French broadcasters protest against make-up of digital council

French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s creation of an internet advisory body, the Conseil National du Numérique (CNN), has met with criticism from representatives of broadcasters and content creators.

Commercial broadcasters’ organization the ACP and authors groups SACD and SCAM have criticized the make-up of the organization, which is headed by new media entrepreneur Gilles Badinet, for being exclusively drawn from the internet and service provider world, with no representatives from the content business. The ACP said it strongly regretted that no representative of the country’s audiovisual industries had been appointed.

The SACD and SCAM meanwhile issued a joint statement criticizing the fact that the new body was entirely composed of network operators and internet companies and excluded the creative industries.