AWS deputies ask Warsaw Prosecutor to investigate TVP

The law calls for TVP's two main stations to be terrestrially transmitted to Polish viewers, while one international channel, Polonia TV, may be uplinked to a satellite. TVP began beaming its two main stations, TVP1 and TVP2, via satellite around the same time it joined a new digital television platform called Cyfra+.
"To our best knowledge, starting Dec. 12, Telewizja (Polska) has been uplinking on a satellite its two national channels from its own uplink located on Woronicza (street)," Tomasz Welnicki, deputy head of the Sejm's Media and Culture committee told the Business Journal. "This is not some kind of balancing on the edge of the law any more, it's breaking the law."
Welnicki told the Business Journal the committee had discussed asking the Prosecutor's Office to investigate the issue at its meeting last Tuesday. Welnicki and other Solidarity Election Action (AWS) deputies have come after TVP on a number of issues recently, including questioning whether the public station should continue to sell commercial time, taking issue with the station's scheduling of political programs, and pushing for TVP's management to represent a more politically balanced structure, as opposed to its current left-leaning tendencies.
TVP began broadcasting its two channels via satellite after it joined other media companies in forming the country's second digital platform, Cyfra+. Still not incorporated, the consortium includes the public station, pay-television Canal+ Polska, private Polsat and Nasza TV and the country's second largest cable TV operator, Aster City Cable.
Cyfra+ scored a major coup by attracting TVP to its ranks. The public broadcaster's lead station, TVP1, attracted 28% of the viewing public in November, while the second channel, TVP2, held 18%, according to media surveyor AGB Polska.
Both TVP and media watchdog the National Radio and Television Council (KRRiTV) - both of which are controlled by opposition party the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) - have defended the broadcaster's involvement in Cyfra+, saying that it gives TVP greater reach and access to digital technology. The center-right AWS-controlled government, however, has repeatedly tried to block TVP's involvement in the consortium, saying that it is not in the public broadcaster's calling.
Cyfra+ originally included TVP's two stations in its platform by uplinking them through a transmitter owned by Canal+. But the State Radio-Communications Agency (PAR) shut that device down last month after the AWS-controlled Communications Ministry said it was operating illegally. (See the Business Journal, Nov. 23-29, 1998)
Before the channels actually get on Cyfra+, they must first be delivered to an uplink in Sweden. To get there, the two channels have to first traverse the Baltic Sea, and there is not a terrestrial way to do that.
That led TVP to send them via satellite, which evoked a fierce reaction from AWS representatives.
"These channels are not defined as public satellite channels," Welnicki said last week. "By putting them on a satellite, TVP is breaking the Radio and Television Law."
He said that TVP may also be breaking a number of copyright deals and sending its signal on frequencies that it does not have the right to use.
Agreements that television stations sign for programming usually contain clauses that specify where the shows can be viewed or if it is broadcast terrestially in cable or via satellite.
"The money you pay to show a movie in a public channel broadcast via terrestrial transmitters is far lower than the money you would pay to show it via satellite, not to mention in a pay-television package," Welnicki said.
According to the KRRiTV as well as TVP, copyrights are not being broken because Cyfra+'s signal is encrypted and received only by those who purchase special decoders.
Consequently, TVP and KRRiTV have repeatedly stated that the station is operating legally.
"If (AWS) wants (to notify the prosecutor's office) they should do that as fast as possible," Robert Kwiatkowski, the president of TVP told AWS deputies.
According to KRRiTV members, AWS representatives are just trying to sink TVP's involvement in Cyfra+ before the consortium is incorporated early next year.
"Somebody who is not following what is happening in TVP may come to the conclusion that there is some abuse of law happening," Witold Grabos, deputy head of the KRRiTV, told the Business Journal last week. "I am positive that nothing illegal is happening in that company."
But while the media agency did not see anything doubtful about TVP's operations, the station's supervisory board said they have asked for a legal opinion as to whether they can beam the signals via satellite or not.
"We still need to have confirmation, only then I will be positive everything is by the book," said Witold Knychalski, supervisory board chairman.
But media players said that legal problems aside, the ongoing war between TVP's owner, the AWS-controlled Treasury Ministry, and the SLD-controlled public television will not come to an end anytime soon.
"This will never change as long as TVP (is) public and its executives will be chosen by politicians" said an executive with a commercial television station who wished to remain unnamed.