The Future Of The European Audiovisual Industry

Economic analysis of the European audiovisual scene, focussed on the television industry. Statistical evidence tracing the structural development of the new audiovisual economy of Europe arising from deregulation and the emergence of new technologies. Examination of the development of fiction and drama production. Internationalisation.

Diagnosis of the situation of the European audiovisual industry and recommendations to better this situation in the post-GATT era.

Met lit. opg. - Met samenv. How can the European Union contribute to developing a strong, forward-looking programme industry (both for the cinema and for television) that can compete on world markets and help European culture to flourish and create jobs in Europe.

New players emerge in the audiovisual industry and offer unprecedented solutions for aggregating and distributing content. New entrants, especially social networks, have been the engines of these changes toward multitasking, multi-screening behaviours. The way of accessing and interacting with content has changed. Over the last three decades, the European Commission has been watching carefully the evolution of the media and content industries with the goal to foster growth and innovation of digital content services in the European Union, while at the same time protecting consumers in a harmonised fashion.The paper contrasts the global trends of the market, the features of the dual EU audiovisual markets with some of the recent proposals of the European Commission in the backdrop of its numerous initiatives of the last decades.

This is an open access book. Media industry research and EU policymaking are predominantly tailored to large (and, in the latter case, Western) European markets. This open access book addresses the specific qualities of smaller media markets, highlighting their vulnerability to global digital competition and outlining survival strategies for them. New online distribution models and new trends in the consumption of audiovisual content are limited by, and pose new challenges for, existing audiovisual business models and their legal framework in the EU. The European Commission’s Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy, which was intended e.g. to remove obstacles to the cross-border distribution of audiovisual content, has triggered a heated debate on the transformation of the existing ecosystem for European screen industries. While most current discussions focus on the United States, Western Europe, and the multinational giants, this book approaches these industry trends and policy questions from the perspective of relatively small and peripheral (in terms of their population, language, cross-border cultural flows, and financial and/or symbolic capital) media markets.

The last major study by the European Audiovisual Observatory on the economic significance of public film support, carried out in 2009, underscored the important role played by these subsidies for the European film industry: in 2009, 280 different funds administered total aid of more than EUR 2 billion. The review of the legal provisions relating to the grant of these subsidies currently being conducted by the European Commission is therefore extremely important for the European film industry, the future of which also depends on the future of state support.