Category Archives: European Union
Monday 21st May 2012
Two weeks ago, as reported in our news section, the European Commission released its latest Study of the Audiovisual Services Directive (AVMS). This Study specifically reviewed Articles 13, 16 and 17. The Study is a result of a requirement in the Directive that the performance of these clauses should be reviewed every two years. These clauses are about securing a given amount of European content on broadcast media, including new online services. They do not relate to cinematic releases of films or retail media like DVDs. The clauses … Read more…
Tuesday 24th April 2012
The BBC is advertising for a new Director General. Like many others I have been asked what I think. About 25 years ago I was asked the same question by the Times. It was a very different era. The UK was arousing itself from a long period of decline. What I wrote looks naive now. The UK needs growth again but the Government’s “growth strategy” does not include the BBC, the UK’s largest media company — though outside observers remind us from time to time that the UK should be … Read more…
Monday 26th March 2012
The UK’s film and TV industries are pleased. In last week’s budget, they got their tax breaks. The Right Decision? Yes, it was the right decision. Too many of the UK’s competitors use them, with little chance of the UK’s being able to do doing anything about it. So the UK is simply losing the business. There is no single set of state aid or competition rules that can be applied across all the national jurisdictions involved – and they can all call up some kind of “cultural … Read more…
Tuesday 28th February 2012
The two most important recommendations of the recent UK Film report, according to its author, are (1) that producers should be free to use the money generated by success to invest further – as opposed, I presume, to returning money to public bodies which have funded them – and (2) that producers should work with distributors right from the outset to tailor their film to audiences. All this is in the interest of greater commercial success – but not necessarily mainstream films, the term used by Prime Minister … Read more…
Thursday 19th January 2012
Overseas Performance Matters The Report makes one obvious point about film that is too easily forgotten. From 72% of the box office for films made exclusively with UK money to 86% of the box office for co-productions, all successful films in which Britain is involved must get over ¾ of their revenue overseas. That should not be a surprise. If a middle sized country is to be a player in a global world, it must have premium products and services that get most of their revenues from somewhere … Read more…
Thursday 5th January 2012
I wrote recently about the “format” revolution that started in the 1990′s. It originated in Europe. Netherlands-based Endemol was a key player. Endemol created the iconic show Big Brother. Time-Warner is a great company, but I hope Endemol remains European. In the next few weeks, the ownership of Endemol will be weighed in meeting rooms and conference calls. Before Christmas Time Warner changed their offer for Endemol to $1.3bn all-cash. The creditors, however, support a debt restructuring. That could help keep the firm in European ownership. Creditors, it … Read more…
Friday 2nd December 2011
Viewers of ABC in America, Channel 4 in the UK and other channels in countless other countries will have heard of Wife Swap and The Secret Millionaire. Not so many will have heard of the Zodiak Media Group, the company that owns and makes them. Zodiak Media is a European firm with its main operating headquarters in London and Paris, majority-owned by the Italian De Agostini Group. De Agostini started to build its Communications Division in 2007, acquiring Marathon (France) and Magnolia (Italy and Spain). Then, in 2008, … Read more…
Tuesday 30th August 2011
I was fortunate to hear Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google, speak at the Edinburgh Television Festival and to attend the Question and Answer session the following morning. Schmidt posed one big question — in my view a massively important one: why hasn’t a country like the UK built large technology companies? (He reminded us that the first commercial use of a computer was at the headquarters of J. Lyons, once famous for its tea shops, in West London). For the audience of British TV Executives the question took a … Read more…
Posted in
AVMS Directive,
BBC,
C4,
Communications Bill,
European Union,
Exports,
Globalisation,
Google,
Media,
Ofcom,
Regulation,
Sky,
TV,
You Tube
Thursday 7th July 2011
For most outsiders, Europe’s Public Service Broadcasting system is a mystery. Most of them will understand what happens in the US. That system gets a small amount of money from Government and raises sponsorship for its network of radio and TV stations around the country. They broadcast “public service” content not found on commercial networks. But in Europe “public” broadcasters continue to be a major part of the landscape. The BBC may be the best known globally, but ARD in Germany, France Television, RAI in Italy are also … Read more…
Friday 10th June 2011
We are in the middle of a large project for the European Commission and just beginning to see the picture that is emerging from this work — that is a picture of Europe’s audiovisual industries seen from a pan-European perspective. We find, as before, a series of cultural islands, with some island clusters — the Scandinavian countries act like a kind of cluster as do the countries that share the same language, France, Belgium, parts of Switzerland, for example. The UK is part of a more complex structure … Read more…
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