Coronavirus: CSA chief says regulator will extend tolerance on production obligations

French media regulator the CSA has said it will extend an element of tolerance and understanding in the way it applies rules governing production and distribution obligations in view of the Coronavirus crisis.

Roch-Olivier Maistre

Writing by email to radio and TV services and industry bodies, CSA chief Roch-Olivier Maistre said that he was cognisant that audiovisual sector businesses and associations faced “numerous difficulties” because of the crisis, with production of all sorts of programmes hit by “the overriding need to preserve the health of colleagues and those of partners contributing to the production and realisation of programmes”.

He said the CSA was also aware of “a brutal contraction in [broadcasters’] advertising revenues, which is having a strong impact on their economic situation and is capable of threatening the survival of the more fragile among them”.

Regarding production obligations, he said that the CSA would “take account in this regard of the situation of each service, of the nature and the timing of obligations concerned and, in a general way, the proportionality of deviations observed with regards to difficulties encountered”.

At the same time, said Maistre, the CSA underlined the need for editorial standards to continue to be met.

He said that the regulator “remained more generally very attentive to to maintaining the fragile equilibrium of the audiovisual ecosystem” with particular situation given to the situation of the creative community.