Local TV and radio, that’s why AGCM beats the government

12 February 20214 years ago babelfish

Observations and suggestions of the Agcm on the methods of disbursement of the funds in favor of local television and radio broadcasters of the extraordinary contribution for the dissemination of institutional communications on Covid contagion

50 million euros. This is the extraordinary contribution for local radio and television broadcasters, for the year 2020, for information services related to the spread of the Covid-19 infection.

Contribution, however, which must be paid on the basis of certain conditions, writes Agcm, the Competition and Market Authority.

For the Authority, the criteria for assessing the applications that determine the distribution of resources must be "oriented to the principle of the protection of competition and pluralism of information". Let's go step by step.

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS FORESEEN

Let's start with the rules. Article 195 of the Decree Law 19 May 2020, n. 34, establishes the “Fund for emergencies relating to local broadcasters”.

"In order to allow local radio and television broadcasters to continue to carry out the information service of general interest on the territories through the daily production and transmission of in-depth local information for the benefit of citizens, the amount is allocated in the budget of the Ministry of Economic Development of 50 million euros for the year 2020, which constitutes an expenditure ceiling, for the provision of an extraordinary contribution for information services related to the spread of the COVID-19 infection. The beneficiary local radio and television broadcasters undertake to transmit the institutional communication messages relating to the health emergency within their information spaces. The grant is paid according to the criteria established by decrees of the Minister of Economic Development, containing the procedures for verifying the effective fulfillment of the information requirements, based on the rankings for the year 2019 approved pursuant to the decree of the President of the Republic of 23 August 2017 , no. 146 ", states the norm.

THE IMPLEMENTING DECREE

Only subsequently, with the implementing decree of the Ministry of Economic Development of 12 October 2020, were the times and methods for submitting the application for admission, the controls of the Ministry on television programming to verify the effective dissemination of institutional communications Covid- 19 and the methods of disbursement of the contribution.

THE METHODS OF DISTRIBUTION OF THE CONTRIBUTION

And it is the methods of disbursement of the contribution that worry AGCM. The Government plans to allocate 95% of the resources available to the top one hundred television broadcasters in the ranking, while the remaining 5% is divided among those that rank from the one hundred and first place onwards.

ANTI-COMPETITIVE MEASURES

Decision, that of the Mise, which "is likely to determine an inequality in the distribution of resources among broadcasters which, positioning themselves in the same area of the ranking (around the hundredth position), must be considered characterized by comparable levels of efficiency", writes Agcm in the weekly bulletin .

This division, "could have distorting implications of competition to the extent that two or more of the broadcasters affected by the discontinuity introduced by the specification just mentioned are operating in the same local area".

AGCM: NEW DISTRIBUTION

And for this reason, the Authority hopes "that there could be two portions to be assigned: one of all the broadcasters in possession of the eligibility requirements, in proportion to the respective score in the overall ranking, the other, in equal parts between issuers, taking care to ensure the latter portion of resources an amount sufficient to guarantee an adequate subsidy to smaller broadcasters ".

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/tv-e-radio-locali-ecco-come-e-perche-agcm-bacchetta-il-governo/ on Fri, 12 Feb 2021 09:10:21 +0000.