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The Act “on audiovisual communication and the new public television service” and the Implementing Act on the appointment of the chairmen of the public-sector audiovisual companies were gazetted on 7 March 2009. A few days earlier, the Constitutional Council, in response to an application by opposition MPs, had validated all the key measures of the reform, including the abolition of advertising on the public-sector channels, their financing, and - more controversially - the appointment of the chairmen of the public-sector audiovisual companies (France Télévisions, Radio France and the company responsible...

The Media Commission of the Flemish Parliament has accepted an important modification to the draft of the new Media Decree (see IRIS 2009-2: 8). In pursuance of the European Court of Human Rights judgment in the case of TV Vest SA and Rogaland Pensjonistparti v Norway (see IRIS 2009-3: 2), the Commission has approved a provision allowing paid political advertising on radio and television in pre-election time (Article 47). The provision’s viability, however, depends on a double condition: approval in the plenary session of the Flemish Parliament and modification of the federal law on election expenditure...

The bill - examined at length and copiously amended at its first reading in the National Assembly and the Senate - passed through the joint mixed committee at the end of January. As a result of this examination, provided for in the urgent procedure adopted by the Government for passing the Act, the bill was ratified in the form it was submitted to the global vote of each assembly in the course of the following days. The package was finally adopted on 4 February 2009. Two types of appeal have already been lodged against the texts adopted. Firstly, opposition members of the Senate have called on...

In December 2008, the Vlaamse Regulator voor de Media (Flemish Regulator for the Media - monitoring and enforcement of media regulation) issued several interesting decisions. Two of them will be addressed below. Firstly, the Algemene Kamer (General Chamber) condemned the commercial broadcasting corporation SBS Belgium for a triple breach of the so-called “20 minutes rule” during the broadcasting of the programme “Lost”. This rule, described in Article 101 § 5 of the Omroepdecreet (Flemish Decree on Radio-broadcasting and Television), requires a period of at least twenty minutes to intervene between...

In a decision issued at the end of 2008, the Bundeskommunikationssenat (Federal Communication Senate - BKS) stated that Österreichische Rundfunk (the Austrian public broadcasting corporation - ORF) had violated the rules on the labelling of TV advertising and the separation of programme and advertising content. The BKS ruling concerned ORF programmes broadcast on its ORF 2 channel and was based on the following findings. On 28 July 2008, ORF broadcast a programme announcement with the ORF 2 corporate design followed by an "advertising divider", also with the ORF 2 corporate design but without...