Brexit The next phase Economics
How well prepared is the UK TV sector for Britain’s departure from the EU? Kate Bulkley investigates
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etting clarity on what Brexit will mean for the UK audio-visual (AV) sector is, at this stage, a near impossibility. What is clear is that the past three years of Brexit politicking have been accompanied by a huge amount of contingency planning for a no-deal Brexit. Add to that the continued strength of TV and film production in the UK, thanks largely to a skilled talent pool, UK tax breaks and significant investment from the likes of Disney, Netflix and Sky, and the consensus is that the sector is well placed to withstand any fallout from Britain leaving the EU. There are issues that need to be ironed out, of course, particularly around talent and access to European markets for programme sales. With no-deal still on the cards, some advertisers still appear cautious about their spending, although that is being eclipsed by new worries over the economic impact of the Covid-19 virus. Reassuringly, the long visibility of a
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potential no-deal Brexit means that there are few unknown issues and, according to many executives in the creative industries, none with the potential to derail one of the most prominent drivers of the UK’s economic performance. Indeed, some in the sector are looking ahead to the potential benefits that an update to the UK’s Communications Act 2003 could provide. A new act would not have to comply with the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). “There are arguments to say that, if we could tailor a better regime for the UK’s media ecosystem, we could do even better,” suggests a major broadcaster’s senior policy expert. A number of media companies, including Viacom, Discovery, the BBC and NBCUniversal, have already taken steps to deal with one of the bigger Brexit-related issues. They have either relocated their European broadcasting licences – and in some cases their HQs – from London to mainland Europe, or they have devised other ways to get
around the likelihood that, in time, their Ofcom licences to broadcast channels from the UK to continental Europe will become ineffective. The number of channels based in the UK dropped by 5% in 2019 due to Brexit, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory. EU rules on content portability is something else the TV business is taking in its stride. In a no-deal scenario, UK citizens will lose the ability to access their subscription content while travelling in mainland Europe. If the UK falls out of the EU’s content portability agreement, EU citizens travelling to the UK will be unable to watch their TV services in Britain. “Losing portability is not something we see as a big challenge to our business,” said a senior broadcaster. There are, however, concerns over the potential impact of UK content no longer qualifying under European programming quotas as “European works”. Under existing rules, UK content competes on an equal footing with European content. But, post-Brexit,
