Pact calls for providers to pay PVR royalties

A major report commissioned by indy trade association Pact has called for service providers offering a PVR service to pay a flat-fee royalty for each and every PVR-equipped home.

The report, generated by policy advisers Oliver & Ohlbaum, is titled UK TV Content in the Digital Age: Opportunities and Challenges and seeks to examine the impact of the evolving UK TV marketplace on independent film, TV, animation and interactive media companies.

The report argues that the introduction of PVRs into UK homes by Sky, cable providers and BT will, over the next ten years, "deprive both commissioning free to air broadcasters and producers of a fair share of the value generated by the re-use of their originated programming."

In order to combat this issue, the report goes on, "regulators should consider the introduction of a royalty scheme whereby platform owners would pay a small annual fee per PVR home to be split among rights owners in accordance with their share of new output on the main free to air commissioning channels."

The report makes an analogy between such a fee and fees charged for the cable retransmission of free-to-air channels.