New offensive by Rajoy government against TV3

BarcelonaThe Spanish government will cut in half the bandwidth available for Catalonia's TV3, which will mean closing down some of its channels. This was announced yesterday morning by Catalan government spokesperson Francesc Homs, in an appearance marked by the pressure of the PP executive to trim back and weaken the autonomous regions' TV stations.

Spain's Industry Ministry, which parcels out the broadcast spectrum between the different participants in the sector, cited the need for the bandwidth by telephone companies who are developing the 4G network (which delivers high speed mobile phone service). The technical services of the Catalan government deny, however, that it is necessary to sacrifice one of TV3's two multiplexes for this reason, and claim that there are technical solutions that would allow TV3 to keep both. "They are flimsy excuses", explained Homs in his appearance.

This sort of political staging -an emergency press conference- is normally reserved for serious matters. The Spokesman stated that if the Spanish government's technical plan eventually moves forward "it could jeopardize Catalonia's Television". And he reminded the public that the percentage of Catalan language television is still in a minority: "The big paradox of this decision is that the presence of Catalan would be reduced even more, dropping below 22% or 23%, which is the current percentage". Mr Homs pointed out that, despite the few channels available to viewers, the Catalan Corporation for Audiovisual Media (CCMA) gets good audience ratings.

The threat could become a reality once the Spanish government approves the reshuffle of the broadcast spectrum. The Catalan executive fears that this could happen as soon as this Friday, at the Spanish government's weekly cabinet meeting.

Multiple damages

The elimination of a multiplex will require more than one sacrifice for TV3. There are three possible consequences and they are not mutually exclusive. One option is to drop the high-definition channel that occupies approximately as much space as two ordinary channels. But this would mean that viewers with an HD TV would notice a clear difference in image quality between TV3 and the rest of the stations with which it has to compete. Currently, half of the television sets in the country are high-definition.

The only option for maintaining the HD channel would be to sacrifice two channels of the surviving multiplex, which currently includes Canal 33/Super3, Sport3, and 3/24 (round the clock news). (There is also TV3 in standard definition, but this could not disappear because the other 50% of television sets -those that do not feature high-definition- would no longer be able to watch the general interest channel.)

Francesc Homs claimed yesterday that giving up the high-definition channel would impact on TV3's ability to be competitive. "When you enter into a downward spiral of marginalization and lack of competitiveness, then every day you are a little bit less than what you were", he warned.

Additionally, if the plan came into effect it would be impossible to separate out Canal 33 (culture) and Super3 (children's TV), which currently share the same frequency and split the broadcast hours. In a future scenario, with an improved economy, the Catalan Broadcasting Corporation would not be able to consider reverting to two separate frequencies for the children's and cultural channels, which were forced to merge into a single one in September of 2012 due to financial reasons.

The loss of the second multiplex would also mean having to abandon the historic ambition to create a single audiovisual market in Catalan. The reciprocity plans with Valencia and the Balearic Islands are stalled after the closure of Valencia's Canal 9 and IB3's decision to stop broadcasting in Catalonia, claiming that it could not afford the €400,000 yearly bill. The additional suppression of the second multiplex would render the interchange of channels between Catalan speaking regions technically impossible.

Questioned about what response the Catalan government was preparing, Homs avoided giving specifics about the measures that might be taken, beyond applying political pressure: "Once we have read the fine print and know how it will be implemented, we will act on all our options. We are still in the political and institutional relations stage".

In any case, Mr Homs believes that the motivation for this maneuver by the ministry is not technical, but rather strictly political. "Unfortunately, the PP (Popular Party) has credibility when it comes to closing TV stations", he said, in reference to the abrupt closure of Canal 9 in Valencia "and when they do it, it doesn't seem to bother them one bit". Mr Homs sees a link between the case and the recent announcement by Spanish Home Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz regarding the desire to harden the penalties for offenses committed on social networks. "Whenever there are media that bother them, they have a tendency to silence them".