But European media are not fragile butterflies, not endangered species. Believe me, European media are a robust, proliferating life-form capable of taking on the world and winning. And Europeans are media literate, keen to embrace new media ideas, specialist channels, new kinds of programming on new distribution platforms, new concepts in learning about, and understanding, the world in which we live. I see no sign of viewers worrying about who produces these new ideas for a new era of communications, as long as they are priced right and easy to get. I am afraid 'convergence' is not a hot topic in the local pub or coffee shop, either.
Television is television to most people whether it is free or paid for through dish or cable.
Which is why I still can't understand the regulators' desire to slice the audiovisual market into ever smaller segments. In your presentation to the American Film Marketing Association last month in Santa Monica you referred to the need for 'new responses' to the new challenges of the digital era. You talked of 'a transatlantic marketplace with trade flowing unhindered'. This augurs well for a future in which narrow protectionist initiatives will be marginalised and an open competitive environment will emerge. We applaud the efforts of President Santer and his colleagues to eliminate barriers to the free flow of capital, labour and talent among member states.