REVELATION “P”: Two regional licenses per company – The government’s new draft law
Two regional stations per one company in different regions (e.g., Athens and Thessaloniki) and ten-year licenses are provided for in the new draft law under processing by the Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister, Pavlos Marinakis.
The number of licenses will be decided by the Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister and not the NCRTV (ESR), while the transmission in high definition will once again have exceptions, as signal transmission in standard definition will also be allowed. The column today records all the basic changes in the government’s new, under processing draft law.
Marinakis and Papastergiou decide on the number of licenses
The number of licenses is decided by the government, namely the Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Digital Governance, in contrast to what the government was saying in 2017 regarding the provisions of the “Pappas law” for the licensing of national range stations. The licenses are granted by the NCRTV (ESR) based on the scoring of the candidates and for a period of ten years. The applications are scored as follows:
a) the hours of broadcast of original program with 30 points, b) the hours of broadcast of program with topics of local interest and character with 30 points, c) the generally employed personnel with 30 points, d) the employed personnel with journalistic capacity.
The applicant company must transmit a television program with a minimum duration of 18 hours for news content providers and 12 hours for non-news content providers.
The news program includes at minimum:
a) Daily, regular original news bulletins, of a total daily duration of at least 1 hour, of which a percentage of at least 50% concerns topics of local interest of the geographical region in which the applicant broadcasts.
b) Transmission of news bulletins in sign language, with simultaneous display of subtitles, of a duration of at least 7 minutes of the hour, between the hours 13:00 and 23:00. Additionally, the news bulletins of the previous paragraph are mandatorily available as video on demand through the official website of the content providers, without charge, for a period of at least one week from the date of their transmission. The presenters of Greek sign language are selected by the content providers after a proposal by the Hellenic Federation of the Deaf.
c) Cultural, informative, variety shows, etc., of which at least 5 hours weekly concern topics of local interest of the geographical region in which the candidate broadcasts.
