TV홈쇼핑 사업자 재승인 심사기준에 대한 평가와 개선방안

This article commemorates the 30th anniversary of the TV Home Shopping Channel and analyzes the structural changes in the TV home shopping industry and its industrial environment. The transformation of the industry is characterized by a declining proportion of broadcasting-related sales in the total revenue of TV home shopping operators and the rapid expansion of the live commerce market. The amount of broadcasting revenue of TV home shopping operators is not much different from 10 years ago, but the amount of transmission fee that TV home shopping operators have to pay has more than doubled. Furthermore, the regulatory burden on live commerce platform operators—who have emerged as direct competitors to TV home shopping operators—is significantly lighter than that imposed on TV home shopping operators. Ensuring regulatory equity across different media platforms should therefore be a critical consideration in the re-approval process. While differences in regulation may be justified by the inherent characteristics of each medium, regulations unrelated to such characteristics should be applied consistently across platforms. Since 2004, the re-approval criteria for TV home shopping operators have been revised to place greater emphasis on their functions and roles as distributors, while reducing the weight of broadcasting-related evaluation items. Continuing in this direction is desirable; however, the current re-approval criteria require improvements in three respects. First, the timing of disclosure of the re-approval criteria must be adjusted. Currently, the criteria are disclosed based on the previous business year, when the re-approval period is set to expire, which limits the predictability for operators preparing for re-approval. Given that the ultimate purpose of re-approval is to determine whether TV home shopping operators should remain in the market, it is reasonable to disclose the criteria in advance to ensure transparency and predictability. Second, the re-approval criteria should better reflect changes in the industrial environment. Two considerations are particularly relevant in this regard. One is that transmission fees borne by TV home shopping operators—rather than only reductions in small and medium-sized enterprises (hereinafter ‘SME’) product sales commission rates—should be factored into the assessment. The other is that the mandatory SME product organization rate should be relaxed. Unlike TV home shopping operators, live commerce platform operators are under no obligation to allocate a certain percentage of their product lineup to SME products. Maintaining such obligations for TV home shopping operators, while simultaneously introducing SME sales commission rate reductions as a re-approval screening item, imposes a disproportionate regulatory burden and undermines regulatory equity. Third, the weighting of the re-approval screening items requires adjustment. As TV home shopping operators function both as broadcasting channel users and as distributors, a balanced 50:50 weighting between broadcasting-related and distribution-related screening items would be reasonable. In particular, the weight assigned to distribution-related evaluation items should be increased to reflect their evolving role as distributors. It is hoped that these improvements to the re-approval criteria will enable a more equitable regulatory framework, thereby fostering a sustainable ecosystem in which TV home shopping operators, suppliers, system operators (SOs), and live commerce platform operators can coexist.