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Week ending March 15, 2008

EUROPE’S PUBLISHERS CALL FOR RADICAL CHANGE TO PUBLIC SERVICE  BROADCASTING RULES - March 13, 2008

from Heidi Lambert for EPC

Responding to the Commission’s Communication on the Application of State Aid Rules to Public Service Broadcasting, the European Publishers Council (EPC) representing Chairmen and Chief Executives of Europe’s leading media corporations, has today welcomed the review of rules for Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) and called for radical changes in order to protect the future viability of commercial media.

EPC’s Chairman, Francisco Pinto Balsemão said: “Long established public service broadcasters in Europe have expanded hugely with public funds – and in some cases with the unfair advantages and distorting effects of advertising revenues too. But today’s PSBs are producing products little different from their commercial competitors and with only a handful of services which could truly be described as public service broadcasting”.

Mr Balsemão added that:  “The publicly funded broadcasters have expanded beyond their ability to maintain broadcasting standards which critics can respect. Public Service Broadcasting was “good while it lasted” but is no longer serving the public interest.”

Following years of distortion of competition from publicly funded broadcasters on the TV market, commercial media companies now face the un-regulated colonising of the internet and mobile market from PSBs. This poses a major challenge to commercial media as governments continue to confer unrivalled funding and unparalleled protection and promotion of their legacy public service broadcasters across media market.

Mr Balsemão warned that “The impact of high expenditure by PSBs on the development of online publishing is profound. It restricts commercial growth, reduces the potential size and diversity of the commercial market and deters new entrants.

“Publicly funded broadcasters follow the trends set by the private sector but from an unequal position and with distorting effects. The Communication must address the question of how to define a public service, establish criteria for assessing what is of value to the consumer and work out appropriate levels of funding to achieve this objective without distorting or damaging the private sector and without stifling the growth of the media sector. Fair competition, a competitive European media and consumer choice are all at stake.

The EPC’s key messages are as follows:

1. Advertising:

It is possible and indeed desirable to prohibit access to advertising and sponsorship revenues for any part of a service covered by a public service remit. This would go a long way towards removing distortions in those markets where dual funding already exists, and protect those markets where publicly funded broadcasters are exploring possibilities of introducing advertising to parts of their new media offers, particularly the internet.

2. Funding

The funding of PSB should be restricted to purely public service activities, according to clearly defined remits. Long-established PSBs in Europe - with a reputation based largely on a remarkable past performance, have expanded hugely thanks to public funds and in some cases with the help of advertising revenues. This is no longer justified.

3. Remit

Member States appear to have extended their remits for PSB to cover whatever they fancy to be public service activities with little or no regard for the market impact of extending their reach beyond traditional PSB. This needs to be addressed urgently.

4. Regulation

Independent regulation is essential but sadly lacking across the EU. EPC believes you must start from the point of first principle of defining what the public service remit can incorporate. Once the remit has been defined, clear ex ante evaluation of requests for expansion to new media should be established together with criteria for ex ante market impact assessment by competition authorities/independent regulators.

5. Definitions

A clear distinction between publicly funded and commercial activities requires major clarification. This is the only basis upon which public funding can be properly assessed and investment decisions made by the private sector.

Unlike the early days of traditional broadcasting, rooted in spectrum scarcity, there is no need for pioneering, state-subsidised semi-monopolies to make the heavy investment necessary to ensure the growth of new media markets. On the contrary, new media markets and their customers will benefit from the very opposite architecture: a wide diversity of suppliers, unrestrained by unfair competition from any dominant, state funded player.

The Internet must absolutely not be defined as broadcasting. The Internet is naturally an extension of the publishing business model. Furthermore, there needs to be a fair and open market for the development of e-commerce without the distorting effects of state aid.

ACAP - RESPONSE TO GOOGLE LINE ON ACAP: “PUBLISHERS KNOW WHAT THEY NEED, AND THEY NEED ACAP” - March 12, 2008

from Heidi Lambert for EPC

Questioned today on its position on ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) at the MediaGuardian.co.uk Changing Media Summit, Google  spokesman Rob Jonas said that “the general view within the company is that the robots.txt provides everything most publishers need to do.”

ACAP Chairman Gavin O’Reilly - also Chairman of the World Association of Newspapers - said in response,

“It's rather strange for Google to be telling publishers what they should think about robots.txt, when publishers worldwide - across all sectors - have already and clearly told Google that they fundamentally disagree. If Google's reason for not (apparently) supporting ACAP is built on its own commercial self-interest, then it should say so, and not glibly throw mistruths about.

Publishers have specifically requested that Google respect the rights of content creators – which is a fairly uncontroversial request.

Google should reflect on the fact that after 12 months of intensive cross industry consideration and active development – in which Google has been party to – publishers have identified not only the patent inadequacies of robots.txt, but more progressively have come up with a practical, open and workable solution for publishers and content aggregators.

So, we – once again - call upon Google to embrace ACAP and to readily acknowledge the right of content owners to determine how their content is used.”

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