European Media Governance

US & European Film Audiences (1997)

• 53 million North Americans saw European films
• 388 million Europeans saw 480 Hollywood films
  

Film Market Share, 2000

Reasons for American media dominance in Europe (Lower & Leaver, pg. 251)

• American products can be sold very competitively on the world market because their costs are usually covered to a larger extent than elsewhere through sales in their large, homogenous domestic market;
• The export advantage given by the English language;
• Highly effective marketing and publicity;
• Hollywood's success in this century in creating a kind of global audiovisual language and grammar;
• The dynamism of the American industry and the quality of much of its product and the marketing thereof;
• The failure of other audiovisual industries to rise to the challenge;
• The strong and consistent support of the US government

Tension between two approaches in EU Telecomm Policy (Lower & Leaver, pg. 252)

1. creation of the single market and promoting the interest of EC businesses (free market rules)
2. cater to the role that information plays in society at large, including guarantees of cultural diversity

European Union Television Without Frontiers Directive (Lower & Leaver, pg. 254)

Two basic principles:

1. the free movement of European television programs within the internal market and;

2. the requirement that television channels, where practicable, reserve over half their broadcasting time for European works ("broadcasting quotas").

Article 4: Obliges Member States to impose on broadcasters within their jurisdiction an obligation "where practicable" to reserve a majority of their transmission time for "European works."

Article 5: Requires Member States to ensure, where practicable, that broadcasters within their jurisdiction devote 10% of their transmission time or, at the discretion of Member States, of their programming budget for European works created by producers who are independent of broadcasters.

Article 6: Defines European works as:

(a) works originating from Member States;
(b) works originating from European third States party to the European Convention on Transfrontier Television of the Council of Europe and fulfilling the conditions of paragraph 2;
(c) works originating from other European third countries and fulfilling the conditions of paragraph 3.22

Further detail is added by article 6(2):

The works referred to in paragraph 1 (a) and (b) are works mainly made with authors and workers residing in one or more States referred to in paragraph 1 (a) and (b) provided that they comply with one of the following three conditions:

(a) they are made by one or more producers established in one or more of those States; or
(b) production of the works is supervised and actually controlled by one or more producers established in one or more of those States; or
(c) the contribution of co-producers of those States to the total coproduction costs is preponderant and the co-production is not controlled by one or more producers established outside those States.

US Objections

• Violates GATT - imposes trade restrictions and unfair advantage (media = commodities)
• EU claims a "cultural exception" (media = culture)

International Joint Ventures (Tinic, pgs. 171-174)

Types of IJV:

1. Official coproductions - both countries make a roughly equal financial and creative investment in the project. Allows both countries to benefit from subsidies and tax incentives.

2. Coventures - projects developed between producers in countries that do not have a formalized coproduction treaty, the primary goal is to share the costs and financial risks of the production process.

3. Twinning package - producers in both countries develop and produce comparable yet distinct domestic projects and then partner them so that each will receive airtime in the other's broadcast market.

Effects of IJVs on Content (Tinic, pgs. 174-176)

De-spatialization of place and space:

1. stories that represent particularities of place are able to achieve universal resonance because of the global restructuring of community

2. stories are developed to de-emphasize place in order to appeal to universal "human fundamentals" that may obscure the specificities of place.