Colombia. The Superintendency of Industry and Commerce, SIC, issued a court ruling that favors the Caracol and RCN channels with which it prevents their signal from being retransmitted without the authorization and / or payment by the subscription television operators. I understand that the SIC defends the rights of consumers and that in its decisions the common good must prevail over the particular good. Now there is the question that I leave as the headline, Where is the viewer?
Calling for memory, when these channels began their operation, their network of transmission and recognition before the audiences were low or non-existent and they created, through lobbying in the national government, the so-called Must-Carry, which is a provision that urges cable television providers to include in their signal all local television channels that are licensed within the national territory, without this implying an additional charge to the end user.
This standard was created to prevent cable television systems from affecting the economic interests of private national television channels. At the moment, which already have a positioning and recognition before cable users, they do a contrary task of lobbying in the government and oh surprise!, the SIC pronounces a ruling that gives the reason to the private channels. In my opinion, it ignores the rights of citizens to free access to information enshrined in the National Constitution, freedom of expression and choice.
For their part, the cable entrepreneurs who make this a true industry, have reached the most remote places of our geography and without their compensation payments there would be no way to develop public television, because their contributions to the ANTV is that the Fund for the Development of Public Television is strengthened. These two channels do not contribute more percentage-wise speaking to this fund. In addition, the concession contracts that the cable operators had to sign for the award of their licenses, oblige them to have these channels within their grids, whether they want it or not, and without this implying a charge to the end user, since they are contemplated as a contractual obligation.
In order to be able to make any modification to these contracts, the ANTV must make an otherye that allows cable users to be transferred the charge that these private channels intend to make, who claimed to be broadcasting organizations, which gives them the right to authorize or prohibit the retransmission of their broadcasts by any means, as provided for in Article 39 of Decision 351 of 1993, as well as in Law 23 of 1981 and in the Rome Convention signed by Colombia in 1975. This gives them a related copyright that empowers them to grant or deny permission to retransmit their signal.
Regardless of what may happen with this ruling of the SIC, RCN and Caracol joined EGEDA - Collective Management Entity of Rights of Audiovisual Producers of Colombia and are executing a charge of 0.30 cents ($822.90 pesos) per month per user in order to favor the implementation of the Intellectual Property Rights of Audiovisual Producers in Colombia, for which they have already required more than 90% of subscription television operating companies.
ANDESCO, a union that represents the interests of the strongest operators operating in Colombia, through a press release, reported that they respect the decision taken by the SIC, "however, it is being appealed and therefore is not yet final. Television operators have complied with Law 680 of 2001 and the regulation of the ANTV for 15 years, in order to guarantee the right to access to information contemplated in our National Constitution. "
And finally, they add that "before the current decision of the SIC, the National Television Authority - ANTV - will be used to indicate the way in which the aforementioned pronouncement must be complied with".
In the opinion of some cable operators, what these channels seek is to safeguard their economic returns, because with the imminent entry of a third channel and the concession of Channel One, a great threat is generated to their advertising "cake" and they seek by all means to preserve their income. I wonder if any of these charges that they intend to implement will reach the producers, directors and actors who make their productions, or is that for them there are only two left feet ...
And will the viewer now have to pay to watch national television, just to favor an economic group that looks after their interests before a state committed to them? Yes, private channels intend to make a charge for having their signal in Colombian homes, because they upload their signal to the satellite, encrypt it and charge for it to people who want to see them, and deliver the frequency of open television that very surely the new channels will want to use.
Text written by Luis Pinto, technical-commercial advisor of TVyVideo+Radio.
