The European Commission is expecting locally produced mobile TV and VOD content to boost the proportion of European works broadcast in the EU. The commission’s seventh “progress report on the promotion of European works for 2003-2004″ (apparently it takes a year and a half to put this together) showed that the average figure for EU-produced content broadcast within Europe dropped slightly by 1.86 percent between 2003 and 2004, though it remains above 60 percent. Release | Full report
— Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding emphasized that the 10 newer member states are broadcasting as much local content as the big 15: the report credited this partly to the 1989 Television Without Frontiers directive which aims to promote EU content within the union. She said the quality of Europe’s audiovisual industry is in its cultural diversity and is “firmly convinced that new media services such as mobile TV and video-on-demand will stimulate and enhance the market for rich European content offers even further.”
– The overall EU-wide average broadcast time for European works was 65.18 percent in 2003 and 63.32 percent in 2004.
– The 2003 figure varied from between 52.75 percent in Ireland and 86.20 percent in Denmark, and in 2004 from 49.12 percent in the Czech Republic and 86.33 percent in Denmark – but in the medium term has stabilized at an average above 60 per cent.
– Good news for indie producers: the percentage of independently produced works rose fractionally from 31.39 percent in 2003 to 31.50 percent in 2004. That figure remains well above the 10 percent quota set by the TWF directive.
This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.
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