Newsflash
| AMARC10, the tenth World Assembly of Community Radio Broadcasters, will be hold in Ciudad de la Plata, Argentina, on 8-13 November 2010. Further information |
| Spanish region of Catalonia plans to introduce third media sector |
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| Wednesday, 16 December 2009 | |
 Representatives of the non profit media sector voiced their views about a draft decree on the audiovisual sector on a public hearing hosted by the Catalan government (Generalitat de Catalunya) and the media regulator, the Audiovisual Council of Catalunya (Consell Audiovisual de Catalunya), at a meeting held in Barcelona on 10 December 2009. Community Media Forum Europe's Board member Núria Reguero (first speaker on the left in the picture, with the Consell de l’Audiovisual de Catalunya’s adviser, D. Comas and the Catalan Assembly for Social Communication’s representative, L. Bergés) was invited to comment on the decree’s contents, together with speakers from the Catalan Association of Social Communication, during a round table devoted to the third sector’s view. Other round tables were organised representing the Government, the academy and the commercial sector points of view.The Decree’s draft on non profit media services (Projecte de Decret sobre els serveis de comunicació audiovisuals sense ànim de lucre a Catalunya) aims at introducing the possibility to grant licenses to these media, putting them on the same level as the public and the private sectors. The regulation will be applicable – from the second half of 2010- to media projects from non-profit associations and foundations representing communities currently without access to public and commercial media, that should be open to the participation in management and content production processes to the communities they will serve. Representatives of the community media sector did ask to include important aspects in this draft decree including: - give priority to the reserve a number of frequencies for the non-profit sector, especially for the oldest operators, who have broadcast since more than 30 years; - measures of support the sector’s activity through grants, as well as the exemption from the broadcasting license fee; - eventual programming obligations and simplified administrative procedures that bear in mind that the stations will be mainly staffed by volunteers’, and with limited resources. Besides the possibility to cover regional as well as local areas, the sector also pointed out the potential problems that could affect the sector if the economic, party or religious institutions were granted with these newly proposed licenses. The private sector representatives did voice their opposition to the decree appealing to the radio spectrum’s saturation and holding as a responsible for this situation the public sector, which owns a 64% of the frequencies in Catalonia. In respect with this argument, the Government and the media authority underlined on the importance of recognizing the non-profit media sector as the third pillar of the media system as a condition to guarantee a truly democratic and plural media system.  The Catalan Minister of Culture and Media, Joan Manuel Tresserras (first from the left in the picture, with President of the Catalan Audiovisual Council, Ramon Font, on the right), informed that the sector’s regulation was an objective to be accomplished at the present legislature which was motivated for two reasons: to grant the right to communicate and to distinguish the non-profit sector from commercial stations acceding illegally to the radio spectrum, with the latter to be prosecuted and fined.The forthcoming decree on non-profit media services develops the articles 70 and 71 of the Catalan audiovisual law (Llei 22/2005, de 29 de desembre, de la comunicació audiovisual a Catalunya), the first of its recognising the sector across Spain. On the same day, also an event for the Spanish community media campaign claiming for the right to communicate, which is not granted on the forthcoming Media General Law, LGA). Further information and audiovisual materials are available on the campaign's website. |
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