Wake Up, Catch Up and Overhaul!

Michael Hedges - March 6, 2006

European media policy all-stars gathered in Vienna to confer about digital content. The big message: Don't just sit back and watch, do something!

In less time than it takes to throw away that video cassette recorder nobody would learn to program, “content” has become the major European media issue. The Austrian EU Presidency engaged this as their first major policy effort at a “high-level” conference – Content for Competitiveness – last week in Vienna.

EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes called for European governments to “wake up,” saying that the EU and national governments do not create jobs, the economy does.

“Europe did not do its homework,” said Austrian State Secretary for Arts and Media Franz Morak. “It limps behind China and the USA.”

“The anxious view of America and Asia is wrong,” he said, somewhat differing from the conventional wisdom. “The European common market is not a threat to cultural diversity. Quite to the contrary, we can look with self-assurance to Europe’s strengths which we must use better.”

Mrs Kroes also took a shot at European public broadcasters, calling for “fairness” toward private sector broadcasters. Use of license fee funds must be transparent and “clearly regulated” and if public broadcasters accept commercial advertising they must do so “under dominant market rules and without public funds.”

Illustrating what drives Europe’s content industries, DG Info Society and Media Commissioner Vivaine Reding’s Cabinet Chief Rudolf Strohmeier pointed to projected 2006 European sales of 33 million mp3 players and 22 million next generation video game consoles. “These are devices exclusively purchased to access content,” he said. “The fact is that consumer eagerness to access a greatest variety of content at home or on the move has always driven the development of new networks and devices.”

The painfully outdated Television Without Frontiers Directive has been reborn, under Mrs Reding’s auspices, to – painfully for some – include digital platforms. “Convergence,” said Strohmeier, “has become a reality…” as  “…broadcasters move toward digital television and enter the internet world…” and “…telecom operators offer television services and buy sports rights.”

“With television services becoming available on the Internet and going mobile, content rules can no longer be limited to traditional broadcasting.”

One theme consistent among EC experts, Strohmeier included, is the competitive disadvantage of 25 sets of rules. No content discussion would be complete without the rather larger issue of harmonizing rules, particularly copyrights. In other venues rights holders, notably but not exclusively the music industry, are adamant that what happened with the internet (read:free) will not happen to mobile platforms (read:cash). Reigning in the internet is a difficult option, not though, without its supporters. Everybody wants mobile platforms under control, meaning turned into cash registers.

Vivendi Universal’s Sylvie Forbin called for the telecoms to collect rights payments from mobile platform users because they drive customers away from the film producer’s usual business model; cinema tickets, rental fees and TV rights. Telecoms, she said, are not contributing to film financing.

Forbin expressed the angst of video producers – based on the same position of the music industry – that pirating is the threat, even more through mobile platforms. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, supporting new platforms, quoted a 2005 OECD report that found the music industry’s revenue problems could not be attributed to illegal file sharing.

Whether or not the European Commission will move forward with EU-wide copyright rules remains an open question. Head of the copyright unit at DG Internal Markets Tilman Lueder rejected the idea, on one hand, citing the fragmented European marketplace compared to the United States. On the other hand, he admitted that harmonized rights rules would be “optimum.”

“Copyright policy must therefore shift toward services and, in particular toward fostering market entry for innovative services, including services supplied across EU borders,” said Lueder.

The jobs issue came around several times. DG Info’s Strohmeier mentioned a million jobs in Europe’s content sector. Skills, too, are converging.

Heinrich Bleicher-Nagelsmann of the European Trade Union Confederation brought the perspective of working life to the content discussion. “The training of creative ones is frequently insufficient and inadequate. In order to better prepare creatives for working life,” he said, “they must receive training in non-artistic activities such as networking, management, negotiating, marketing and advertising.”

Bleicher-Nagelsmann also pointed out an excess of insufficiently trained graduates of creative studies seeking to fill too few available jobs.

Every good conference – especially a mobile media content love-fest - needs a reality check after an endless barrage of forecasts and premonitions. “Don’t write off Hollywood,” warned National Broadcasting Council (Poland) Director of Planning Dr. Karol Jakubowicz. “The internet is still the digital equivalent of the silent-film era.”

While the action call was a call for action now, it was balanced by the realization that while rules might be popular among the political set, by the time any EC rule making might come into force media and its content will surely change.

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