ITV Goes To EU

ITV has written to European Commissioners expressing concern about a proposed Directive on Media Concentration and Pluralism, which will be discussed at today’s meeting of the Commission.

“The Current proposals are very damaging”, said Barry Cox, director of the ITV Association, “If Commissioners agree them as currently drafted, they will pose a serious threat to the future of regional broadcasting in the UK, and could stifle investment in digital terrestrial TV.”

The aim of the Commission’s proposals is to create common rules across Europe to enable media companies to invest more freely across frontiers, and to set pan-European limits on concentration of ownership to ensure media pluralism is maintained. The rules currently set a limit of 30% on the broadcast audience share a television company can have in its reception area. A limit of 10% audience share is allowed for multi-media companies; this may now be under review.

The European proposals, if enacted, would contradict the current UK Broadcasting legislation. The 1996 Broadcasting Act removed the old ownership restrictions on ITV companies and permitted any media company to expand its interests up to a maximum 15% national audience share threshhold. These European proposals would restrict ownership on a regional basis and would, as a result, stop all of the ITV companies from maximising the opportunities presented by the Broadcasting Act.

Barry Cox commented: “We hope that the Commission will take note of the concerns of the media companies it seeks to regulate and postpone agreement on these proposals until these concerns have been adequately addressed.”

ITV: 0171 843 8086