The National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) has adopted new measures after the entry into force of the new audiovisual law in 2022. One of the most notorious is related to the control of content on streaming platforms such as Netflix or Twitch, reason for which an analysis of 500 hours of content from the most popular streamers on the network will be carried out.
For now, the Secretary of State for Telecommunications continues to work on the regulations that make up this new measure; among them, the requirements that content creators will have to meet to be part of the new registry of audiovisual creators stand out. Until this measure is put into operation, Competition has chosen to analyze the content to qualify it by age.
The CNMC has allocated some 220,000 euros to contract a “technical assistance service for the age rating of content on video sharing platforms” and a “storage and recovery service for audiovisual content issued by audiovisual providers”. The company Oesia Network will be in charge of carrying out the report on the streaming of platforms such as YouTube or Twitch.
The contract, which was awarded in mid-January, has a duration of one year, during which the company will analyze the content of interest. According to Business Insider, in twelve months they will have to produce age rating reports equivalent to a maximum of 1,000 viewing units, which is 30,000 minutes or 500 hours. Likewise, in addition to informing about the age rating, the contractor will indicate the presence of commercial communications in the content.
Despite being a positive proposal, the analysis may be insufficient if one takes into account the number of hours that streamers in our country add up. Counting exclusively the content of Ibai Llanos, the Basque managed to accumulate 1,300 hours live in 2022, according to TwitchTracker. The situation becomes more difficult if one takes into account the existence of content creators who go further, reaching nine or ten hours of daily streaming.
The objective of the CNMC is for content creators to identify themselves as ‘audiovisual communication service providers’, thus facing the same legal consequences as television channels, among others. We witnessed something similar several weeks ago in the field of influencers and advertising, since until a few years ago there was a great vacuum in the regulation of these sectors.
Given the regulation of the CNMC, several streamers have shown their discontent. The presenter and reporter known as Cristinini mentioned in a Twitch broadcast: “They want to equate the creation of content with television in all aspects: in the advertising we do, in the content per se, in taxes for all of this, in licenses that we will have to pay. Come on, they want to ruin us, basically.”
Likewise, the changes could cause a flight of youtubers and streamers from Spain, according to the Galician content creator Carola: “If Spain comes to me and says ‘hey: you have some schedules, you have some things to do and you have content to give ‘. Good morning, I’m going to Andorra. See you later, enjoy. It would be stupid to stay here. Let the Spanish Government come and tell you how you have to make your content… Touch your balls!”