A share of revenues from subscription fees to online video services should be paid into a fund to support British television production. That is one of the key recommendations of a report from the cross-party Culture, Media and Sport committee to the government. It also calls on the government to require the licensing of creative works in all cases where they are used to train artificial intelligence models.
The report calls for enhanced tax incentives for high-end television production and for online subscription services, such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV+, and Disney+, which benefit from the creativity of British producers, to commit to pay 5% of their UK subscriber revenue into a cultural fund to help finance drama with a specific interest to British audiences.
In high-end television production, the report says, the balance between inward investment and domestic production is at a tipping point. “It is time for streamers to put their money where their mouth is. They laud the UK’s mixed production ecology, with public service broadcasters and independent producers at its heart, but their business practices are putting that at risk. They need to step up their support for the making of culturally British content, and not just reap the cultural and training benefits it provides. Ultimately, they should then benefit from a healthier supply of PSB-made shows that they can license for their platforms.”
The report recommends that all subscription video-on-demand platforms that operate in the United Kingdom play a 5% levy on their UK subscriber revenue into a cultural fund administered by the British Film Institute to support domestic production of high-end television. It says the industry should fund this on a voluntary basis. However, it says if this does not happen within 12 months the government should introduce a statutory levy.
Dame Caroline Dinenage MP, Chair of the CMS Committee, said: “Big box-office blockbusters made in Britain have showcased the UK’s world-class film and high-end television industry like never before. But the boom in inward investment of recent years now risks crowding out our many talented independent British producers. While streamers like Netflix and Amazon have proved a valuable addition for the industry and economy, unless the Government urgently intervenes to rebalance the playing field, for every Adolescence adding to the national conversation, there will be countless distinctly British stories that never make it to our screens.
Adolescence, shot in Wakefield and Sheffield in the North of England, was commissioned by Netflix and became one of its most popular ever series, and was the most viewed television programme across the United Kingdom in the week it was released. For many, it looked like the sort of drama that one might have expected from the BBC.
Peter Kosminsky, who has directed series like Wolf Hall shown on the BBC, recently said the industry was in crisis and that public service broadcasters including the BBC and ITV could no longer afford to make high-end British drama. “I hugely welcome the fact that the CMS select committee has endorsed the call for a 5% levy on streamers’ revenue to support public service broadcasting high-end television. This is a brave thing to do in the current political climate and absolutely the right solution. However, I do think it is important to stipulate that the fund created by this levy should only be available to productions which are either commissioned or co-commissioned by a public service broadcaster. As far as I can see, this isn’t made clear in the report and it is an essential aspect of the 5% levy solution to the problems our industry faces.”
On artificial intelligence, the report says that “Getting the balance between AI development and copyright wrong will undermine the growth of our film and HETV sectors, and wider creative industries. Proceeding with an ‘opt-out’ regime stands to damage the UK’s reputation among inward investors for our previously gold-standard copyright and IP framework.” It says the government should abandon its preference for a data mining exception for AI training with rights reservation model, and instead require AI developers to license any copyrighted works before using them to train their AI models.
British film and high-end television, the House of Commons committee report with recommendations to government, is available from the Parliament web site.