UK firms fear ‘soap opera’ sub-plot

Date: 03/04/1997

UK COMMERCIAL television companies are warily eyeing the Commission's next move on media ownership.

Firmly established in their regional fiefdoms, almost all the ITV companies easily exceed the proposed directive's 30&percent; audience share in their regional markets, according to the latest winter schedule figures. Ulster Television tops the popularity stakes, with 45.4&percent; of the audience at peak times.

The 10&percent; limit on cross-media ownership is also much more punitive than UK current rules and would prevent regional television companies buying into almost any other media, complains the industry lobby, the Independent Television Association (ITA).

That said, exemptions apparently on offer would seem to guarantee the companies a licence to continue printing money for their shareholders, at least in their core broadcasting business, for another decade.

Attuned to sudden soap opera twists of fate, the UK's commercial television companies are not taking Commissioner Mario Monti's proposals and promises at face value. They suspect a sub-plot in which the European Parliament hijacks an otherwise acceptable measure and turns it into an unslayable monster.

“I have never yet known a directive survive the legislative process in the form originally proposed, and so no one can provide the cast-iron guarantee we need that the exemption would survive in its current form,” said Barry Cox, director of the ITA.

The association is highly sceptical of the need for EU input into protecting media pluralism. The UK last year passed its own, less restrictive, broadcasting rules which broadly allow any media company to have television interests which give it up to 15&percent; of the national audience. The ITA argues the Commission should copy the formula of setting national percentage limits. It says most media companies want to concentrate their growth on the domestic markets they know best and are relatively uninterested in Monti's crusade to prise open hitherto unexplored markets.

The shadow of EU media rules threatens to prevent UK television companies from investing in local expansion or spending an estimated 55 million ecu a year in new digital networks, adds the ITA.