On Thursday, Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission
(CONATEL) released a list of cable television companies that will be
subject to the Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television,
marking an expansion of the law’s jurisdiction over television
broadcasters.
The law, known by the acronym RESORTE, establishes standards for
child and adult programming, prohibits inflammatory content such as
incitement riot or assassinate the president, places limits on
commercial advertising, and requires stations to broadcast important
government announcements.
When the law was passed in 2004, it applied only to companies
holding public broadcasting concessions. Last July, CONATEL announced
that cable broadcasters would undergo review and be subject to the law
if 70% of their content and overall operations could be considered
“national,” meaning Venezuelan.
Minister for Public Works and Infrastructure Diosdado Cabello, who
is also director of CONATEL, said on Thursday that 105 channels were
classified as national, while 164 were classified as international.
Over the past month, CONATEL invited all cable broadcasters to present
their case for classification as either national or international, but
only 24 companies responded, said Cabello.
“Starting today, channels should comply with the technical norms
pertaining to their broadcasting schedules, and there will be sanctions
for those who do not comply with the law,” said Cabello in the CONATEL
head office in Caracas on Thursday.
“With these technical norms for subscription [cable] channels,
Venezuelans will be able to watch television that is more pleasant,
healthy, and without poison,” Cabello added.
One of Venezuela’s largest cable stations, Radio Caracas Television
(RCTV), was among the companies that claimed to be international, but
was classified as national on Thursday.
RCTV, owned by media mogul Marcel Granier, supported the coup d’état
against President Chavez in April 2002 by broadcasting false and
manipulated images, showing Hollywood movies and other unrelated
material while the coup was underway, and by welcoming the installment
of the coup regime.
RCTV’s twenty-year public broadcasting license expired in May 2007,
and the government did not renew the license. RCTV continued to
broadcast on cable television, outside of the jurisdiction of the
RESORTE law, until now.
On Thursday, RCTV released a statement calling CONATEL’s measure
“unconstitutional, because it establishes different, discriminatory,
unjust, and arbitrary obligations for the channels whose content is
mostly made in Venezuela.”
Also, the legal limit of one cut to commercials during each program
threatens to “make the life of the company unsustainable,” RCTV stated.
“It obligates us to change the financial, advertising, and programming
structure,” the statement continued.
The company also claimed to have vetted its programming over the
past month and taken several popular “telenovelas” or soap operas off
the air, in order to not be categorized as national.
In response to RCTV’s objections, National Assembly Legislator
Manuel Villalba said RCTV “cannot be considered international when the
RESORTE Law establishes that if the capital, the artists, the
programming, and the technicians are Venezuelan, then the channel is
national.”
“Radio Caracas Television wants to provoke the government and
disobey the Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television,”
Villalba said, adding that if RCTV does so, it could face strict
penalties of up to five years off the air. “You have some parameters
and you have to submit yourself to the norms established by Venezuelan
laws,” the legislator said.
The measure announced Thursday was part of an ongoing government
effort to limit the concentration of media ownership, increase the
ratios of state and community-owned media to privately-owned media,
sanction broadcasting companies that violate the terms of their
concessions, and favor small-scale independent producers.
Venezuelan Analysis