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After the adoption of the Private TV Law in 1988, the Spanish Government, then the Socialist party (PSOE), opened a procedure to grant the three licences provided for. Article 19, par 3. of the Act stipulates that no natural or legal person can own, directly or indirectly more than 25% of the capital of a licensee company, so several joint ventures were created to bid for the licences. Finally, four media ventures competed for the three licences: Antena Tres TV (Godó Group, Prensa Española); Gestevisión-Tele Cinco (Berlusconi, ONCE); Canal Plus (Canal Plus France, PRISA Group), and Univisión (Zeta...

The Spanish law on digital television (Ley 17/11997 of 3 May 1997) has had a chequered history, both at national and community level, and which has been closely followed in IRIS (see IRIS 1997-9: 9, IRIS 1997-8: 11, IRIS 1997-5: 12 and IRIS 1996-10: 15). A quick recap of the basic facts is needed. The main point of contention centred around the choice of a single decoding system for deciphering television signals. Canal Satélite and Via Digital, the two operators in the market, each use a different kind of de-coder, simulcrypt for the former and multicrypt for the latter. The first version of...

In June, the party Izquierda Unida (United Left) presented a Bill on media concentration. This Bill proposed an increase of the existing disclosure obligations measures for media companies; introduced press concentration and cross-ownership rules, which at the moment do not have a specific regulation in Spain; proposed the reinforcement of the ownership limits for radio, and especially for national and local TV and for cable TV, this meaning that a company wouldn't be allowed to own, directly or indirectly, more than 25% of the capital of a TV broadcaster; and proposed the creation of a Consejo...

This June, the Spanish Government presented a new Bill on Telecommunications. The Bill is due to substitute the 1987 Ley de Ordenación de las Telecomunicaciones (LOT), in order to comply with the requirements of EC Telecommunications law. The Bill only deals with telecommunications (liberalisation and free competition in telecommunications market; interconnection of networks; numbering policy; telecommunications public service; privacy of data in telecommunications networks; sanctions; telecommunication authorities...). The Bill expressely establishes that radio and TV broadcasting are excluded...

The Spanish Government has changed the Law 17/1997, of 3 May 1997, by which the EC Directive 95/47 on the use of standards for the transmission of television signals (see IRIS 1996-2: 5) had been incorporated in Spanish law. Two articles of this Law 17/1997 created a strong controversy, widely discussed in Spain: - Art. 7.a) of Law 17/1997established that all decoders should be open, and that the operators using simulcrypt decoders (like Canal Satelite, the only channel operating at that time) had to reach an agreement with the other operators so that all programs could be received with a single...