RTS dissatisfied with SBB’s decision to shift channel order – Waiting for REM decision

The users of SBB’s digital D3 television have not been watching Radio-Televizija Srbije (RTS) program on the first channel since March 15, but TV N1. If they want to have the public service program available to them at position 1, they need to set the channel order themselves, SBB says, as reported by Vecernje Novosti.

RTS is dissatisfied with this decision and has complained to the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM), but has yet to receive an answer.

REM is expected to at least interpret the law as to whether the cable operator has the right to make such a change, considering that the Law on Electronic Media, Article 22, Paragraph 1, Item 12, prescribes that the regulator “determines more closely the logical channel numeration”.

The N1 website says that “according to the generally adopted interpretation, the regulation from the Article 22 of the Law on Electronic Media pertains exclusively to multiplexing”. It is pointed out that the area of cable providers is fully left out of the Law and that “there is no article of the law providing REM with the right to determine the numeration of cable channels in private provider networks”.

When asked by the Journalists’ Association of Serbia whether REM was in charge of determining the logic numeration of channels for private providers as well, General Secretary of REM Nenad Jankovic only said that “on Friday, REM received a request by RTS for the decision of SBB on the new channel numeration in the digital package to be reconsidered” and that the REM Council would consider the request in the coming days.

Channel position and ratings

According to Vecernje Novosti, N1 also claims that they’ve learned from their sources that REM intends to thwart SBB’s intention to allocate position no. 1 to them and that they are to be placed behind all other local channels, claiming they want to lower their ratings this way. The owner of TV N1 is United Group, one of whose members is SBB.

On the other hand, Director General of RTS Dragan Bujosevic says that the Public Service has not previously received any notification from SBB that the numeration will shift and reminds that “RTS addressed REM two year ago with the request that public service channels be located in the first two positions in all cable operators”, but that they didn’t receive an answer at the time either.

He said for the Journalists’ Association of Serbia that, in this case, it wasn’t about the damage to the Public Service, but that it was about “what a state finds important, what its priorities are and who determines the rules – whether it’s the institutions or powerful individuals”.

SBB’s Corporate Communications Manager Jovana Lukic pointed out that SBB had implemented the new digital channel order so as to simplify things for their users. She says that they have not received instructions from REM regarding the channel order so far, that logical numeration doesn’t currently exist, and that, accordingly, no special permits are needed for this kind of shift to be made.

SBB d.o.o. Beograd

UG. UNITED GROUP INC Beograd

TV N1

Radio televizija Srbija- RTS Beograd

Regulatorno telo za elektronske medije Beograd

Udruženje novinara Srbije - UNS Beograd

United Group

TV N1

RTS

REM

cable operator

cable television

digital television

Law on Electronic Media

TV channel order

logical channel numeration

multiplexing

Journalists Association of Serbia

Nenad Jankovic

Dragan Bujosevic

Jovana Lukic