TELEVISION WITHOUT FRONTIERS DIRECTIVE : RIGHTS TO SHORT SPORTS CLIPS SET TO BE PART OF REVISED DIRECTIVE.

The issue of news reporting of major sports events such as football was being discussed by MEPs as part of a debate on the revision of the TV Without Frontiers (TVWF) Directive on 12 December. EU member states have come up with a document setting out their general approach, in which they say they want "any broadcaster established in the Community" to have access "on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory basis to [...] events of high interest to the public which are transmitted on an exclusive basis by a broadcaster under their jurisdiction" for the purposes of short news reports. This also applies to sport.

Although still to discuss the issue formally, EU countries broadly want broadcasters to be allowed to freely choose short extracts from the transmitting broadcasters' signal with at least an identification of their source. EU countries want to keep decisions on the maximum length of extracts and how long after the game the extracts can be shown for themselves.

Ross Biggam, Director-General of the Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT), with members in 28 European countries ranging from free-to-air television broadcasters to digital TV platform operators, agrees that sports clips should be restricted to news reports and that secondary broadcasters should have to identify the source of their information on the screen.

THE CASE OF AUSTRIAThere is an interesting ongoing case in Austria with regard to football broadcasting rights. Back in 2004, the country's public service terrestrial broadcaster ORF lost the rights to football matches. Nowadays, the private satellite broadcaster Premiere...