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Article 15 of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) allows television channel operators to acquire exclusive broadcasting rights to events of high public interest. Other channels, however, must be able to have access to such events for the purpose of short news reports. The owner of an exclusive right must therefore provide other broadcasters with access to its signal to allow them to freely choose short extracts. The Directive permits that owners be compensated for access to their signal, but this compensation may not exceed the additional costs directly incurred in providing that access. In...

In a decision of 5 November 2012, the Austrian Bundeskommunikationssenat (Federal Communications Senate - BKS) confirmed that a sponsor reference that was excessively promotional in nature should be separated from the preceding programme by optical, acoustic and spatial means, in accordance with the rules on “traditional” television advertising. The decision concerned a reference to a photography studio as sponsor of a programme broadcast by Burgenländisches Kabelfernsehen (BKF). The reference was accompanied by the following spoken text: “Steve Haider photography, your partner for modern corporate...

In a decision of 5 November 2012, the Austrian Bundeskommunikationssenat (Federal Communications Senate - BKS) explained the difference between surreptitious advertising and product placement in a radio competition. The case concerned a competition organised over several days by the radio station Ö3 and based heavily on the state lottery. On the days of the relevant broadcasts, presenters drew a total of 12 bonus numbers, always just before the hourly news bulletin. Listeners were urged to see if the numbers were on their lottery tickets, which could be up to six months old. After the news bulletin,...

According to media reports, the Landesgericht Korneuburg (Korneuburg Regional Court) dismissed on 8 November 2012 an action brought against RTL by a man from Lower Austria. The plaintiff had been accidentally filmed by the German TV broadcaster in November 2010 during his holiday on the Maldives, subsequently shown without his consent in the programme “Deutschland sucht den Superstar 2011 - Recall” (Germany seeks 2011 superstar - Recall”), and was referred to by one of the presenters as the “monster from the deep”. In order to avoid legal action, RTL paid the 70-year-old plaintiff a lump sum of...

Following the media regulator KommAustria, the Bundeskommunikationssenat (Federal Communications Board - BKS), Austria’s supreme broadcasting authority, reached the conclusion in its decision of 5 November 2012 that television cable network operators must feed the special-interest channel ORF Sport + into their analogue networks. Liwest, Austria’s second-largest cable network operator, had up to then fed the sports channel into its digital cable network only, and KommAustria ruled that ORF Sport + also had to be distributed in analogue networks in accordance with the “must carry rule” in section...