Infso-2008-00093-00-02-en-rev-01

C) Further comments

Since the last report on the compliance by broadcasters with the obligations under Articles 4 and 5 of the Directive, the rules governing broadcasters’ obligations in Italy have changed radically. Article 2 of the Law No 122 of 30 April 1998 has been repealed by Legislative Decree No 177 of 31 July 2005 (the ‘2005 Broadcasting Code’), which gathers together all the existing provisions in the broadcasting sector.

The following paragraphs summarise the main obligations for broadcasters and content providers under Articles 6 and 44 of the 2005 Broadcasting Code:

• 
  scheduling obligations — all national broadcasters and content providers⁴¹ must — where practicable — reserve more than 50% of their monthly transmission time for European works, excluding time devoted to news, sports events, games, advertising, teletext services, talk shows and teleshopping. The same provisions apply to peak viewing times;
  
• 
  at least 50% of this percentage must be made up of recent works (produced in the past five years);
  
• 
  national broadcasters and content providers must — where practicable — reserve at least 10% of broadcasting time for European works produced by independent producers, not counting time devoted to news, sports events, games, advertising, teletext services, talk shows and teleshopping. The public service broadcaster must meet a quota of at least 20% for independent producers;
  
• 
  investment obligations — all broadcasters under Italian jurisdiction must reserve at least 10% of their net annual revenue from advertising for the production and purchase of audiovisual programmes produced in Europe, including films, works by independent producers and programmes for children. At least 40% of this quota must be invested in the production and purchase of European films.
  

In addition to the Broadcasting Code, the regulation on the promotion of the distribution and production of European works (the ‘Quotas Regulation’) adopted by AGCOM with its Decision No 9/99 of 16 March 1999 is still in force. Its most important provisions are as follows:

• 
  Article 2(3) introduces the obligation to provide specific reasons for any shortfalls in the minimum proportions set for European works. The AGCOM may not investigate such reasons if the shortfalls do not exceed 7% of these proportions;
  
• 
  Article 2(4): when several channels belong to or are controlled by a single company or person, the minimum proportions reserved for European works are determined on the basis of the channels’ overall programme schedule (with a minimum 20% for each channel) and on the basis of the total net revenues from yearly advertising earned by all the channels of the group.
  

The issue concerning the limited application of the rules concerning works by independent producers to only analogue terrestrial broadcasters was thus apparently resolved in 2005 by the Broadcasting Code, which extended the obligation regarding independent works to all content providers.

Most recently, Law 244/2007 and Law 31/2008 amended the Broadcasting Code to change yet again the provisions regarding the promotion of European and independent works. The new obligations are summarised below:

• 
  all national broadcasters and content providers must reserve more than 50% of their transmission time for European works, excluding time devoted to news, sports events, games, advertising, teletext services, talk shows and teleshopping. The same provisions apply to peak viewing times;
  
• 
  at least 10% of the transmission times of each broadcaster and content provider must be reserved for recent European works (produced in the past five years), and 20% of this percentage should be reserved for cinema films made in the Italian language. The public service broadcaster must reserve 20% of its transmission time for recent European works;
  
• 
  each broadcaster/content provider must reserve at least 10% (15% for the public service broadcaster) of its revenues for European works created by producers who are independent of broadcasters. Within this quota, the free-to-air channels must devote a share of 30% to cinema films made in Italian, while the pay-tv channels must reserve a share of 35% to works made in Italian;
  
• 
  the provisions of the AGCOM Quotas Regulation remain valid.
  

The new framework therefore replaces the obligation to reserve at least 10% of broadcasting time for European works produced by independent producers with the obligation to invest at least 10% of revenues in such works, in line with Article 5 of the Directive. Starting from 2008, therefore, AGCOM will fill in columns 2 and 3 of the table published above only for statistical purposes.

Finally, it must be noted that the new framework does not explicitly mention recent works created by producers who are independent of broadcasters: as already stated in the previous reports to the Commission, the obligation to reserve part of transmission time for recent works is applied in Italy to all European works and not to works by independent producers. In order to make the Italian framework fully compatible with Article 5 of the Directive, AGCOM intends to adopt a regulation imposing an obligation to reserve an adequate proportion of investment in independent works for recent works.

LATVIA

Number of channels	Reference period	Monitoring method
Total identified: 6 Covered (IND 1): 5	2005/2006	Self-reporting