Colombia. The CRC developed a study that presents a diagnosis of the audiovisual content sector, presenting the evolution of the creative and cultural industries, the regulations governing the dissemination of content in the television service and on SVOD platforms, the review of the value chain of the current audiovisual industry and the key aspects for alternatives for the evaluation of information pluralism.
According to the analysis, at the level of general context it was found that in 2019, the cultural industry reached an added value of more than five billion pesos and 54.5% was generated by the audiovisual industry.
Of the total revenues of the audiovisual industry between 2014 and 2019, 52.2% corresponds to the economic activities of subscription TV, 12.4% to TV programming and transmission and 16.9% to the exhibition of cinematographic films.
Between 2014 and 2020, the advertising pattern for national TV and regional and local TV decreased, going from 48.7% to 39.2%, despite maintaining a screen share (which indicates the total number of viewers of a program at a given time) between 61% and 55%, likewise, the financing resources for public TV grew in constant terms by 33.7% in the same period.
The main source of income for private free-to-air TV providers (Caracol TV and RCN TV) 2015 and 2019 was advertising, which represented an average of 80.6%, as well as revenues from the sale of productions and their programming increased their share from 9.4% in 2015 to 13.2% in 2019.
Since 2013, the screen share of private, public regional and national channels has been very stable and stands at between 55% and 61%
Regarding the subscription television service, an increase in the number of subscribers was evidenced by 68%, between 2010 and 2019, likewise, a 24% increase in revenues was identified between 2014 and 2019.
In terms of Value Chain, it was concluded that the interaction of industry agents is of the network type (value ecosystem) and that it is composed of eight main activities related to those of the creative and cultural industries and the telecommunications industry and five support activities. In the exposed value chain, two main groups of activities were clearly identified: creation and exhibition. The first corresponds to the activities of the creative and cultural industries in terms of the production of audiovisual content; and the second concerns the activities characteristic of the telecommunications industry, and especially the television industry; in the middle they are connected, in some business models, by the distribution of content. Likewise, new dynamics and integrations were identified along different links of this updated chain.
On the conceptualization of information pluralism, two approaches were identified, the external one, related to the existence of a wide and varied offer of audiovisual media with editorial lines, ideologies, different political positions, media understood as information companies and with economic freedom. The internal approach, on the other hand, relates to the content of the audiovisual media, which must be plural, impartial, as well as promote the freedoms of expression, information or opinion.
"With the development of this study, in addition to having a diagnosis that allows us to understand the trends in the audiovisual content industry and build a conceptual framework, we propose alternatives for the measurement of information pluralism that support the design of regulatory strategies," explained José Fernando Parada, Commissioner of Audiovisual Content of the CRC.
Consult the study on the Audiovisual Content Industry and Information Pluralism in Colombia" here.
