Watchdog to look at media bill

Poland's media watchdog is due to discuss a bill this week in preparation for the launch of digital terrestrial TV (DTT), which in Western Europe will replace analog broadcasting within the next 10 years.

The National Television and Radio Council (KRRiTV) will have to approve the bill before it can be sent to the government.

"While the bill addresses a much broader range of issues, the chapter of the draft is dedicated to DTT," said Joanna Stempień, press spokesman for Juliusz Braun, the council's chairman. "It could serve as an opening of a national discussion on the issue, so far totally neglected by Polish legislators."

Stempień said the current media law, despite several earlier amendments, is anachronistic. "And the bill (drafted by a team of media experts) is a review of the entire media market from the ground up," she said.

But those who welcomed KRRiTV's latest initiative should not expect too much from the initial introduction of the new technology. If the draft is approved without revisions, the proposed legislation could limit access to the new technology.

Witold Graboś, a former member of the KRRiTV, who also headed the team of the bill's authors, said it proposed that one of two so-called multiplexes - a single DTT multiplex may contain up to five highly compressed digitally broadcast channels and interactive services - will be operated by Telewizja Polska (TVP), the public broadcaster.

"Due to the scarcity of available frequencies, only two multiplexes will be possible in Poland," he said. "I know that giving one of them to TVP and inscribing it into the law is controversial, but in the future it will be operators of multiplexes and not broadcasters that will attract most of the available ad revenue. So if we don't appoint TVP, it won't generate any ad revenue at all."

Meanwhile, DTT, whose efficiency lies in compressing several signals under a single frequency (under the analog system only one channel is available per frequency), should be the answer for commercial TV broadcasters frustrated by the scarcity of frequencies available under the country's backbone analog network. But the only one multiplex available under the proposed law may not be enough.

Graboś, however, said commercial broadcasters would benefit from the new legislation. "Under the draft, commercial broadcasters could also be available through the multiplex operated by TVP," Graboś said. He added that private broadcasters, which hold the KRRiTV's concession for terrestrial (analog) broadcast (Polsat, TV4, TVN, TV Puls), should not be worried about the future in the DTT era. "It will be up to the council's chairman to decide that a certain channel, which now holds its concession, is broadcast through one of the multiplexes," he said. According to Graboś, the draft doesn't solve all the problems resulting from the future launch of DTT in Poland, but it provides basic rules on how those multiplexes will be operated.

"Potential operators of multiplexes will have to apply to the council for a concession," he said. "And it will be the council to fix the concession's price."

Meanwhile, Western countries have already set dates when DTT should replace analog. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is expected to order all analog TV transmitters off the air and switch to digital TV by 2006. Until Americans buy new digital TV sets, analog and digital signals will be simulcast. In Europe, a deadline for a similar changeover has been set for 2010.

Anna Kocinska