BBC ONE and BBC TWO in Zurich, Switzerland: rights?
Follow @mediaukdiscussSo, I’m in a hotel in Zürich today, and on the hotel television system, I’m being treated to BBC One (London), BBC Two, ITV (London), and ITV2. No Channel 4, incidentally.
I’m wondering how this works from a rights point of view. Are these rebroadcasts of BBC television legal here in Switzerland, and does that mean the BBC have negotiated the rights to their programming across Europe? So far I’ve found BBC 1 in places as far afield as Belgium, the Netherlands, some parts of Germany, and even in Iceland.
How does this work? Does the BBC pay for carriage? Or, do the cable companies here pay the BBC? (If so, is this BBC Worldwide money?)
Somewhere along the line, I get small cheques from places like Belgium and Holland for cable transmission of TV programmes I’ve written being shown on BBC1 & 2, so they are definitely playing us!
There are no payments involved. The broadcasts are picked up from open satellite transmission on Astra. Additionally, Swiss copyright law allows for the retransmission of open satellite signals across the territory. Hence Zattoo, for example, offers some UK channels to Swiss IP addresses without having to pay a fee.
Who is paying – the cable companies in Belgium/Holland, or the BBC? If the former, how do they know who to contact? Curious.
So, when the BBC negotiate rights for programming in the UK, are they actually negotiating pan-European rights? Otherwise, wouldn’t this open the BBC up for legal challenge from the movie companies (for example) for allowing their broadcasts to be receivable outside the UK? And why is the iPlayer therefore IP-restricted to just the UK?
If they are negotiating pan-European rights, why is the licence fee being used to subsidise EU viewers?
The cable companies pay the BBC. The BBC distributes the money through a body called the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society: http://www.alcs.co.uk/What-we-do/Where-the-money-comes-from
I’ve often wondered the same thing.
It would appear that BBC Worldwide has negotiated carriage rights in various European countries’ cable etc. systems. e.g. http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2011/01/27/kpn-tv-get-domestic-bbc-channels/ so it would all seem totally above board.
Swiss copyright laws allow for the retransmission of any channel that is available over satellite and transmitted in the clear. The law is different in EU countries and resembles what we have in the UK.
Incidentally, the BBC lost a case in the Swiss High Court in 2004 against the small cable company GGA Maur for retransmitting its channels.
Oh, really interesting. I keep forgetting that Switzerland is not part of the EU!
I distinctly remember, may have been in the late nineties, there was a right old fuss about this because there was the view that Ex Pats, and others were getting the BBC for free. I am sure I remember that the BBC entered into an agreement with cable operators in Brussels so that they got paid for having BBC services carried in that city. I am sure the BBC are aware that across Europe there are many viewers who watch and contribute nowt, especially as BBC services are now Free To Air.
In Ireland, cable providers and pay BBC Worldwide for carriage. On the Sky platform for example, BBC Three, Four, CBBC and CBeebies have only recently been added to the Sky EPG.