Chile. The National Television Council, Mauricio Muñoz, is promoting a pilot program to recover the control of content of regional channels.
SUBTEL will provide the physical space to capture the signals and obtain the recording samples in each region, starting with the city of Talca. The material will be processed and inspected in the same way as it is done with national open television signals and pay television.
"We hope that this is the beginning of a work at the national level that grants an equal inspection treatment for all television services in our country, as mandated by law," said the president of the CNTV, Mauricio Muñoz.
"The CNTV's oversight mission is mainly for the protection of children and to preserve a series of values that have to do with the defense of democracy so that they are safeguarded in the exhibition of television content," Muñoz explained.
History of regional TV auditing
In 1995, the CNTV began to supervise content broadcasts at the regional level as a result of the growth of pay TV services, which were initially local cable TV and microwave operators. Thus, in the context of the pay TV market in those years, the audit began by sampling 2 companies per month, one from the Metropolitan Region and one from another region.
In 2001, due to the standardization of pay-TV services due to the entry of multi-operators such as VTRs acquired by most of the local regional cable TV companies, and in view of the fact that a significant number of regional local open television projects were beginning to be consolidated, which proposed to contribute to the cultural development of their localities, samples of local free-to-air TV broadcasts began to be included.
In 2014, with the publication of Law 20,750, which on the one hand introduces the so-called digital terrestrial television, modifying the structure of the open television industry, and which significantly increases the powers of the CNTV in matters of supervision, an ambitious project was promoted to establish a network of permanent inspection facilities in regions. After a couple of years of operation, the project was discontinued because the Council failed to modify the legal framework that would allow such territorial expansion.
With the advent of the global health crisis and the consequent state budget restriction that it entails, the regional inspection system for sampling was suspended until October 30, 2023, the date on which the current president of the CNTV, Mauricio Muñoz, re-promotes this new stage that allows the CNTV to take over part of the role mandated by the Law, and that it has to do with the supervigilance of our television.
