Chile. In ruling on the appeal filed in the case of the sanction filed against Direct TV in 2011 by the National Television Council, the Supreme Court of Chile indicated that the regulatory body is authorized to supervise and fine satellite television operators in that country.
In the ruling, Chile's high court makes it clear that the entity has the powers and powers to monitor and apply fines to satellite television operators when they violate child protection regulations .
The ruling adds that "it is not possible to exclude the competence of the Council to satellite television simply because it is a mere retransmission of programs sent from abroad, since to affirm this would mean assuming that the lack of technical mechanisms would suffice to control what the concessionaire repeats or retransmits, a matter that constitutes a voluntary situation to be outside the scope of control of the authority".
This process began after the broadcast by Direct TV of the film The Rescue, on March 27 of last year, in the schedule considered as child protection, for which the CNTV had imposed a fine of 200 Monthly Tax Units, UTM, a fine that the Court of Appeals of Santiago had knocked down and that is why it reached the high court.
And it is that the competence of the CNTV had been questioned in this case because Chilean law indicates that the entity will not be able to intervene in the programming of free-to-receive television broadcasting services or in that of limited television services, but the ruling clarifies that it can determine the time from which qualified film material for adults can be transmitted.
