EU politics, regulation and media legislation

What the chapter covers

Introduction: regulation and the regulators

The EU regulatory debate

The European regulatory context

European scheduling

The European mediascape – now and in the immediate future

Public vs private

Money and investment

European history

Digital delivery

Research work

How to categorise the regulatory frameworks

Using regulations and assessing their importance

National vs trans-national regulation

European convergence between states

International rules and the EU

The extent of international regulation

Copyright and intellectual property

Patents

EU regulatory development – key areas

The Hahn Report 1983

The Bangemann Report 1994

The Television without Frontiers Directive (TWF), 1989, revised in 1997 and 2005 onwards

The Single European Market 1987–1993 and TWF 1989 onwards

Mergers, acquisitions and takeovers, monopolies and competition policy and state subsidies

Moving on into the 21st century

The Lisbon Agenda 1997, eEurope (2002–2006) and i2010

Open Network Provision (ONP) 1998

EC regulatory framework for electronic communication and services (convergence) 1999–2002

Policy frameworks

The Audio-visual Media Services Directive (AVM) 2007 onwards

Reaction to EU media policy and regulatory change

Company reaction to policy changes

EU member state national regulation

Regulation, deregulation, self-regulation and co-regulation

Conclusions and more questions

Learning objectives

When you have completed this chapter, you will be able to:

Relate the media scene to the regulatory framework set in place by the EU and the individual countries and other similar types of organisation, e.g. WTO, EU or European nations.

Understand that conflicts of interests are often linked to regulation, law and the politics behind different regulatory frameworks.

Recognise that while media ‘regulations’ across the EU are often diverse, they are often similar too.

Draft a thumbnail sketch of the principal international, EU and trans-national regulations.

Identify the range of competing views about the changing media regulatory landscape at the many levels of governance (national, European, international and even regional).

Examine how political and economic pressures impact upon the picture of the changing media global services.

Themes

Below you will find a simple statement or series of statements around the six themes. They should not be read as a given fact. They are more like hypotheses (see Chapter 2) which need to be proved, discussed, debated and then used in your own analysis of the subject. The ideas and approaches in this book are always to be considered with an open mind; this is important in university study and is what makes it distinct from pre-university study.

Diversity of media

The ‘media’ is a diverse technology that is in the process of converging. Even so, its diversity remains predominant within organisations, both public and private, changing over time and often functioning differently in different countries.

Internal/external forces for change

The media is not only changing technologically, but also in a regulatory, political and economic way. In our analysis of the media, we need to be aware of the internal media dynamic within the national industries but also mindful of the global, international, EU and even sub-national, local pressures that are pressing for change. This theme alerts you to this question and points to the internal, national dynamic and the external pressures forcing change.

Complexity of the media

The media is complex because of the way in which it is regulated and how the rules are put together. This is often conveniently labelled as a discussion about public and private provision within societies. Moreover, the distinction between public and private sector broadcasting, in particular, is being blurred, with a mix of public and private regulatory initiatives being used to develop the ‘old’ media and the ‘new’.

Multi-levels

Media business and public broadcasting reform at global, national and local level is quickening. No longer is the nation state the only level at which the media interacts. The levels are generally subsumed into accepted notions of globalisation, whereas on the ground, it is local and global as well as European levels that are in play.

European integrative environment

In the context of this book’s investigation, one theme has been of major interest: the Europeanisation of the media market. Europeanisation is both a private and public sector concern and is political and economic and, in the long term, cultural. This theme alerts us to the process of European integration and its impact upon us in matters cultural. As a term it is not meant to subvert the national but alerts us to a process whereby member states of the EU are bringing together their media and business policies in a form which not only goes beyond the national into the global, but is uniquely European.

Cultural values

The media for most us is not just a technology or a business but a content-laden communicator of cultural and social values: in a word ‘content’. This theme reminds us throughout that the question of culture is ever-present in our analysis of the market place.

Essentials

This chapter provides an overview and an introduction to the most important international, national and EU media legislation. Understanding media regulation is often a specialist field of activity. The present era embraces some very technical subjects such as cross-border assimilation of legislation, foreign ownership, the softening of ownership concentration legislation, provisions for the continuation of public service broadcasters (PSBs), and programming quotas in television together with copyright and patents. Although this chapter cannot investigate these in depth, they are sufficiently important that we need to have some background information if we are to get to grips with the contemporary media scene. The work in this chapter has three broad themes:

The background to international media regulatory regimes.

The evolution and context of EU media regulation.

A discussion of some of the debates that surround new media regulations.