Vive La France

Just picked up the story on FT.com about Sarkozy's intention to take advertising off state TV and replace revenues with 'taxes on mobile phone operators, internet service providers, plus a levy on the advertising revenues of private television channels'. The intention it would seem is to create a BBC for France.
Each country has a very different broadcasting history and comparisons are not always that helpful, however, if true this proposal is the kind of thing the NUJ has been seeking in a UK context for years.
The current system in the UK whereby the vast majority of public service broadcasting is provided by the BBC in exchange for a public licence fee is sustainable, providing the BBC gets the transition through Bill Gates 'digital decade' right. The trick being not to alienate your core audience by rushing headlong after the new. The jury is out on the current BBC strategy. However, if long term funding for the BBC is uncertain, amongst commercial broadcasters the funding picture is distinctly bleak. Channel Four is asking for Government intervention to bolster and sustain its PSB offering; ITV is currently trying to divest itself of its remaining commitments, killing, in the process, the very goose that laid the golden - licence-to-print - eggs.
We have argued that those commercial operators who benefit from access to broadcast systems in the UK - such as Sky and others, should be obliged to pay a levy allowing others to produce PSB programming. On the other hand. if a commercial entity is committed to producing such programming they could then be given an exemption from the new tax.
It will be interesting to see what happens in France. The marriage between a right wing populist leader who launches a full scale attack on workers rights and a trade union is an unlikely one, however, with so much riding on the outcome, sometimes needs must.