Colombia. In the press conference offered by the director of the National Television Authority, Ángela María Mora Soto, the official figures were revealed that allowed to determine how viable the Third Channel and Channel UNO are, in terms of pattern.
The director stressed that in 2015, public and private television channels received one billion one hundred and seventy-four billion pesos as advertising guidelines, of which 96% of the national guideline is concentrated in private channels and only 4% is distributed among the other channels.
"If the advertising pattern remained constant at 2015 levels, advertising investment in television in Colombia, over a 10-year horizon, would be equivalent to 11 billion pesos, which would be around US$4.28 billion."
As Mora Soto explained, "the study of the National University that projected how much the third channel and channel UNO will cost, took the official data of the Superintendency of Societies, and that information is available for public consultation." The study determined the market price from three variables: the entry of a new private television channel with national coverage, the entry of the fourth generation of mobile phone technologies (4G) and the development of convergent technologies such as Livestream, IPTV and online TV. Likewise, he analyzed how much the broadcast and transmission of Canal Uno is worth and how much is being invested in the transition to Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT).
The decision to assign the frequency of the third channel was made based on this information, which was not available in 2013. To this were added the data provided by the convergent markets report, published by the CRC in April of this year, according to which Internet penetration is 66% in Colombian households and only 3.4% of the population watches Internet TV, this means that in Colombia OTT are not a substitute for traditional television but a complement.
The court decisions have already been overcome. On May 31, the administrative court of Cundinamarca determined that the MinTic, the ANTV, the ANE and the CRC, effectively complied with the requirements of the law and there was no room for contempt. Similarly, on July 7, the Constitutional Court declared articles 41 and 257 of the National Development Plan enforceable, where the ANTV has all the competence to determine the number of concessionaires that can keep channel UNO.
The director of the ANTV explained that today, channel UNO has nine registered: NTC, CM&, Colombiana de TV, Jorge Barón, Alternativa S.A., RTI, Televideo, SporSat and Programar S.A. "With Canal Uno we are going on time, as we announced, we are going to take out the specifications in its pre-specification version that is when effectively all the possible interested parties send us observations, what we should take away, how we should do it. The pre-specifications for the award of channel UNO will be published in two weeks, in this way the operator will be awarded in November and will begin to broadcast from the first of May 2017".
He also announced that Colombia is penultimate in terms of the number of channels of private operation. Brazil leads the index with 13 channels in operation, Peru and Venezuela have five private channels, while the country has two and only surpasses Panama, which has one.
Finally, he insisted that, "we are ready to open Channel One and the Third Channel. There is enough pattern and we are not going to break anyone. The authority wants to give Colombians the option to change channels, to watch better television."
