The Television Without Frontiers Directive, introduced in 1989, was the EU’s first regulatory instrument under the audiovisual media policy, aiming to facilitate the circulation of television services throughout the Union. Since then, the audiovisual landscape has evolved significantly, with technological advancements and market shifts prompting revisions of the directive. In 2007, the scope of the directive was expanded to include video-on-demand services (e.g. Netflix), transforming the directive into the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). In the years that followed years, influencers – creators of user-generated content on video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok – became established sources of audiovisual entertainment, information, education, and commercial communication. Today, they are in effective competition with traditional television and video-on-demand platforms. The most recent revision of the AVMSD in 2018 acknowledged this by no longer automatically excluding user-generated videos from the directive‘s scope. Despite this update, the regulatory framework remains deeply rooted in the twentieth-century media ecosystem, which was characterised by spectrum scarcity and television broadcasters as gatekeepers. This leads to challenges in applying and interpreting the AVMSD, hindering its ability to effectively achieve its policy goals.