Brexit-related broadcasting question

An Ciarraioch

Discovery and Sky, among others, have channels head-quartered in Europe and broadcasting throughout the EU so will be unaffected by Brexit, but will BBC, ITV and Channel Four need to establish European holding companies in order to remain on Irish platforms, or can commercial service providers avoid such legal questions?

An Ciarraioch

Appears BBC have branded channels that broadcast specifically to Europe, so they're covered anyway.

icdg

It’s one of these things we don’t really know. In principle, EU law as at 29th March 2019, including the audiovisual services directive, continues to apply in the U.K. after Brexit until the UK legislature repeals each piece of legislation piece by piece (that could take decades or longer).

Worth noting a few things:
- The BBC and ITV were on cable in Ireland long before we entered the EU or there was any audiovisual services directive.
- ITV is no longer available on any Irish based platform (except ITV3&4).
- Sky is licensed in the UK. “Sky Ireland” is a sales, marketing and customer service operation. It is not a broadcaster or carriage provider. All contracts, even for ROI customers and channels, are with Sky UK Limited and/or Sky Subscriber Services Limited in the UK.
- Freesat isn’t officially available in Ireland. As I said before, it works here solely because our human science is yet to invent the satellite that can cover all over the UK and not also Ireland. Also because it’s not really a platform operator at all, it’s a brand name for what is actually a common specification for satellite receivers and an EPG covering a group of U.K. based FTA broadcasters on the Astra satellite.
- To complicate matters, the actual owners of said satellite; SES Astra, see based in Luxembourg.

I personally don’t think we’ll see any real change. But you never know with Brexit.

mikeecho

Even a hard border will have trouble stopping the Astra 1N foot print.


I'll continue to smuggle my UK TV

Capt'n Midnight

The UK docs aren't very reassuring. The tl;dr advise from the UK Government for Broadcasters and Video On Demand to Ireland boils down to
You should consider taking local legal advice on the licensing requirements

And what is the BCI's position with 194 days to go ?



Broadcasting and video on demand if there’s no Brexit deal

If there’s no deal, the AVMSD and the country of origin principle will no longer apply to services under UK jurisdiction that are broadcast into the EU, as the UK would be classified as a third country.

...
As noted in the White Paper, in any scenario the UK is committed to ensuring continued licence-free reception for TG4, RTÉ1 and RTÉ2 to reflect and build-on the commitments in the Good Friday agreement.

...
If a service is available in the EU and available in one or more of the 7 non-ECTT countries (Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Sweden) you would need to ensure that the service is correctly licensed (or authorised) on exit day. How this is done is dependent on a number of factors as there is a hierarchy of jurisdiction (noted above) in the AVMSD which determines which EU country regulates the service.
...
You should consider taking local legal advice on the licensing requirements in those countries.