Who: The DGMIC (Department of the Media and Cultural Industries).
Where: France
Publication: August 21st, 2017, published online here.
What Happened:
Within the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the DGMIC defines, coordinates and assesses the state policy in the area of media pluralism, the advertising industry and more widely cultural economy.
The DGMIC has launched six crucial surveys for the TV advertising market.
- Advertising prohibited sectors: Currently, TV advertising is not authorised for promotions run by the distribution sector, for cinema and for publishing industries. The DGMIC proposes to end these three prohibitions.
- Segmented advertising: In principle, TV adverts must be transmitted simultaneously in all the service coverage area. The DGMIC proposes to allow broadcasters to air different commercials that would be adapted to their different audiences. As a precautionary measure, DGMIC provides two exceptions regarding TV adverts within, before and after children’s programmemes, and TV adverts for local advertisers with precise addresses.
- Maximum advert duration: Today, the average daily limit for TV advert is set to 9 minutes per hour for terrestrial TV channels. The DGMIC proposes to increase this limit to the European maximum duration (an average daily limit of 12 minutes per hour). The DGMIC also seeks views about the potential removal of any duration limit during the 00:00 – 06:00 a.m period of the day.
- Advertising interruption of TV programmes other than cinematographic and audio-visual works: Presently, advertising interruptions take place before or after TV programs or within TV programmes that have some natural interruptions (between two autonomous parts for instance) provided that there is at least 20 minutes of programme between two advertising interruptions. The DGMIC proposes to adopt the rules set up by the AVMS directive and to allow the free interruption of TV programmes other than religious programmes (no interruption allowed at all), children’s programmes (interruption allowed only each 30 minutes for programmes lasting more than 30 minutes) and news programmes (interruption allowed only each 30 minutes). In this respect, in July 2017, the CSA (Independent Authority for the Protection of Audiovisual Communication Freedom) authorised TF1 (the biggest French private TV channel) to interrupt its news programmes with adverts.
5) Advertising interruption of cinematographic and audio-visual works: The DGMIC a third advertising interruption in cinematographic and audio-visual works. Currently, only two interruptions are allowed by French laws while the AVMS directive allows advertising interruptions every 30-minutes (being specified that interruptions within series, serials and documentaries are not subject to any limitation).
- Teleshopping: French rules on teleshopping are very strict (prohibiting any advertising interruption, prescribing specific airing days and times, etc.). The DGMIC proposes to remove all existing constraints and to keep just the one relating to the minimum duration of teleshopping programmes (15 minutes). In addition, the DGMIC proposes to allow direct offers for the sale, purchase or rental of goods and for the provision of services in TV adverts, which is currently reserved to teleshopping programmes.
Why this matters
The result of this consultation could be the introduction of far-reaching changes in TV advertising regulation, which could significantly increase competition in the advertising market between the different available channels (TV, web, etc.).
