ARCOM calls for common app for French broadcasters on Freely model

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French media regulator ARCOM has called for the creation of a common smart TV and set-top application for French broadcasters as the best way to assure their prominence as consumption of audiovisual services moves away from linear TV to on-demand and digital.

The watchdog has defined France’s public service broadcast channels and on-demand services and those of commercial players present on the country’s digital-terrestrial platform as “services of general interest” (SIG in the French abbreviation) and called for ‘appropriate visibility’ for these services on connected screens and devices.

ARCOM has called for a common application on the model of the UK’s just-unveiled Freely HbbTV OpApp-based offering as the best way to ensure this.

According to the watchdog’s recommendation, which comes out of a long period of industry consultation last year, appropriate visibility would best be achieved by the creation of an application that would provide access to all the broadcasters’ linear and on-demand services, with a point of access on the home screen of connected TV interfaces.

Access, it said, would be via a dedicated icon of a size and prominence comparable to those of others on the home screen.

The home page of the app itself would comprise at least two sections, according to ARCOM, with the first giving direct access to each of the participating TV services, with the other providing access to the specific apps providing access to SIG service provided by the same group.

The services and apps should, it said be presented according to objective, transparent and non-discriminatory criteria, with TV services presented according to their numeric ordering on the DTT platform.

Users should be able to navigate seamlessly between a SIG TV service and the particular application of that TV service provider, and also between different SIG services.

Users should also be able to return easily to the home page of the service they are using, while the common app should provide a set of rich functionalities including a guide to programmes on SIG services.

The creation of a common app would probably require the setting up of a joint organization similar to Everyone TV in the UK. It would also require buy-in from French broadcasters who are free to establish their own agreements with the internet service providers who in France account for the majority of households’ access to TV.

Decisions taken by the watchdog relating to prominence, which will in effect be a French implementation of wording from the 2018 Audiovisual Media Services directive of the EC, will be notified to Brussels in the coming days, with the latter having three months to make observations.