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In a decision on 11 February 2010 the Conseil d’Etat cancelled the letter from the Minister for Culture and Communication of 15 December 2008 calling on the Chairman of France Télévisions to stop marketing advertising space on the group’s channels between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. “in accordance with both the spirit and the letter of the legislative reform in hand”. The letter was issued at a time when the bill on reforming the audiovisual sector, directed mainly at abolishing advertising on public service television, was pending: the Act had only passed through the National Assembly on its first reading,...

On 23 December 2009, the Oberlandesgericht München (Munich Appeal Court - OLG) upheld the company Danone's claim to information about the kick-back payments received by the media agency Aegis Media during the period of a contract between the two companies (case no. 7 U 3044/09). The plaintiff had been using Aegis Media as its media agency for many years. As such, Aegis Media essentially managed the company's TV advertising budget and bought advertising slots from broadcasters. Under the contract between the two parties, all economic benefits that were neither part of the advertising fee nor the...

At the end of January 2010, Schweizer Fernsehen broadcast an advertisement by the Verein gegen Tierfabriken (VgT) three times, thus bringing an end to a 16-year legal dispute. In January 1994, the VgT had asked the Schweizerische Radio- und Fernsehgesellschaft (Swiss radio and television corporation - SRG) to broadcast its spot, which attempted to raise awareness of the cruel treatment of pigs and to urge viewers to eat less meat. However, SRG's subsidiary, publisuisse SA, refused this request on the grounds that the spot infringed the ban on political advertising on television. This was followed...

Product placement has been authorised in the French-speaking Community of Belgium since 19 December 2009, in compliance with Article 21 of the Coordinated Decree of 26 March 2009 on audiovisual media services. By totally banning product placement in news broadcasts and children’s programmes, the legislator has in fact gone further than is required by the AVMS Directive, but the amendment is significant nonetheless: in all other types of programme, the placement of accessories is authorised, whereas product placement stricto sensu (i.e., in return for payment) is only accepted in cinematographic...

At the end of 2009, the Vlaamse Regulator voor de Media (Flemish Regulator for the Media) issued several decisions regarding audiovisual commercial communications. Two of them will be addressed below. In a decision of 23 November 2009 the Flemish Regulator imposed on MTV Networks Belgium a fine amounting to EUR 2,500 for multiple breaches of the regulation on teleshopping. The Regulator considered three programmes (‘Hot or Not’, ‘Your Take Ringtone Chart’ and ‘Your Take’) to be teleshopping programmes. According to Article 82, §1 (1) of the Flemish Media Decree 2009, these programmes have to be...