Streamers Will Not Be Regulated In UK For Another Two Years

Streamer regulation in the UK will not be in place for at least two years, Ofcom said today.

Delivering its roadmap for implementing the Media Bill, which includes the regulation of major U.S. streamers for the first time, the UK regulator said it will spend the next year hosting roundtable discussions on the subject and putting together a report on the state of the VoD market for the government.

Ofcom will simultaneously start working on a draft code that will set out the regulation and which streamers are to be regulated – referred to as ‘Tier 1 services’.

Once the code is complete, those falling within it will have a 12-month grace period to prepare, which means they won’t have to abide by it until at least 2026.

Published last year, one of the headline policies in the Media Bill was the move to bring the U.S. streamers under Ofcom’s regulatory framework, which would mean they can be fined up to £250,000 ($308,000) or restricted in the UK entirely if they break rules around harmful material that have applied to the public broadcasters for decades.

The bill will “better protect children by applying similar standards for TV to the streaming giants,” the government’s notes on the recent King’s Speech said.

The likes of Netflix have criticized the move in the recent past, saying impartiality rules could have a “chilling” effect on its appetite to make documentaries available to British audiences, for example. Netflix’s submission to the UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee earlier this year threatened to preemptively remove films and TV shows from its UK library to avoid falling foul of the new regulations if rubberstamped, although Ofcom chair Michael Grade pushed back on this during a late November set piece.

Netflix has, on the other hand, consistently stressed support for the Media Bill, pointing to a close working relationship with Ofcom and partnerships with local broadcasters on shows such as The Bodyguard and Dracula. It is also the only streaming service to voluntarily carry BBFC age ratings on all content.

The long-awaited Media Bill will also introduce new laws on the prominence of broadcasters and give Channel 4 the opportunity to produce its own shows for the first time.

On the latter, Ofcom said today that it will begin consulting on a new commissioning policy for Channel 4. New duties to facilitate fair commissioning will come into force once Channel 4 has established its production business, it added. Indies have previously expressed concerns that the move will dent Channel 4’s relationship with the third-party production sector, which the Gogglebox network has solely relied on during its 40-year history.