Brexit: Leaving EU Could Devastate UK TV

TV might seem the ideal escape from the UK’s never-ending political horror show but no more – Brexit is infiltrating your box. The loss of EU funding and freedom of movement will inevitably stifle the sector but the real worry is the legalities of broadcasting. Unless the British Government and industry can somehow negotiate major changes to those laws the future of UK broadcasting will look a lot less bright.

Playing By The Rules

The creative industries have not exactly dominated the thinking of the British Government’s Brexit planners. Industries such as finance, farming and car manufacturing have taken priority, even though the UK creative industries contribute £84bn a year to the economy and TV and film rely more than many other sectors on EU funding and labour.

Britain’s TV industry is underpinned by a huge number of rules, laws and policies, many of which are inextricably linked to the EU.

The legalities of television – from production to broadcasting – don’t make for light reading but they’re really important. The EU’s audio-visual media sector directive sets out its TV broadcasting policies, which include the all-important “country of origin principle”, handily shortened to COOP.

Given that TV, internet and satellite signals do not stop at national borders the EU long ago decided to allow broadcasting across borders without extra regulations or tariffs.

So where does the country of origin principle come in? Rather than having to comply with the laws of multiple jurisdictions, the COOP means broadcasters only have to follow the laws of the broadcasting country.

If a show is made in Germany but beamed to Austria, Italy and Switzerland, only German laws apply to its production. COOP removes a serious amount of international red tape and allows TV producers and broadcasters unrestricted access to the world’s largest trade area.

The result is market growth as cross-country competition increases and allows providers to test out markets without needing to set up abroad to do so. Losing access to this regime would do significant harm to the UK’s TV industry, especially as the principle is likely to extend to satellite channels in future.

Coop Up or Cop Out

The UK is easily Europe’s largest and most prolific broadcasting hub. Some 1,200 television channels are based in the UK, which is almost three times as many as France, Britain’s closest competitor in the EU. Amazingly, around 55% of those channels aren’t domestic – they broadcast from the UK to other countries. Conversely about 35 channels received in the UK are based abroad.

Our television sector’s status is tied to the continuing success of the UK’s international channels. The British communication and TV regulator Ofcom has unequivocally backed the continuation of COOP in the UK after Brexit “so that media companies based here don’t face new hurdles, o worse, feel compelled to set up in another European country.” Ofcom says retaining COOP will help to “encourage – not undermine – the growth and vibrancy of our cultural industries.”

If UK TV channels, including foreign broadcasters based here, are locked out of the COOP, they are likely to move elsewhere.

As pointed out by Lord Puttnam in a House of Lord debate on the creative industries, jobs will go with them. “Literally thousands of jobs are at stake here,” he said.

“A significant portion of the 12,000 people who work in the multi-channel sector are employed at the European or international headquarters of media groups located here in Britain.

Indeed, the number of international channels based in this country has been rising by around 17% every year.” He warned that leaving the audiovisual media directive and COOP would result in a loss of jobs, hard-won investment and “repercussions could be far greater than that”. If the sector shrinks and moves abroad, the UK’s ability to produce and access epic shows like The Night Manager (left) will shrink too.

Keeping COOP would require heavy negotiations and it won’t be easy as the Government can’t simply copy it over into UK law after Brexit. Taking part would require the agreement of the EU’s 27 member states, many of whom would be delighted to see the UK lose its broadcasting crown. The UK TV industry directly employs 106,000 people and its exports total £1.6bn a year. Breaking from the EU without having the right broadcasting policies in place would be devastating to the UK industry, its audience and workers. Broadcasting cannot afford to take a back seat in Brexit negotiations but it hasn’t even been given a non-speaking role. The entire sector is an off-screen extra and the profits and quality of British TV could suffer for it.

 

by Jo Davey

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