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Parliament votes for US-style TV ads

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Published 14 December 2006 - Updated 06 February 2007
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The Parliament has adopted changes to EU television rules, allowing for more advertising breaks and product placement. 

Exactly one year after the presentation of the revised directive - on 13 December 2006 - the Parliament's Plenary voted on the Committee's report. It adopted a watering-down of the rules limiting advertisements. The most important changes adopted are the following:  

  • The scope of the directive is widened to cover all audiovisual media services. Consequently, the directive's colloquial name will in the future be "Audiovisual without Frontiers".
  • Non-TV audiovisual services, including so-called non-linear or on-demand services will be made subject to some content regulation, including an obligation to promote European content.
  • Product placement - the placing of branded goods in TV productions, paid for by advertisers - will be allowed in Europe. TV producers must make clear "at the start and the end of the programme and by a signal at least every 20 minutes during the programme" when products have been placed in their productions. No product placement can take place in news, current affairs programmes, documentaries and children's TV.
  • TV broadcasts can be interrupted by advertising every 30 minutes instead of every 45 minutes under the present rules. 
  • An amendment to ban advertising for junk food (food high in fat, sugar or salt) to children was watered down, making the restriction subject to a voluntary code of conduct. 
Positions: 

Ruth Hieronymi, the Parliament's rapporteur called the vote "a real success", adding: "Despite all attempts to turn the television of the future into a purely commercial product, we successfully secured political majorities. The freedom of information and diversity of opinions cannot be protected by purely economic means."

Spanish Liberal MEP Ignasi Guardans said: "This text is based on the audiovisual landscape and manages to avoid two pitfalls. The aim is to avoid European television moving too far towards the American model dominated by advertising breaks, but at the same time to avoid too much regulation which would have prevented audiovisual innovation and undermined the commercial viability of the more flexible model. 

The Socialist group commented: "We deplore this real risk of a shift towards American-style television."

The Green group declared: "This decision to introduce American-style advertising rules under an EU ethical label will lead to the greater commercialisation of audiovisual media in the EU."

BEUC, the European consumers' organisation, warned: "Unfortunately, this is not the landscape that consumers want. It would mean more advertising on TV, including hidden advertising in the form of product placement." 

Michel Grégoire, Secretary General of EGTA, the European Association of Television and Radio Saleshouses, said: "Viewers will be the first to benefit from such a modernised regulatory framework. They will be able to enjoy creative television advertising again instead of today’s long-cluttered tunnels caused by an overly-detailed regulation. This qualitative improvement will safeguard broadcasters’ financial capacity to offer diversity programming accessible free of charge to European viewers."

ENPA, the European Newspaper Publishers' Association, declared: "ENPA is pleased to see that the Parliament has made a clear commitment to protecting the freedom of the press, by making a specific exclusion for newspapers in their electronic versions. However, there is still work to do in the Council where Member States will be working on a Common Position under the German Presidency as from January. ENPA considers that it will be vital to protect press freedom by including an identical exclusion for the press in the Council text. " 

Next steps: 
  • Member states are expected to adopt their Common Position on the revised rules at the 15 February 2007 Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council.
  • The Common Position is likely to be based on a preliminary compromise agreed by the Council on 13 November 2006 and taking into account amendments from the Parliament's Culture Committee.
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Background: 

On 13 December 2005, the Commission proposed new rules for television regulation. The rules, in the form of a directive amending the 1989 "Television without Frontiers" Directive, which was last revised in 1997, concern limitations to advertising and the extension of the directive's scope to more audiovisual services than just on-air television. 

The changes were justified by the emergence of new technologies such as TV-on-demand, internet television and digital, hard-disk-based video recorders, which are capable of automatically suppressing advertising blocks. Television companies fear that these developments, together with changing viewing habits, will threaten their most important source of revenue, namely the advertising time sold to producers of consumer goods. 

In the Parliament, German Conservative Ruth Hieronymi was appointed rapporteur for the Culture Committee. 

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