The French communications regulator Arcom has adopted rules to give due prominence in television interfaces to services of general interest. The rules will apply to leading television manufacturers, dongles and other devices, games consoles, voice assistants, and service providers, including Amazon and Google. Similar policies are being implemented in other European countries, in line with the amended European Audiovisual Media Services Directive. Meanwhile, in Australia a consultation has been launched on the implementation of a new television prominence framework.
The French regulator says that the development of the policy was based on lively exchanges with publishers, interface operators, the European Commission and several European counterparts, in particular from Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
The policy is based on three objectives.
Firstly, to facilitate the user experience to offer access to services of general interest in a fast and intuitive manner.
Secondly, to ensure satisfactory exposure of the offer by publishers of services of general interest on user interfaces, in an environment that they control.
Thirdly, to ensure simple and proportional implementation procedures, based on the development of a harmonized approach at the European level, particularly for user interfaces available internationally.
It says that the appropriate visibility of services of general interest is ensured by grouping all these services within the same environment, taking the form of an application, jointly set up by publishers, which gives access to all services of general interest, both linear channels and available on-demand.
The access point to this application should be positioned on the page or home screen of the interface, under conditions equivalent to those allowing access to other services best positioned on this page or home screen. It can be a dedicated icon, the size of which is comparable to that of those of similar services, with similar terms of access, such as one-click selection.
It says that services and applications should be presented according to objective, transparent and non-discriminatory criteria. Television services may be ordered according to their logical channel numbering on digital terrestrial television.
Within the application, users should be able to navigate between television services of general interest and the application of the publisher of that service, for instance by the arrow or numbered keys on the remote control, and users should be able to return easily to the page or home screen of the user interface. The application should provide rich features and information, for example a guide to programmes of general interest services.
The regulator will approach publishers so that they can declare their general interest services. Following this, a list of qualified general interest services will be published by the authority and notified to the publishers and interface operators.
Arcom says that it will support all interface operators for the implementation of appropriate visibility measures and will ensure the compliance of the devices put in place.
Meanwhile, the Australian communications regulator, ACMA, is consulting on similar measures as part of the implementation of overseeing and enforcing a new television prominence framework that will come into force for all connected television devices sold from January 2026.