A media bill being prepared by the government will place restrictions on commercial television channels and online content, according to a working draft obtained by news website Index.
TV channels or families of channels with viewer ratings higher than 35% would face stern restrictions. Owners of such channels or groups of channels would be obliged to sell their channels within six months and reduce the combined viewer rating of their channels to below 35% or lower their ratings by changing their programming.
More generally, stricter rules would apply to any channel with annual viewer ratings above 10%, obliging commercial television stations to air more Hungarian films.
The draft also bans television channel operators from launching more channels, thereby blocking any expansion by TV2 and RTL Klub.
Advertising regulations would also be changed: unduly noisy commercials would be banned, but the ratio of advertising to programming would be loosened, allowing state media to show nine minutes of commercials every hour instead of six as at present. However, no advertising would be allowed on news, religious or children’s programming.
Protection of minors would be extended to the internet.
A finalised version of the concept could be submitted to Parliament later this month and approved later this year in a fast-track procedure.
Why not? Obviously Hungarians need the Government’s help. Too dumb to manage their own retirement money. Certainly too dumb to decide what TV and internet content their families should access. Thank goodness there will be some really smart, wise and caring people to decide for us.
I am reminded of Reagan’s fantastic comment (I paraphrase): “The scariest sentence in the English language is, ‘Hello, I am from the Government and I am here to help you’”.
As I see it:
The tv program can’t get much worse here (exactly as in the USA, UK, Germany or wherever) – the more channels you got the bigger the chance of reruns of trash …
After the news we usually switch off the tv – maybe once a week there’s something worth seeing – which hasn’t appeared a dozen times already …
Not sure the typical viewer of RTL or TV2 would have enough brain-cells to realise they’re being *restricted*.
It would be very useful for all of us though if Fidesz could make an announcement each Monday regarding which programmes the Hungarian Nation should be watching that week. Alternatively, they could just remove those programmes which are not *suitable*.
wolfi watches the wrong channels. There are lots of pretty interesting programs available on cable.
I can always find something on one of these channels: National Geographic, History, Discovery Science, Discovery World, Travel, Spektrum, Animal Planet or Cartoon Network. What sucks is that the Hitler (History) Channel switches over to the Sodomy Channel at night.