TV broadcasters frustrated by too few frequencies
While other countries have long been preparing for the age of digital terrestrial TV broadcasting, Polish broadcasters are still building their analog terrestrial reach.
Apart from Polsat, the country's only national private broadcaster, other stations holding supra-regional broadcast licenses have not yet achieved the viewer-reach goals outlined by the National Radio and Television Council (KRRiTV) in 1997. ITI Holdings-owned TVN has a viewer reach of 34.3%, according to the Wroclaw-based Communications Institute, less than KRRiTV's predicted 40%+. Catholic Telewizja Niepokalanow was to boost its reach from 13.4% to 28.4%, but today has only 3.5%, according to KRRiTV.
Part of the reason is the lack of frequencies. "Free frequencies are not available at the moment," said Joanna Stepien, spokeswoman for KRRiTV Chairman Juliusz Braun. "And I know that all (broadcasters) are suffocating."
Broadcasters accuse the council of poor frequency distribution. "So far there has been no document describing what the TV market in Poland should eventually look like," said Mariusz Walter, president of TVN. "Broadcasters have to know where they are, in what direction they should go," said a former council adviser who wished to remain anonymous.
In a 1997 report, KRRiTV said that while it had granted 40 frequencies to existing supra-regional broadcasters, it would double that number in the future. "In the future, Polsat will get frequencies from the military, thus freeing up more than 10 lower frequencies," the report stated. It also said that the development of supra-regional TV broadcasters depended on the Defense Ministry freeing up its high-frequency channels.
One beneficiary of such a scenario would have been TVN. Under its broadcasting license, Polsat was obliged to give up its lower frequencies when it received high-power channels from the Defense Ministry. Although Polsat has received some frequencies from the ministry, which TVN then applied for, the latter still hasn't received the renounced frequencies. Why? "Because Polsat does whatever it wants to," Walter said.
According to KRRiTV's Stepien, "We have rebuked Polsat more than once, but our ability to enforce something is limited."
In its defense, Polsat said recently that it would hand over one frequency in Suwalki. According to Tadeusz Jagodzinski, a KRRiTV adviser, Polsat is also likely to renounce its channel in Koszalin. "But we can't say exactly how many frequencies they should give up, that's up to PAR (State Radio Communications Agency)," he said. PAR sources said Polsat should renounce "dozens of frequencies." At the same time, the Defense Ministry hasn't handed over frequencies to other TV broadcasters. Stepien said the ministry informed the council this past spring that it would do so in 10 years.
No wonder then, that Canal+ Polska's announcement two weeks ago that it would give up 10 of its 19 analog frequencies raised broadcaster's hopes (see the Business Journal, Oct. 2).
"They (TVN) kept asking the council about any possible decisions by Canal+," Stepien said. TVN's Walter said that the station was expecting to get those frequencies.
Broadcasters said that there was yet another way to increase the number of available terrestrial frequencies and improve the situation of supra-regional stations. "The council should stop granting frequencies for new Telewizja Polska (TVP) regional broadcasting centers," said one source close to Niepokalanow. "Instead of transmitting programs, they (regional TVP branches) should produce them and the two national TVP channels could broadcast them."
Under media law, the communications minister and KRRiTV are responsible for granting the frequencies necessary to transmit regional television programs. "The point is that it's not specified in the bill how many such regional TVP branches should exist, but their number has been growing," the source said.
TVP's regional branches, which have their own frequencies, cover 40.8% of the country and reach 61.1% of the population, according to estimates by the Communications Institute. "The majority of those regional branches broadcast with high-power transmitters," said KRRiTV's Jagodzinski. In March, 17 TVP transmitters broadcast regional programs.
"I admit that there are different views among the nine members of the council regarding the future of TVP's regional broadcasts," KRRiTV's Stepien said. "Discussion on that has already started and the council has met with TVP's management." According to Stepien, the chairman of KRRiTV is against creating new regional branches of TVP. "That's why he welcomed establishing TVP's editorial department in Opole instead of another broadcasting center," she said.
Elzbieta Kindler-Jaworska, chairman of the Polskie Forum Digital Video Broadcasting and lecturer at Warsaw University's journalism department, said that a clear and transparent frequency distribution policy is a must if Poland wants to prepare itself for the age of digital terrestrial television.
"Digital terrestrial broadcasting is a fact in three European countries and will start in the next 10 countries next year," she said. Great Britain has six multiplexes (digital networks), each with four to five channels, she said. Poland, according to a report released by the Communications Institute, has only two national digital networks with four channels each. "If nothing changes, the future of digital terrestrial television in Poland is uncertain because such a limited number of channels will not be able to compete with cable and satellite broadcasters," Kindler-Jaworska said.
