Speech by Roch-Olivier Maistre on the occasion of Arcom's 2024 Greetings
Check against delivery
Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of Parliament,
Ladies and Gentlemen Presidents,
Ladies and Gentlemen, in your respective titles and merits,
Dear friends,
As I welcome you here this evening, to the Musée du Quai-Branly, where President Jacques Chirac wanted to see " an incomparable aesthetic experience as well as a lesson in humanity ", I can't help but note the strength of the message conveyed by this cultural Mecca. For all of us fortunate enough to work every day in a world that makes us privileged witnesses to the times and the world, its progress and its chaos, this is an invitation to put things into perspective and to reflect.
In any case, it is a great pleasure for the board, the general management and all the staff of the Authority to welcome you.On their behalf, as well as my own, I extend to you our warmest wishes for health, happiness and success in this new year 2024.
An Olympic year, but also an electoral and European year, dominated by major geopolitical challenges for our continent, and more generally a year rich in deadlines for our field of activity.
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As we leave behind us the shores of the past year, we will remember that, on the sea of tranquility we share, the swell of change will not have lacked intensity. For the Authority, 2023 will be remembered as a year of consolidation and innovation.
First and foremost, the Authority deployed the full range of its missions, both historic and new.
In the field of television, it issued new authorizations and concluded new agreements for the TF1 and M6 groups. For the first time, it also granted the France Télévisions group authorization to show its programs in ultra-high definition for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
In radio, the Authority has accelerated the roll-out of digital terrestrial radio. It now covers almost 60% of mainland France.
We have also begun drafting a White Paper on the future of the radio medium, to be published in the spring, and set up the podcast observatory with the Ministry of Culture.
At the same time, Arcom has been actively fulfilling its missions in terms of audience protection, plurality and program ethics. It has intervened whenever the rules laid down by law or convention have been breached.We have taken further steps to protect person under 18s from the dangers of the screen, and, with Arcep, we have adopted a recommendation to reduce the environmental impact of audiovisual and digital services, not forgetting our assessment of actions to fight online hate.
Faced with the conflict in the Middle East, the College brought together editorial staff to summon vigilance in the treatment of information, so as not to fuel tensions and fractures within our society. The cardinal principle of responsibility, the natural counterpart of freedom of communication, must be a constant requirement for all those working to keep our compatriots well informed.
Arcom has also continued to adapt its organization and operation to the extension of its missions. Our board of directors was reconstituted, with the arrival of two new members: Antoine Boilley and Bénédicte Lesage. On this occasion, we set up a new working group dedicated to media education, information and digital citizenship, as well as environmental protection and public health.
We have also launched a mission on artificial intelligence and strengthened our links with the academic world, as illustrated by our recent study day which brought together some thirty European researchers. We have also strengthened our teams, in particular our online platforms department, developed the scope of action of our regional offices, and overhauled our social bodies. And we are now preparing our next move, which will certainly take us away from the banks of the Seine and the Pont Mirabeau so dear to Guillaume Apollinaire, but will open up new horizons for us in eastern Paris.
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This year of consolidation has also seen Arcom consolidate its European and international roots.
August 25, 2023 marked a major milestone in the entry into force of the European regulation on digital services. This seminal text, the first step towards regulation of the major digital players, better equips our continent in the fight agains unlawful content, online hatred or the manipulation of information. It radically transforms our missions and opens up a new horizon for regulation. To prepare for its implementation and our future role as coordinator of digital services for France, in conjunction with the French national data protection agency (CNIL) and the DGCCRF, we have formalized our relations with the European Commission and strengthened our ties with our European counterparts.
We have also stepped up our participation in major international networks: the network of future digital coordinators, which, under the chairmanship of the Commission, will form the European Digital Services Committee; the European Network of Audiovisual Regulators, ERGA, which will shortly become the European Committee for Media Services. As Madame de Staël said, " in our modern times, we must have a European spirit". Arcom is now a key player in audiovisuel and digital regulation on the European stage, a level that is increasingly relevant to the issues that beset our societies. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the network of French-speaking regulators, REFRAM, which we chair and which will shortly be holding a major meeting in Abidjan devoted to digital regulation.
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If 2023 was a busy year, 2024 will be no exception! It promises to be a year of major challenges for the future of our audiovisuel and digital landscape.
Important deadlines await us.
First of all, the European elections will put Arcom's expertise to good use. In February, we will be adopting a resolution setting out the terms and conditions for media coverage of these elections.
In this respect, the College intends to be particularly vigilant in ensuring that publishers comply with the rules governing plurality of thought and opinion. These rules, I would like to reiterate, are intended to find their full place in news programmes, including debate programmes. Similarly, in view of the importance of this election for our continent, and given the destabilizing actions of the "engineers of chaos", the Authority will be particularly attentive, in liaison with Viginum and online platforms, to the risks of foreign interference and manipulation of information.
Another major event will take place in 2024, with the Olympic and Paralympic gaming. This exceptional event must be the occasion for significant progress in the representation of women's sport and parasport on air. We call on all broadcasters to work together to ensure that 2024 marks a decisive step forward in the priority challenges of women in the media, to finally achieve parity, and the representation of both disability and diversity. The audiovisual media must be more reflective of our society. Our compatriots' confidence in them depends on it. The cohesion of our country also depends on it.
Finally, two major projects will be at the heart of our action over the coming months.
The first concerns the promotion of services of general interest, to ensure that our national channels are properly exposed to foreign platforms on the new digital environments of connected TV sets.
This is a question of fairness and economic and cultural sovereignty. The College will be giving its opinion on this eagerly-awaited dossier in the next few days.
The second concerns the authorizations for the 15 DTT services due to expire in 2025. Following the public consultation and impact study to be carried out in 2023, the call for applications will be launched in February, with the aim of concluding the agreements and issuing the authorizations to the publishers selected at the end of the proceedings before the end of the year. Everyone is aware of the importance of this deadline for the organization, plurality and balance of our audiovisual landscape over the next ten years. It's a great opportunity for the editors' candidates to put forward new programs, but also to make new commitments, in order to better meet viewers' expectations.
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Beyond these major deadlines, Arcom will continue its commitment to strengthening and promoting the French model.
This ambition implies supporting those who embody it and bring it to life: I'm referring to our audiovisuel groups. Faced with the transformation of uses and the market, all publishers, whether public or private, are today engaged in profound strategic developments. They are obliged to invest in both technology and content, to rejuvenate their audiences and keep up with the competition. At the same time, their business models are being challenged by digital giants and budget constraints.
While we can applaud the initiative of our groups in coping with change, we must also listen to them so as to better support them, while avoiding pointless quarrels.
For public audiovisuel, which plays an essential role in balancing the landscape, Arcom defends three priorities: firstly, to perpetuate the way it is financed by earmarked public resources, the only way to guarantee its independence and its ability to carry out the diversity of its missions; secondly, to further reaffirm the uniqueness of its supplies in the service of all French people; and thirdly, to further pool its strengths, by developing cooperation between its components and continuing to reflect on its governance. The next contracts of objectives and means must be an opportunity to convey a new ambition for public service broadcasting.
For private audiovisual companies, which contribute to the plurality and dynamism of our audiovisual landscape, the increasing capture of advertising by non-European online advertising operators is weighing on the balance of their business model. It has become imperative to invent and implement a better way of sharing advertising to the benefit of media that invest in content, and thus correct the imbalances that penalize our national players. At the end of this month, we will be publishing the conclusions of a study, launched jointly with the French Ministry of Culture, on developments in the advertising market. It should help inform this debate and the action taken by the authorities.
Providing better support for players also means adapting legislation to current developments.
Amended almost 100 times, the 1986 law, whose principles are still entirely relevant, has lost some of its clarity. That's why we're proposing to launch a codification project without delay, which will also provide an opportunity to comb through this founding text. We have long had a film and moving image code. It's high time we had a code for audiovisual and digital communication.
This work should not exclude initiatives aimed at further modernising our normative managerial framework, as proposed by several parliamentary works in recent years. I'm thinking in particular of the anti-concentration scheme at the heart of the debate on plurality. Alongside the Competition Authority, and as recommended by the Inspectorate-General of Finance, the sector regulator could be given a stronger power of assessment. This would make it possible to move beyond a simple logic of thresholds and take better account of contemporary realities, in particular the multimedia dimension of groups.
Promoting the French model also means supporting creativity. While our historical media remain the main funders of creation, the contribution to national production made by foreign streaming services, thanks to agreements concluded by the regulator and inter-professional agreements, is now unrivalled in Europe.
It also means strengthening the fight against piracy, which has decreased significantly since the creation of Arcom.
Here again, we can go further by limiting circumvention phenomena, reducing procedural delays and developing our awareness raising initiatives, like the communication campaign launched with the CNC.
Last but not least, the model we want to defend is that of plurality, reliability and independence.
At a time when our compatriots are expressing mistrust and "information fatigue", we have launched a study into the sources of information used by the French, the conclusions of which will be made public in March. At a time when anyone can share content or information online, and when artificial intelligence is further blurring the boundaries between what is true and what is false, the specificity of professional media must be affirmed. Media that provide reliable information, presented and debated from a plurality of viewpoints, capable of nourishing public debate and our democratic life.
In this respect, the European regulation on media freedom will provide a new manager to ensure the freedom, plurality and independence of the media on our continent. At national level, the Etats généraux de l'information will undoubtedly provide new guidelines for strengthening existing schemes. We will contribute to this.
Finally, while it is not Arcom's role to act as some kind of thought police, and while it intends to be the guarantor of freedom of communication, we will nonetheless remain vigilant to ensure that television and radio services comply with their obligations.
It will exercise its full powers in this area because, to quote a famous saying, "trust does not exclude control".
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Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear friends,
2024 will also mark the last year of the mandates of three members of our College: Anne Grand d'Esnon, Hervé Godechot and yours truly. When we leave, Arcom will be, as Paul Verlaine so aptly wrote, "neither quite the same, nor quite another". The regulator will have changed its name, its college, its field of action, its size, its organization and even its location.
One thing, however, has never changed over the years: our commitment to public service.
I'd like to thank you for your attention, and invite you now to the best part of any New Year's ceremony: the glass of friendship.