France

[FR] Fine Inflicted on Broadcaster for Infringement of Advertising Rules Used to Support the Audio-visual Industry

IRIS 1995-4:1/11

Ad van Loon

European Audiovisual Observatory

By Decision of 23 February 1995, the French media authority, the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA) has inflicted a sanction upon the broadcaster Télé Toulouse (T.L.T.) for not respecting the advertising rules.

In France, terrestrial broadcasters that broadcast their programmes unencrypted are not allowed to broadcast advertising messages stemming from advertisers that are active in the economic sector of distribution. This prohibition is laid down in Article 8 of Decree n° 92-280 of 27 March 1992. Article 9 of this Decree prohibits illegal advertising.

According to the CSA, T.L.T. had infringed these provisions on different occasions in 1992. By sending warnings on 15 September and 10 November 1992, the CSA tried to urge T.L.T. to respect the obligations imposed by law. On 24 December 1992, the CSA again noted a series of infringements. Therefore it decided on 23 February 1995, taking account on the one hand, of the seriousness of the infringement and on the other hand, the revenues gained by T.L.T. from the broadcasting of the illegal advertisements, to inflict a fine of FF 100,000 to transfer to the Treasury's special account for financial support to the cinematographic industry and the audio-visual programme industry.