Speakers

Irini Katsirea Senior Lecturer Middlesex University, United Kingdom

Irini Katsirea studied at the Free University of Berlin, at the University of Leicester (LLM) and at Magdalene College, Cambridge (PhD). She is currently Senior Lecturer in Law at Middlesex University, London. Her research interests are in the areas of European Union and comparative media law. She is the author of Public Broadcasting and European Law. A Comparative Examination of Public Service Obligations in Six Member States (Kluwer, 2008) and of Cultural Diversity and European Integration in Conflict and in Harmony (Ant. N. Sakkoulas, 2001). She has also published extensively in leading law journals including the Yearbook of European Law, the , the Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies and the Journal of Media Law.

Commercial influences on programme content: The German and British approaches to transposing European Union rules on product placement

Product placement, the practice of placing brands within editorial content, has been liberalized across the EU with the aim of tapping into an additional source of revenue for commercial television companies and programme makers while at the same time ensuring that they retain editorial control over programmes they transmit and protecting viewers from surreptitious advertising. This presentation will examine the implementation of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive rules on product placement in the UK and Germany and discuss whether the new regime is likely to achieve its aims.