‘The thought is unbearable’: Europeans react to EU
plans to cut British TV
EU media critics say post-Brexit plans could pave way
for more homegrown content
Kate
Connolly in Berlin, Angela Giuffrida in Rome, Jon Henley in Paris, Helena Smith
in Athens and Sam Jones in Madrid
Fri 25 Jun
2021 18.17 BST
It was
during a trip to Brighton for an English language course in 1984 that the young
German student Nicola Neumann first discovered British television.
“The
elderly couple who put me up tried really hard to educate me further, so we’d
sit in front of the telly together every evening and then talk about the
programmes afterwards,” she said.
She remembers
watching news bulletins, EastEnders, Coronation Street, and ‘Allo ‘Allo! – and
every Friday night without fail, a crime drama.
“I was
hooked,” she said. “Since then I’ve not been able to imagine my life without
British TV and film. I like the quality, the tone, the humour, the way it has
taught me to express myself in colloquial English. For me it’s been an
education over three decades.”
On her
return to Germany, Neumann continued to get her “fix” through videos and
episodes of programmes such as All Creatures Great and Small, and Upstairs,
Downstairs, which aired on television – albeit dubbed into German – in Bavaria,
where she grew up. More recently, said Neumann, who is a bookseller from
Erlangen, it has mainly been streaming services and YouTube which have helped
feed her craving.
So when it
was reported earlier this week that the EU was preparing to act against the
“disproportionate” amount of British television and film shown in Europe after
Brexit she said she was “furious”.
“Some of us
are still reeling from the shock of the Brexit referendum. We’ve thought about
the consequences of things like freedom of movement, import duty, or fishing,
perhaps, but this is one of the things we had not paid attention to.
“I guess if
it happens I will try to circumnavigate the problem even if it means going to
the UK and buying up loads of DVDs,” she said.
Chiara
Lagana, an Italian journalist who writes about TV, is equally shocked at the
prospect of having less access to British content.
“The
thought is truly unbearable,” she said. “I’ve been fond of British TV series
for years. The thought of losing them or not having access to new ones makes me
feel poorer. They are of huge quality, much better even in comparison to the
US.”
In Spain, British
television series have always been viewed as “prestige products”, said Natalia
Marcos, a journalist for the TV section of El País.
“Downton
Abbey is one example of that, as is The Crown. But it’s not just the period
dramas – British cop shows are also very popular. Line of Duty has found a real
niche among TV lovers here, who really rate and respect it,” she said.
Marcos said
she believed that if Spanish viewers were to find themselves deprived of their
favourite British shows, many would not hesitate to resort to illegal means,
such as VPNs – encrypted connections over the internet which help circumvent
geographical locks.
Gabriele
Niola, a film critic and Italy correspondent for Screen International, agreed.
“I don’t think the impact will be too significant as people will still find
ways of accessing shows if they really want to,” he said.
But
post-Brexit, politically the will is there to challenge the dominance of
British TV and film.
When the
European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, visited Rome this week to
formally approve Italy’s spending plan for its share of the EU’s recovery fund,
the Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, hosted her at the Cinecittà film
studios in Rome, where €300m (£257m) of the funds are to be invested in development.
“It’s
obvious that if Britain leaves the EU, then its productions no longer fall
within the community’s quotas,” the Italian culture minister, Dario
Franceschini, told Corriere della Sera. “Europe will have to respond on an
industrial and content level, and Cinecittà will be strategic on this front.”
Sten-Kristian
Saluveer, an Estonian media policy strategist, said EU plans to reassess the
amount of UK content – in particular on streaming platforms such as Netflix and
Amazon – were inevitable.
“A big
catalyst is the increased trade tensions between the UK and France, as well as
the EU’s anti-trust procedures,” he said. “The question is not so much about
original content produced in the UK as it is about studios in the UK connected
to platforms like Apple and Netflix, which are very well positioned to utilise
the good relations the UK has with the US – as well as exploiting the European
capacity, including everything from work permits to subsidies,” he said.
“When
Britain was in the EU there were spillover effects for the rest of the bloc.
But now it’s not, the question is why should these platforms be able to exploit
the same benefits?”
Saluveer
said smaller EU members could stand to benefit from a reduction in UK content,
as it could allow more room for their content. He cited the box office success
Tangerines – an Estonian-Georgian co-production which was nominated for a
Golden Globe – or the Oscar-nominated The Fencer, a Finnish-Estonian-German
collaboration.
Thomas
Lückerath, a leading TV industry journalist in Germany and editor in chief of
the media magazine DWDL, said he believed the EU had “no alternative” than to
refocus its definition of what was a “European work” now that Britain had left.
The EU’s
audiovisual media services directive – according to which a majority of airtime
must be given to European content on terrestrial television and must constitute
at least 30% of the number of titles on streaming platforms – was introduced to
create a distinction from works from the US which would otherwise dominate, he
said.
“This is
about ensuring that works are made in the EU – that the streaming services use
EU talent and don’t just grab the money. And it has certainly led to more
investment flowing into the creative scene,” he said.
Since
Brexit, he said “the political agenda hasn’t changed. The 30% quota was simply
to boost creativity and that’s what it’s done.”
He said he
believed the knock-on effect of this might even lead to more British content,
not less. And German TV – which recently showed Sherlock in a prime-time slot,
and where series such as Midsummer Murders and Line of Duty have cult
followings – would continue to show as many British series as it ever had, he
said. “There are no plans to cut what people like to watch.”
Even in
France, notoriously protective of its cultural heritage, British TV draws big
audiences and dedicated followings. Costume crime such as Peaky Blinders and
Ripper Street, and contemporary cop shows such as Luther, Killing Eve and
Bodyguard are recent examples.
“British
television fiction is of a very high quality, there’s a lot of it, and it
consistently has a great deal of success in France,” said Laurence Herszberg,
director of the international Series Mania festival, adding that several
leading French production houses now had British subsidiaries.
Any
decision by the EU to cut the amount of British content on screens would
certainly be felt. But a recent decline in French interest in US-made series
could reduce that impact.
“My
impression is that if UK-made content is no longer classified as European,
British product will be able to compensate for the shrinking share of US
output,” she said. “There will be some fall-off, but I think maybe not as much
as people might fear.”
EU prepares to cut amount of British TV and film shown
post-Brexit
Exclusive: number of UK productions seen as
‘disproportionate’ and threat to Europe’s cultural diversity
Daniel
Boffey in Brussels
Mon 21 Jun
2021 12.58 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/21/eu-prepares-cut-amount-british-tv-film-shown-brexit
The EU is
preparing to act against the “disproportionate” amount of British television
and film content shown in Europe in the wake of Brexit, in a blow to the UK entertainment
industry and the country’s “soft power” abroad.
The UK is
Europe’s biggest producer of film and TV programming, buoyed up by £1.4bn from
the sale of international rights, but its dominance has been described as a
threat to Europe’s “cultural diversity” in an internal EU document seen by the
Guardian.
The issue
is likely to join a list of points of high tension in the EU-UK relationship
since the country left the single market and customs union, including disputes
over the sale of British sausages in Northern Ireland and the issue of licences
in fishing waters, which led to Royal Navy patrol boats being deployed to
Jersey earlier this year.
Brussels’
target this time is the continuing definition of British programmes and film as
being “European works”.
Under the
EU’s audiovisual media services directive, a majority of airtime must be given
to such European content on terrestrial television and it must make up at least
30% of the number of titles on video on demand (VOD) platforms such as Netflix
and Amazon.
Countries
such as France have gone further, setting a 60% quota for European works on VOD
and demanding 15% of the turnover of the platforms is spent in production of
European audiovisual and cinematographic works.
According
to an EU document tabled with diplomats on 8 June, in the “aftermath of Brexit”
it is believed the inclusion of UK content in such quotas has led to what has
been described as a “disproportionate” amount of British programming on
European television.
“The high
availability of UK content in video on demand services, as well as the
privileges granted by the qualification as European works, can result in a
disproportionate presence of UK content within the European video on demand
quota and hinder a larger variety of European works (including from smaller
countries or less spoken languages),” a paper distributed among the member
states reads. “Therefore the disproportionality may affect the fulfilment of
the objectives of promotion of European works and cultural diversity aimed by the
audiovisual media services directive.”
The
European Commission has been tasked with launching an impact study on the risk
to the EU’s “cultural diversity” from British programming, which diplomatic
sources said would be a first step towards action to limit the privileges
granted to UK content.
Industry
figures said a move to define UK content as something other than European,
leading to a loss of market share, would particularly hit British drama, as the
pre-sale of international rights to shows such as Downton Abbey and The Crown
has often been the basis on which they have been able to go into production.
Adam Minns,
the executive director of the Commercial Broadcasters Association (COBA), said:
“Selling the international intellectual property rights to British programmes
has become a crucial part of financing production in certain genres, such as
drama.
“Losing
access to a substantial part of EU markets would be a serious blow for the UK
TV sector, right across the value chain from producers to broadcasters to
creatives.”
The sale of
international rights to European channels and VOD platforms earned the UK
television industry £490m in sales in 2019-20, making it the second biggest
market for the UK behind the US.
According
to the leaked EU paper, entitled “The disproportionate presence of UK content
in the European VOD quota and the effects on the circulation and promotion of
diverse European works”, it is thought necessary for the bloc to reassess the
“presence of UK content in the aftermath of Brexit”.
“The
concerns relate to how Brexit will impact the audiovisual production sector in
the European Union as, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory, the
UK provides half of the European TV content presence of VOD in Europe and the
UK works are the most actively promoted on VOD, while the lowest EU27 share of
promotion spots is also found in the UK,” the paper says.
It adds:
“Although the UK is now a third country for the European Union, its audiovisual
content still qualifies as ‘European works’ according to the definition
provided by the AVMS directive, as the definition continues to refer to the
European convention on Transfrontier Television of the Council of Europe, to
which the UK remains a party.”
It was long
feared in the industry that the EU would seek to undermine the UK’s dominance
of the audiovisual market once the country had left the bloc. The government
had been repeatedly warned of the risk to the British screen industry.
Industry
sources said they had believed it was a matter of “when not if”, with the
government appearing to have little leverage over Brussels on the issue.
EU sources
suggested the initiative would probably be taken further when France takes over
the rolling presidency of the union in January, with the backing of Spain,
Greece, Italy and Austria, among others. There is a midterm review of the AVMS
directive due in three years’ time, which sources suggested may be the point at
which changes could come into force.
A UK
government spokesperson said: “The UK is proud to host a world-class film and
TV industry that entertains viewers globally and which the government has
supported throughout the pandemic, including through the film and TV restart
scheme.
“European
works status continues to apply to audiovisual works originating in the UK, as
the UK is a party to the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Transfrontier
Television (ECTT).”
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