everybody else from the evils of tobacco and alcohol ads , too many ads and too many American TV shows.

ftm background

Lines On the Sandy Brussels Beach
Immediate response was rather muted to EC Media Commissioner Vivaine Reding proposed revisions to the TV Without Frontiers Directive. That was six months ago. EURO-MEI and British government, regulator and media business are firmly opposed...for different reasons.

Mrs Reding to TV: I Cannot Protect You From Competition
European commercial televisions executives, gathered in Brussels, heard DG Info Society and Media Commissioner Vivaine Reding talk bluntly about survival.

EC Audiovisual Conference Debates New Media Rules
The European Union’s main policy experts, regulators, broadcasters, legislators along with industry and employees associations will gather in Liverpool to “facilitate expert discussion of the revision of the Television Without Frontiers Directive.”

EC Says Rights Are in the Hand of the Holder
The European Commission sent media people off on summer holidays with a little light beach reading.

European Commission Sends Broadcasters New Signals
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.

But the biggest guns in European media – newspapers – won their battle, pointing to the single greatest problem with this directive or any meaningful attempt to regulate media broadly. Newspapers’ websites are specifically exempt as those websites are not (yet) their core business. Radio broadcasters are exempt, too, because they are “local,” pointing to another artifact of waves gone by.

Every public company CEO worth that exorbitant salary knows full well that in a flash of cosmic reality that parchment is the past, websites and mobile phones are the present and, oh my goodness, the future is so vague. Most television and radio broadcasters haven’t thought about it. Not only is the future vague, it’s distant; sometime after retirement.

But cash-register companies - the telecoms, mobile phone makers and systems operators - know very well that the key to a profitable distribution business is having the content people will buy.

And the EuroParl Culture Committee’s first round of debate last week (October 3) showed precisely what the EuroParl members (MEPs) want as a final outcome. On-demand audiovisual services will be included, largely as base-line legislation beneath which individual countries cannot fall. Any service with the look and feel of television will be ruled like television. Simple logic: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. European-level rules for fixed schedule programming and on-demand offerings will be “coordinated.”

One proposed amendment went so far as to require electronic program guides to reflect cultural instructions instead of popularity or, maybe, alphabetical order.

Google’s acquisition of YouTube will certainly create gasps of horror in Brussels. Google already replaced Rupert Murdoch as Europe’s most dreaded cultural capitalist. Strict reading of the new AVMS Directive would require web-sites like YouTube – even, or especially, user generated sites – to conform to European content requirements.

Product placement will not likely see the light of day. Mrs Reding’s arguments in favor notwithstanding, MEPs certainly don’t like the idea. Mrs Reding is certainly correct: product placement will bring billions of new euros into the hands of broadcasters. And this seems to be the MEPs greatest fear.

Intellectual evidence supporting market liberalization of Europe’s media abounds. Economics is all about the allocation of resources. But media in Europe is not strictly about economics. The cultural impact of media is not taken lightly – mostly – where culture is considered a virtue. And the clash of titans – culture and economics – continues.