CTVMA Review

  As governments rethink the future of broadcasting for an internet-first era—and the United Kingdom begins consulting on a strategic transition towards IPTV by 2034—a broader policy convergence is emerging. Platform governance—not spectrum management—is rapidly becoming the defining question for connected television, determining how public service media, commercial broadcasters and streaming services are discovered within increasingly algorithmic home screen ecosystems. The End of the Spectrum Era For much of the twentieth century, television policy centred on a relatively simple premise: governments regulated access to scarce broadcast spectrum. Licensing, ownership rules and electronic programme guides determined who could transmit content and how audiences found it. Today, however, the centre of gravity has shifted. As television becomes software delivered over internet-connected platforms, discovery is increasingly governed not by spectrum allocation but by operating systems, ...

                                                    Home Screen   Prominence                                               The Australian Government has committed to legislating a prominence framework which will determine how TV applications and/or content will appear on Australian TVs and what content appears first in search.  Since our submission to the federal government, Foxtel commissioned research by YouGov to examine what Australians thought about this issue. The overwhelming view of Australian consumers is they want to be in control of the TVs they own and spend thousands of dollars on annually.    The research showed: When given the choice, 94% of Australians said they don’t want the government controlling the ord...

                                                                                                                            Consumer Privacy Following our recent submission to the Australian government consultation prominence framework on the media regulation reform of Connected TV home screens in Australia, the UK Media reform Bill has entered the House for debate. The bill is similar in scope to Australia, with prominence of public service broadcasters (PSBs) on smart TVs.  Under the new Ofcom code, local UK apps would be discoverable on UK devices and reciprocated internationally under carriage agreements by other countries to global CTV viewing audiences. The content impl...