Intellect oh well
April 19th, 2006
A unique alliance from across the broadcasting, telecoms, technology, new media and advertising sectors is voicing its concerns about the draft Audiovisual Media Services (AMS) Directive that is currently under discussion in Brussels. The UK government has serious concerns about the draft Directive and is currently discussing these with other Member States.
The key movers in this ‘unique alliance’ are Intellect (”the trade association for the UK high-tech industry”) and the Broadband Stakeholders Group (a government-stakeholder partnership, with Intellect acting as secretariat. The website (audiovisualstakeholders.org has a longer list of signatories to a paper (more on this in a second), including mobile phone operators (e.g. Vodafone, T-Mobile), broadcasters (e.g. ITV, Channel 4, Five), the ISP Association, etc. The Associated Press mistakenly says that Intel are involved (they aren’t, but ‘NTL’ are - perhaps an overly helpful subeditor thought it was an abbreviation?)
Anyhoo, all this fuss is about the update to the EU’s Television Without Frontiers directive; a proposal for which was published just at the end of 2005. The various bigwigs and mediumwigs involved in Intellect and the BSG have responded with a critical paper, which can be summarised as ‘nice try, but we’d prefer selfregulation, if it’s alright with you’. Their concern is with the prospect of ‘nonlinear’ AV services (primarily webcasting/online video-on-demand/mobile phone services/etc) being regulated, along similar lines to existing television services under Television W/O Frontiers (Stone Age version).
This is about to get very interesting. The website and paper are opening shots, but they appear to be preparing for a major fight.
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May 27th, 2006 at 11:22 am
[...] The European Parliament is holding hearings on the Audiovisual Media Services directive (the update to the EU’s Television Without Frontiers, last updated in the mid-90s) proposed by the European Commission. TWF deals with issues such as advertising, satellite broadcasting, rights to sporting events, and so on. The biggest issue in the debate over updating it is how to deal with ‘non-linear’ content (web-based or mobile-delivered media, essentially). There’s been a lot of opposition from various corners of the media industries, and when I posted about the alliance of companies seeking amendments, I suggested that things were about to get more interesting. Now that’s quite relative, I suppose, but we did have the amusing spectacle of the Commissioner responsible (Viviane Reding) apparently getting some tough questions at a press conference held to mark the Council’s outline support (that’s the EU council of ministers responsible for all this jazz, keep up at the back). [...]