ABSTRACT
For historical reasons, broadcasting is a heavily state-regulated sector, particularly in Europe in which there is also, on the one hand, self-regulation or self-monitoring by means of internal bodies at public service broadcasters (PSBs), as a way of implementing independence by keeping distance from the government of the day, and on the other, self-regulating islands in the commercial sector. Increased complexity in terms of more services brought about first by cable and satellite, and then digital technologies, has forced changes in the regulatory environment; the authorities felt the need to delegate more and more tasks of supervision to lower levels.1 Therefore, we are witnessing a shift to self-regulation within a general context of a complex, coregulatory environment. Self-regulation could be resorted to instead of government regulation to avoid constitutional free-speech issues when regulating more stringently than the requirements of statutory regulators. For example, by performing pre-publication control as carried out for the protection of minors by the FSF2 in Germany and similar bodies in other countries. The trend is towards continued delegation. The regulatory environment thus created is one that permits the tasks of supervision of content to be discharged by increasingly autonomous mechanisms. The authorities retain supervision at a higher level (broad guidelines, judicial review, etc.).
