The General Audiovisual Law ready for debate in the Senate

Subsidiary liability for fraud in gambling and esoteric programs, the design of a concrete plan for the creation by the RTVE Corporation of the reference production center in Sant Cugat and the possibility of local broadcasting stations within their Community, are some of the main amendments that the Senate in the General Audiovisual Law.

In its parliamentary process, the Senate has included in the text a series of amendments to the General Audiovisual Law. Of the total of 432 amendments that the text has received, the PSOE has presented 27, the majority of a technical nature; the PP 50; Entesa 253; the PNV 73; CiU 22, and Mixed Group 7.

One of these amendments incorporated into the second section of article 7, referring to the rights of minors, grants television operators “subsidiary responsibility for fraud” that may occur derived from the already famous gambling and betting programs, or those related to esotericism and parascience.

At the proposal of the Popular Party, it has also been included in the first paragraph of section two that “conditional access must enable parental control.” The new law will prohibit the open broadcast of audiovisual content that could seriously harm the physical, mental or moral development of minors, and in particular, programs that include scenes of pornography or gratuitous violence.

Sant Cugat center and premises

Regarding the program that the Government must sign with RTVE, it has been established in the Senate that "the organization and programming of La 2, which, in any case, will have a specific plan for the creation of the reference production center in Sant Cugat."

The Senate has also included, at the initiative of PP and CiU, an amendment that would allow local television stations to broadcast on a network as long as joint broadcasts are restricted to the scope of the Autonomous Community in which they operate.

Among the socialist proposals is also one for the future State Council of Audiovisual Media (CEMA) to carry out inspections of operators with the rank of "public authority" and for the collection obtained from the rate on the reserve of public electricity domain to be deposited, as until now, in the Public Treasury, and this will transfer it for financing to RTVE. The project that came out of Congress established that these incomes would be entered into the future State Radiocommunications Agency for remission to the state public radio and television.