IRIS Special: Audiovisual media services without frontiers. Implementing the rules

The current ongoing revision of the EC’s Television without Frontiers (TVwF) Directive clearly raises major questions for the future of the regulation of linear and non-linear services. However, it also gives rise to reflection concerning the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Transfrontier Television (ECTT), a parallel regulatory instrument concerning cross-border broadcasting.

At a time of major transformation of the European legal instruments which are applied to broadcasting and new audiovisual services, this new report from the European Audiovisual Observatory takes stock of recent and current problem areas in broadcasting regulation in the light of the challenges these will raise for the new extended regulation. The report analyses issues of the practical application of the TVwF Directive and the ECTT in their current form.

It also raises the question of the future cohabitation of the two instruments following the completed revision of the TVwF Directive, not forgetting that there will clearly be a period where the two instruments will be “out of phase” with each other.