Brussels loads the dma cannon and points it straight at your living-room screen
Three operating systems decide what 250 million Europeans watch after dinner. The European Commission just received a 15-page letter arguing that this is already too much power for Google, Amazon and Samsung.
The note landed on Thursday morning, signed by every broadcaster that still owns prime-time slots: RTL, Canal+, Warner Bros. Discovery, ITV, Sky, Mediaset, Paramount, Disney, NBC Universal, TF1. Together they control the programmes; Google TV, Tizen and Fire OS control how those programmes reach the sofa. The Alliance of Commercial Television and Video on Demand (ACT) wants that imbalance recognised under the Digital Markets Act.
Gatekeepers in slippers
Smart-TV middleware was never meant to be a chokepoint. Yet Android TV has climbed from 16% to 23% EU share in five years, Fire OS has doubled to 12%, and Samsung’s Tizen still leads at 24%. Add the three slices and you hit 59% of every set sold in the single market. The ACT calls them “the de facto curators of European viewing time”.
The charge is simple: recommendation rows, default tiles and autoplay trailers are not neutral. They bury rival apps, nudge viewers toward house brands and auction the top line of the home screen to the highest bidder. Broadcasters pay the toll or vanish below the fold.
Under current DMA drafting, only smartphone operating systems are automatically labelled gatekeepers. Television playbooks slip through the net because brussels wrote the text when Chromecast was still a dongle, not the spine of a 65-inch panel. The ACT demands that loophole closed before the 2024 holiday sales cycle locks in another year of algorithmic dominance.
Commission already weighing the trigger
Margrethe Vestager’s team confirmed the letter is “under assessment”, code for lawyers already red-penning paragraphs. A designation would force Google, Amazon and Samsung to open their ranking black boxes, offer uninstall options and share data with competing channels. Fines start at 10% of global turnover; repeat breaches can push a board to sell assets.
The firms counter that TV interfaces are crowded, competitive and easy to bypass. A Samsung spokesperson pointed to Tizen’s open-source roots; Amazon notes every Fire TV ships with rival apps pre-loaded; Google argues Android TV lets any developer pitch for prominence. None of the three answered why their own streaming services routinely sit in the top two rows of the homescreen they design.
ACT’s math is brutal: every percentage point of share translates into roughly one million European households. Control the first second of scrolling and you shape overnight ratings, ad rates and, eventually, which studios survive the content arms race.
brussels has until February to publish draft gatekeeper list updates. If the TV trio lands on it, the DMA’s interoperability clauses will bite before the next Champions League final. Streaming wars used to be about who owns House of the Dragon; now they are about who owns the remote.