Cristina Farinha: European Audiovisual Observatory to keep on reaching further

European Audiovisual Observatory to keep on reaching further

Blog: Blog
Verfasser: Cristina Farinha - Datum: 27 Okt 2008, 18:36

This October meeting of the CULT Committee of the European Parliament (EP) discussed the future of the Community participation in the European Audiovisual Observatory. The working document points out the need for reaching new development areas and wider audiences.

The Observatory is a European centre for monitoring the audiovisual industry and it was set up in 1992 as an agency of the Council of Europe. Beside the 27 EU members, it includes also Albania, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Norway, Russia, Switzerland and Turkey.

The European Community has been a member since 2000 but had already played an important role in setting it up. Its participation is now running for the full period of the support programme for the European audiovisual sector (MEDIA 2007-2013).

The EC’s considers that the Observatory’s activities are helping to strengthen the competitiveness of the Community’s audiovisual industry, by providing expertise and systematic information to the operators concerned. The Commission also points out that awareness-raising and market transparency helps market participants with their investment decisions and provides new understanding for legislative authorities.

Despite considering it a very important key source of information, the Community reports some spaces for improvement:
-Enlargement of the geographical scope of those benefiting from its publications and other information sources: 67% of the Observatory clients are concentrated in only 9 of the EU member-states, mostly located in the west and north of Europe.
-Strengthening of the Observatory’s capacity to follow closely new developments, such as: media convergence; video games; public broadcasting (and its activities in the online world); sales of audiovisual works on the Internet; and media literacy.

If you are interested in the audiovisual field across Europe, explore the European Audiovisual Observatory full potential, and make it one of your regular working tools!

See also related blog: "World Day for Audiovisual Heritage”.