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The Prime Minister has announced that the Government will continue to provide film tax relief, the targeted tax break for the British film industry, until the end of December 2015. The scheme provides relief for film production companies in relation to the expenses they incur on the production of a film intended for theatrical release in commercial cinemas. For a film to be eligible for relief, it must be certified as British, either by passing a cultural test or under an agreed co-production treaty. The certification process is administered by the British Film Institute on behalf of the UK Government’s...

Section One of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code deals with “Protecting the Under-Eighteens” and should be read in conjunction with Section Two (“Harm and Offence”). Guidance already exists to assist broadcasters to interpret the Code and, in this context, in particular, Rule 1.3. This reads, “Children must…be protected by appropriate scheduling from material that is unsuitable for them”. However, “a fundamental requirement underpinning these rules is the application of the watershed, which applies to television only”. The watershed runs between 21:00 - 05:30. Between those hours, one should expect a...

The UK communications regulator, Ofcom, has decided that a continuous visual reference to Skype during an interview may constitute product placement. Sky News broadcast an interview via a video call in its coverage of the Utoya Island massacre in Norway. Whenever the interviewee was shown full-screen, the words ‘VIA SKYPE’ were shown almost continuously in a caption in the top right-hand corner. There was no product placement agreement with Skype, and Ofcom was concerned that this amounted to giving undue prominence in a programme to a product, service or trade mark, which is prohibited by the...

The European Commission has requested Belgium and the UK to implement outstanding provisions of the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive. The AVMS Directive aims at ensuring a single market and legal certainty for Europe’s TV and audiovisual industry. This is done through the creation of a level playing -field for both broadcast and on-demand audiovisual media services across borders, while ensuring cultural diversity, the protection of children and consumers, the safeguarding of media pluralism and combating racial and religious hatred. This Directive is based on the principle of the...

On 19 August 2011, the UK’s Competition Commission (CC) published its provisional findings on the competition situation with regard to the marketing of films in the British pay-TV sector. In its report, the CC establishes that the dominance of BSkyB in the area of pay-TV film rights limits competition between the pay-TV retailers, thus leading to higher prices and less choice for subscribers. An important element for this assessment by the authority is that, owing to its long-standing exclusive arrangements with the six biggest Hollywood studios, BSkyB has a dominant market position with regard...