The 2005 proposal
110. While one stated objective of the Proposal
was to ease or remove some of the existing rules, significant
concerns have been expressed that such liberalisation has not
gone far enough, while new restrictions have been proposed that
would adversely impact on the sector, where advertising revenues
are critical and yet the sources of such revenues are under threat
and are rapidly evolving.
111. The general view of respondents from industry
was that the current quantitative advertising rules are no longer
appropriate in an environment where the consumer has such a wide
choice of provider and can express any dissatisfaction with the
quantity of advertising being fostered on him by moving to an
alternative provider.
112. The Government were against the quantitative
rules imposed by the Commission's proposal, particularly the 20
per cent rule and the 35 minute rule for films, children's programmes
and news programmes. They argue that such rules can only have
negative effect on the transmission of this type of programming
by commercial stations. In their view, the need for these restrictions
is based on a broadcasting environment of spectrum and service
scarcity which is largely a thing of the past.
113. Today, there is an enormous range of television
services and the universal availability of a greatly increased
number of channels will be secured by the switchover to digital
broadcasting. The Government support the fact that the Commission's
proposals do contain some important simplifications of the TVWF
rules on television advertising. (pp 64-66)
114. Several of our witnesses viewed the quantitative
rules as entirely unnecessary as viewers would simply switch to
alternative services if they found that there was too much advertising
on one channel, as was the case with some recent examples in the
United Kingdom with commercial radio.
115. Martin Stott from Channel 5 called for "a
levelling down of the detailed rules" with "a form of
rules of principle" rather than what he regarded as unnecessary
"micro-management." (Q 272)
116. Jonathan Simon from Channel 4 told us that
their preference would be for "no rule at all at the European
level" on advertising for children, which would allow Member
States to set their own rules according to their very different
priorities. (Q 297) This approach would, however, seem to
negate the Country of Origin principle, discussed below, still
further.
117. There were strong concerns from the free
to air broadcasters over the impact of the 35 minute rule for
children's programming. Mr Stott told us that "the economics
of children's programming are fairly fragile already and it is
quite difficult to make a profit on a commercial channel by broadcasting
children's programmes." Impinging on the existing ability
of channels to fund these already marginally profitable services
was, according to Mr Stott, "less kids' programming"
or "less original kids' programming", and a greater
reliance on cheap imports and repeated programmes. Thus, far from
protecting children's programming, it was likely to have a negative
impact on quality and a negative impact on original European content.
(Q 292)
118. Magnus Brooke from ITV suggested that the
Commission risked "taking the most commercially vulnerable
genres and subjecting them to additional rules" with children's'
and news programming and that there was no obvious detriment to
the viewer of, say the advertising break in the News at Ten.
(Q 293)
119. Mr Dawes from the DCMS agreed that
the imposition of these new rules "seems to be going in the
opposite direction of liberalisation", which was the stated
purpose of the proposal. (Q 164)
120. Mr Blowers from Ofcom agreed that it
would be "entirely appropriate to remove those kinds of artificial
restrictions and certainly to look very hard at an artificial
impediment to the creation of children's programming." (Q 143)
The Council's text
121. In the Council's text, Article 11(2) has
been altered so that all programmes excluding children's programming
and news programmes are now subject to a 30 minute rather than
35 minute rule.
122. Meanwhile children's programming and news
programmes should be interrupted for advertising only once for
each period of 30 minutes, provided that such programmes exceed
30 minutes to begin with.
The European Parliament's text
123. The Parliament's text imposes stricter quantitative
limits on advertising, with the daily limit of the percentage
of advertising content reduced from 20 per cent to 15 per cent.
124. The Parliament's text also limits advertising
breaks in "films made for television, cinematographic works,
concerts, theatre plays and operas" to "once for each
period of 45 minutes"—and not, as the Commission had
proposed, every 35 minutes. This goes in the opposite direction
to the Council's proposal, where the 35 minute rule would be relaxed
to a 30 minute rule.
125. We are unconvinced by the case made for
any of the proposed quantitative rules on advertising. We believe
that in an increasingly competitive environment, consumers will
be able to influence for themselves the volume of advertising
which they find acceptable.
126. We are concerned about the likely implications
of these rules for free to air programming, particularly children's'
programming, of the proposed 30 minute rule.
