Eurovisioni

There are many festivals and events in Europe dedicated to the audiovisual media, but only one of these deals specifically and exclusively with the European film and television market, technological developments and socio-cultural changes 

It’s Eurovisioni, a festival founded in 1987 when pan-European television did not then exist but is now reaching maturity. Today tens of millions of European households can receive the same programmes.

The promoters 

Eurovisioni was founded by a group of European audiovisual professionals. Today it is a cultural association whose work is coordinated by Henry Ingberg, its president.

The vice-presidents of the board of directors are: Luciana Castellina, whose former posts include president of the Committee on Culture and Media and president of Italia Cinema (the agency that promotes Italian cinema abroad); Krzysztof Zanussi, producer and director of Film Studio ‘TOR’; Stefano Rolando, secretary general of the Regional Councils’ Presidents (Italy); Robert Stéphane, president of the BECT; for cinema, Gianni Massaro, president of the CICCE and ANICA; for technology, Giuliano Berretta, president and CEO of Eutelsat; for public service broadcasters, Jean Réveillon, secretary general of the EBU; and Richard Peduzzi, in his capacity as director of the French Academy in Rome.

The other members on the board include: Jérôme Clément, president of Arte; Véronique Cayla, director of the CNC; Paul Docherty, director of the British Council in Rome; Ulrike Tietze, cultural attaché of the Goethe Institut Rom; Mauro Masi, director of the Dipartimento Informazione ed Editoria della Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri (Italy); Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the ESA; Claudio Carrelli, director of Eurescom; Aurelio De Laurentiis, honorary president of the FIAPF; Fernanddo Lara, director general of the ICAA, Ministry of Culture (Spain); Richard Boidin, director of External Broadcasting, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (France); Giula Rodano, director of the CARL of the Region Lazio; Jacques Briquemont, EBU delegate to the European institutions; Gina Neri, director of General and Institutional Affairs at Mediaset; Mario Morcellini, director of Sociology Department at La Sapienza in Rome; Pierre Sirinelli, professor of Audiovisual Com-munication at La Sorbonne in Paris; Emmanuel Hoog, president of INA; Hervé Bourges, president of the UIJPLF, and many others.

Who organizes?
 

Every year new members are added to the board of directors, depending on the themes chosen for the next edition. These new members propose a number of topical issues and suggest the names of the best experts in these areas. 

Many institutions are represented on the board of directors (EU, national governments, etc.), along with public and private television broadcasters (e.g. ARD, France Télévisions, ZDF, RAI.), the EBU and associations representing authors, writers, copyright, technology in the audiovisual sector, telecommunications companies, and so on. The general secretariat – coordinated by Giacomo Mazzone – ensures that the decisions of the board are implemented.

Who finances? 

A basic contribution is given to Eurovisioni by institutions such as the European Commission and the Direzione Generale per il Cinema of the Italian Culture Ministry.

Depending on the themes chosen, various bodies and private companies also participate from year to year. Furthermore, all participants cover their own expenses.

The objectives? 

Eurovisioni encourages the inter-action and mutual understanding of the three groups who run the audiovisual  sector: the operators (those who produce, distribute and diffuse works in the audiovisual media), institutions (who regulate and provide incentives for this type of activity in the national and European arena), and the manufacturers (who with their technological innovations move the European audiovisual frontiers forward every year). This is achieved by selecting key issues at the forefront of the audiovisual sector, for example the launch of digital TV in Europe, the advent of DBS satellites in the year of their launch, the reform of authorship laws with regard to European television in the year in which an EU directive on the subject was sent out.

Meetings take place, the sector’s professionals interact and, simply by virtue of having the opportunity for this kind of exchange, the different countries are better able to carry out their work, which inevitably is increasingly directed towards Europe.

Diversity and convergence
Christopher Baldelli (GRF), Vice-President of the EBU

Any technological leap forward really deserves a neologism  

Eurovisioni, which each autumn brings together in Rome the decision-makers of European broadcasting media, research-workers and – above all let us not forget them – those who write for and make television and cinema films, paid homage to the burgeoning digital technology by giving its deliberations the decisively compressed heading of: ‘The tele(com)vision in Europe’.

The 19th edition of the Eurovisioni Cinema and Television Festival was held on the day following the Unesco General Conference, during which the authorities of the countries of the European Union had demonstrated the unanimity of the EU as regards the policies of support for national cultural industries alongside the protection of the expression of the heritage of mankind, of peoples and artists.

As the defence of cultural diversity lies at the heart of the concerns of Eurovisioni participants, the latter met to compare their experience and viewpoints – And now? And next? With what resources? For which public? In what legal framework? – these are all questions being asked in the audiovisual media field faced with this ‘new television’, the hybrid daughter of telecoms and television broadcasting, in which the ‘non-linear’ services are destined to develop, grow and multiply alongside the fixed programmes that make up the schedules of conventional channels, whether general-interest or themed. These are now termed ‘linear programmes’, which does not necessarily mean that they must or can be accessed online.

The discussions at the inaugural session in the Palazzo Farnese, where the Festival was accommodated on the premises of the French Embassy, were introduced by, specifically, the president of the Eurovisioni Association, Henry Ingberg, the secretary general of the Ministry of the French Community of Belgium, and by the Italian deputy minister for Culture, Antonio Martusciello. The speakers, who were to include representatives of Unesco, the British Presidency of the European Union, the Media programme, Cineuropa, public service broadcasters (Carmen Caffarel Serra, RTVE and Claudio Petruccioli, RAI), together with private operators, unanimously stressed the importance of the issues at stake as regards this ‘tele(com)vision’ in a landscape whose topical relevance – and dangers – was highlighted by the proceedings of the recent European Union conference in Liverpool.

The three workshops, in which the exchanges of views provided the material for the reports contained in this issue of Diffusion, covered the following topics: ‘Which future for no-pay media?’, chaired by Jean Stock, former EBU secretary general, with Jean-Noël Dibie as rapporteur; ‘The Reform of Public Service Radio and Television: United Kingdom, Spain, Italy’, chaired by Carmen Caffarel Serra, with Gaetano Stucchi as rapporteur; and ‘Public/private; Television/telecommunications: between cooperation and com-petition’, chaired by Pascal Rogard (SACD) and Bernard Miyet (Sacem), with Michel Fansten as rapporteur.

Among the subjects addressed, EBU members’ concerns, as expressed at the Liverpool Audiovisual Conference, where our Union argued in favour of a balanced regulatory framework for all operators – both ‘linear’ and ‘non-linear’ – were widely echoed by the participants in the 2005 edition of the Eurovisioni Festival.

The tele(com)vision in Europe
Henry Ingberg, President, Eurovisioni 

Convergence… triple play… linear and non-linear… digital telecommunications… digital television … pay-per-view… video-on-demand…

References to new developments in the audiovisual media are coming thick and fast, jostling for attention.

These matters had already been addressed by Eurovisioni in 2004. 

Since then the issues have hardened and it is clear that decisions have to be made as a matter of urgency.

The 19th International Cinema and Television Festival is therefore an opportunity to situate the evolution of this hybrid ‘tele(com)vision’ which is leading to a marked increase in the number of operators and raising radical questions in terms of development and regulation.
 
All the operators are redefining themselves with reference to this upheaval, confirming their traditional role but at the same time establishing themselves in new functions hitherto reserved to other categories of operator.

Thus, what we are witnessing is a meeting between broadcasters, the new media, telecommunications operators and new interactive service suppliers…

Questions

In view of the fact that public service broadcasting is clearly a part of the European audiovisual landscape, which has been confirmed by the Amsterdam Protocol, how are the renewed remits of the public service broadcasters to be envisaged? 

Do the private operators themselves agree to assume missions of a general nature?

Is cooperation between private and public service broadcasters possible, and on what bases and principles?

How will all this be translated into European law?
 
The debate is taking place at a particularly decisive moment in the international political calendar. 

The Unesco General Conference is finishing as the Eurovisioni Festival is starting. We shall therefore know whether the General Conference has adopted the Convention on Cultural Diversity. Even though there is a very large majority in favour of the text, we know that the controversy with the United States on this subject is virulent. Whence the necessity to assert European cohesion. 

The two Cs

We recently took part in the Liverpool Conference ‘Between Culture and Commerce’, organized by the British Presidency of the European Union. 

The Conference was dominated by companies’ demands for the non-regulation of the new non-linear services.

The representatives of the creative sector strongly reiterated their demand that the arrangements for supporting audiovisual media creation in Europe should be maintained, on the same reasoning as that already covered in the Television Without Frontiers Directive.

This point of view was reasserted at the Beaune Meetings and at the second European Audiovisual Conference in Naples organized by the FERA (Federation of European Film Directors).

The revision of the Television Without Frontiers Directive is therefore on the agenda as regards incorporating online services. The positions that will be adopted by the Member States, after consultation with the professional sector, will hence be of decisive importance. Rather than referring the regulation back to each Member State, applying the principle of subsidiarity, it is clear that it would be preferable to find convergence in Europe as to the stance to adopt. This would give a clear framework both for the authorities and for the public and private operators. 

The scheduled workshops will make it possible to go straight to the heart of the problems. 

Workshop I: Which future for no-pay media? will compare points of view concerning the evolution of linear media, public or private, funded by state grant or similar, or by advertising.
 
Workshop II: The Reform of Public Service Radio and Television: United Kingdom, Spain, Italy will provide an opportunity to examine some specific cases of the evolution of public service broadcasting in relation to the digital challenge.
 
Workshop III: Public/private; Television/telecommunications: between cooperation and competition  will cover the confrontation between broadcasters and telecommunications operators. This may finish up as an ongoing battle to win market shares, as conflicts between operators and projects or, again, as joint ventures between public service and private operators.

As is only right and proper, our approach consists in comparing points of view in such a way as to show up clearly the contradictions and points of agreement. 

In this way the best use is made of the specific characteristics of Eurovisioni which brings together the expertise of the leading figures present and freedom of expression in the exchange of ideas. 

Workshop I
No-pay media: which future?
Jean-Noël Dibie, Secretary General, GRF, France 

The watchword in Eurovisioni is continuity. In the light of market developments, our workshop confirmed one of the conclusions of the 2004 workshop: ‘The new tele(com)vision’

“The search for an economic model must respect the complementary nature of the editorial content offer and the service offer.”

Which future for no-pay media? Monday 24 October  Burcardo Library And Theatre Collection – SIAE Workshop report:  Chair: Jean Stock – France Keynote speakers: Paolo Agostinelli, Marketing Director, Fastweb – Italy Piero De Chiara, Head of Regulatory Coordination and Multimedia, Telecom Italia  Rapporteur: Jean-Noël Dibie, Secretary General, GRF – France Presentation of the European Digital Library on-line: Xavier Perrot, Adviser to the President, responsible for new technologies at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Starting out from this observation, the workshop chairman suggested that the participants should approach the question of the future of no-pay media from three different standpoints:

• Economic: what is a free medium? 
• Social: for whom?
• Technological: how?  

Economic

A medium costs money at both production and distribution stages and may only be free for the consumer, as opposed to a pay medium sold in units or by subscription.

Depending on the medium’s vocation:

• either to satisfy the general interest to meet a social need, specifically in education, information and/or entertainment;
• or to offer customer contacts to advertisers,   

it is funded out of public monies or commercial revenue, chiefly the sale of advertising space. These two funding resources, like the two vocations, may be combined.

Social

The prime vocation of no-pay media is to satisfy collective expectations; the corollary of this is extensive distribution. 

Technology

In the analogue world, broadcasting made it possible to deliver the same message to a very large audience. In the digital universe, there is no under-lying reason to assign technologies according to the nature of the service. ADSL broadband, which has become the main vector of the ‘worldwide web’ is a point/multipoint service, whereas mobile phones use radio for point-to-point connections.

Telecom operators have already combined these ‘logical uses’ and are marketing ‘triple play’ offers bringing together:

1. fixed telephone lines,
2. broadband Internet,
3. television (general-interest unscrambled channels, themed channels, VOD).

The workshop was keen to point out that this complementarity might be deceptive: the free portion of the television offer, i.e. that part included in the basic subscription for channels in the clear, may be thought of as a loss leader without any guarantee of continuity. 

This reservation made in the workshop spotlighted the fact that, while ‘free’ distribution on multiple platforms might help make it easier to recover the cost of content, it was advisable to make sure to that this was done on two conditions:

• guaranteeing the funding of original audiovisual works, which is more often than not provided today by free-to-air broadcasters who are seeing their income and their audiences gradually eroded by the increase in the number of platforms;
• enabling the content producers to organize the broadcasting windows.  

The question raised in the workshop was not confined to the future of no-pay audiovisual media, and hence participants were informed of the progress of the ‘European Digital Library’ project. 

It emerged that the economic and social problems associated with the project were very similar to those of free-to-air broadcasters faced with the proliferation of digital platforms.

Will the commercial aims of Google and the cultural aims of the EDL be able to come together in the convergent universe of online services?

Workshop II
United Kingdom, Sapin, Italy
The reform of public service radio and television
Rapporteur Gaetano Stucchi 

Today more than ever, the ultimate characteristic feature of public service broadcasting... 

... is its capacity to act as a regulatory element in the system. With the legislative and institutional instruments that a country can give itself to support and guide the operation of an important sector of activity such as communications (and television and the audiovisual media in particular), the role of a public service is both absolutely specific and difficult to replace, at least in national systems corresponding to the so-called ‘European model’.

The Reform of Public Service Radio and Television: United Kingdom, Spain, Italy Monday 24 October Bucardo LIbrary and Theatre Collection – SIAE  Chair: Carlo Rognoni, Member of the Administrative Council, RAI – Italy Keynote speakers: Gonzales Martìn, Director of International Relations, RTVE – Spain  Jean-Paul Philippot, Administrator General, RTBF – Belgium Rapporteur: Gaetano Stucchi – Switzerland

In this regulatory system, which cannot consist solely of rules and obligations (and, even less, solely of negative rules) there always comes a moment when more dynamism is needed, along with more restructuring of the sector, on both economic and technological levels, with reference to the repositioning of the operators or the behaviour of users. 

In the performance of its functions, every public service must reflect above all the general interest of the country that set it up and is funding it, and of course it must respect the logic of more general projects and policies (even supranational) that define the country’s image of itself.
 
The far-reaching restructuring of the sector, with the initiation of the ongoing combined development of digital technologies and the global reach of the Internet, is not perhaps destined to change these interests, projects or policies, but it is without doubt radically changing the products and services of communications, the infrastructures and systems of distribution, forms and habits of consumption, business models, value chains and the funding flow of the whole communications industry. 

This move towards a re-organization of the system should not automatically trigger off distrust, fear and the defensive instinct in traditional players, such as broadcasters, production houses and authors, but this is definitely an evolving process whose complexity, scope and pace will increase the risk of market failure, i.e. the probability that market forces alone will not be able to guarantee the optimum course or the swiftest and happiest outcome.

Within this framework, it is above all for each national community to specify the tasks and the priority objectives of the public broadcasting service itself, from the constitutive and perpetual to the more concrete and incidental (or even variable). 

Most of the former prove to be common to the experience and needs of the different countries in the European Union, although not always as regards the results obtained in each:

• to contribute to the correct functioning of the domestic and Europe-wide audiovisual media market; 
• to guarantee the continuous and permanent expression of the country’s own national cultural identities and the respect of those of other countries;
• to support the overall development of the audiovisual sector and the whole communications industry, including of course the private operators in all categories who are involved in it (not only the PSBs and commercial broadcasters, but also TLC, ISP, etc.);
• to ensure the pluralism, and not just economic pluralism, of the production houses and the content produced (and offered to the user);
• to promote the highest possible level of innovation, creativity and quality in the final offer available on the market by encouraging diversity and competition amongst operators.  

At the very least, these objectives must be wholly taken into consideration in order to fully legitimize public service broadcasting; also, in other words, they are necessary (and sufficient?) as a whole, without establishing a hierarchy or ranking them according to importance. 

While, on the one hand, the elements of this remit justify a strong and determined public service presence in the communications sector, on the other they possess certain of its inalienable characteristics that are exactly commensurate with the results to be achieved:

• reliability of the resources allocated, in both the short and the long term;
• stability and independence of the management, resulting from the criteria of appointment and the duration of terms of office;
• transparency of supervisory machinery and instances;
• responsibility towards the national community of users and permanent monitoring of their needs.  

If we examine this mission and the funding of public service broadcasting in the context of the system as it is taking shape today at national and global level, we must note two key trends, one technological, the other economic, which the public service corporation must include in its reckoning.

1)

The whole set of new communications services and products, which is expanding and diversifying at an exponential rate, rests on the prospect of progressive convergence and the integration of all existing and future networks according to the NGN model (New Generation Networks): a system of transport and distribution infrastructures that are all perfectly complementary and interoperable, designed to make digital communication between citizens (and intelligent ‘objects’) universal, total and open in our society.

This new category of networks, capillary and widely available, will very probably make effective that separation between networks and contents, already sanctioned in the regulations but never as yet achieved in fact, which represents one of the pillars of the EU’s approach to the Information and Knowledge Society.

It is therefore within this radically innovatory perspective that we must situate the development and partnership strategies of the European public services in the short and medium term, drawing all the inescapable and coherent conclusions in redefining the PSB’s role in each of our countries (as in redistributions and the management of the requisite associated ‘natural’ resources, i.e. the frequency spectrum).

2)

The funding of the communications industry draws at present on three sources:

• public expenditure, from the licence fee to all other forms of support;
• advertising expenditure, the investment of economic operators;
• individual expenditure, in other words, paid-for acts of consumption.  

In view of the gradual levelling-off of the first two sources (certain for the first, at best; probable for the second), the only remaining area of expansion of system resources is consumer expenditure. This macro-economic trend is already occasioning the shift of the most valuable content and communications services to forms of paid access, with all the concomitant chance effects and risks of discrimination.

One form of digital divide that should not be overlooked is in fact that separating citizens, within individual national situations, on the basis of their purchasing power. This is a kind of economic divide distinguished by the fact that it does not exist between continents, civilizations, races or generations, but between those who can pay for access to essential products and services, and those who cannot.
 
A commitment that is in the very nature of the public service is without doubt the commitment to combat any form of exclusion, any limitation of the right of citizenship within the national community, especially if it is bound up with the most ferocious and unfair criteria. And hence to undertake to provide a solid, basic free-to-air offer, rich and many-faceted, on all the most important distribution platforms – important as regards what they provide, their penetration and their coverage – present and future.

This universal vocation of public service broadcasting also refers us to another topic which is emerging ever more forcefully in the contemporary debate on the forms of cultural ownership. Built around the concept of commons, in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, and based on a careful reading of the historical evolution of industrial, scientific and cultural property in advanced industrial civilizations, the established opinion is that the total private ownership of knowledge is a trend to be moderated with appropriate counter-measures and amendments.

Lastly, the European dimension and the existence of the Single Market are certainly not irrelevant factors in the strategies of the public services, just like the rising level of competition in the sector and the global profile of a growing number of competitors (from Endemol to the US majors, from Google to Microsoft).

Solidarity and international cooperation between public service broadcasters, especially within the European Union, is consequently becoming an unassailable strong point in the European model of the communications system which may take concrete shape both within already existing associated schemes (starting with the EBU) and in appropriate multilateral and regional partnerships. The new competitive framework in which the public service remit is now situated will not fail to suggest others, some of them new, even outside the increasingly ill-defined borders of the traditional category of broadcasting. 

Rome, 25 October 2005

Workshop III
Between cooperation and competition 
Public / private – Television / telecommunications 
Michel Fansten, Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, France  

Participants in Eurovisioni expressed their concerns faced with the risks to which the audiovisual media sector as a whole is being exposed by the rivalry between telecommunications operators 

Regulations laying down the respective obligations of the various players are required. In particular, it is absolutely necessary that the new services should be obliged to support European creative talent. This is the key element at stake in the revision of the Television Without Frontiers Directive.

Public / private; Television / telecommunication: between cooperation and competition Monday 24 October  Burcardo Library and Theatre Collection – SIAE Chair: Pascal Rogard, Director General, SACD – France and Bernard Miyet, President, Sacem – France Keynote speakers: André Lange, Head of the Market and Finances Department, European Audiovisual Observatory; Lieven Vermaele, Programme Manager, Strategy, VRT – Belgium; Daniel Weekers, Managing Director, Be TV – Belgium; Antoine Virenque, Secretary General of the International Federation of Film Distributors Associations (FIAD) – France Rapporteur: Michel Fansten, Académie des Sciences morales et politiques – France

Workshop III brought together representatives of all the players in the audiovisual media and film industries, in writing, production, distribution, and operation, in public service and private television channels, and no-pay and pay channels.

The debates showed up a unanimity rarely encountered at Eurovisioni. A unanimity that may be summed up by the anxiety expressed by Christophe Baldelli, vice-president of the EBU: “The house is on fire.” Fire, that is the risk of seeing the economically most fragile part of this sector disappear, the part that indeed makes the greatest contribution to the variety and diversity of the programme offer: the themed channels, whose precarious equilibrium was confirmed by the figures presented by the European Audiovisual Observatory.
 
This risk of witnessing a decline in the variety and diversity of what is on offer to the audience may seem paradoxical at a time when we are seeing a substantial increase in the number of distribution channels and modes of reception. And even more paradoxical at a time when the Unesco vote has recognized diversity as an essential dimension of the cultural offer.

Disorder 

The risk is that of confusion in the marketplace. With the evolution of technologies, one and the same network makes it possible to telephone, have access to the Internet, receive television programmes or download films. And this on a multitude of fixed or mobile reception systems. In order to control the complete chain, each operator, each industrial group concerned is tempted to become at once a programme publisher, a technical provider and a commercial integrated equipment designer. The upshot is confusion between professions and rivalry between telecommunications operators. In order to defend or win market shares, the latter slash prices to the bone and step up the number of promotional offers, using audio-visual media works as loss leaders to ensure their commercial expansion with the public. 

However, competition between operators to attract new subscribers and foster their loyalty does not hinge on the novelty and originality of the offer. It focuses on programmes held to be ratings boosters that have already been purchased by the television channels at great cost, such as sports broadcasts or international pop music shows. Two examples are significant from this viewpoint: the acquisition of the exclusive rights to the latest Madonna recording by Orange and the exclusive rights to the Belgian football championship by Belgacom.

For content of this nature, we observe a continual inflation in prices that is not regulated by any market sanctions. And we also witness the repercussions: a drain on resources available for other programmes. There is a real danger of seeing the creative sector in a double bind, through the paucity of remuneration for existing works and through the absence of resources to invest in the creation of new programmes.

Outrun the problem 

This situation is all the more absurd as the process embarked upon does not contribute to the sustainable development of the telecommunications sector. As we saw a few years ago with the dot.com bubble, we are witnessing an attempt to outrun the problem: each new subscriber costs the telecom operators more and more, the capital expenditure involved goes higher and higher and their profitability becomes more and more remote and increasingly less certain. Consumers’ resources and the money obtainable from advertisers will not rise to the level of the expenditure committed. Transfers will be insufficient to make them profitable. They all know this, just as they know that a financial crisis is inevitable and that the upshot will be a brutal restructuring of the telecom sector and companies. But in the meantime, whole areas of creative activity and audiovisual media production in Europe will have disappeared. The telecom operators attempt to outrun the problem is weakening them, but it is weakening even more the audiovisual sector as a whole. 

The workshop participants claimed to be particularly concerned by the positions taken in this context by the European Commission. In intensifying the pressure to dismantle national systems for supporting creative works and for the protection of authors, it is taking upon itself a terrible responsibility: that of weakening the creative sector even further. If, on top of that, it chose not to regulate the new services it would, in the comparatively short term, bring about the conditions for an irreversible crisis in the audiovisual sector as a whole.

Another way 

The workshop’s proceedings showed that another way is possible.

This involves first of all adapting and strengthening the existing regulatory and financial arrangements, and not calling them into question. Next comes consultation then cooperation with the telecom companies on issues of common interest, endeavouring to get a grip on a process that is spinning out of control. 

Several issues of this kind have already been identified, first of all that of digital copying, i.e. pirating. The participants in the workshop were therefore delighted to hear of an initial measure by the Commissioner for the Information Society, which was to put together a high-level group on the matter.

But other urgent issues connected with the regulation of this sector should also be handled in line with the general interest. This is the case in particular with the contribution of the new distribution modes, such as VOD, to the financing of the creation of new works. Hitherto the solidarity between the production sector and the sectors exploiting the works has formed one of the foundations of the audiovisual media economy in Europe; it has been broadened to take in the various forms of television as they have developed. It is all the more necessary that it should be extended to the new services in that the latter are fated to play a more extensive part in the distribution of works.

The indispensable cooperation between the audiovisual sector and the telecommunications sector is not confined to defining their respective boundaries and obligations. Partner-ship agreements are possible within the framework of a structuring of convergence in which every partner will contribute its skills and knowledge:

These are the key issues at stake in the Television Without Frontiers Directive.

pj / nc