Broadcasting Council sanctions five local TV stations
Five local TV stations do not respect the local programming quotas, and/or those relating to the Romanian language and/or those relating to prime time. These are the findings of the Audiovisual Council which decided to sanction them with 219,000 lei in total. These are Cinema 1, Canal 3, Canal 2, Familia and Mega TV.
The biggest fine was imposed on Cinema 1 - 54,000 lei. According to the CA, the channel broadcast just over 20 hours of local programmes out of 56 hours provided for by the Audiovisual Media Services Code (CSMA). Only 9 hours were in Romanian, out of 16 hours that the channel was supposed to broadcast. The share of local programmes in prime time was around 46%, less than half of what it was supposed to broadcast.
CANAL 3 was fined 51,000 lei for not broadcasting enough local programmes in Romanian and for having about 66% local programmes in prime time.
The TV station "FAMILIA", fined 49.000, broadcast about 86% of local programmes, the share of local programmes in Romanian was about 35 hours out of about 39 hours, and in prime time it broadcast 4 hours less than the legal requirement.
CANAL 2, fined 47,000 lei, broadcast 56 hours of local programmes, but almost half of this time was self-promotion. The station broadcast insufficient Romanian-language programmes, and had about an hour less local programmes in prime time.
MEGA TV was fined 18,000 lei for broadcasting less than half of the quota of local programmes in Romanian required by law.
