AUDIOVISUAL: EUROPEAN TELEVISION COMPANIES BACK ON THE UP.

• Position: Financial analysis of television companies

The European Audiovisual Observatory analysed the annual accounts and balance sheets of around 550 television companies for the years 1999-2003. There are not yet enough figures available for 2004 to carry out a similar analysis for that year, although all the indications are that the financial recovery of continued.

Growth rates vary from country to country.

The United Kingdom is, by far, the country with the largest TV company revenue: euro 17.3 billion in 2003 compared to euro 13.6 billion in Germany, euro 10.5 billion in France and euro 7,6 billion in Italy. This is due not only to the high level of funding of public service television, the advanced development of digital television and the number of channels available, but also to the fact that many pan-European broadcasting companies are based in Great Britain.

The yearly average growth of 4.4% is fairly disappointing compared to the double digit growth rates experienced in the 1980s and 1990s (it was 10% in 2000). The poorest growth figure was recorded in 2002 (0.4%), although it rose to 3.2% in 2003. Of the larger countries, only France achieved average growth higher than that of Europe as a whole (5.7%), although the growth stimulated at the start of the decade by the increasing importance of thematic packages and channels is, in France as elsewhere, beginning to tail off. Germany suffered a 1.6% drop in 2003, mainly due to a recession in the advertising market. The apparent slump in the British and Polish markets is actually due to the conversion of figures into euros. The revenue of British companies rose from GBP 10.8 billion in 2001 to GBP 12.2 billion in 2003. In the national currency, the Polish market remained quite stable at around PLN 4.1 billion between 2001 and 2003.

Improvement in the financial situation as a whole.

On the whole, the financial situation of the television sector in the European Union improved markedly in 2003, and the first figures available for 2004 tend to confirm this pattern. There are three main reasons for this:

- following the general recession of the European economy in 2001, which was particularly evident in a drop in advertising investment, the economy began to grow again and advertising revenue increased in most countries (with...