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On 27 January 2017, the Audiovisual Media Authority (AMA) decided to grant the fifth and final national commercial license for national terrestrial digital networks. In its meeting, the regulator voted to grant the final license to the company ADTN, with four votes in favour and three votes against the decision. Previously, following legal battles in Court and after a successful attempt to abolish media ownership limitations for national operators, the regulator had issued four other licenses. The licenses went specifically to the two national commercial broadcasters TV Klan and Top Channel TV,...

The public broadcaster Radio Televizioni Shqiptar (RTSH) has approved its first editorial guidelines. RTSH presented the editorial guidelines in a meeting on 18 November 2016, before receiving the approval of the Steering Board. Previously, the draft guidelines had been consulted internally and with stakeholders and civil society organizations focusing on media, while OSCE enabled the external assistance of EBU. The guidelines were based on the BBC rules of conduct and the Slovenian public broadcaster editorial rules. The guidelines cover not only radio and television, but also online media and...

On 3 November 2016 and 29 December 2016, after a long impasse in the digital switchover process, the Audiovisual Media Authority (AMA) issued four of five licenses for national terrestrial digital networks. The decisions came after two parallel and successful legal battles of commercial operators to abolish the legal limitations for ownership of shares in national media companies, as well as opposing previous administrative decision of AMA, which failed to grant digital licenses to any of the applicants. On 13 May 2016, the Constitutional Court of Albania notified that it had ruled in favour of...

On 13 May 2016, the Constitutional Court of Albania ruled in favour of a request by the Association of Albanian Electronic Media seeking to abrogate paragraph 3 of Article 62 of the Law 97/2013 Për Mediat Audiovizive në Republikën e Sqipërisë (On Audiovisual Media in the Republic of Albania). The paragraph states that: “No natural or legal, local or foreign person shall have more than 40 per cent of the general capital of a joint stock company that holds a national audio broadcasting license or a national license for audiovisual broadcasting.” The Association of Electronic Media argued in the hearing...

On 14 April 2016, in a plenary session, the parliament voted to change the rules for the election of the General Director of the public broadcaster Radio Televizioni Shqiptar. The Act no. 22/2016 “On some additions and amendments to the Act no. 97/2013 ‘On Media in the Republic of Albania’” stipulates that the General Director of the public broadcaster needs 3/5 of the votes of the Steering Council members to be elected. If this does not happen in the first three rounds, he/she can be elected in the next two rounds through a simple majority. In case all five rounds fail, the Steering Council will...