Search results : 342

After monitoring Spanish television practices between May 2005 and July 2006 to verify compliance with the “Television without Frontiers” Directive, the European Commission found that Spanish television channels had frequently and on numerous occasions infringed the rules on advertising as contained in Articles 18(2) and 11(4) of the Directive. These infringements entailed that Spanish television advertisements often exceeded the 12 minutes per hour limit and failed to observe the 20-minute interval between advertising breaks. This situation was found to stem from the narrow interpretation retained...

In February 2007, the Spanish national public service broadcaster TVE had widely advertised a programme to be shown during its primetime: an interview conducted by journalist Jesús Quintero, who had a weekly show on TVE, with another journalist, José María García, formerly one of the most popular and controversial Spanish journalists who had been out of the spotlight for several years due to illness. The interview had already been recorded, and TVE used some clips from this in the advertising for the programme. However, shortly before the beginning of the programme, TVE decided not to broadcast...

In December 2005, the Catalan Parliament approved Act 22/2005 on Audiovisual Communication (see IRIS 2006-2: 10). Some of the articles of the were considered controversial because they were allegedly in breach of certain exclusive State competences, and of several Acts approved by the Spanish Parliament containing basic principles to be respected by regional Parliaments. The Popular Party (in the opposition both at Catalan and national level) decided to challenge the Act’s constitutionality. Surprisingly, a second application was filed by the national Government (including members of the Socialist...

On 20 April 2005, the Commission closed the procedures it had initiated, under the EC Treaty State aid rules (Article 88(1)), with regard to the funding system of the Spanish public broadcaster RTVE. It did so after having found that the commitments given by the Spanish authorities ensured a sufficient degree of transparency and proportionality in RTVE’s financing scheme, which ensured the latter’s compatibility with the Single Market for the purposes of Article 86(2) EC. Following the implementation of those commitments (elimination of the unlimited State guarantee and of the exception from corporate...

On 29 July, the Spanish Government approved a new Decree which regulates cable broadcasting and which also deals with other issues related to broadcasting, such as the introduction of Digital Terrestrial TV (DTTV) or the obligations for broadcasters to provide accurate information about the programme planning of their TV channels. As regards cable broadcasting services, their provision was fully liberalised by Acts 32/2003 (see IRIS 2004-1: 11) and 10/2005 (see IRIS 2005-7: 11), but the entry into force of these Acts was conditional upon the approval by the Government of an implementation Decree....