The EBU has submitted its response to the European Commission’s Green Paper on "Preparing for a Fully Converged Audiovisual World".

European public service media (PSM) welcome the Commission's initiative to open an important and timely public debate about convergence in the audiovisual media landscape. With "hybrid" broadcast and broadband services now mainstream products, a number of regulatory and policy issues need to be carefully examined. The Green Paper gives a general outline of these issues and asks media sector players to give their views and ideas based on a questionnaire.

“Our response to the Green Paper focuses on setting the right conditions for the audiovisual sector and public service media to deliver on the expectations brought on by media convergence,” said EBU Head of European Affairs Nicola Frank. “We ultimately want audiences to fully benefit from the opportunities offered by media convergence.”

“Reaching all audiences with diverse content lies at the heart of the PSM model. We therefore strongly believe in content distribution models which maximize possibilities for citizens to access a plurality of media content.”

The EBU response highlights the tremendous opportunities of convergence as well as the challenges, such as the increasing role and importance of new digital intermediaries. It recommends a number of policy approaches including:

• providing universal and easy access across platforms to a plurality of information sources and diverse content;
• ensuring that programmes and services which are of particular value for society can be easily found by viewers;
• securing efficient use of both broadband and broadcast technology;
• ensuring that the terrestrial platform will be made available for long-term broadcasting use;
• protecting signal and content integrity against commercial overlays and other parasitic business models and;
• devising a strong regulatory framework for net neutrality, reflecting the fact that the openness and non-discriminatory features of the Internet are key drivers for innovation, economic efficiency and media freedom and pluralism.

With ever-greater and faster access to information for citizens, the EBU believes that the role of the media in serving the democratic, cultural and social needs of each society is more important than ever. The primary goals and values of the current audiovisual regulatory framework remain just as relevant. But the practical implications of a situation where many players - who, in contrast to European audiovisual media service providers, are global and operating in an often unregulated environment - obviously need to be examined further.

So far, PSM organisations have been instrumental in developing digital technology and driving its adoption. They have been at the forefront of the development of hybrid TV systems such as HbbTV, YouView, MHEG-5 and MHP, which offer audiences a whole range of options for accessing audiovisual content which goes far beyond traditional linear TV. PSM have also been instrumental in the development of technical standards for hybrid radio such as RadioDNS.

PSM are also committed to high and sustained levels of investment in high-quality and original European audiovisual productions. In the "big 5" markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK), 71% of PSM programming spend was invested in original content.[1] In the UK, PSM overall network spend amounted to 3.4 billion euros in 2012,[2] while in Germany, PSM organisations invested almost 4 billion euros.[3]