Government pulls TVP from Canal+ digital platform

The broadcasters had to pull their programming, reducing Cyfra+'s offer to 13 channels from 17, after the State Radio-communications Agency (PAR) said their presence on the platform was illegal.
"We did not have a choice, so it was a really simple decision," Stanislaw Zmudzin, deputy president of PAR told the Business Journal. "From the technical point of view, the situation was crystal clear, the uplink used by Canal+ did not have a telecom license, so we had to shut it down."
The move follows efforts by Solidarity Election Action (AWS) members to block TVP from joining the digital platform. (See also WBJ, Nov. 16-22, 1998). Treasury Minister Emil Wasacz had opposed TVP's inclusion, calling it a "creeping privatization" of the broadcaster. The dispute was part of a fight between AWS and TVP's board, which is controlled by members associated with opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD).
The PAR ordered Canal+ to shut down a Poland-based uplink facility the company was using to transmit Polish channels included in Cyfra+ to EutelSat's Hot Bird satellite. Cyfra+'s non-Polish channels are uplinked from Sweden. PAR said it shut the facility because Canal+ does not have a telecom license.
The shutdown has Canal+ Polska scrambling to find another way to get TVP's two main channels back onto Cyfra+. Among the alternatives is the possibility of uplinking TVP's signal using a third party's facilities, or moving the uplink to a neighboring country such as Ukraine, Lew Rywin, president of Canal+ Polska said. He added that Canal+ had applied for a license for an in-Poland uplink facility Nov. 5, but had not heard from the Communications Ministry.
That application is bogged down in the larger debate of whether TVP should be allowed to broadcast via satellite. The Communications Ministry last week said that it shouldn't be allowed to do so.
"An analysis of the Radio and Television Law and TVP's articles of incorporation indicate that public television may not broadcast via satellite any channels except for the Polonia channel, nor can it subcontract any other broadcaster to do so," the ministry said in a statement.
This puts it in conflict, though, with the view held by the country's media watchdog, the National Radio and Television Council (KRRiTV). That agency last week stood by its previous decision to let the station go digital. In a press release issued by KRRiTV Chairman Boleslaw Sulik, the agency said that the charges made by the ministry are based on a misinterpretation of two media terms: broadcast and distribution. "The charges could concern channel broadcasting, or an activity of a primary character, which was not a transfer by TVP onto another entity," the KRRiTV statement said. "Public television made its programs available for the planned Polish Digital Platform, and in this case we deal with distribution."
The KRRiTV also slammed PAR for stepping onto what it considers its turf. "The national council holds the opinion that state agencies should not surpass the limits of their own prerogatives," the agency said. "Shaping the country's policy toward media cannot be carried out without cooperation of appropriate agencies with the council."